The Virgin Queen

October can’t come soon enough

IT IS AUGUST

This has been in my likes since last year. It is time.

This is the 21st night of September skeleton. He only appears once a year.

On the set of “Mothra” (1961 Japanese film)

my little brother got a girlfriend recently and the two of them have been making their discord icons matching anime couples, so my other brother, his twin, keeps changing his icon to a third wheel character to annoy them

this is an old post but i have an update: the second brother started voice calling and playing games with a girl he likes, and every time the first brother walks into their room while hes talking to her he makes sure to hype him up, but in absurdly hyperbolized ways like “broo i just saw you on the news congrats on saving the bus full of orphans from crashing into the baby panda hospital. also zendaya called and asked if you wanted to go out with her and billie eilish but obviously you wont because youre so loyal. and joe biden came by personally and said he wanted to give you an award for most handsome man alive but i told him to just put it with the others”

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.

This is the most important lesson he could have taught you....

Transformers has a lot of quotable lines, especially from the animated movie, but “I’ve heard it said that we only gain wisdom through suffering, and tonight I intend to make you very wise” is so fucking raw and needs more appreciation

yoooooo

next handwritten book is gonna probably just be a book filled with these quotes lmao

I had this shitpost hit me so suddenly that I had to pull the car to the side of the road to make it

Mist Hotan Prefecture​​​​​​​

Help, I see cats where they are not

Save them

(X)

@holdwine @evergrove is this accurate?? 🤣🤣

@niuniente

#fjsdfs #when i studied in denmark #they spent an entire class showing us simple words and how similar they were across danish #norwegian #etc. for the express purpose of ragging on how different the finnish word was #the teacher literally said ‘we can more or less understand across these languages. if you see one that sticks out like a sore thumb it’s finnish #also the delivery on this video is just delightful (via @destinyandcoins)

I find it hilarious that denmark has to stoop to ragging on the finns (instead of doing it for I guess shits and giggles like the others), because all the other nordic languages rag on them for sounding like they’re mumbling with a mouth full of marbles. XD

Oh! Oh! That’s because Finnish is from a different language family! The Uralic languages!

:D

Yup! The roots of the majority of European and many nearby languages is Indo-Eropean, which is the root of everything from English to Russian to Hindi to Persian and more!

Finnish however, as you said, has its roots in a different branch than Indo-European, the Uralic languages. There aren’t many of them - Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian are the most widely spoken, but there’s a handful of others as well, mostly spoken by local ethnic groups in northern Scandinavia and Siberia.

Poles and Lithuanians eying one another across the table xD

Every time I come across posts like these I’m just reminded of the beautiful infographics made by Minna Sundberg

BTW the Finnish word lohikäärme does not come from the separate words lohi (salmon) and käärme (snake). According to current knowledge, this word comes from an old Swedish word floghdragi (flying snake). Finnish has loaned the word, left the first part untranslated but changed it a little to suite Finnish pronounciation better, and it just accidentally is the same word as salmon. The second part of the compound has been translated to käärme (snake).

So yeah, as funny as it is that it is a salmon snake, that’s not really it.

ps. Finnish also has a similar word to the Swedish drake: traakki. It is not widely used but it appears in some plants’ names for example.

Source: https://www.kielikello.fi/-/kysyvalle-vastataan (in Finnish)

Actually, I want to talk a little bit more about Finnish compounds since they are fun and very different from english ones so this might be interesting and quite educational for some of you!

Unlike in English, in Finnish compounds are very normal and widely used. I personally like this since it makes many words easier to understand ‘cause they are a lot more describing than their englsih counterparts. Let me give you some examples:

plane - lentokone (fluing machine)

concussion - aivotärähdys (brain jolt)

conspiracy - salaliitto (secrect alliance)

There are also some comppunds that Finns don’t usualy even recognize as compounds (although they most certainly are).

garden - puutarha (tree enclosure/farm)… it was hard to find a translation for tarha…

world - maailma (land air)

Also in Finnish compunds are ALWAYS and I really mean always written together. This also gives the opportunity to make very usable new words.

You know that “German has a word for everything” meme? I am not 100% sure but I have understood that the German works in a similar way. Of course there is a word for “the happy feeling you get when you eat cauliflower” because that can just be maybe up by compounding the keywords: kukkakaalinsyönti-ilo (cauliflower eating happines).

Cauliflower is also a great compound! It literally means flower cabbage.

German does work in a similar way! In fact, the exact same way for some of the words you  mentioned. We have:

plane - lentokone (flying machine) - Flugzeug (flying thing)

concussion - aivotärähdys - Gehirnerschütterung (brain jolt)

cauliflower - kukkakaali - Blumenkohl (flower cabbage)

And also:

dictionary - sanakirja - Wörterbuch (word book)

railway - rautatie - Eisenbahn (iron way)

So yeah, we have a word for everything for this exact reason! And there are a lot of words you can just translate literally into finnish and it’s still a valid compound word, which is nice when you’re German and learning Finnish! Basically,

Just President Loki fighting Alligator Loki

Important

Can't believe Peter Griffin really tried it.

Ok but I'd the second dude like...a vampire? Because my straight ass is bewitched.

[Transcript:

(the first person has text over them that says "being fat and wanting a girlfriend")

First person: "See what's behind this door..!"

(Door has text over it that says "fat girls" while The Toccata and Fugue in D minor plays in the background)

First person: "Noo, is there a bett-"

Second person: " Yo it's funny that there's an entire demographic, of petite women who love bigger men. But because you've just ousted yourself, as a cunt, it's never gonna happen for you mate. You're really out here body shaming, all these beautiful shawties, big body Bugatti (kiss noise), exquisite; but you're built like a less cool Bling Bling Boy from Johnny Test. Make it make sense mate. It doesn't- it really doesn't. Could've kept your mouth shut. But you had to say something. And you even went so far as to put it on the internet. And you thought that was a good idea because-? Please, take yourself elsewhere. Sincerely the entire fucking human race."

End transcript.]

The moment that man started speaking -

That transcript up there is great, but it fails to mention that the second person? Has a voice like... warm caramel. Like a blanket on a rainy day. Like the gentle creak of an ancient tree in an even more ancient forest. A voice that's a low, deep -- far deeper than expected -- warm, and has a soothing timbre that, honestly, I could listen to for hours.

I feel it needs to be further clarified that his voice is like warm caramel if warm caramel was still delicious but also haunted. A warm blanket knit from the fleece of an unnamed beast that roams wild lands where humans were not meant to tread. An ancient tree in a beautiful forest where you don't want to linger after dark.

second version, needs a wizard stick!!

this image is probably the most accurate visual representation of the United States education system

Oh boy.

Do I have a story for you…

So this is the iconic and beloved clock of Moszkva square in Budapest, Hungary. Or more precisely it was.

It was a very popular meeting point for generations.

„2pm on Moszkva, under the clock?” „sure” It was in the middle of the square, so you could see each other pretty easily from anywhere.

When they „renovated” (rebuilt) and renamed the square that is now called Széll Kálmán tér (only by youngsters and tourists who don’t know any better - it will remain for a lot of us „the Moszkva”) the old clock was removed.

So. Removing the clock was very controversial, but it had to go, because someone dreamed about a new shiny one. Here it is. New, and weird and DIGITAL.

The problem is, it stopped working. For days. (you see, fixing it was time-consuming…) And they came and fix it. But it broke down in a couple of days again and again, so the lovely people around helped to fix it. Some of the best solutions:

Graffity: ?Is this a clock? No" and Where is the old clock? Furthermore, on the clock it states that it shows the right time.

An artistic rendition:

But my favorite one is where people got enough of the breaking down abomination, and the heartless people taking down the actually working clocks (it is a very busy square with a lot of public transport connections), and things escalated quickly:

I think this is the most of them we had taped on at once.

The papers state: In memoriam of the unknown time. Rest in Peace

So… I guess, Hungarians do.

content

i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies it''s sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and i'm not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home i'm talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because it's literally not even that difficult and it matters so much

i truly believe that knowing how to cook is a basic survival concept and the fact that so many people can't even make simple dishes is depressing as hell this is the sorta thing that should be taught at a young age. being able to take the ingredients you have around your home and turn them into a meal is like, essential and will make life so much better. you don't need to be a high end chef you just need to understand some things that can be easily taught... but then again maybe the education system is playing a roll against this and ultimately they want you to grow up to rely on mcdonalds for dinner. i don't know. please learn how to cook for yourself if you're able. i'm not asking you to hunt for specific ingredients to make some expensive youtuber's "best" recipe but if you know the basics of cooking you can do a lot with cheap canned ingredients. cooking can be affordable i promise you just need to learn how to make do with what you can get

Can anyone point me towards resources that teach those basics cus I would LOVE to teach my child this stuff but i dont know how to cook

not comprehensive but heres some:

internet shaquille's basics but especially:

food safety + a recipe to demonstrate

how to learn to cook (just a list of subtopics, no actual tips)

basics with babish s1 & 2, but particularly:

basic knife skills

picking the right pan for each recipe

j. kenji lopez-alt's tips and tricks playlist

egg recipes

a little more complicated, involved, and longer than any of the rest of these but good breakdown of flavor & how and why to use the basic seasoning/flavor profiles

and then recipe channels representing various cuisines:

again definitely not a comprehensive list but it touches on most of the basics

‘I don’t want a throne’ I’ve been in an unexpected art mood recently, and after seeing a particularly emotive gif on tumblr of a very emotional Loki from the finale this week, I felt inspiration strike. I’ve drawn the wonderful Tom Hiddleston a couple of times in the past but I think this is definitely my best interpretation to date. I absolutely love the depth of emotion he brings to Loki, and this moment in the final episode was beautifully raw and heartbreaking. Usually when I do portraits I do lineart first, then essentially ‘colour it in’ but this time around I tried to block in everything without lines which was really freeing! I started off with a dark canvas which was great fun to work on. I’m so glad I took the plunge and got Clip Studio Pro - it’s easily the best art program I’ve ever used, I absolutely adore it! Unusually for me I drew the entire thing in around 4-5 hours in the middle of the day - I’m normally only ever in Art Mode at night, so it’s weird seeing it finished in daylight and the same day I started it! XD

That’s a drawing?!

You don’t remember your name? No, but for some reason I remember yours.

SPIRITED AWAY

- 2001, directed by Hayao Miyazaki