DO YOU HAVE COMPANY COMING OVER, BUT YOUR HOUSE SMELLS LIKE SMOKE OR YOUR MOLD EXPERIMENTS OR CAT PISS OR SOME BULLSHIT LIKE THAT?
WELL SLAP MY ASS AND CALL ME BRILLIANT, BECAUSE THIS SHIT ISN’T EDIBLE, BUT IT’LL MAKE YOUR HOUSE SMELL LIKE A GODDAMN CHURCH CHOIR SINGING HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH IN YOUR NASAL PASSAGE! (YOU SHOULD GET RID OF WHATEVER’S STINKING UP YOUR HOUSE IN THE FIRST PLACE AS WELL, MORON)
RUN YOUR CLASSY ASS OVER TO THE STORE AND MAKE SURE YOU’RE PREPARED FOR THE MIND-FUCK OF THIS SHIT. YOU’LL WANT 1 ORANGE, A SMALL BAG OF CRANBERRIES, 3 CINNAMON STICKS, GROUND CLOVES, NUTMEG, 2 LEMONS, ROSEMARY AND VANILLA.
THERE ARE TWO VERSIONS OF THIS THAT YOU CAN COOK, BECAUSE CLASSY-ASS MOTHERFUCKERS NEED VARIETIES IN THEIR LIFE! THE FIRST IS ‘CHRISTMAS’ AND THE SECOND DOESN’T HAVE A DAMN NAME, BUT IT’S FUCKING WONDERFUL.
ONLY HAVE ONE POT OF THIS SHIT GOING, IT’S CRAZY POWERFUL.
“CHRISTMAS” CHOP UP THE ORANGE, SKIN AND ALL, BECAUSE YOU DON’T JOKE AROUND WITH THIS SORT OF SHIT. USE YOUR WARRIOR STRENGTH TO BREAK THE CINNAMON STICKS IN HALF, LIKE YOUR CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF SNAPPING THE FEMURS OF DRAGONS BEFORE YOU SUCKED THE MARROW OUT. THROW THE ORANGE AND CINNAMON STICK PIECES INTO THE POT, OR IF YOU’RE NOT CONFIDENT WITH YOUR AIM, YOU CAN SET THEM GENTLY INSIDE. SHOVE A SMALL SPOONFUL OF NUTMEG AND A SMALL SPOONFUL OF CLOVES INTO THE POT.
THEN FILL THAT FUCKER UP WITH WATER UNTIL THERE’S ONLY AN INCH OF LEEWAY BETWEEN THE WATER AND EDGE, BECAUSE YOU’RE A DAREDEVIL MOTHERFUCKER.
NOW SET YOUR STOVE TO A LOW-MEDIUM SETTING, AND LEAVE IT SITTING THERE TO MARINATE IN IT’S OWN QUIET ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH. DON’T COVER THIS FUCKER, BECAUSE THE SMELL OF IT IS GOING TO INVADE YOUR ENTIRE GODDAMN HOUSE.
THAT WHICH WILL NOT BE NAMED
THE OTHER VERSION OF BOILING POTPOURRI ONLY HAS LEMONS, ROSEMARY SPRIGS AND VANILLA.
RIP THE LEMON INTO CHUNKS WHILE SOLVING THREE UNSOLVED MYSTERIES IN YOUR HEAD AND YELLING AT YOUR FLATMATE TO LEAVE YOUR OTHER EXPERIMENTS ALONE, THEN BE A CHAMPION BY NOT USING A MEASURING TOOL WHEN SPLASHING 1 TABLESPOON OF VANILLA INTO THE POT.
TOSS IN THE ROSEMARY SPRIGS AFTER YOU’VE STARED THEM INTO SUBMISSION. FILL THAT SUCKER WITH WATER AND PUT IT ON THE HEAT.
YOU LEAVE IT ON FOR 2 HOURS AT THE START OF THE DAY, THEN TURN IT ON AGAIN AN HOUR BEFORE GUESTS GET TO YOUR HOME AND LEAVE IT ON ALL EVENING. TAKE A WHIFF UP CLOSE EVERY FEW HOURS, BECAUSE THE FRUIT WILL START TO SMELL WEIRD AT THE END OF THE DAY AND THAT’S WHEN YOU TURN IT OFF.
WHEN YOUR GUESTS ARRIVE THEY’LL HAVE TO STEP BACK AND EXCLAIM “HOLY MOTHERFUCKING TITS, THIS IS ONE CLASSY HOME”
Not gonna lie, I’m mostly reblogging this because reading it is so thoroughly enjoyable.
I really love aggressive recipes
I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. Gotta try it!!
And while the pot(s) are simmering, stamp around the house in your biggest, heaviest boots, clashing two saucepan lids together and shouting “SMELL BETTER, DAMMIT!” at the top of your voice – because, after these instructions, just sitting quietly while the scent develops is a bit of an anti-climax…
This is hilarious but I’m going to have to try this. It sounds amazing ^_^
I make things like this. Reblogging so everyone else can to, and also because something about it made me think of @ninetailedraven
“Omg look at this fucking shit, gluten free mascara, ahaha, people need to be fucking stopped.”
Yes, I’m sure the person with a wheat allergy wanting to avoid putting wheat containing things near their eyeballs is truly the reason society is failing.
Also if anyone does actually need gluten free mascara, Zuzu Luxe is one of the best I’ve been able to find. Hardly clumps and doesn’t flake off like a lot of the others. Their other products can be a little hit or miss texture wise, but the mascara is great.
I once saw a person point out that common allergens are in so many things, and it even has to do with “this facility uses it in another product but it’s still the same facility” and I stopped laughing. And then I felt bad. I was ignorant, but I didn’t think about like. My corn tortillas better not have gluten! They’re corn! And then I realized….same facility. Airborne particulates. Someone working on one line, accidentally dropping particulates in another line just by walking past.
Cause there are people who are *that* sensitive. And they deserve to be protected and have safe products.
I specifically do not take issue with people just not knowing things. Cause why the heck would anyone know things like that unless they ever had to? Why would you know wheat is a common ingredient in things like mascara or shampoo? I sure as shit didn’t till I started to piece together why my body went into meltdown every time I washed my hair.
What does get to me is how inherently shitty some people are about it. Like why is the first go to for things like this mockery? Why? I mean I know the answer is “society is inherently abelist even if people don’t realize they are doing it” but I’m still allowed to be frustrated by it. (It’s the same with infomercials. Those products are not lazy or worthless, they are designed for people with disabilities!)
And I know this seems like such an over reaction to something like someone in Walgreens being shitty over gluten free mascara haha. But it’s so much more than that.
So much of my daily life is emotional and mental labor just trying to spoon feed people how not to be unthinkingly meanall the time. And
it’s not like I can ever stop because this is my life. I am living in a
world not designed or meant to include me, so constant emotional and
mental labor is required to justify both myself and the things that make
my life easier.
And I wish people would just think with a little more kindness sometimes. That’s all.
Also people have a weird desire to catch you “lying” about an allergy? There’s a preservative used in a lot of artificial caramels that I’m allergic to, and my aunt used to get so mad because she was convinced my mom was lying about it. Once when I was a toddler she offered me a bowl of ice cream with this really smug look on her face while I ate it—a look that quickly died once I started projectile vomiting all over her brand new couch. Yup she hid the caramel in the ice cream.
Feeling miserably sick for a while aside, the look on my aunt’s face at the state of her couch was rewarding
HGSKL ALL THE TIME, PEOPLE DO THIS ALL THE TIME AND IT IS NOT OKAY
This is my masters’ degree in anthropology. I’d show you my BA, but it’s at my parents’ house. I’m three and a half years into a PhD in physical anthropology. I’ve been employed to do physical anthropology at one of the world’s best natural history museums. My area of study? Teeth and diets. I’m not here to argue veganism or vegetarianism, I’m here to tell you, point by point, why you’re devastatingly misinformed about our place in the primate family tree, along with my peer-reviewed sources behind the jump. I know we live in a “post-truth” society so maybe being presented with the overwhelming consensus of the scientists who currently work with this material is meaningless to you, and honestly, this probably isn’t going to make a bit of difference for you, but I can’t let this slide. Not in this house built on blood and honor. And teeth.
1. The evidence for being closely related to chimpanzees is vast and well-understood thanks to advances in DNA analysis. We share a huge amount of DNA with them, and not just repeating patterns in non-coding DNA. We have numerous genes that are identical and likely diverged around 7 million years ago, when Sahelanthropus tschadensis was roaming the earth. S. tschadensis was a woodland species with basal ape and basal human-line traits. The most notable was the positioning of the foramen magnum towards the central base of the skull and not emerging from the back suggests bipedality. This, along with other traits such as small canines worn at the tip, which implies a reduced or absent C/P3 honing complex (the diastema), suggests that this is actually a basal trait and the pronounced diastema we see in other species was a trait that came later. But more on that later- back to chimps and what we mean by sharing DNA. Our chromosomes and chimp chromosomes are structured far more like each other than other mammals. Furthermore, the genes located on these chromosomes are very similar. Chromosome 2, for instance, is nearly identical to two chimpanzee chromosomes. (Chromosome 2 in humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans is different from Chromosome 2 found in apes and is actually the remnant of an ancient mutation where Chromosome 2 and 3 merged- you can see that from its vestigial centromeres and the genes found on it. We can’t get DNA from fossil material, but Neanderthal and Denisovan subfossils have demonstrated that this reduced chromosome count- we have one fewer pair than apes- is a typical trait of the Homo genus). Here’s a side by side comparison of Human and chimpanzee chromosomes.
Gene coding regions are colored- bands at the same place mean that there’s two identical genes at that locus. Our similarities to lemurs, on the other hand, aren’t on homologous chromosomes. We have similar coding around the centromeres but the genes express themselves differently. The structure of non-ape primate genes is also significantly different; when the first chromosomal comparisons were done between humans and lemurs back in the 1990s, it was discovered that lemurs have much more highly-concentrated heterochromatin at their centromeres, whereas the structure of human and chimpanzee centromeres is similar. The major differences in chimp and human DNA are in the noncoding regions; most of our genes have identical structures.
2. All primates evolved from a lemur-like organism, not just humans. Here’s one of them. I’ve seen her in person. Pretty cool, huh?
Her name is Ida and she’s a member of the genus Darwinius. But that’s just like saying all primates evolved from something that was basically a tree shrew- which is also true. See, one of the main points of evolution is that organisms are continually changing throughout time. We didn’t jump from lemur-like organism to human; changes were slow and gradual and the lineage isn’t really a straight tree. The fossil species we have and know lead to different lines branching out. Some things died off, some things flourished. Heck, look at the Miocene- twelve million years ago, there were hundreds of ape species. Now there’s twenty-three. (Sixteen gibbons, two chimp species, two gorilla species, two orangutan species, and one human species. There’s also some subspecies of gorilla and gibbon, but I’m only counting the primary species.) It’s hard to trace things back, but saying that we evolved from lemur-like species is obtuse and obfuscates the real point, which is that Homo and Pan descended from a relatively recent-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things common ancestor.
3. Our dentition is unique to the extant primates, but not australopithecines. Our teeth look very much like other members of the genus Homo, the extinct ones, as well as many of the australopithecines. We also have very similar enamel proportions to gracile australopithecines; apes have much thinner enamel overall.
But what did australopithecines eat?
Everything. We know they were eating fruits and nuts based on microwear analysis and strontium analysis, but we also know they were eating meat- and in pretty decent quantity, too. We’ve found all kinds of butchering sites dating back millions of years and in association with Australopithecus garhi, the earliest tool user, but we can also see this in tapeworm evolution. There’s many, many species of tapeworm in several genera. But three of them, in the genus Taenia, are only found in humans. And these species diverged from… carnivore tapeworms. Their closest relatives infect African carnivores like hyenas and wild dogs.
Tapeworms that are adapted to the specific gut of their host species need a certain environment, as well as a specific cycle of infection so that it can reproduce. A tapeworm that infects hyenas is going to be less successful if it somehow makes the jump to a horse. But if the hyena tapeworm was able to adapt to our gut, that suggests that our stomach was hospitable enough for them chemically to survive- which brings me to the intestines.
4. Our intestines are also unique. Yes, we have longer intestines than carnivores, but we also don’t have cecums like herbivores. We are omnivores and that means we still needed to retain the ability to digest plants.
The key to being omnivores is omni. All. I’m not saying we should only be eating meat, I’m saying our ancestors ate a varied diet that included all kinds of things. If we weren’t omnivores, why would we have lost the cecum’s function? Why is the human appendix only a reservoir for the lymphatic system, as it is in carnivores? The cecum is an extremely important organ in herbivores, as it houses the bacteria needed to break down cellulose and fully utilize fiber from leaves. But we don’t have that. Instead, we compensate with a long gut. Our ancestors absolutely did eat fruits and nuts and berries, but they also ate other stuff. Like scavenged carcasses and bugs and probably anything they could fit in their mouths. Which- actually, primate mouths are interesting. Humans and chimpanzees have enclosed oral cavities, thick tongues, and jaw angles much more like herbivores than carnivores- suggesting a herbivorous ancestor. That’s not something I’m arguing against at all. But again, we have adaptations for eating meat and processing animal protein because we are an extremely opportunistic species.
5. Our canines are true canines. First, semantics: having a diastema does not canine teeth make. We refer to the canine teeth by position- even herbivores, like horses, have them. They’re the teeth that come right after the incisors. All heterodonts have the potential same basic tooth types- incisors, canines, premolars, molars- in various combinations and arrangements. Some species don’t have one type of teeth, others don’t have any- but it’s silly to say that the canine teeth aren’t canine teeth just because they don’t serve the same function as a gorilla’s or a bear’s or some other animal’s. It’s basic derived versus primitive characteristics.
Now that we’ve got semantics out of the way, let’s talk about that diastema. The lost diastema is a derived trait, which means that our ancestors had it and we lost it over time. All other extant non-Homo primates have a canine diastema. All of them. However, when you look at australopithecines, we see that many of them either don’t have it or have it in a reduced capacity. At the earliest known hominin site, Lukeino, we see Orrorin tugenensis with reduced canines compared to ape fossils and modern apes- and… you do know that apes don’t use their canines for eating meat, right? Like, primate canines serve a very different purpose than carnivorans’ canines. It’s suggested that the large canines are for social display moreso than anything dietary- bigger, more threatening teeth are useful if you’re a gorilla or chimpanzee fighting to the top of your group’s social structure.
I’m going to refer you to a blog post written by Dr. John Hawks, a good friend of my advisor and generally a pretty cool guy. He’s got a nice writeup on the evolution of hominin teeth and how the human line’s teeth have changed through time.
Also, of course our teeth are going to be smaller. When we compare archaic Homo sapiens fossils to modern skeletons, their teeth and jaws are much more robust. This is likely related to the introduction of soft foods- and by soft, I mean cooked grain mush- to the diet around the time of domestication, right before the population explosion that happened about 10k years ago. In general, post-domestication human jaws are much smaller and more crowded than any other humans and hominins that came before.
6: Neanderthals did die out, but not in a catastrophic event like we think of with dinosaurs. While there are no living Neanderthals today that we would classify as Homo neanderthalensis, there is plenty of evidence that we interbred and likely outcompeted them as a species due to our overwhelmingly large population size (hypothesized based on number and locations of remains found). While there’s only a small percentage of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA lines in human populations today, it’s quite likely we lost a lot of that due to genetic drift and population migration- Neanderthals, after all, had a much more limited range than Homo sapiens sapiens. Their eventual extinction is a mosaic of events- outcompetition plus assimilation. The line between Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis/Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is blurry- there’s some physical anthropologists who actually think we should be including them within our species as a subspecies- but they are extinct in that the specific subset of hominins with distinct karyotypes and potential phenotypes no longer exists.
I find a big stumbling block that comes with teaching Romeo and Juliet is explaining Juliet’s age. Juliet is 13 – more precisely, she’s just on the cusp of turning 14. Though it’s not stated explicitly, Romeo is implied to be a teenager just a few years older than her – perhaps 15 or 16. Most people dismiss Juliet’s age by saying “that was normal back then” or “that’s just how it was.” This is fundamentally untrue, and I will explain why.
In Elizabethan England, girls could legally marry at 12 (boys at 14) but only with their father’s permission. However, it was normal for girls to marry after 18 (more commonly in early to mid twenties) and for boys to marry after 21 (more commonly in mid to late twenties). But at 14, a girl could legally marry without papa’s consent. Of course, in doing so she ran the risk of being disowned and left destitute, which is why it was so critical for a young man to obtain the father’s goodwill and permission first. Therein lies the reason why we are repeatedly told that Juliet is about to turn 14 in under 2 weeks. This was a critical turning point in her life.
In modern terms, this would be the equivalent of the law in many countries which states children can marry at 16 with their parents’ permission, or at 18 to whomever they choose – but we see it as pretty weird if someone marries at 16. They’re still a kid, we think to ourselves – why would their parents agree to this?
This is exactly the attitude we should take when we look at Romeo and Juliet’s clandestine marriage. Today it would be like two 16 year olds marrying in secret. This is NOT normal and would NOT have been received without a raised eyebrow from the audience. Modern audiences AND Elizabethan audiences both look at this and think THEY. ARE. KIDS.
Critically, it is also not normal for fathers to force daughters into marriage at this time. Lord Capulet initially makes a point of telling Juliet’s suitor Paris that “my will to her consent is but a part.” He tells Paris he wants to wait a few years before he lets Juliet marry, and informs him to woo her in the meantime. Obtaining the lady’s consent was of CRITICAL importance. It’s why so many of Shakespeare’s plays have such dazzling, well-matched lovers in them, and why men who try to force daughters to marry against their will seldom prosper. You had to let the lady make her own choice. Why?
Put simply, for her health. It was considered a scientific fact that a woman’s health was largely, if not solely, dependant on her womb. Once she reached menarche in her teenage years, it was important to see her fitted with a compatible sexual partner. (For aristocratic girls, who were healthier and enjoyed better diets, menarche generally occurred in the early teens rather than the later teens, as was more normal at the time). The womb was thought to need heat, pleasure, and conception if the woman was to flourish. Catholics might consider virginity a fit state for women, but the reformed English church thought it was borderline unhealthy – sex and marriage was sometimes even prescribed as a medical treatment. A neglected wife or widow could become sick from lack of (pleasurable) sex. Marrying an unfit sexual partner or an older man threatened to put a girl’s health at risk. An unsatisfied woman, made ill by her womb as a result – was a threat to the family unit and the stability of society as a whole. A satisfying sex life with a good husband meant a womb that had the heat it needed to thrive, and by extension a happy and healthy woman.
In Shakespeare’s plays, sexual compatibility between lovers manifests on the stage in wordplay. In Much Ado About Nothing, sparks fly as Benedick and Beatrice quarrel and banter, in comparison to the silence that pervades the relationship between Hero and Claudio, which sours very quickly. Compare to R+J – Lord Capulet tells Paris to woo Juliet, but the two do not communicate. But when Romeo and Juliet meet, their first speech takes the form of a sonnet. They might be young and foolish, but they are in love. Their speech betrays it.
Juliet, on the cusp of 14, would have been recognised as a girl who had reached a legal and biological turning point. Her sexual awakening was upon her, though she cares very little about marriage until she meets the man she loves. They talk, and he wins her wholehearted, unambiguous and enthusiastic consent – all excellent grounds for a relationship, if only she weren’t so young.
When Tybalt dies and Romeo is banished, Lord Capulet undergoes a monstrous change from doting father to tyrannical patriarch. Juilet’s consent has to take a back seat to the issue of securing the Capulet house. He needs to win back the prince’s favour and stabilise his family after the murder of his nephew. Juliet’s marriage to Paris is the best way to make that happen. Fathers didn’t ordinarily throw their daughters around the room to make them marry. Among the nobility, it was sometimes a sad fact that girls were simply expected to agree with their fathers’ choices. They might be coerced with threats of being disowned. But for the VAST majority of people in England – basically everyone non-aristocratic – the idea of forcing a daughter that young to marry would have been received with disgust. And even among the nobility it was only used as a last resort, when the welfare of the family was at stake. Note that aristocratic boys were often in the same position, and would also be coerced into advantageous marriages for the good of the family.
tl;dr:
Q. Was it normal for girls to marry at 13?
A. Hell no!
Q. Was it legal for girls to marry at 13?
A. Not without dad’s consent – Friar Lawrence performs this dodgy ceremony only because he believes it might bring peace between the houses.
Q. Was it normal for fathers to force girls into marriage?
A. Not at this time in England. In noble families, daughters were expected to conform to their parents wishes, but a girl’s consent was encouraged, and the importance of compatibility was recognised.
Q. How should we explain Juliet’s age in modern terms?
A. A modern Juliet would be a 17 year old girl who’s close to turning 18. We all agree that girls should marry whomever they love, but not at 17, right? We’d say she’s still a kid and needs to wait a bit before rushing into this marriage. We acknowledge that she’d be experiencing her sexual awakening, but marrying at this age is odd – she’s still a child and legally neither her nor Romeo should be marrying without parental permission.
Q. Would Elizabethans have seen Juliet as a child?
A. YES. The force of this tragedy comes from the youth of the lovers. The Montagues and Capulets have created such a hateful, violent and dangerous world for their kids to grow up in that the pangs of teenage passion are enough to destroy the future of their houses. Something as simple as two kids falling in love is enough to lead to tragedy. That is the crux of the story and it should not be glossed over – Shakespeare made Juliet 13 going on 14 for a reason.
I saw this in my emails and couldn’t see why I’d been tagged in it (all the while nodding vehemently along) and then I saw my tags and ah. Yep. Still forever mad at how badly Shakespeare is taught in most schools.
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.
Until proven otherwise, I must assume this is correct.
News reports and personal accounts from people who knew him show that
Brett Kavanaugh lied again and again at his Senate confirmation
hearing. How can this sputtering, raging, serial liar possibly be
considered for the role of a Supreme Court justice?
In last Thursday’s confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh lied repeatedly
about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony that she was sexually
assaulted by him at age 15.
Kavanaugh repeatedly lied that her account had been “refuted” by
witnesses. He also lied about his behavior in high school and college.
And he lied many times about policies he worked on during the presidency
of George W. Bush.
“Kavanaugh is such a brazen liar that many of his false claims have been entirely refuted by reporting,” Media Matters for America says in this comprehensive list of his lies under oath before the United States Senate.
Kavanaugh repeatedly claimed Ford’s accusation has been
“refuted” by others who she said attended the party – even though the
other attendees have said no such thing. Kavanaugh seized on the word “refuted” when responding to Ford’s report, claiming in five instances
that the three people who Ford says were at the party when Kavanaugh
sexually assaulted her had “refuted” her account. That’s an obvious
misrepresentation of what those people have said. They have actually all
said that they don’t recall
the party in question – a major difference from saying something
didn’t happen. And Ford’s friend Leland Keyser has said that although
she doesn’t remember the party in question, she believes Ford is telling the truth.
Kavanaugh said he “did not travel in the same social circles” as Ford, but he did. During prepared remarks, Kavanaugh said
that Ford “and I did not travel in the same social circles. It is
possible that we met at some point at some events, although I do not
recall that.” But Ford testified that she went out with one of
Kavanaugh’s friends, whose name appears 13 times in Kavanaugh’s calendar.
Kavanaugh attempted to fabricate an alibi by suggesting he
did not drink on weekdays and was out of town almost every weekend night
of the summer of 1982. Kavanaugh claimed
that the incident Ford described “presumably happened on a weekend” and
suggested that he and his friends didn’t drink during the week because
of their jobs while adding he was “out of town almost every weekend
night before football training camp started in late August.” In doing
so, Kavanaugh attempted to falsely imply that he did not attend the type
of get-together that Ford described. Kavanaugh’s lie is readily
apparent in the calendars he provided the committee and a contradictory statement
he made acknowledging “the calendars show a few weekday gatherings at
friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers.”
In particular, great attention has focused on his July 1 calendar entry – a Thursday – that showed he was having “[brew]skis” with some of the people Ford said were at the party.
Kavanaugh said he had no connection to Yale University prior
to attending undergrad and law school there, but he was a legacy
admittee. While denying that he was a heavy drinker in college who drank to the point of blacking out, Kavanagh said,
“I got into Yale Law School – that’s the number one law school in the
country. I had no connections there; I got in there by busting my tail
at college.” In fact, Kavanaugh’s grandfather Everett Edward Kavanaugh attended Yale, making Kavanaugh a legacy student.
Kavanaugh denied every blacking out from drinking and
downplayed his alcohol consumption as a young man, but numerous Yale
classmates say he was a belligerent drunk. Kavanaugh became
angered under questioning from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) after she asked
him if he ever blacked out from excessive drinking. In response,
Kavanaugh pressed Klobuchar if she had ever blacked out and claimed that he doesn’t have a drinking problem. The New York Times reported
that “nearly a dozen” of Kavanaugh’s classmates “said they recalled his
indulging in heavy drinking, with some characterizing it as outside the
norms of college life.” His freshman roommate James Roche said Kavanaugh was “frequently unusually drunk” and would become “belligerent and mean,” while classmate Charles “Chad” Ludington said Kavanaugh was “a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker.” Classmate Elizabeth Swisher called
Kavanaugh’s claim he never blacked out “a lie” based on her observation
of his behavior at the time. Classmate Lynne Brookes told CNN that she
and her former classmates were texting each other during the hearing
that Kavanaugh was lying about his college drinking habits.
like all electronics, robots are extremely susceptible to ghostly influence
Glumshoe, S. (2018). Getting the Ghost Out of the Machine: Practical Exorcism for Androids. North Central Positronics. 19(09), 167-188.
“Ten?” Darya whispered. “Are you alright…?”
The android shuddered and rose slowly to his feet. There was something stiff and insectoid about his movements – nothing like Ten’s usual inhuman grace. His head twisted on his neck with a sound like a creaking gate.
“Hoowee! Talk about a haunted doll!” The voice that came out of the robot was not one Darya had ever heard him use before. “I’ve never gotten to play with a toy this fancy before!”
Darya took a step back. The android’s eyes fixed on her. Even in the dim lighting of the kitchen, she could see his pupil-like ocular lenses expanding and contracting independently, whirring in protest at the unnatural function. A shiver went down her spine.
“Ten?” she asked again, her mouth dry, and raised her hands slowly in front of her.
“Sorry!” sang the android in that strange voice. “’Ten’ can’t come to the phone right now! Care to leave a message?”
It lunged without warning. Darya screamed and stumbled backwards, bruising her spine against the edge of the counter. The thing’s hands shot out and grasped her by the throat, pressing cold thumbs against her windpipe. Its face contorted into a wide, manic smile that strained the synthetic skin of its cheeks.
Darya choked and clawed at its wrists. The android, insensitive to pain and far stronger than a human, ignored her and slowly began to squeeze. The pounding in her head grew louder and louder as she felt pressure build behind her eyes. Her vision blurred and her hands slipped off the thing’s wrists, falling leadenly to dangle at her sides.
Suddenly its grip loosened. Blood rushed back into her head and Darya wrenched away, gasping for breath. Ten’s body twitched again as she scrambled for the doorway.
“Ooh, am I not supposed to do that?” it chuckled. “Looks like I forgot to turn the safety off! Hey – where are you going, little lady? Don’t tell me you’re too old to play with dolls…”
Stumbling into the hallway, Darya froze. She wanted to run, but there was no way she could make it further than the edge of the yard without support, and that support had just tried to kill her. She glanced over her shoulder at the robot. Ten – or Ten’s body, at any rate – was still standing beside the sink, twitching weirdly as if something was shifting around inside of it, trying to get comfortable.
“Ahh. Much better.” It stretched its arms. “Now… where were we?”
“I’m so sorry. If only I’d known!” Ten’s face reappeared, his hand pressed against his cheek in mock concern. “We could have had so much more fun. Just think – I could have ridden around inside him, biding my time, making him do awful little things he’d never remember. Eventually you’d have to deactivate him. I wonder whose heart would break first… yours, or his?”
Rationally, Darya knew that Ten could not feel physical pain – at least, not in the sense that a vertebrate with a nervous system could. Even his emotions were muted, limiting his ability to suffer. Theoretically.
