it’s been long enough i’m making an executive decision that we all need to go reread the tgi fridays infinite mozzarella sticks article

still just as good as i remember it

The link is broken nooooo

burning of the fucking library of alexandria right here. anyway everyone say thank you wayback machine

Happy ten years of Caity weavers infinite mozzarella sticks article

So this comment section on a tiktok about insane things people ask at aquariums is a goldmine

i worked at a natural history-type store for a while and one time this mom came in with her sweet little boy and he was asking intelligent questions and she was giving zero-information answers and i was able to not pipe up in my shrill hectoring voice until she confidently informed him that "snakes dont have bones". she was standing next to a shoulder-high specimen of this:

Baptized in the Otter Exhibit by Chuck Tingle

All throughout childhood, while my peers were socializing and making friends, I studied the blade read so many books that I am now almost legally blind, which left me with vast and deeply instinctual understanding of English grammar - and next to no ability to explain how it actually works. Friends will often ask me to proofread their writing and then get very mad when I say things like, "You need to completely reverse this sentence and cut this clause entirely; no, I'm sorry, i don't know why, I just know that the way it is now ITCHES 😭"

Now, what I want to see is a fantasy story where this plays out with MAGICAL grammar. Someone from a backwater town deeply steeped in folk magic arrives at Wizard Uni where all their fellow students are like "What do you mean, we should add another '𝞯∘⋇𝞿' to the incancation because it 'sounds better'? What do you mean, 'it could just be a regional thing'?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'THIS SPELL JUST FEELS LIKE IT NEEDS A LIVE RAT'????"

"I mean, on the plus side, there's live rats in a lot of places, so the odds of you casting that spell within close enough range of a live rat to work is pretty high? Like, if you've ever had that spell just randomly fizzle out on you, then you tried it again ten minutes later without changing anything and it suddenly worked, a rat probably just wandered into range in that time."

disclaimer: spell does not work in Alberta

Sorry if it’s a little cramped- had to make this all fit in ten photos. Hope you guys like it….. and again…. sorry Andrew

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The window visual did me in I’m wheezing

NO

WELP

I haven’t seen this in years and yet it is burned into my memory forever.

sorry i covered your neck in dark hickeys and clamped down hard on your throat like limp prey while i was giving you a handjob. you whimpered a little too soft and i blacked out and believed myself to be a feral dog in possession of an entire rotisserie chicken

you all know there's other posts on here to reblog right

everybody else deactivate your account these two need the room for a second

y'all are tagging posts like recipe website commenters

I NEED EVIDENCE

I think I found the post

The thing about Cottagecore is that is a fetishized aesthetic of country life, divorced from labor and idealized by a primarily urban audience with a backward looking ethos of tradition. They are not prepared for the stresses of a rural life: farming; harvesting; tapping pumpkins to ensure none of them have been replaced with flesh; losing out on income by having to use one of your pigs in a blood sacrifice to paint protective sigils over your doors and windows; checking cracks and chimneys for the flesh-vines of the Pumpkin Lord; having to decide, before the Growth is complete, whether that's really your tradwife or an amassment of vines, leaves, and blood in the shape of your tradwife; ignoring their desperate pleas that "I'm me! No! No!" as you burn them alive, realizing too late you picked wrong; and the exploitative corporate nature of commercial farming in 2024. All seen through a deeply colonial lens, of course

When I made this post I did not expect it to be an effective test of which Tumblr users actually read a post fully before reblogging, and yet

pizza hut had to remove its self-service salad bars in china because people were engineering literally exactly this babelian monstrosity

People are like “these animals have exoskeletons and these ones have endoskeletons” but no. It’s all exoskeletons, your exoskeleton is protecting your bone marrow which is where your soul (which is you) is. The rest of the stuff is extraneous decoration that Big Pharma wants you to think is important/

Why do you think there’s so few ghosts around? Why are most ghosts people who died violently? You gotta crack the bones to let the soul out. Most souls are trapped alone in the dark and silent ground (or teaching hospitals) for hundreds or thousands of years until the bones eventually start to break. People who are cremated get their whole soul released and it can reincarnate. But if someone dies violently then maybe only a couple of their bones are cracked and a little scrap of the soul escapes but it’s incomplete and confused. Can’t figure out how to leave, gets obsessed with its own circumstances, repeats actions, CANNOT be reasoned with. PROOF that the soul is in the marrow.

See I know what I’m talking about.

Sin is stored in the teeth btw which is why young children are innocent (they’ll get a do-over with replacement teeth) and the elderly are shameless (once you have no teeth to remember your sins, you have nothing to fear).

Upon review I think that maybe vodka isn’t for me.

it’s ninety-nine degrees outside, four fuck-thousand percent humidity, and my husband was like, “i’m gonna go for a bike ride.” and i was like “why. no. why. don’t put us on the news like that. local fool collapses on unnecessary journey. don’t do it.” so he says he doesn’t want to “hide in the house” because the sun is shining. bruh. honeybruh. “the sun is shining” does not cover it. its hot outside. its motherfucking hot as fuck outside. our outdoor plants have been crying into their hands all week. whole cars are melting into the sewer. our fucking patio umbrella developed sentience to ask me for lemonade this morning

@robotmango, you need to work for the weather forecast - this was both hilarious and so vivid it made me stand up and get some iced tea.

this is a great idea, thank you. here goes. my audition tape for the weather channel. dearly beloved. we are gathered here today to have a fucking funeral for the outdoors. it had a good run, with all its creeks and clouds and shit. pretty great. now it’s ten-thirty at night but still ninety-two asshole-sweating degrees and humid as fuck. everything is hot and slimy, like being a “borrower” that got trapped inside a bottle of shampoo and then accidentally microwaved. you can see on my doppler radar that nothing is moving around out there because everything is probably dead. the only alive thing is the mosquito currently trying to drill a hole in my leg. no surprise that all the shitbag mosquitos are fine, since the thermostat of hell is always at the devil’s preferred temperature. this forecast has gotten away from me a little, but in conclusion fuck the sun

Okay, let me tell you a story:

Once upon a time, there was a prose translation of the Pearl Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was wonderfully charming and lyrical and perfect for use in a high school, and so a clever English teacher (as one did in the 70s) made a scan of the book for her students, saved it as a pdf, and printed copies off for her students every year. In true teacher tradition, she shared the file with her colleagues, and so for many years the students of the high school all studied Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the same (very badly scanned) version of this wonderful prose translation.

In time, a new teacher became head of the English Department, and while he agreed that the prose translation was very wonderful he felt that the quality of the scan was much less so. Also in true teacher tradition, he then spent hours typing up the scan into a word processor, with a few typos here and there and a few places where he was genuinely just guessing wildly at what the scan actually said. This completed word document was much cleaner and easier for the students to read, and so of course he shared it with his colleagues, including his very new wide-eyed faculty member who was teaching British Literature for the first time (this was me).

As teachers sometimes do, he moved on for greener (ie, better paying) pastures, leaving behind the word document, but not the original pdf scan. This of course meant that as I was attempting to verify whether a weird word was a typo or a genuine artifact of the original translation, I had no other version to compare it to. Being a good card-holding gen zillenial I of course turned to google, making good use of the super secret plagiarism-checking teacher technique “Quotation Marks”, with an astonishing result:

By which I mean literally one result.

For my purposes, this was precisely what I needed: a very clean and crisp scan that allowed me to make corrections to my typed edition: a happily ever after, amen.

But beware, for deep within my soul a terrible Monster was stirring. Bane of procrastinators everywhere, my Curiosity had found a likely looking rabbit hole. See, this wonderfully clear and crisp scan was lacking in two rather important pieces of identifying information: the title of the book from which the scan was taken, and the name of the translator. The only identifying features were the section title “Precursors” (and no, that is not the title of the book, believe me I looked) and this little leaf-like motif by the page numbers:

(Remember the leaf. This will be important later.)

We shall not dwell at length on the hours of internet research that ensued—how the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon, grading abandoned in shadows half-lit by the the blue glow of the computer screen—how google search after search racked up, until an email warning of “unusual activity on your account” flashed into momentary existence before being consigned immediately and with some prejudice to the digital void—how one third of the way through a “comprehensive but not exhaustive” list of Sir Gawain translators despair crept in until I was left in utter darkness, screen black and eyes staring dully at the wall.

Above all, let us not admit to the fact that such an afternoon occurred not once, not twice, but three times.

Suffice to say, many hours had been spent in fruitless pursuit before a new thought crept in: if this book was so mysterious, so obscure as to defeat the modern search engine, perhaps the answer lay not in the technologies of today, but the wisdom of the past. Fingers trembling, I pulled up the last blast email that had been sent to current and former faculty and staff, and began to compose an email to the timeless and indomitable woman who had taught English to me when I was a student, and who had, after nearly fifty years, retired from teaching just before I returned to my alma mater.

After staring at the email for approximately five or so minutes, I winced, pressed send, and let my plea sail out into the void. I cannot adequately describe for you the instinctive reverence I possess towards this teacher; suffice to say that Ms English was and is a woman of remarkable character, as much a legend as an institution as a woman of flesh and blood whose enduring influence inspired countless students. There is not a student taught by Ms. English who does not have a story to tell about her, and her decline in her last years of teaching and eventual retirement in the face of COVID was the end of an era. She still remembers me, and every couple months one of her contemporaries and dear friends who still works as a guidance counsellor stops me in the hall to tell me that Ms. English says hello and that she is thrilled that I am teaching here—thrilled that I am teaching honors students—thrilled that I am now teaching the AP students. “Tell her I said hello back,” I always say, and smile.

Ms. English is a legend, and one does not expect legends to respond to you immediately. Who knows when a woman of her generation would next think to check her email? Who knows if she would remember?

The day after I sent the email I got this response:

My friends, I was shaken. I was stunned. Imagine asking God a question and he turns to you and says, “Hold on one moment, let me check with my predecessor.”

The idea that even Ms. English had inherited this mysterious translation had never even occurred to me as a possibility, not when Ms. English had been a faculty member since the early days of the school. How wonderful, I thought to myself. What a great thing, that this translation is so obscure and mysterious that it defeats even Ms. English.

A few days later, Ms. English emailed me again:

(I had, in fact searched through both the English office and the Annex—a dark, weirdly shaped concrete storage area containing a great deal of dust and many aging copies of various books—a few days prior. I had no luck, sadly.)

At last, though, I had a title and a description! I returned to my internet search, only to find to my dismay that there was no book that exactly matched the title. I found THE BRITISH TRADITION: POETRY, PROSE, AND DRAMA (which was not black and the table of contents I found did not include Sir Gawain) and THE ENGLISH TRADITION, a super early edition of the Prentice Hall textbooks we use today, which did have a black cover but there were absolutely zero images I could find of the table of contents or the interior and so I had no way of determining if it was the correct book short of laying out an unfortunate amount of cold hard cash for a potential dead end.

So I sighed, and relinquished my dreams of solving the mystery. Perhaps someday 30 years from now, I thought, I’ll be wandering through one of those mysterious bookshops filled with out of print books and I’ll pick up a book and there will be the translation, found out last!

So I sighed, and told the whole story to my colleagues for a laugh. I sent screenshots of Ms. English’s emails to my siblings who were also taught by her. I told the story to my Dad over dinner as my Great Adventure of the Week.

…my friends. I come by my rabbit-hole curiosity honestly, but my Dad is of a different generation of computer literacy and knows a few Deep Secrets that I have never learned. He asked me the title that Ms. English gave me, pulled up some mysterious catalogue site, and within ten minutes found a title card. There are apparently two copies available in libraries worldwide, one in Philadelphia and the other in British Columbia. I said, “sure, Dad,” and went upstairs. He texted me a link. Rolling my eyes, I opened it and looked at the description.

Huh, I thought. Four volumes, just like Ms. English said. I wonder…

Armed with a slightly different title and a publisher, I looked up “The English Tradition: Fiction macmillan” and the first entry is an eBay sale that had picture of the interior and LO AND BEHOLD:

THE LEAF. LOOK AT THE LEAF.

My dad found it! He found the book!!

Except for one teensy tiny problem which is that the cover of the book is uh a very bright green and not at all black like Ms. English said. Alas, it was a case of mistaken identity, because The English Tradition: Poetry does have a black cover, although it is the fiction volume which contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

And so having found the book at last, I have decided to purchase it for the sum of $8, that ever after the origins of this translation may once more be known.

In this year of 2022 this adventure took place, as this post bears witness, the end, amen.

it obviously makes sense, but one of my friend’s kids is going into swim class, and all the parents got an email today going, “when little ones are scared, they cling on to instructors. PLEASE trim their nails.” 

i don’t know why that’s so funny to me, but just. the idea of this poor, scratched swim instructor having to make sure to email before each class as a reminder to please declaw the children SENT me. 

When I taught swim lessons I remember trying to delicately ask parents not to cover their child in shea/coconut/olive oil before lessons.

“I understand your skincare regimen and wanting to protect their tender baby flesh from the pool chemicals, but COULD YOU NOT OIL YOUR CHILD LIKE A GREASED PIG before tossing them in the POOL? Thanks EVER so much!”

@nakimochiku i CACKLED

So I got called into jury duty…

And I was put in the seat instantly, of course. I said, “your honor, I can’t be a juror on a two week trial, I have opera rehearsal.” And she said, “opera huh, well, sing something for us.”

And I did. In a federal court of law, in front of the judge, 75 jurors, the lawyers and the fucking DEFENDANT, I sang o mio babbino caro.

And the judge excused me.

@districtswiftie13

YO I DIDNT EMBARRASS MYSELF IN FEDERAL COURT SO YALL CAN DOUBT ME.

I know a lot of opera singers, and singing a full-on aria in a court room with only a hint of provocation is EXACTLY what they would do.

I know a lot of judges, and demanding an impromptu opera solo on a whim is also something they would do.

(And also one of the main reasons you can be excused from jury duty is economic hardship–basically, it would cause you unreasonable financial damage. If you’re a professional singer, a two week gap in your rehearsal schedule could do that for sure.)

As a muso, I absolutely believe this. I’ve got my accordion out of my carry-on and played a tune when airport security couldn’t recognise its weird mass of levers. Singers and musicians are just Like That.

Accurate.

My friend got stopped at the Canadian border coming back into the US. Border patrol took one look at his tattoed, ear-gagued, mutton chop wearing, hipster self, and said “I don’t believe you’re an opera singer. Sing something for me.” His wife immediately put down her knitting and plugged her ears, because Matt’s a contrabasso, and he does NOT sing quietly. Every other booth along the border stop had a head poking out of it within twenty seconds. And they let them pass without further contest.

The unwillingness of some people to believe that literally anything remotely interesting happens in other people’s lives is truly astounding.

Can we all please just take a moment to appreciate that OP’s url is literally @melodramaticsoprano and yet she still was doubted?  

Color has been disappearing from the world.

A new research group used machine learning to track color changes in common materials and items, below is their findings for all color changes over time, they used 7000+ items from the 1800s to now to determine color changes in the most common items.

Below are the colors of cars by year, notice how the majority of cars are grey, white, or black compared to twenty years ago.

These aren't data points, but they are comparisons between the 'modern' homes of the 70s and 80s compared to the modern homes of today.

Carpets have equally had the same treatment of grey added to them! The most common color of carpet is now grey or beige.

Even locations that used to scream with color for decades have now modernized to becoming boring minimalist (and I love minimalism) personality-less locations.

The world is becoming colorless, why?

source paper

you can look at any folk culture around the world, past or present, and find the use of the entire color spectrum. humans are drawn to color, it holds emotional symbolism but it also reflects the land we live off of. I consider it like a celebration of life and our place in it

the problem is that we aren’t actually allowed to belong to the places we live. houses and entire towns are shells meant to be as plain as possible for the next renter, buyer, or investor. the more generic it is, the more consumers it can be sold to. And when you have a country that’s biggest population doesn’t have a distinct sense of cultural identity it will be reflected and mass produced without much complaint

people getting joy from the minimalist gray aesthetic is not the same as the estrangement this country is making between people and place, one of the most fundamental relationships humans need to survive (and be happy while doing it)

Films depict middle ages as devoid of color but it's the other way around.

When I was buying my house, people were telling me not to paint it this or that color because it would be harder to sell later. Like, I haven't even bough the house and you're already telling me to sell it! I'm buying a house because I need a place to live! I want to live here until I die or manage to move to Europe! We are not supposed to actually own anything anymore. Not our houses or cars or furniture. We are supposed to be perpetually replacing these things, paying more each time around, until we break and die and our bones are the color of the walls around us.

Its obvious to me when people who post about canaries in mines have never met a canary. Like yeah the miners had a special device to revive the canary because canaries are one of the most adorable creatures on the planet and they make adorable little chirping sounds and honestly probably loved the sounds of machinery and people talking so it was probably loud and friendly with the workers. Whatever though maybe meet a canary sometime and youd understand

If you see this animal every day at work, and it sings to you during your hardest bouts of labor, you will be distraught if it dies. Even if you know this creature is meant to die in lieu of you, you still hear it when the labor is at its hardest and your muscles are struggling against the weight of your work. It is so small, smaller than your soot-stained hands and louder than the death that follows you. You dont want it to die. The same as a woman does not want her candle to run out ; she knows that is the point, its flame is meant to burn the wick and melt the wax ; but she is not indifferent to its wasting away. She may even save her favorite candle as not to burn it too quickly. Now imagine you are that woman, and there is a way to rebuild your favorite candle that you love the smell of and the way it flickers. Would she rather throw her candle out? Or would she rebuild it? That is a canary to these miners. Would you allow an animal to just die when it has been singing for you? It reminds you that it is alive, and you are too. Its stop of song signifies the lethal danger you are in. Why abandon it? Is the miners' love for a little bird really that surprising?

@wearepaladin

andrew came downstairs from the office to give me a hug and seemed really worried about me and it turned out that i had reblogged a picture of a jellyfish with the tag “sometimes i wish i could be this” and while i had meant “beautiful, ethereal, and full of light” he had interpreted it as meaning “brainless and totally free of the burden of consciousness”

this was the jellyfish