I can behave normally around books

I can be trusted in bookstores and libraries and you should take me to those locations

"you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel" girl i am living that balsamic life, that's the mommy down there at the bottom.

#are you havinf a stroke or am i i can NOT understand this

Balsamic vinegar is made by aging a reduced grape syrup in barrels with "mother", which is a kind of bacterial slime that develops naturally in the vinegar over time. True balsamic vinegar goes through a very particular process of aging it in a series of smaller and smaller barrels, transferring it from one barrel to the next either every year, or every few years, depending on the process, and then adding fresh syrup to the largest barrel and continuing the process. The slimy film that forms on the insides of the barrels is the mother, and due to the increased concentrations over the years, the mother in the smallest barrel is most potent, and is sometimes partially removed and used to seed new batches of vinegar, so production can be expanded. Scraping the mother from the bottom of the barrel is how you multiply the goodness, the sweetness, and the quality of your balsamic.

If you've ever bought a bottle of apple cider vinegar and thought "what's that cloudy stuff at the bottom?", that's the mommy <3

This is also a part of what makes a high quality balsamic, well, high quality. And part of what makes it expensive. Good quality balsamic is all about age, both the age of the batch itself, and the age of the mother that seeds it. Balsamic has to be at least 12 years old, but you can age it much longer, and many places do. As for the mother, that requires literal lifetimes. Some of the oldest balsamic producing families in Modena have mothers that have been kept alive for centuries, passed down through the generations to seed new batches year after year after year, hundreds of years over. The bacterial cultures develop unique and incredible flavors in this time, and you can really taste it in the end product. It's the kind of flavor and quality only age can offer.

we have entered laika's autism zone. u will learn food and cooking facts, whether you want to or not.

Making flavor with mama

The most unrealistic thing in the DC universe is that no civilian has killed the Joker yet. He's not a meta and he's not a practically skilled fighter. Sometimes he doesn't even have a gang or is carrying a gun. He's literally just a guy. Hit him with your car.

MISS CONGENIALITY (2000) dir. Donald Petrie

Keira Knightley in The Duchess (2008)

"Vladimir, STOP!" is unfortunately killing me

Anyway the thought about Christianity was a tangent, I was actually thinking about ranking Fall Out Boy songs by how far back in time you could go before the lyrics were completely unintelligible due to untranslatable cultural differences.

"Uma Thurman" is partially unintelligible even to me (I have next to no idea who Uma Thurman is) but I feel like it would be a good example to help explain what cultural Christianity is, because the amount of song lyrics that would make zero sense if you didn't know what Christianity was is always way higher than you think it is

This is also a good exercise in estimating just how much we, as modern readers, are missing in ancient texts

Imagine explaining this to an ancient Sumerian. They don't have July, let alone the Fourth of it, and the significance of that date and the connection to fireworks requires you to explain everything from gunpowder to the concept of a nation.

I like "This is a black, black ski mask song" from Novocaine because even a historian that knew what skiing was might not necessarily know what the significance of a ski mask is here.

"I Don't Care" is almost timeless though. I'm pretty sure an ancient Roman would "get" most of it.

Same with "Alone Together." "My heart is like a stallion, they love it more when it's broke in?" Perfectly understandable for someone a couple thousand years ago.

"The Mighty Fall" is an interesting case because you could envision trying to explain "Your crooked love is just a pyramid scheme" to an ancient Egyptian

Trying to do this with Owl City makes you appreciate just how MUCH clever wordplay is in Owl City lyrics, because you're like "SO MUCH would definitely get completely lost in any attempt to translate, but I can't even break it all down"

owl city lyrics have a habit of punning on idioms, which probably is the worst for historical longevity. In "Plant Life" there's the lyric "new leaf turns over, unwilling to fall" which is referring to the speaker's reluctance to let go of the past and move on. this is both playing with the idiom "turn over a new leaf" meaning to start something new, and creating the image of a literal leaf reluctant to fall from the tree (as leaves do in fall, as part of the natural progression of seasons).

Also from the song Plant Life

so, there's "spirit" and "ghost," but neither actually mean in context the same thing that they mean when they do mean they same thing, and "pull off your sheet," which is a reference to sheets being used as a ghost costume. then there is the concept of a "teddy [bear]" and "grin and bear it" which is punning on "teddy" referencing a bear. this is kind of brilliant but incomprehensible

Would the wordplay in "Get me out of this cavern or I'll cave in" in "Cave In" necessarily be intelligible when translated for a future historian or person from the distant past

By the way, Cave In is at the top of my minecraft themed playlist because it mentions the largest number of things that are in Minecraft that I have found in a song

You'll have the most fun if you assume that what technology is and does can be explained to your listener, and focus purely on cultural and linguistic barriers

In the song "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga, knowing what a garage is and is for does not help you understand what it means to be "garage glamorous" at all.

Sometimes the barrier isn't not knowing what something is, it's knowing what something is like.

Speaking of Lady Gaga, Poker Face is great for this

Listen, *I* barely know how poker is played. But I still know that the first line references a variant (?) of poker called Texas hold 'em. There are so many double meanings here. "After he's been hooked" probably references gambling, and "I'll play the one that's on his heart" references the fact that "hearts" are one of the four suits in traditional playing cards.

Imagine not knowing any of this. Now imagine knowing all of this—does that actually let you understand what a "poker face" is?

I go back in time, I try to show an ancient Sumerian some bangers from the future, I end up stuck explaining the complex legal and cultural status of gambling in the United States, fuck time travel honestly

Songs that make roughly the same amount of sense to nearly everyone regardless of their position in history

It helps that most songs throughout history are about roughly the same things:

See this is fascinating because we're already leaving the time in history where people understand things like "meaner than a junkyard dog" but the Archetype still works

"You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC has some specific cultural references, but people throughout history would Get It okay

what's being highlighted here I think is "technical meaning is understandable, but emotional/thematic meaning is completely obscure" untranslatable things vs. "technical meaning is obscure but the song still Hits" untranslatable

I think "fast car" by tracy chapman could make sense to someone who doesn't actually know what a car is. Like, it's clear from context regardless that the car is a symbol for the opportunity to escape the circumstances you were born into and feel trapped in

Oh yeah i could write an essay about how Adam Young has a specifically autistic way of writing lyrics

those dont sound like compliments at all, mitchell franklin

why don’t they make a baby pope.

having to elect a new pope every ten years because they keep dying is super inconvenient. if it’s a baby that’s a solid 80 year streak right there. and a baby is basically a clean slate so he can be influenced by the forces of good and evil as he grows. we’ll see what god really wants

there was a weird little slice of my life where i was boymoding for school but not so much for work, but those were both in the same neighborhood, so i went to the same bagel place for lunch every day & the workers there knew me--except they didn't know i was one person. so I'd come in & they'd be like "the usual?" & if they thought i was a boy i got an egg & cheese and if they thought i was a girl it was cream cheese toasted. went back a couple years ago & they were happy to see me, but i didn't know how to tell them this meant two of their old regulars were alive & well. anyway happy teedeeohvee

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you need to be slow maxxing. you need to be reading long, fat books. you need to be making 48 chocolate chip cookies. you need to spend hours watching wild life. you need to spend 15 minutes making coffee. you need to breathe in and out. you need to be slowwwwwww

Im starting to think your fetish isn't based in Marxist theory...