guys I just found the greatest video on the internet
What did I watch
guys I just found the greatest video on the internet
What did I watch
I know "60s housewives who invented slash fanfiction" has taken on a life of its own as a phrase, but Kirk/Spock didn't really exist until the 70s and THOSE WOMEN HAD JOBS. They were teachers and librarians and bookkeepers and scientists and they damn well spent their own money going to conventions, printing zines, buying fanart and making fandom happen. Put some respect on their names.
Salute to our troops (70s careerwomen who put their hard-earned dollars into homemade gay erotica)
It was women with secretarial jobs doing a lot of the heavy lifting, if memory serves correctly.
They had training in type setting, could churn things out quickly, knew how to organise mailing lists, and had easy access to Expensive High Tech like photocopiers.
Boss make a dollar, she makes a dime. That's why she's printing Kirk X Spock zines on company time.
Honestly thought I'd never hear the word "usborne" again. My mom used to live and breathe that company, and while I certainly don't regret a fair chunk, I do find it amusing as I look back now. I legitimately thought it had fallen off faster than Juice+.
In reference to a post where i mention my kid has the usborne “see inside germs” book.
So if people don’t know, usborne is a weird publishing company that has done indispensable books for British children for generations; they’re in every library, school and nursery, and have shelves devoted to them in every bookstore. They are how many people learned to read, and are the originators of many hyper focuses. They’re famed for doing educational lift the flap books for all ages, like “see inside your body”, as well as as the ubiquitous touch-and-feel series, “that’s not my….” In which a mouse comments improbably on various creatures not being their creature. “That’s not my dragon,” the mouse says, inviting you to stroke a dragon with a patch of fur on it, “its tummy is too soft. That’s not my dragon,” on the next page, where the dragon’s ears are lined with textured paper, “its ears are too bumpy.” This seems like such an inefficient way to find one’s missing dragon, a fact that simmers underneath you through endless repetition. Why does the mouse own so many things (pirates, ducks, polar bears) and why is it interrogating other people’s pirates etc by feeling their legs.
At any rate, turn a parents’ house upside down and these books fall out.
Which is why it’s completely hilarious that they are also an MLM.
Well. Kind of. In the old school sense. It’s less about signing up a pyramid scheme and more about getting a random citizen to buy a crate of perfectly popular books and try to sell them on from their home. It’s very traditional for Mums On Maternity Leave to do this. Pre-social media and online ordering, they’d hook up other mums at toddler group. Today, they post awkwardly on social media. The idea is that buying from another parent is cheaper than the bookstore, and they get to keep the markup. They get intense about things, and I believe they attend conferences. Nobody makes a huge amount of money and it’s unclear how undercutting local bookstores is helpful; it’s also basically the same RRP as Amazon I think.
And the books are perfectly respectable and sell perfectly well in bookstores.
So. Like. This marketing scheme is completely weird. Why?? Why does it still exist? People buy the books normally! You don’t need to promote them aggressively! You don’t need elaborate independent local middlemen schemes! You can just buy them! I have never understood this. I just file it under one of those weird mat leave hustles.
But don’t worry OP. They’re still going. They’ll never stop. The thing is that your mom got bored and online sales probably ate whatever residual profit margins were left and it’s probably very liberating for everyone to grow out of the “that’s not my cow” stage, but Usborne books are going strong.
^ Pictures taken at the city library showing dozens of usborne books. Definitely still a thing!
you ever accidentally create a recurring theme in your writing. you start putting together an outline for something you’ve never written before and get partway through planning, rearrange the pieces, and go “GODDAMMIT THIS IS ABOUT GRIEF AGAIN”? because let me tell you,
[image ID: @knine-nights says “Kind of, but it was with spaghetti, and I realized I need to learn more types of pasta. /end ID]
actually everyone else can go home clearly this is the only guy who gets me.
which is definitely not an omen
My boyfriend is trying to explain cricket to me again. “He’s only got two balls to make 48 runs”, he says. The camera focuses on a man. Underneath him it says LEFT ARM FAST MEDIUM. A ball flies into the stands and presumably fractures someone’s skull. “There’s a free six”, my boyfriend says. 348 SIXES says the screen. A child in the audience waves a sign referencing Weet-Bix
The first time he showed me this I assumed he was pranking me
if people haven’t been exposed to cricket before, here is the experience. The person who likes cricket turns on a radio with an air of happy expectation. “We’ll just catch up with the cricket,” they say.
An elderly British man with an accent - you can picture exactly what he looks like and what he is wearing, somehow, and you know that he will explain the important concept of Yorkshire to you at length if you make eye contact - is saying “And w’ four snickets t’ wicket, Umbleby dives under the covers and romps home for a sticky bicket.”
There is a deep and satisfied silence. Weather happens over the radio. This lasts for three minutes.
A gentle young gentleman with an Indian accent, whose perfect and beautiful clear voice makes him sound like a poet sipping from a cup of honeyed drink always, says mildly “Of course we cannot forget that when Pakistan last had the biscuit under the covers, they were thrown out of bed. In 1957, I believe.”
You mouth “what the fucking fuck.”
A morally ambiguous villain from a superhero movie says off-microphone, “Crumbs everywhere.”
Apparently continuing a previous conversation, the villain asks, “Do seagulls eat tacos?”
“I’m sure someone will tell us eventually,” the poet says. His voice is so beautiful that it should be familiar; he should be the only announcer on the radio, the only reader of audiobooks.
The villain says with sudden interest, “Oh, a leg over straight and under the covers, Peterson and Singh are rumping along with a straight fine leg and good pumping action. Thanks to his powerful thighs, Peterson is an excellent legspinner, apart from being rude on Twitter.”
The man from Yorkshire roars potently, like a bull seeing another bull. There might be words in his roar, but otherwise it is primal and sizzling.
“That isn’t straight,” the poet says. “It’s silly.”
“What the fucking fuck,” you say out loud at this point.
“Shh,” says the person who likes cricket. They listen, tensely. Something in the distance makes a very small “thwack,” like a baby dropping an egg.
“Was that a doosra or a googly?” the villain asks.
“IT’S A WRONG ‘UN,” roars the Yorkshireman in his wrath. A powerful insult has been offered. They begin to scuffle.
“With that double doozy, Crumpet is baffled for three turns, Agarwal is deep in the biscuit tin and Padgett has gone to the shops undercover,” the poet says quickly, to cover the action while his companions are busy. The villain is being throttled, in a friendly companionable way.
An intern apparently brings a message scrawled on a scrap of paper like a courier sprinting across a battlefield. “Reddy has rolled a nat 20,” the poet says with barely contained excitement. “Australia is both a continent and an island. But we’re running out of time!”
“Is that true?” You ask suddenly.
“Shh!” Says the person who likes cricket. “It’s a test match.”
“About Australia.”
“We won’t know THAT until the third DAY.”
A distant “pock” noise. The sound of thirty people saying “tsk,” sorrowfully.
“And the baby’s dropped the egg. Four legs over or we’re done for, as long as it doesn’t rain.”
The villain might be dead? You begin to find yourself emotionally invested.
There are mild distant cheers. “Oh, and with twelve sticky wickets t’ over and t’ seagull’s exploded,” the man from the North says as if all of his dreams have come true. “What a beautiful day.” Your person who likes cricket relaxes. It is tea break.
The villain, apparently alive, describes the best hat in the audience as “like a funnel made of dove-colored net, but backwards, with flies trapped in it.”
This is every bit as good as that time in Australia in 1975, they all agree, drinking their tea and eating home-made cakes sent in by the fans. The poet comments favorably on the icing and sugar-preserved violets. The Yorkshire man discourses on the nature of sponge. The villain clatters his cup too hard on his saucer. To cover his embarrassment, the poet begins scrolling through Twitter on his phone, reading aloud the best memes in his enchanting milky voice. Then, with joy, he reads an @ from an ornithologist at the University of Reading: seagulls do eat tacos! A reference is cited; the poet reads it aloud. Everyone cheers.
You are honestly - against your will - kind of into it! but also: weirdly enraged.
“Was that … it?” you ask, deeming it safe to interrupt.
“No,” says the person who likes cricket, “This is second tea break on the first day. We won’t know where we really are until lunch tomorrow.”
And - because you cannot stop them - you have to accept this; if cricket teaches you anything, it is this gentle and radical acceptance.
I thought this post was about… crickets like, you know, crickets…
No it is, you’re right, you’ve nailed it
I got this D21 at a Renaissance faire
It's the same as a D20, just numbered differently
this is like if you made a fey wish to roll higher. they took your crit hits away in payment
hmmm
ORONGE
MOOBARU
If you are watching a TV show, it can be live action or animated.
But not when you're reading a book. Much to think about.
Wait.
Wait wait.
Magic the Gathering tip: EDH was named after famous magic the gathering player Edward De Hater after he discovered being salty at removal
Covent Garden 1974 by Clive Boursnell
I must not explain the joke. Explaining the joke is the joke-killer. I will face my followers who did not get the joke. I will permit them to pass over me and through me
you are making this so difficult
When post is gone, only the joke will remain.
In Japanese, they don’t say “moon,” they say “tsuki,” which literally translates to “moon,” and I think that’s how language works.
Hey its been at least 9 years anything changed?
nope! all quiet on the linguistic front. i am a girl now though