The missile is very tired.

[animentality]

[kat]

i had a dream last night that the entire world used a currency (?) called angrypennies which as the name implies are obtained by experiencing anger. the stronger and more intense your anger was, the more angrypennies you'd gain. an all-consuming rage would earn you more than a slight irritation, etc. so people were always searching for ways to fuel their anger and purposefully keeping themselves angry all the time because they wanted to earn angrypennies. unclear if angrypennies could be exchanged for goods and services, or if they were just a collectible.

anyway, as if this wasn't heavy-handed enough, at one point british comedian greg davies appeared and explained that angrypennies couldn't be worth feeling angry all the time. this was a real revelation to dream-me and i was finally able to break free of the angrypenny grind and allow myself to experience emotions other than anger.

[kat]

it goes without saying that i will be using the word angrypenny as if it was part of the common vernacular instead of a term that my dreaming brain conjured up i.e. "he's all about the angrypennies" (derogatory way to refer to a guy who searches for reasons to be angry and possibly lacks introspection)

[dogtoks]

[higglety]

you're laughing. Those dogs were stuck on that large pile of snow until it melted into a tiny pile of snow and you're laughing

[silviacrossdresser]

Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny reinterpret this cartoon first published in German magazine Lustige Blätter in 1932:

[blackpyrefly]

william the conqueror: i shall take england for normandy and become its king

william the concurrer: i agree

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[ralfmaximus]

Civic duties fulfilled

[the-real-seebs]

Someone linked me this beautiful poster, and I'm just really impressed.

My contribution:

[gallusrostromegalus]

I may be turning into my Grandfather.

You know, the one who brought home an inordinate number of animals over the course of my mom's childhood.

Longtime followers might have noticed it's been quiet here lately and that's because I've added several dozen animals to my household. Our beloved Ginger cat Mochi passed away in March from a kidney infection and it was. Emotionally devastating. Since there was a cat-shaped hole in my home, I talked with with several rescue agencies, and drove to Texas on Easter Weekend to collect my beautiful daughter Selene:

Selene is three apples tall, weighs less than a gallon of milk, and sits comfortably at the top of the animal dominance hierarchy. Selene's hobbies are Rodent Destruction Simulator (toys), Reptile Pursuit Simulator (String on a flypole), and wedging herself into crevices. The dogs instinctively fear her, but lately Herschel the Corgi has started to be brave about playing string with her, and she makes a point of greeting Charlie the Yes when he comes in from the yard.

Since Selene is a very energetic baby with a healthy appetite for recreational violence, we did have a bit of a problem with her deciding that the humans were he favorite toys and playing with us a little too hard. On the recommendation of our vet, we got her a Playmate:

Helios (actually answers to Sunny) is approximately 5years old, and has the Size, Sweetness and Intellectual Fortitude of a Honeybaked Ham. He has the proportions of Johnny Bravo and none of his executives are functioning. Sunny's Hobbies are watching TV (His favorite movie is Fantasia 1940, specifically the Toccata and Fugue In D Minor), getting in the way of D&D, and demanding we all go to bed at 9PM.

He's about 5, but had a rough start- his former owners surrendered him when they moved, didn't do a good job box-training him, and declawed his front paws. He is extremely spoiled now, but does have to live with an inexplicably heavily armed teenager who wants to play Violence with him.

Neither of these cats Meows. Selene beeps and trills like some sort of adorable futuristic robot and Sunny very quietly honks and quacks like a very polite goose. I also decided to manifest a dream I've had since I was about 7:

If you've never kept fish before some notes:

Fishkeeping is a TERRIBLE introduction to pet ownership, but a GREAT introduction if you want to learn Ecology, Chemistry, Zoology, Structural Engineering, Botany, Interior Design and Economics all at once

Which perhaps sounds daunting but if you also need something that is intellectually engaging, forces you to learn time management and budgeting skills, and will alleviate your depression by giving you a project that rewards you with actual, literal growth, I cannot recommend a better hobby against The Current Miasma

I am not kidding about the Interior Design and Structural Engineering. 1 gallon of water weighs about 10lbs so the smallest acceptable tanks weigh at least 50lbs when full, usually more, and more than say, an Ikea Bookshelf can reliably bear. The GOOD tanks start at 200lbs and need to be placed where they can be filled and drained for water changes, near an outlet for lights/filtering/heat/air pump, and on a floor that can handle the weight of both the tank and the stand

Prices and product quality control being what they are, you might need to build your own stand so add Carpentry to that list too

Fishkeeping can be ...expensive

It can be a lot less expensive if you casually mention you're interested in the hobby, because half a dozen fishkeepers will pop out of the woodwork and start offering you their old tanks and equipment as well as excess plants and livestock, but this will also make you Beholden To Your Local Fishkeeping Community

which is not necessarily Bad

...but it may mean needing to rapidly set up an emergency tank for a Surprise Betta your friend who does hazardous building cleanup found in the back of an abandoned trap house, for instance

If you do not already have one, you will develop a deep and profound hatred for the pet industry and how they will outright lie to people about fish, especially bettas.

You will also become very emotionally attached to Shrimp

Come join me it's fun I promise :)

Ok this post is already a mile long so read the Alt text for descriptions of my Tank Denizens:

Relatedly, the best place to put a fish tank is the bathroom because the sink is RIGHT THERE for water changes, it's got the water-resistant flooring and outlets, and you're garunteed to be in there a few times a day so you will be checking on the tank.

Also, Premium Ringside Seating! I'm a goddamn Genius.

So this is what I've been doing since March and if you enjoyed this post and want to hear future Creature Adventures or for me to do a Tank Setup Guide, you can support me on Ko-fi or Patreon.

[lovely-v]

Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings he’s always like “well we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said so”

[busket]

at the rose city comic con panel this month a fan asked them (sean and elijah) if sam and frodo were in love and they said

Sean: .....yes. absolutely

Elijah: 100 percent.

Sean: dont tell rosie

[explorerrowan]

Rosie: "This is my husband Sam, and that's his husband, Frodo. Frodo is my husband-in-law. I'm not into him, he's he's a bit too 'elfy' for my taste, but Sam likes him, and that's fine with me. As far as I know, Frodo can't give Sam children, but Frodo looks after ours all the same, so I don't mind sharing Sam if it means another pair of eyes on the wee ones. In all honesty, our family tree is right simple compared to some hobbits. Yes, I'm referrin' to you Lobelia, over there pretendin' you ain't eavesdroppin'. Still bitter you ain't got either of my boys or their house, eh?"

[arcaniumagi2]

[ms-katonic-of-tamriel]

Tbh it's canon that Frodo invited Sam and Rosie to move in to Bag End after their wedding and they all lived there for a couple of years until Frodo went to Valinor, so yeah. Running with it.

And once Rosie dies, Sam says his goodbyes and disappears after him.

[roach-works]

what’s funny is people assuming that rosie would somehow be too dim or naive to KNOW that sam loved frodo, instead of looking at a guy who would loyally follow a beloved friend to hell and then help carry him home again, and not be like ‘oh i can’t not fuck that.’

[elodieunderglass]

Polyamory, specifically polyandry, would be an interesting solution to the oddball population of the Shire.

The Shire is excellent farming country, with consistently good weather, and only one tough winter in living memory; hobbits like to produce large families; they’re resistant to disease, rarely violent, and encounter few dangers. It is usual for hobbits to produce many children, so that (for example) Bilbo and Frodo are unusual in both being only children, with no siblings, and not having children of their own. All of this should point to a population that increases every generation if not doubling outright. Young people (and their ideologies!) should rapidly outnumber the old with an ever-increasing effect and impact on society. However, the Shire has a surprisingly stable history; it never seems to increase or decrease greatly in population, and the bell curve of age seems… demographically balanced? There certainly isn’t a conflict from rising young bloods challenging the middle-aged reactionaries; there’s no unemployment; there are no housing crises or waves of emigration, or even a tendency for young people leaving home to marry. Meanwhile, not only does the Shire not suffer from internal pressures, but it remains obscure and hardly noticed in global politics.

What makes sense here is that adult hobbits form a loose group. Four parents in a polycule, between them all, may produce four children. All four parents claim to have four children. An outsider would assume this meant the adults had eight children.

Hobbits therefore are not especially fertile or fecund. They simply have large families. Much of their interest in genealogy is due to the complex relationships of blood-kin, hearth-kin, love-kin and pledge-kin, who must all be carefully tracked and measured - not just because you need to make sure that you don’t climb into bed with an un-permitted degree of blood-kin, but to track family alliances and carefully quantify the precise level of thoughtfulness to put into the proper present to gift your father’s lover’s lover (too much implies a degree of intimacy that might upset the polycule.)

Thus, while a hobbit matron may tell a startled dwarf that she has seven sons, she might only have borne five of them herself, and have one hearth-son by her wife, and a pledge-son of her first husband’s. There are between three and four fathers involved at various stages of production, from conception to pledge-duty, but there is debate about the precise number of fathers, as one child was festival-conceived and therefore provisionally pledged to the Brandybucks until more distinctive paternal traits should materialise. It’s expected that four of the sons will be uninterested in women, and their contribution to family life will be in raising hearth-children and pledge-duty. However, this level of detail is normally negotiated later in conversation, as a mutual overture of friendship. So she’s just clear and simple: yes, certainly, she has seven sons. Yes, they’re all hers. Yes, that’s fairly normal - yes, hobbits like big families. How big? That’s really hard to say! Well, about thirteen hobbits live in her house… er, she has forty-three nieces and nephews. Yes! She has nine siblings, that’s correct, but some of them are still babies themselves..

In this way, a bewildered dwarf might assume that hobbits are absurdly fertile, producing an average of seven children per couple, at an absurd pace.

When in fact, with about half of hobbits never bearing biological children, the population of hobbits is pretty much always the same.

Tl:dr, hobbit population works perfectly well, both internally and in the perceptions of outsiders, if the majority of the Shire is gay, they’re all polyamorous, and they all firmly claim to be parents of high numbers of children. Of course Frodo fathered Sam’s kids - he named them! They were pledge-kin but not hearth-kin, as Frodo needed a lot of quiet and stability in the home.

No outsider ever parses hobbit genealogy well enough to understand this except for Gandalf, who never explains anything either.

[dancingspirals]

are you kidding? Gandalf would WEAPONIZE his knowledge of Hobbit genealogy against outsiders

[elodieunderglass]

Since “pledge” kinships are multidimensional and can occur in different directions, hobbits can form - and formalise - family bonds simply because they choose to. Gandalf doesn’t tell anyone that the formation of Thorin’s Company, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Belladonna Took’s Accidental Troop of Mercenaries* are legal formations of pledge-siblings, a hobbit family structure usually claimed to increase social class and prestige (as high numbers of pledge-kin confer distinction on a hobbit, being a sort of popularity vote/endorsement that adds greatly to their social power. Incidentally, this is partly why Bilbo was both controversial and successful in his pledge-claim of Frodo; outsiders mistook his “bachelor” status as someone living outside of heteronormativity, while the Shire was bewildered and increasingly annoyed by his rejection of pledge and hearth commitments. By rights Bilbo had too few pledge-kin, and too little parenting experience, to claim rights to an orphan, especially one from Brandybuck hearth; but conversely, his social status was high enough that his belated bid for his very first pledge-son couldn’t reasonably be denied by anybody.)

In short, all of the hobbits enjoyed achieving even larger families on their adventures, legally and without argument or debate. It’s free real estate. If nobody else is going to sibling these losers, we will. (The condensation of so many entanglements at once also legally made Pippin his own father-in-law.)

Gandalf never explained.

* see the post about the Old Took’s “enchanted diamond cufflinks” that obeyed the wearer’s commands; which were probably, given the general state of things, two lost silmarils recovered by his Remarkable Daughters and gifted to him because things stay small and safe in the shire

[chaosaccountant]

@elodieunderglass wouldn't that make pippin both denethor's pledge-son-in-law, and (as pledge-brother to the king) probably outrank him?

[elodieunderglass]

Only through Boromir while Boromir was alive! Pippin’s familial claim through Boromir technically dissolved on Boromir’s death, as Denethor hadn’t been privy to it, and those bonds rarely stretch to a stranger when the person in the middle has died before introducing them; although Pippin, who was well-brought-up, perfectly and politely rectified the problem at once by simply swearing himself as Denethor’s pledge-son. but through his blood-cousinship to Frodo, who was older than Boromir, his status as the Took double-primarc (don’t ask) and the proximity-enhanced status-doubling effects of having a five-way cousin in Merry, Pippin was demonstrably higher status as a pledge-sibling and was also his own father-in-law and approved of himself. As such, he would have significantly raised Boromir’s social status and marital prospects in the Shire.

Inheritance follows parent-child pledge as the primary consideration, with matrilineal descent as the secondary. Pippin would have been bewildered to gradually understand that Denethor held his two sons in such odd and different standing :-/ hobbits don’t recognise kingship so it would’ve been very upsetting and disappointing to Pippin to understand how Denethor stood in position of sworn-father to a whole city of people without even being slightly fair to his younger hearth-son. Aragorn is demonstrably much better dad-material and therefore had Pippin’s vote. Pippin, by virtue of being an excellent father-in-law to a spectacularly promising young son-in-law, also considered himself a better candidate for king of Gondor than Denethor, by outranking him in Dad Competence - but was too busy by the time he realized this to point this out .

Ironically, the events in which Pippin realized this made Faramir his own hearth-son - so Pippin won in the end and took a great interest in ceremonially approving of Eowyn. Gandalf never explained

[elodieunderglass]

[tkingfisher]

I will buy that for a dollar, yup.

[deafmangoes]

It crossed my dash again! The Hobbit Polyamory Post!

[ilikewritingandspeedcore]

EXCUSE ME THERE IS A PLANT THAT CAN MIMIC FAKE PLANTS?????

IT'S CALLED A BOQUILA TRIOFOLIOLATA AND IT'S FUCKING WITH MY BRAIN

IT APPARENTLY CAN MIMIC OTHER PLANTS AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE "oh cool man it must take it's genetic code and copy it or feel the roots or something like that!! :3"

AND THEN I READ AN ARTICLE ON IT AND THESE FUCKING PARAGRAPHS HIT ME LIKE A BUS

LIKE READ THIS SHIT

WHAT THE FUCK MOTHER NATURE

[rhyperographer]

I went to find the article. It's fascinating.

[digital-magus]

In retrospect, consider the number 1 thing every grade-schooler knows about plants is they take in light, the idea they might be able to see should not wreck my shit as hard as it does

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

today I found out my mother doesn't know what dandelions are and now I'm wondering what other strange secrets she's been quietly harboring

[krystal-prisms]

Where do you live that you don't have dandelions?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

we have dandelions EVERYWHERE, they are basically our State Weed, it is absolutely impossible that my mom has never interacted with a dandelion before, this requires further investigation

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

So after extensive interrogation I have an update:

my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.

the truth is actually weirder

she's aware dandelions look like this

she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions

she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?

she answered, with complete confidence: Daffodils.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

gosh I enjoy this website

[glutton-for-funishment]

then wtf is a daffodil......................

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

buddy

[scorpionlafemme]

[stitchposts]

unfortunately i have free will so im about to make art that is going to appeal to basically 4 people. let us hope those 4 people follow me.

[hppjmxrgosg]

"going out to get milk" is a common turn of phrase used to describe a man abandoning his family.

the "milkman" is a common figure in stories depicting a woman's infidelity and adulterous affair.

this implies that the ability to provide milk would both decrease the likelihood of a man abandoning his wife and children, as it would eliminate the need for leaving to get milk AND would secure that man's marriage, as his wife would have no need to seek milk from an extraneous source.

therefore, all men should produce milk, through various means such as:

- being a cow

- being an almond

- being a woman

- being a coconut

- being in the omegaverse

- being an oat

(list is exemplary and not finite)

in this essay, i will redefine the nuclear family and explain the seductive and inflammatory nature of the 1993 "Got Milk?" commercials.

[hppjmxrgosg]

you shut your mouth.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

A man who abandons enough families by going out for milk eventually finds himself in a state of perpetual milk acquisition, having to regularly unload his hoard onto the doorstops of new women and becoming the milkman.

[digitalmyyth]

Hanging out with people will make you remember you're the crazy woke friend for like. not wanting to shop at shien

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’m a person that’s into studying historical and contemporary religions for personal curiosity scholarly reasons but I’m also a practicing Christian so for the sake of intellectual honesty I’ve had to develop two different brains for studying Christian texts and history. An analytical student of literature and history brain and a spiritual religious person brain.

These days when I look at passages about hoarding wealth being corrupting in the New Testament my studying brain is like it’s kind of interesting how Christianity says wealth is a bad thing because a lot of polytheistic religions in the ancient Mediterranean took the exact opposite approach so this was probably pretty weird to people at the time but maybe that’s also why some people found it appealing.

Meanwhile my spiritual brain is like dear Lord God if it be your will please haunt JD Vance’s dreams with these passages about how being rich is stupid thank you for everything good in my life like my cats and cheese on bread and if it be your will please haunt JD Vance with visions of camels trying to fit through the eye of a needle and make him really uncomfortable about it k love you amen

[recklessmoss]

WEEE!! WEEEE!!! WEEE!!! YAYYY!! YIPPIE! WAHOO! AWAWAWA!!! WEE WEE WAA WAA WAA! ZWEEM !! BABABABA! YAHOOO WEE YAY WYEE !! WEWEWEE!!