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The worst thing I've ever written is my final assignment for a screenwriting class. The professor successfully pushed me into writing the blandest mess of a "thriller" you could imagine. It was garbage, and when he called me to give feedback on it, his only point was. His only point was. His only point was asking me why I made a character Chinese, if I didn't have her do "kung fu" or use "herbal medicine". I pointed out she was a spy, and spies in our modern post-post-Cold War era basically have to be Chinese or Russian or American, and I'm pretty sure Chinese spies use guns instead of channeling the mystical kinetic energies of the chi, but he demanded I "use" the fact she was Chinese. Though someone staring at the hottest garbage ever written and only going "but why isn't this character white?" does seem like a realistic simulacrum of the film industry experience

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i love when people draw 2 characters cuddling and it looks like this

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okay we need a name for our condom brand. something that evokes power and protection. something that evokes an impregnable fortress where no one has ever been able to sneak anything past its defences.

Guy who's just been reading the Iliad but hasn't quite gotten to the end: oh I have the perfect idea,

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being a fan of a friend's ocs is actually so humiliating....... like yes my favourite character rn is tragically doomed and a pillar of humanity who i think is relevant to the current world. you can find information about them on discord dot com and sometimes in late-night conversations with this guy i know. what the fuck

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they are swimming around ur blog

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Odd interaction at the bookstore yesterday. Got summoned to the register in my capacity as Employee Who Knows About Old Books because a customer wanted to know what Don Quixote was about.

(Yes, this does mean that the employee already at the register wasn’t able to answer that question. I have a lot of “what are they teaching you in those schools?” interactions with my younger co-workers.)

Anyway, I gave the customer a quick synopsis. He asked if I’d recommend it, and I said I would, that it was not only well-written but also pretty accessible & engaging for a novel written four hundred years ago. Then he asked if he would “see things differently after reading it.”

He then elaborated that he really liked Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and wanted other books he read to have a similar paradigm-shifting effect.

(I haven’t read The Alchemist, specifically because every time someone recommends it to me they use this same kind of language, which makes me feel like they’re trying to get me to join a cult rather than read a book.)

We are in a college town, so “young person who’s just learned what philosophy and poetry are and now thinks of themselves as Deep” is a Type of Guy we encounter fairly frequently.

(Just a few hours before this, I overheard a young man recommending a book to his female companion because it would “help with her creative energies”.)

So it’s not that this is particularly unusual in vibes, it’s more that… this seems like an odd standard to hold a novel to before you read it. And it’s an odd question to ask your local bookseller — “will this book change my life?” I dunno, man, I don’t know your life. Maybe it will, books do that sometimes.

Anyway, I told him “probably”, because honestly Don Quixote is a really good book and I think more people should read it. And, I dunno, maybe it will make him see things differently.

(It might even make him see novels as intrinsically worth reading rather than as vessels for personal change.)

I have no idea if that worked, because as mentioned I wasn’t at the register at the time. I went back to organizing the used books and didn’t see him again. Kind of hope he bought it.

(To be clear, at no point during this conversation was he holding a copy of Don Quixote. I had to instruct him to look under “C” for “Cervantes” if he decided he wanted to buy it. His curiosity was sparked by a set of novelty bookends.)

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Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.

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The Onion really ain’t fucking around.

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lmaooo

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Does anyone remeber when the earth use to be our medicine

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Some tweets belong on tumblr. One such case

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unbelievable that its 4/20 and absolutely nobody has put the objectively best rage comic on my dash yet. i have to do everything around here

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Buckle up, European and Foreigner Tumblypoos, because I'm about to learn you a thing about AMERICA.

You see these delectable motherflippers? These are called STATES. You stupid foreigners might not be able to wrap your head around this, but basically they're administrative subdivisions of the country.

And here's the thing: They are totally heckin' different from each other! For instance, New York:

Looks TOTALLY DIFFERENT from Kansas:

And they both look TOTALLY different from California!

So before you make fun of an American for not knowing where tiny third-world countries like "Check Republic" or "South Korea" are, maybe think about how much we have to learn about the unique regional differences in our OWN country. Maybe you should think about AMERICA more.

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happy 420 and day i reserve a spot in hell