The Trash Heap

@gobbiemel:matrix.org [Matrix] | Your Garden Variety Goblin | 18+ pls, here be Adult topics on occasion | Mostly reblogs, sometimes thoughts, but my brain is chowder so I keep it in the tags a lot | My posts are tagged #prrsonal | When any of you darlings reblog my art posts just know I am gently kissing your forehead and baking you a strawberry cobbler | Bigots and similar Scum get blocked without warning | If you wanna call me something, you can call me Mel | She/They flavored | 42 | Queer | Atheist with a dash of Animism | Chaotic Neutral | Lifelong Art Creacher | Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Cop | Comfortably Cringe | Clinical Heebie Jeebies and Constant Thinking Syndrome |

[grubby-gerblin]

꧁༺June 13, 2003 ~ June 4, 2025 ༻꧂

Death leaves Us homesick, who behind, Except that it is gone Are ignorant of its Concern As if it were not born. Through all their former Places, we Like Individuals go Who something lost, the seeking for Is all that's left them, now—

Emily Dickinson

[ocprompts]

does your oc like to be the big or the little spoon?

[nadjasnandor]

consuming media like

[recovering-vamp]

attack on the lovely @suttsuru of their OCs Jili and Gandzya :)))

[autumnoiir]

[hellenhighwater]

We're doing a raku firing at the studio today and my first two pieces have come through gorgeously

[hellenhighwater]

Wheeee pottery

[hellenhighwater]

They're all wall hangers! And they all have compartments in the bottom for a sneaky trinket or scroll to be secretly stashed.

[anasternie]

[heartpeacenquiet]

[tainbocuailnge]

forget everything anyone has ever told you on the matter the truest marker of adulthood is starting to hear the siren call of high quality kitchenware

[tainbocuailnge]

to be clear you SHOULD buy that cast iron pan and you SHOULD buy that knife set and you SHOULD buy that fancy rice cooker and you SHOULD buy that novelty mug. high quality kitchenware is always worth it you’re literally gonna be using that almost every day

[nudityandnerdery]

This seems like a good post to include this link on:

Your Cookware Got Worse On Purpose

One buyout firm quietly collected Pyrex, Corelle, Instant Pot, and Oneida. Farberware is a name on a 200-year lease. And the pans still wort

Talking about popular kitchenware companies undergoing enshittification, and gives you a list of brands towards the end that are more reliable.

[correctopinionhaver]

[historicity-was-already-taken]

(Yoinked this from LinkedIn, genuinely interested in seeing how responses align with demographics) (so far it’s those of us over 35 being indignant but I wanna see how those fully plays out) (it’s cultural and technological history/memory, bruh)

18

[bellisima-writes]

I am an old bitch - 20/20.

[starlight-shadowbanned]

How many of these have you done

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Remaining time: 5 days 13 hours

[macmanx]

20/20

[radwolf76]

20/20.

Also re #13 I was the guy at Blockbuster who rented you your videos.

[grubby-gerblin]

[depsidase]

[broken-horn-of-equius]

[strombolicious]

[teathattast]

reblog to do this w your mutuals

[forlornly]

ig: hoovisyo

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

This makes me incredibly angry.

[ID: Screenshots of a Facebook post from user Advocatus Peregrini, which reads:

I was conversing with a fully-grown adult a few days ago, born and educated in the USA, who let this little gem drop:

“Well, it’s like Shakespeare said, “Love conquers all!”“

I pointed out that Shakespeare never said that, Virgil did, (Eclogues X) and Chaucer after him (Canterbury Tales.)

She said, “Oh I’m sure Shakespeare said that. In Romeo and Juliet!”

I sighed. I’ve been in that play several times, in different roles, and even directed it. That text does not occur in it.

But the real grind-my-teeth moment here was that if Romeo and Juliet can be said to have a message, it is most certainly not “Love conquers all,” seeing as the lovers die by their own hands with a trail of their friends and relations’ corpses in their wake.

Neither this fact, nor the fact that I knew the play, nor my explanation that Virgil and Chaucer used the phrase long before Shakespeare’s birth dented her determination that “Love conquers all” came from Shakespeare.

“You don’t know ALL the versions!” she protested.

All the versions?

Alternative Bard?

With every instinct screaming at me to let the matter drop, warning me that some horror that will not soon be absent from my nightmares waited around the next corner of this conversation. I pressed on.

It was a decision I was soon to regret.

I asked when she had first read “Romeo and Juliet.” She said she had only read it once, when she was in Junior High. In the version she was taught, Romeo and Juliet survive, are reconciled with their parents, and are married in the church with their friends Mercutio and Tybalt arm in arm in the wedding party.

“Help me into some house, Benvolio, or I shall faint.”

It turned out that her school had their own “version” of Romeo and Juliet, with an “uplifting” ending. This was printed and distributed by a religious education publisher. And it was the only version of the story that she had ever read. Of course she had HEARD other people say that the story was a tragedy, but she just assumed they were wrong.

And she did not see why MY version of Shakespeare should be considered better than HER Shakespeare, which, after all, had a much more wholesome ending.

I explained, in vain, that “my” version is definitive because Shakespeare actually wrote it (quiet, you Oxfordians. Don’t make me stop this car) and the message of the play - that when adult stubbornness meets youthful impulsiveness tragedy ensues - is lost in the ersatz, happy-clappy ending.

She said the ending that had been Frankensteined onto Shakespeare’s play by the “Christian Education” publisher was better than the original ending, “if the ending is as sad as you say it is.”

At this point, I concluded that this was a person who deserved to go through the rest of her life “…safest in shame! being fool’d, by foolery thrive!” I bid her adieu.

After the conversation, I wondered, darkly, if that was to be the fate of Shakespeare, and all other literature if the happy-clappy people get their way - as harmless and “uplifiting” as a cheerleader’s chant.

I wondered what these bowdlerizers would do with “Hamlet?” or worse, “Titus Andronicus” or “MacB-” Nothing wholesome, I’m sure. Oh, that’s right, what they can’t appropriate, they ban. Or burn.

In trying to protect children, we leave them undefended from “…the slings and arrows” that life will no doubt throw their way. Shakespeare raises the issues of tragedy - the fatal flaw, the last turning, the role of fate, as well or better than any author before or since. He is a gentle tutor, much to be preferred over that stern and dangerous teacher, Experientia Inopinatum.

But, as ever, it really isn’t about the children. It’s about the adults, and their desire to avoid answering difficult questions from agile young minds, who know no fear and swarm like eager flies around questions that have been boggling our best minds for millenia. To answer the questions that literature raises, you have to have thought deeply about them yourself. And that is something that few dare to do.]  end id

[2utora]

[unusual-suspects]

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