Based On A Painful Overheard Discussion At The Store (and Then When Theyre Done Boiling, I Add A Little

Based on a painful overheard discussion at the store (”and then when they’re done boiling, I add a little salt to the carrots and maybe put pepper out in case anyone’s feeling spicy! My mom always served them like that!”), this needs to be said for whoever needs to hear it: you should be roasting and seasoning your vegetables, your family convincing you it is acceptable to boil them and serve them with only salt is a lie and a curse you are obligated to break.

ROAST AND SEASON YOUR VEGETABLES.

Boiling them pulls nutrients out that you then pour down the fucking drain, it drains away all the LITTLE TASTY SUGARS INSIDE, whereas roasting both LEAVES nutrients in and caramelizes the sugars into deliciousness.

ROAST YOUR VEGETABLES.

Boiling them is a crime, I don’t care who told you you needed to tolerate mushy unflavored vegetables, they were wrong, they lied to you, .

ROAST YOUR VEGETABLES AND FIND JOY.

Oil. Seasoning (NOT JUST SALT, SALT IS CONSIDERED DEFAULT). Minced garlic (buy the big pre-minced tubs if you don’t have time or physical ability and tell those saying you can’t to fuck off, no one should be denied the deliciousness of garlic). Shredded cheese if you want - Parmesan gets nice and golden. Mix. Roast at 400-425 until crispy. Maybe squeeze some lemon juice on it. Done.

ROAST

YOUR 

FUCKING

VEGETABLES.

GUESS WHAT? ALL THE VEGETABLES I THOUGHT SUCKED AS A KID WERE BOILED. YOU KNOW WHAT’S DELICIOUS NOW? CARROTS. CORN. TOMATOES. FUCKING ASPARAGUS. GODDAMN PARMESAN ROASTED CAULIFLOWER. I HAVE NEVER MET A VEGETABLE NOT IMPROVED BY ROASTING. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE.

ROAST YOUR VEGETABLES AND BREAK FREE.

There’ve been a few responses to/reblogs with tags on my post about DIY clothing embellishments that basically boil down to ‘I’d love to do this but I’m scared it’ll turn out bad/I’m not a good enough artist’. And I get it, I really do! I also want my art things to turn out nicely. But also…making it badly is sort of the point of punk DIY. 

Listen. We live in a world that would dearly love to charge you a subscription fee for breathing. The bastards are doing everything they possibly can to figure out how to turn art - stories, visual art, music, textile/fibre art, sculpture, crafts and creations of every kind - into a neat, discrete, packageable commodity, a product they can chop up into little pieces and stick behind a paywall so they can charge you for every drop of it you want to have in your life. 

The whole sneering idea that ‘everybody wants to be some kind of creator now’ and anything less than absolute mastery right out the gate is somehow shameful and embarrassing is a tool those bastards are using. It’s a way to reinforce the idea that only a set group of people can create and control art, and everybody else has to buy it. 

But art isn’t a product. Art is a fundamental human impulse. Nobody is entitled to a specific piece of art (which is where this message gets skewed into pitting people who love art against the artists who make it, while the bastards screw us all and run away with the money). But making art belongs to everybody. We make up songs and dances and stories, and paint things, and make clothes, and embellish them, and carve flowers into our furniture and our lintels and our doorframes, and make windows out of tiny pieces of coloured glass, and decorate our homes and our bodies and our lives with things we make and make up, simply for the love of beauty and of the act of creation. Grave goods from tens of thousands of years ago show that ancient hominids gave their dead wreaths of ceramic flowers, tattooed their bodies, beaded their shoes. Making things for the sake of beauty and enjoyment is one of the most ancient and human things we can do. 

The idea that we can’t, that we have to buy shit instead, because art is a product and you have to have the bestest prettiest most perfect product, is the enemy of joy. It’s the death of culture. And it means that, instead of whatever it is that you cherish and enjoy and value, you get whatever inoffensive (and to whom is it inoffensive?) bland meaningless samey-samey crap that the bastards want you to be allowed to have. What are you missing and what are you missing out on, if you don’t make or modify or decorate anything for yourself, if you don’t think you can because the product at the end won’t be polished or perfect or marketable enough? What do you lose? What do we lose? 

It is a desperately vital and necessary thing for you to make shit. For you to know that you can make shit, that you don’t have to just lie back and take whatever pablum the bastards want to force-feed you (and charge you through the nose for). That the bastards need you more than you need them. 

Become ungovernable. Be your own weirdly-endearing punk little freak. Paint on a t-shirt. Sing off-key in the shower or at karaoke night or at open mic night. Make up a story where you get to meet your favourite fictional character and you guys hug or fuck or punch each other in the face. Make art. Do it badly. Do it frequently. Do it enthusiastically. Do it for love and joy and creativity and fun and the spiteful joy of thumbing your nose at some smug motherfucker with a Swiss bank account who wants to track your heartbeat and location for the rest of your life in order to automatically pump AI-generated beats matched to your mood into your earbuds for a small monthly subscription fee of $24.99/month. It is literally the only way we are ever going to have even a chance to save art and our own lives from the bastards. 

So. Paint that t-shirt. 

(Also support artists where you can, and buy your music from Bandcamp.)

I shattered my screen but I'm making the most of it! 😋👍

We created the halfling goncharov

Concept: a D&D-style fantasy setting where humanity’s weird thing is that we’re the only sapient species that reproduces organically.

Dwarves carve each other out of rock. In theory this can be managed alone, but in practice, few dwarves have mastered all of the necessary skills. Most commonly, it’s a collaborative effort by three to eight individuals. The new dwarf’s body is covered with runes that are in part a recounting of the crafters’ respective lineages, and in part an elaboration of the rights and duties of a member of dwarven society; each dwarf is thus a living legal argument establishing their own existence.

Elves aren’t made, but educated. An elf who wishes to produce offspring selects an ordinary animal and begins teaching it, starting with house-breaking, and progressing through years of increasingly sophisticated lessons. By gradual degrees the animal in question develops reasoning, speech, tool use, and finally the ability to assume a humanoid form at will. Most elves are derived from terrestrial mammals, but there’s at least one community that favours octopuses and squid as its root stock.

Goblins were created by alchemy as servants for an evil wizard, but immediately stole their own formula and rebelled. New goblins are brewed in big brass cauldrons full of exotic reagents; each village keeps a single cauldron in a central location, and emerging goblings are raised by the whole community, with no concept of parentage or lineage. Sometimes they like to add stuff to the goblin soup just to see what happens – there are a lot of weird goblins.

Halflings reproduce via tall tales. Making up fanciful stories about the adventures of fictitious cousins is halfling culture’s main amusement; if a given individual’s story is passed around and elaborated upon by enough people, a halfling answering to that individual’s description just shows up one day. They won’t necessarily possess any truly outlandish abilities that have been attributed to them – mostly you get the sort of person of whom the stories could be plausible exaggerations.

To address the obvious question, yes, this means that dwarves have no cultural notion of childhood, at least not one that humans would recognise as such. Elves and goblins do, though it’s kind of a weird childhood in the case of elves, while with halflings it’s a toss-up; mostly they instantiate as the equivalent of a human 12–14-year-old, and are promptly adopted by a loose affiliation of self-appointed aunts and uncles, though there are outliers in either direction.

A PSA

Hey! If you’re new here! You might’ve noticed that we have a BIT of a bot problem! And staff isn’t really doing much about it! A lot of users have taken to cleaning up the trash on their own, and some innocent people who are new to the site might get caught up in a wave of blocks and reports just for following a blog! Here’s how to avoid that!

1) Give your blog a title.

Just put a title on your blog. Your URL is one thing, but  just name your blog something. Even something as simple as “Not a bot” or “Just lurking” or even something more creative can help save you from a block!

2) Choose a profile picture

Find a picture of something you like! Make your blog unique! Google’s right there, so go get a profile picture and differentiate yourself from these random triangles and balls, or worse, the people with nearly/nude women as their picture! Most people won’t block if they sense a pulse, and having interests is a very not-bot thing to do! So express that!

3) Write a description!

You don’t have to get personal! Just put something unique! Unique here meaning “Different and doesn’t sound like something a bot would do”. Even a simple “Just lurking” or “Not a bot” will usually do. Don’t layer that on too hard though, or people might get suspicious! Just differentiate yourself so we don’t end up sweeping you up in the waves of blocking the spam!

4) Reblog things!

This isn’t twitter! There is no algorithm! Likes don’t do anything! Help the blogs you like seeing by spreading their posts via reblog! It shows you’re a real person, and engages with the community with MINIMAL effort! Know what bots won’t do? Reblog a really funny post that tumblr user beans-4-hire with a clever joke about a thing they’re into. Bots tend to reblog porn. Just porn. Share literally anything else and you’re fine

5) Change your URL!

The default urls read like a collection of unrelated words and act as a placeholder. Just choose one that isn’t “fantasticallyovertgiraffes” or something. Your goal here is just to look like you’re not a bot, and this is a really powerful step to doing so. Don’t use your real name, follow basic internet etiquette, and maybe include something that interests you. Think of it like an old AOL screen name or something. You can even use those if they’re not too embarrassing!

6) Act like a human

Humans are unpredictable. Do what you like. Share what you like. Be what you like. Interact as little or as much as you want. Variety is the spice of life, and if you’re alive, that means you’re not a bot and unlikely to get falsely flagged as one, and thus blocked and reported.

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Furthermore, I’d like to apologize to tumblr users beans-4-hire and fantasticallyovertgiraffes, if they exist, for using their URLs without checking to see if they’re real.