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@coralwithstress
site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word
site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition
site that gives you words that rhyme with a word
site that gives you synonyms and antonyms
THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS
I FOUND THE POST AGAIN
On Tradition
Welcome to another thanksgivng themed Family Lore! Content warnings: Food, bigotry, fire and explosions, knife mention, conspiracy theories and Ohio. Please mind the tags, your health and safety always come first.
It’s November of 2012 and the last time I’m going to Ohio on purpose. My grandparents had passed away within a week of each other that February and since my mom’s family had spent the last decade caring for them there was sort of a void- we’d been putting aside grudges and problems in the interest of their comfort, but also setting aside interests and hobbies to make time for them. How would we get along without that purpose and burden?
So, the first family Thanksgiving my family had been able to attend in a decade was arranged, part family gathering, part wake. We drove from Colorado this time, I’d been taking a semester off after a viral infection nearly killed me, and my sister taking a gap year before college. Everyone was going to be there- my mother’s brother family, My grandmother’s sister and her daughter and her husband, Sue and Cliff.
Sue never really got the hang of critical thinking and as such conservative politics and conspiracy theories held tremendous appeal to her, and that crossed with the family’s double-dominant Dramatic Hoe Genes means that she’s prone to the occasional spectacular leap of illogic and will fight you in the street to defend it.
A decade prior, she’d taken issue with how my uncle stuffed the Turkey.
Seriously, read that one it’ll make this story make a lot more sense.
Upon arrival, she seemed to have mellowed slightly in the past 11 years and we had an entire salient conversation about fishing whilst preparing the bird. It was a little strange- after the last decade, it was like I was meeting the entire family again for the first time, but things were going well and I was starting to remember things again. Maybe I’d figure out how to get back next year.
“We should establish some more traditions!” Mom suggested after Aunt Stephanie mentioned how odd it was to not have grandma and grampa around. Being raised a 5th generation agnostic has got some advantages- I’ve never gotten up before noon on a sunday- but the lack of religious structure means you’ve gotta DIY your holiday rituals sometimes. We were used to applying this to Agnosticmas already and were willing to build Thanksgiving 2.0 (now with 200% less revisionist history!) if necessary.
“Like what? Decorations?”
“Yeah, food, decorations, party games, things like that. Bobby seems game to do his Pregnant Turkey every year, so that’s one down. Now all we need is some festive decorations and a party game and we’ll have a real traditional holiday.”
“Hand turkeys?” Suggested my sister.
“We still have pumpkins we didn’t carve at Halloween, we could make a turkey out of those?” Said cousin Sam.
“Oh yeah with the decorative gourds in the hallway- the long one is the neck and- do we have corn for the tail?” I said, missing art class and feeling entirely too overconfident in my ability to handle knives. Thusly, everyone under 40 went off to the garage to create a Squash facsimile of Ohio’s Most Murderous Avian.
We were doing pretty good for most of it- there was the initial debate as to whether the mock-turkey was going to be cooked or still kicking, but that was quickly settled by the locating of a spectacularly ugly nobbly gourd to be it’s head, but then JohnJack brought up an important point:
“Are we going to be putting a candle in this like a jack-o-lantern?”
We all paused, staring at the half-gutted pumpkin we’d started disemboweling on instinct like a horde of overexcited serial killers.
“I mean, we’re definitely setting him on fire eventually.” I said like a sane and rational person that should definitely be holding an eight-inch knife. “But I think the corn leaves would catch so we probably shouldn’t do that inside. We’ll set it on fire AFTER the meal, as a sacrifice to harvest gods.”
“That sounds reasonable.” Said cousin Sam, up to her elbows in pumpkin guts like another sane and reasonable person who should be allowed to have knives.
“What are we going to call him?” Asked my sister, shovelling the rest of pumpkin guts out like the only responsible adult in the room.
“Bob.” Said Sam.
“Your brother is named JohnJack because you guys named literally every dude Bob for like eight generations there, are you really going to start that up again?” Said my sister.
“Slagthor the Annihilator.” Suggested JohnJack.
“MUCH BETTER.” we all agreed, and set about the complicated technical challenge of getting his head to stay on securely enough to last through dinner.
Slagthor turned into a thing of beauty and terror- he had a resplendent tail of multicolored corn cobs and leaves, wings carved from the sides of the pumpkin and carefully offset and filled in with corn leaves, a long goose-gourd for his neck and some hideous knobbly thing for his face, the twisted stem a menacing beak. We even got him to stand with creative use of aluminum wire left on the garage workbench and another pair of drumstick-shaped gourds. The effect was completed by a pair of sunglasses balanced carefully on his stem-beak, giving him a fun, 90’s-radical kind of look. He was greeted with many oohs and Ahs and genuine surprise that none of us had lost a finger making him.
“It’s a Thanksgiving miracle!” Mom declared.
Things were feeling chill, feeling fun now, and we sat down to dinner under the watchful bespectacled gaze of Slagthor, who had been put up on the mantle as master of ceremonies. Everyone went around the table and said what they were thankful for- being able to gather, the time we had together, that the turkey didn’t catch in the smoker this year- and we sat down to what was a pleasant dining experience until about two glasses of wine in, when in the middle of an unrelated conversation on raised garden beds and rabbit control, Aunt Sue opened her mouth:
“-And Osama Bin Laden’s death was a Hoax!”
The conversation came to a sudden halt and there was a collective spiritual groan at the table, as everyone tried to avoid eye contact with her. Cousin JohnJack got up from the table in disgust.
“I saw the maps! Abbottabad is nowhere NEAR the ocean!”
Her mother, unfortunately, took the bait.
“Sue, the navy has helicopters, they don’t need to take the boat everywhere.”
“They couldn’t drive a helicopter with their flippers!” said Sue excitedly now that someone was engaging with her.
“They wouldn’t need Scuba gear in the desert Sue.” Said Uncle Bobby, taking up the fight since she wasn’t going to shut up about this.
“Why would a Seal need Scuba gear?” She said.
There was a long minute of confused silence as we tried to puzzle that out. I recused myself immediately and continued eating twice-baked potato.
“Sue…” My father said cautiously, having stumbled upon her line of reasoning. “SEAL is an acronym for Sea,Air, Land. They’re human men, not trained seals.”
“No, the navy trains animals to do things underwater, they have dolphins that find bombs!” She argued.
“That was a TV show, Sue.” he said gently. “Flipper wasn’t real.”
Sue faltered, opening and closing her mouth like a confused grouper. “It-it-!” She stammered, scrambling for another theory to satisfy herself.
“Hey can we clear up so we can set Slagthor on fire before it starts snowing?” I said, which gave everyone a nice out.
We gathered in the front yard, dressed like michelin men to ward off the late-november cold, and set Slagthor atop the stump Uncle Bobby had failed to dynamite out the year before. We gathered around as Johnjack carefully lit his tail, then watched in confusion as he sprinted back towards the house. The more mentally adept members of the family started sprinting as well.
“Why are you all standing there?” he asked from the porch.
“It’s cold and we want to be near the fire, why are you running?” Asked Aunt Stephanie.
“We’re destroying him, so-”
JohnJack was interrupted by Slagthor suddenly and violently exploding, flaming cobs of corn and miniature gourds flying in all directions and the pumpkin amplifying the sound of the roman candle inside to a deafening roar. The family scattered, taking whatever cover was available- cars, snow drifts and shrubbery alike. It took a good three minutes for Slagthor to stop exploding, reduced to a charred ring of squash and flaming pieces of produce scattered about the front lawn. In the distance, sirens began to wail.
“- SoI stuffed him full of fireworks.” He explained.
We all glared at him from our various partial covers.
“I shoulda said that earlier, right?”
“Yes JohnJack, You get to clean him up.”
And thusly, the family thanksgiving 2.0’s traditions are set: the Pregnant Turkey, The telling and defending of the wildest conspiriacies we can think of, and the creation and destruction of a produce turkey.
This year I’m planning on “The earth isn’t a ball OR flat, it’s actually shaped like a donut, with the equator on the outside and the poles in the middle. The moon is the donut hole.” and putting Slagthor the Harvest Turkey out on a float so he explodes in the lake like a particularly dramatic viking funeral.
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The Turkey Story
So it’s 2001, and my family drives from fucking California and like three blizzards to get to Ohio for thanksgiving, becuase my grandparents are moving into a nursing home and it’s their last holiday in that house. So its a bit bittersweet but ultimately a good thing.
Since it’s their last holiday there, the family pulls out all the stops when it comes to dinner, all the Russian desserts come out, as does the Lethal Bacon Mashed Potatoes and the horrible candied yams with the mini marshmallows dish because not all expressions of love are good, even if they are sincere. In the spirit of going all-out, Uncle Bobby smokes a Turkey.
Uncle Bobby started cooking as a boy scout by tossing foil-wrapped potatoes into a campfire and has been addicted since, and now has a hand-made smokehouse in the backyard where he makes various cured meats and other delights. He seasons the turkey in the traditional manner, but he and grandpa have a shared passion for a spicier mesquite-style bird, so Bobby makes a Cornish Game Hen seasoned that way, for them.
Then Bobby has a Brilliant Idea. He realizes that he can stuff the turkey (once it has been smoked) with regular stuffing, and there is still plenty of room for him to put the game hen inside THAT, and stuff the game hen becuase why not? He confers with Mom, and she explains how to cut open the turkey so there’s dramatic reveal as the stuffing and game hen come out. It’s Genius.
Except, of course, that my Aunt Sue is attending, Uncle Cliff slouching after her.
So the day of the dinner, tensions are running a bit high, between the marathon cooking, the kids all being trapped indoors due to aforementioned blizzards, and Uncle Cliff deciding that the best way to amuse himself is by hiding from the adults in the basement, getting drunk and rambling about how various ethic groups were destroying America. Being that I had close Muslim friends that were leaving the country becuase of 9/11, I was near tears from this nonsense and ready to fight a man roughly five times my size.
Sue, for some reason, keeps coming down and defending him, or telling us we’re rotten children for ‘attacking’ him, becuase she Must Stand By Her Man, even if her man is a hefty bag of dog feces with an ugly mustache.
My sister eventually bolts upstairs to tattle and my grandfather limps down to the basement and brandishes his Hip-Bone Cane, hands rock-steady in spite of the Parkinson’s slowly taking over him.
“Firstly Cliff, It may not be my roof much longer but while you are under it you will be civil, or I’ll beat your skull in. Also, dinner’s ready, everyone go wash up.”
We go upstairs and sit down, and do the traditional “Name one thing you’re thankful for” as the bread gets passed around the table, and things calm down a bit. Bobby brings out the Turkey and everyone goes OOH becuase it’s really pretty, them Mom carves it open so that the stuffing spills out dramatically along with the game hen and there’s an appreciative gasp all around becuase it looks cool.
Only Sue KEEPS gasping, in utter horror, before getting up and clasping her hands to her face ala Edvard Munch and shrieks-
“OH MY GOD IT WAS PREGNANT!”
We all stare at Sue. We all look back at the fully-dressed-cooked-and-stuffed birds that in no way had any internal organs in them or ever gave live birth. Then we all looked back at Sue, trying to figure out where to begin but since she’d been trying to justify Cliff’s behavior she was pretty much free-associating conspiracies and scandals now, and just kept going.
“IT WAS PREGNANT MY GOD WE’VE COMMITTED AN ABORTION WE’RE ALL GOING TO HELL FOR THIS, I’M SO SORRY JESUS-” She goes into full pearl-clutching gibbering horror at this point and falls back into her chair like it’s a Victorian fainting couch only it’s a shitty chair from the Eisenhower administration so it collapses and she slams into the floor, sobbing and kicking her feet like a toddler.
Everyone watched for a moment before my Mom sighs heavily and starts carving and serving the turkey while my grandmother mouths “she’s not coming back”.
Cliff, reactions delayed by about six beers, finally notices his wife is on the floor and tries to pick her up, falls on his ass himself. They are assisted by Dad, who is saintly patient man and less immune to this jacknapery at that point. I am stuffing dinner rolls into my face to keep from laughing at this grand spectacle and it’s not working.
“I CAN’T EAT IT, I REFUSE TO PARTAKE IN THIS BARBARISM-” Sue begins but Dad puts on his best Kindly Father voice (he was heavily involved with the catholic church and even considered becoming a priest before getting drafted but that’s another story) and assures Sue that she need not eat, or even be in the room if she wants. She nods, placated by being the center of attention again, and Dad goes in for the kill.
“I wouldn’t want you to go hungry. Can I make you some Eggs?”
“That would be lovely.” Said Sue, joke flying over her head like a boeing 747. I recall watching my grandmother nearly choke to death on the green beans over that, and everyone pointedly trying to avoid talking about anything poultry-related while Sue sat there and ate the most ironic scrambled eggs in the history of mankind.
Shortly thereafter, Cliff threw up in the sink and they went home, and the party got underway properly, with Grandpa raising a toast to Mom and Uncle Bobby “For marrying well, for a change” “Pregnant Turkey” has been an Ohioan thanksgiving staple since then. I’ll see if I can hit Uncle Bobby up for instructions but if you decide to make it 1. you HAVE to shriek “OH MY GOD IT WAS PREGNANT” when you carve it open, or it’s not authentic and won’t taste as good 2. Share the pictures with me.
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Always worth a reshare.
The 1969 Easter Mass Incident
Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention. Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.
As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities. This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.
When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.
Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace. Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on. In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.
For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you. It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass. All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.
*
“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”
“We’re getting to that.” He waved.
Keep reading
the world will achieve world peace once there is a fanfic specifically for duplicity niall….
OMG THIS IS SO REAL
Working on it ;)
Don't you fucking dare compare TikTok to Vine. ITS NOT THE SAME THING
Vine went away cuz it couldn't afford to stay active
TikTok went away because congress RIPPED it away from us. It let to many activist groups connect faster than ever before; it let too many voices of dissent be heard louder than ever before; and most importantly it was more popular than Facebook, Twitter( cuz fuck that X bullshit), and instagram.
I understand losing both of these platforms hurt, I was alive for vine's death to. But don't let yourself be fooled into a falce equivalence.
Vine died
TikTok was murdered.
*gripping your shoulders and shaking you* you gotta promise me one thing, if nothing else. you have to promise me to live, do you hear me. and if it's for nothing else but spite, LIVE. donald trump wants you to feel defeated and alone. let's show him and all the americans who voted for him that we will not stay quiet, we will not be devided and we will LIVE. we will survive that 78-year old felon, we will OUTLIVE him. so please reach out to friends and family, reach out to each other and STAND TOGETHER.
PLEASE, LIVE!
If you are trans I need you to stay alive.
Stay alive for every other trans person fighting, stay alive for every trans person who is no longer here, and most importantly stay alive for yourself.
They don’t get to erase us! They don’t get to take away our rights, and treat us as less than human. Don’t let them erase us, and don’t let them make you a statistic. Don’t let them win.
Stay alive
If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for others. Do it out of spite.
ice skating daphne
I don’t even care who fucking wins the presidency this year look at this
This makes an INCREDIBLE difference!!!! For fuck sake go vote!!!!
A few years back a Republican won my house district by six vote. Now she’s talking about making it illegal to protest the Gazan genocide. Pay attention to Congress
if any of your circle is telling you voting is useless and it will never get us anywhere is lying to get you not to vote. republicans will always vote. not voting is just pulling your teeth for them. go vote and dont reblog propaganda that makes you feel hopeless
HEY don't forget that this year we are boycotting Eurovision as per BDS guidelines!
Solidarity with Palestine and Artsakh forever!
Oakland, California
I'm just saying, if there's a curse that runs along your family line and you don't tell your kids about it, how the hell are they supposed to go on a quest to stop it?
Tell your children about your medical history.
