#ruin rambles

[aturinfortheworse]

I read a fair number of recipes on the ten thousand interchangeable recipe blogs that exist, and often they say something like "This recipe is a family favourite!" or "This a crowd-pleaser" etc. and I roll my eyes a little bit every time because of course they are, it goes without saying! People like food! Nearly any special-occasion home-cooked meal is going to be popular.

But there is one recipe, one cake, that has recontextualised all those comments for me and now actually I think those bloggers might be wrong about what a family favourite is. It sure as hell isn't Interchangeable Chocolate Cake No. 7.

I'm telling you this because I need you to know the seriousness of the power I am going to bestow on you. And hey, maybe your friends and family have different preferences than mine do. Maybe you need to find another recipe to fill this role. But you must know that there's a recipe out there, and not even a particularly alluring one or a particularly difficult one, which people will bring up in unrelated conversations to you four years later.

If I so much as say the word cake, my family all turn to face me like a pack of hungry wolves. Even the ones that don't like food!! Health nuts and people who simply don't enjoy eating and people with no appetite and people I have no goddamn memory of ever having cooked for, all of them come up and say to me "Hey remember that cake-" I asked my brother and his girlfriend what foods they're looking forward to, when they return home after three years in Japan, and they say "You know that cake?"

It doesn't sound particularly appetizing. I only made it the first time because it was gluten free and I had a bunch of lemons. Please don't let the name inform your opinion here. This is a fairly fast and simple cake that requires no special equipment and people will literally never stop asking you for it.

Lemon Polenta Cake

This cake is a sort of Anglo-Italian amalgam. The flat, plain disc is reminiscent of the confections that sit geometrically arranged in pati

It's not even my favourite cake! I'd rather have basque burnt cheesecake, which is harder and more expensive to make and consists almost entirely of fat and sugar but still manages to be a little savoury... But people want the weird corn one.

To be fair, this is the only cake that'll make me dip my fingers into boiling sugar without regret.

[girlontheruin]

Just watched off campus 🫨 my writing senses are tingling…

[the-stars-inside]

Going to see Iron Lung in a few hours🫡

[ruinedmystery]

I need to know how people perceive me

Like… what color do you think of when you think of me? What’s your opinion of me even if you know me through writing, y’know?

[ruinthebritishboi]

Listen I love Solar! I really do!

Yes yes, I know I killed him, BUT I did it lovingly!

[ghost-ruin-zone]

just realized its april 3rd tomorrow thats the show's anniversary right. what do you guys do for that around here all i see is apocalypse ??

[megatron-fucks]

actually Minimus' poetry is a deeply interesting subject too - maybe more so than Megatron's - because we know enough about Minimus' linguistic preferences to assume some things about his poetry. He clearly has feelings about the rules and presentation of language.

the #1 assumption i would have to make is that he writes poetry with a demanding structure. idk enough about poetry to suggest many forms, but a villanelle would be an option.

A villanelle requires five stanzas of three lines, followed by one stanza of four lines. It has specific refrains and a specific rhyme scheme, and - while it has no single requisite meter - I'd assume Minimus is like "It's only a true villanelle if it uses anapestic tetrameter."

Sestinas are so complicated that they require graphs to explain. I've got no fucking idea how to write a sestina. like this is the kind of poetry that Minimus would be into:

these forms have personalities, they get anthropomorphized by poets. A villanelle is obsessive, a sestina is bleak, a sonnet is romantic.

but the MORE INTERESTING thing about fixed verse is that you can focus more on how you're saying things than what you're saying. it allows a certain distance from the subject matter.

Maybe Minimus spends much of his poetry trying to come up with new, perfect structure. Something that dictates word order and rhyme and stress and alliteration - everything - to the extent that it's nearly impossible to write a poem that says anything. And he knows it can't say anything, but at this point it's almost an exercise in theoretical mathematics: its peering beneath the hood of the language and finding out what makes it tick.

Maybe Minimus writes poetry that gives him a sense of control over his feelings: he has placed his anxiety and insecurity and frustration on the page and he has arranged them into something orderly. He has turned his feelings into something he can stand to look at directly.

[aturinfortheworse]

Manifesto of the Committee for the Sick and Useless

Those of us with disabilities form an interest group with an immense number of seemingly abled people. Everyone whose culture, beliefs, age, personality, sexuality, language, immigration status or other inclination makes them less useful to society belongs with disabled people in the fight to exist without justification.

The Committee for the Sick and Useless believe it is the innate and inalienable right of all people to:

       Do Nothing

       Help No One

       Feel Awful

And above all else

       Be Useless

In this age of increasing productivity and accomplishment, we too often sacrifice the most sacred right of all living things: to simply exist, asking much and contributing nothing. We sacrifice this right not just for ourselves as individuals but for all life on Earth present and future. 

Our existence has been made conditional on the work we are expected to do, whether that work is employment, education, or caring for the home. Even plants and animals must now earn their right to exist by producing food, providing beauty, cleaning our air, warming our hearts. The ugly, unpleasant and useless are abandoned.

We, the committee, do not consider ourselves at odds with health, joy and usefulness. Rather we are united with all good and joyful people in our fight against the demand for productivity. Our enemies are those who demand that the land produce wealth, that the workers produce profit, that the sick produce medical certificates, that children grow up and the elderly make themselves scarce. 

The right to exist is the foundation of all human rights and duties; it cannot be made conditional, lest all rights be made conditional. We support the right of everyone, everywhere, to live.

In this admittedly revolutionary goal, we have many allies. These include, but are not limited to: queers, cripples, drug users, the unemployed, the mentally ill, the anti-colonial, the incomprehensible, the celibate, the ugly, mutes, mystics, pessimists, mosquitoes, cats, children, teenagers, the elderly, speakers of suppressed languages, and people without a driving license.

This is Chapter 31 of Redefining Disability, with very minor edits. I held off on posting this until it was published. It is now in a real physical book that they cannot take away from me so here you all go.

If you would like a copy of this or any other chapters from the journal, there is a pinned post on my blog with free download details. I would also be happy to email them to you.