a sexy apocalypse in a can

Kelly. 28. she/her. Maryland, USA, Earth, The Known Universe. Hot mess of multifandom best enjoyed with cinnamon.

[beardedmrbean]

[catchaspark]

According to Know Your Meme, on August 18th, 2005, Erwin Beekveld brought forth this work into the world. HAPPY TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY, THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD.

[timefortigers]

sheds a single tear

[themarysue]

Bless.

[beeshibe]

my mom just came to me and ranted about how everyone is making this facebook status that says, “raising teenagers is like nailing jello to a tree”. she was so baffled by this because she said, “you were pretty easy to raise as teenagers. all you did was sleep and eat.” 

so to prove some point she’s going to nail a small cup of jello to a tree. 

[beeshibe]

she’s so pleased with her self

incredible

parents are weird 

[voidbat]

yeah but this is about as accurate as it gets.

you say “nail jello to a tree” and most people think jello all by itself.

but if you put any actual thought into what you’re doing and then give it just a little support

well gosh. look what happens.

please tell your mom good job.

[margaretssmallworld]

also love how the original metaphor of “nailing jello to a tree” is about trying to force your bizarre and arbitrary will on something that is categorically disinclined to do such a thing, for no conceivable reason.

[mariamlovesyou]

losing my mind losing my mind

[randomgermancupcake]

N64 graphical glitch

[dragongirltitties]

your dog is clipping through the environment and you're laughing

[trickstertime]

[setulose]

Trace amounts of Monica in my life

[setulose]

A statistically insignificant level of Monica in my life

[setulose]

My life manufactured in a facility that also processes Monica

[sweetfears]

Too funny to leave in comments @inkskinned

[hanitje]

“It’s a handbag.”

[staroftara]

[sexybritishllama]

just finished this month's book club book, went skimming goodreads reviews afterwards as you do, got my breath taken away by this absolutely brutal ending to one of the multi-paragraph 1 star reviews

[chimaerakitten]

Not enough military-adjacent sci-fi takes advantage of the humble rearguard action tbh.

(Not talking about hard military sci-fi since I haven’t read enough of it to say one way or the other. I’m talking soft quasi-military sf like Trek)

Like if you think about it narratively they’re incredibly useful because it’s a type of battle where:

1. No matter how spectacularly well the people fighting one do, it’s inherently not gonna successfully take down the big bad. Because the battle that could have done that is already lost. So it’s a time when they can win (achieve their objective of a successful orderly retreat) without winning. Always useful in a story where you need your protagonists to not win until the end.

2. You have an excuse for your Very Clever Plucky Band of Protagonists to be taking on a much much bigger and better armed force without it being just plain stupid to do so. No idiot balls here, just an acknowledgment that we inherently have to be asking a small force to hold off a large one, so the rest of our large force can get clear.

3. Great potential for a heroic sacrifice that doesn’t feel contrived BUT a sacrifice is not required. As mentioned in point 1 your protagonists can also do really well without it screwing up the pacing of the story. This means that your audience will not know for sure which way it is going to go based on the rules of storytelling. So you can get genuine tension/suspense and genuine catharsis.

4. Battle tactics and objectives can be complex and difficult to get across on page or on screen at the best of times, but “cover everyone else’s retreat from a lost battle” is easy to understand, sufficiently high stakes, and emotionally impactful—much more so than any convoluted “get the macguffin” or “take this territory” could ever be.

5. The combo of high stakes, inability to retreat (the whole point is they’re already retreating) and desperation mean it’s a perfect excuse for your protagonists to pull out all the stops. That experimental weapon that has a one in three chance of blowing up? Might as well use it because if we don’t not only are we dead, all our friends retreating behind us are too.

6. A rearguard action is easy to make unambiguously heroic or at least more morally defensible many other kinds of battle. Whatever lead up to this, right now our allies are just trying to not get killed/captured and we are standing between them and a force that wants to overwhelm and kill/capture them. This works even when the antagonist force isn’t evil or dishonorable, because “chase a retreat to try to turn it into a rout or full surrender” is considered pretty acceptable in many kinds of warfare, so your Honorable Enemy is likely to engage in it to an extent—it’s not reserved for the Evil Forces of Evilness.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

it's so funny to read "and there was just one bed :O" fanfiction set in time periods where sharing a bed was entirely normal. Guys, just be glad it's only the two of you.

[ineptshieldmaid]

Hmm.

Proposition: There’s only the two of us in this bed (which makes it uncomfortably intimate). We’re usually three abed with Snoring Steve the footman between us. We kind of expected to bunk down before the fire or in a hayloft, but our mysteriously gracious host has given us a room, and this bed, and there’s only two of us in this bed.

[stoneantler]

Getting really tired of how all the anti porn censorship posts going around are like, "I don't like porn but I will defend it" or "it was bad for me to see porn young but it's better than the alternative." I like porn. I want to see porn. I was not damaged by seeing porn as a young person. Porn and erotica are valid and fun vehicles for artistic expression and completely normal expressions of human sexuality. We gain nothing by being squeamish in our support of porn, erotica, and nsfw content.

[hypokeimena]

#it was good for me to see erotica at the age I sought it out (definitely younger than 18 Imao) because it was #an extremely safe and low-stakes way to explore the concept of sexuality and what I was and wasn't into #and because I enjoyed it! #some of it l've seen I haven't been into and even found unpleasant but it's baffling to call that harm #any more than smelling something really nasty while out walking has caused me harm. #sometimes things take you by surprise and make you go 'ew bleh' but that is literally. How life is. Like trash in an alley. #And there is quite a lot of cool and enjoyable and joyful stuff also! Like good restaurant smells! #it's just life it's just a part of life. (via @screambirdscreaming)

#prev is highly correct #i recognize that this is a talking point from some very wretched sources. but: the loss of distinction between harm and discomfort #is frankly devastating a lot of people's ability to socially cohere #and needs to be remedied!!!! urgently!!!!!! (via @ursula-legun)

[akajustmerry]

truly one of the most demoralising things about being in the job market atm is "only successful applicants will be notified" is practically a universal standard. so you spend hours, sometimes days filling out applications, writing CVs and cover letters only to be ghosted as the only form of communication. Not even a "thank you but this time you've been unsuccessful" email. You're in a constant state of "did I not get it or have they not contacted me?" and you just have to eventually conclude you were unsuccessful without so much as courtesy, "sorry, but thank you for your application." A literal thankless cycle for months and months and months. You'd think with all the ways to automate these processes they would at least have the time, means and decency to acknowledge your submission and let you off the hook, but no. You're just in limbo in every possible way in the name of "efficiency". Solidarity with everyone going through this because it is truly dehumanising and demoralising to work so hard on putting yourself forward constantly without acknowledgement or useful communication of any sort for long periods of time, and most ppl simply will not have any compassion for what that's like.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

so fun coming across pre-9/11 references to the twin towers bc people loathed them. You can be reading a random book from the 90s and stumble across succulent easter eggs like this:

"...where the World Trade Center (so good they did it twice!) stands as the final failure of architecture; not an idea, not a design, not a whimsy, not a grace note, not a shred of art or passion wrinkles those sharply creased trouser legs."

(Don't Ask by Donald E. Westlake)

[karlmarxtdumitmirgehn]

i once read somewhere that new yorkers refered to the twin towers as the boxes the chrysler building and empire state building came in

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

thinking about when my friend found a book from the 70s in a church office with truly some of the most insane prayers I have ever heard

[lasrina]

oh this was about someone specific

[aurpiment]

“It’s easy to assume”: someone’s misconception is about to be amiably corrected

“It’s tempting to assume”: someone’s assumption is about to be criticized

“It’s comforting to assume”: someone’s assumption is going to be read for filth

[mckitterick]

Deadly egg recall

The FDA has upgraded an egg recall issued last month to “Class I,” its highest risk level, as it warns the public that consuming the products could cause “serious adverse health consequences or death.”

The recall of 1,589,577 dozen white-shell eggs and brown cage-free shell eggs was initially issued by Midwest Poultry Services in late July, which warned they might be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis.

According to the company, the eggs were produced and distributed from farms in Texas between June 6 and July 3 and have sell-by or best-by dates between July 20 and August 17. The recalled egg cartons have either the code P-1950 or 0840962 and Julian Dates between 157-184.

source: X

[prof-grace-aspen]

Recalled eggs were shipped to foodservice and retail customers in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.  Recalled eggs were available to consumers at Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana; Brookshire Grocery stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and other smaller retail and foodservice outlets in these states plus Mississippi and New Mexico.

Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and New Mexico are the currently affected states.

[homunculus-argument]

All good My Little Pony names sound either like euphenisms for gay people or euphenisms for hard drugs. You could've had a pony with a handlebar moustache named Fruit Garland and his energetic wife Sparkle Snow and nobody would've even blinked. Due to the sparkle snow.

[featherfulquadroped]

Spent too long on this, but may I present my take?

[rarity-pony]

You have no idea how much this is making me laugh.

[derring-do]

Opera Streams: Mid-Late August 2026

Jungmi Kim as Orpheus

15th: Wagner's Das Rheingold from Osterfestspiele Salzburg. Featuring Christian Gerhaher, Leigh Melrose, and Brenton Ryan. Geolocked to Europe. Free!

15th: Puccini's Tosca from Festival Cap Rocat. Concert presentation. Featuring Lise Davidsen, Freddie De Tommaso, and Ludovic Tézier. Subscription.

16th: Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims from the Rossini Opera Festival. The now-traditional summer showcase for ROF academy artists. Free!

20th: Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos from Salzburger Festspiele. Featuring Kate Lindsey, Ziyi Dai, Christina Nilsson, and Eric Cutler. Subscription.

21st: Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin from the Metropolitan Opera. Featuring Iurii Samoilov, Asmik Grigorian, and Stanislas de Barbeyrac. Geolocked to US IPs. Will also air on PBS member stations (airtimes vary). Free!

21st: Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice from Daegu Opera House. Featuring Jungmi Kim, Heejin Oh, and Junghyun Lee. Free!

21st: Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims from Salzburger Festspiele. Featuring Cecilia Bartoli, Mélissa Petit, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, and many more. Subscription.

28th: Verdi's Macbeth from Opernfestspiele Heidenheim. Featuring Thomas Weinhappel, Leah Gordon, and David Esteban. Free!

TV: Viewers in German-speaking Europe can see the Ariadne noted above on 3SAT on the 15th, and Austrians can also see it on ORF2 on the 24th.

Cinemas: Cape Town Opera's Carmen heads to South African movie theatres at the end of the month.

Not strictly opera, but: Joyce DiDonato and Time For Three perform Kevin Puts's semi-staged Emily Dickinson song cycle Emily: No Prisoner Be on the 22nd. Lea Desandre sings Vivaldi with Ensemble Jupiter on the 30th.

Archive notes: Medici recently added a number of Glyndebourne productions to their offerings, including Alcina and Semele, and this fortnight will be adding several Salzburg productions, including Elektra. Arte is offering two productions previously featured here: Lohengrin with Piotr Beczała and Aix's double Iphigenies (Taulis & Aulis).