A Troll's House

Time shifting

––

I wanted this but the original poster is transphobic

I know I’m the old technology freak but… These new fridges are terrible. Trust me.

I was a tech for a while and serviced them. You’d be lucky to get 3 years without a major failure.

Strong beige box lasts for 20+ years and plus it comes with The Guy

If you’re the kind of person who would do that, you never become Bezos in the first place.

My Dad owned a business my whole life. It was profitable, but it didn’t expand. I ask him once why he never grew it, and he said it’s nearly impossible without climbing on someone’s back–your vendors, your customers, your employees. Particularly that last one. You don’t wait until your business is big to be a good human being. The very first time you have to choose between your own profit and your employees health insurance, you choose the later. You give maternity leave even though the government doesn’t make you. You dock your own salary to not lay people off during a recession. You have adequate staffing and reliable hours. Anybody who says you can’t run a retail business on a normal, reasonable, predictable schedule you know in advance is full of shit. My Dad did it for 35 years (always have one more person than you think you need, and 98% of your staffing problems vanish). It’s just not maximum profit. If you don’t prioritize extracting profit from every corner of your business, you never become rich enough to give billions away. 

(One of the things my father is proud of is that by the time he retired they hadn’t needed to take a help wanted ad in 30 years. Turnover was low, and when a spot opened, referrals filled it.)

Last week I accidentally took an edible at 10x my usual dose. I say “accidentally” but it was really more of a “my friend held it out to my face and I impulsively swallowed it like a python”, which was technically on purpose but still an accident in that my squamate instincts acted faster than my ability to assess the situation and ask myself if I really wanted to get Atreides high or not.

Anyway. I was painting the wall when it hit. My friend heard me make a noise and asked what was wrong—I explained that I had just fallen through several portals. I realized that painting the wall fulfilled my entire hierarchy of needs, and was absolutely sure that I was on track to escaping the cycle of samsara if I just kept at it a little longer. I was thwarted on my journey towards nirvana only by the fact that I ran out of paint.

Seeking a surrogate act of humble service through which I might be redeemed and made human, I turned to unwashed dishes in the sink and took up the holy weapon of the sponge. I was partway through cleaning the blender when it REALLY hit.

You ever clean a blender? It’s a shockingly intimate act. They are complex tools. One of the most complicated denizens of the kitchen. Glass and steel and rubber and plastic. Fuck! They’ve got gaskets. You can’t just scrub ‘em and rinse them down like any other piece of shit dish. You’ve got to dissemble them piece by piece, groove by sensitive groove, taking care to lavish the spinning blades with cautious attention. There’s something sensual about it. Something strangely vulnerable.

As I stood there, turning the pieces over in my hands, I thought about all the things we ask of blenders. They don’t have an easy job. They are hard laborers taking on a thankless task. I have used them so roughly in my haste for high-density smoothies, pushing them to their limits and occasionally breaking them. I remembered the smell of acrid smoke and decaying rubber that filled the kitchen in the break room the last time I tried to make a smoothie at work—the motor overtaxed and melted, the gasket cracked and brittle. Strawberry slurry leaked out of it like the blood of a slain animal.

Was this blender built to last? Or was it doomed to an early grave in some distant landfill by the genetic disorder of planned obsolescence? I didn’t know, and was far too high to make an educated guess. But I knew that whatever care and tenderness and empathy I put into it, the more respect for the partnership of man and machine, the better it would perform for me.

This thought filled me with a surge of affection. However long its lifespan, I wanted it to be filled with dignity and love and understanding. I thought: I bet no one has hugged this blender before. And so I lifted it from its base.

A blender is roughly the size and shape of a human baby. Cradling one in your arms satisfies a primal need. A month ago I was permitted to hold an infant for the first time in my life, an experience which was physically and psychologically healing. I felt an echo of that satisfaction holding my friend the blender, and the thought of parting with it felt even more ridiculous than bringing it with me to hang out on my friend’s bed.

This cat is too fluffy for me to comprehend in slow motion

wow continuants wow

WOAHHHHHHHHHH

Me: “Do you guys want to see the fluffiest cat?” Coworkers, immediately and loudly: “YES SEND IT NOW.”

Cat cloud. Cloud cat.

cocktus

suckulent

please clap

*claps enthusiastically*

Simply phenomenal punnery!

you want to help stop tumblr from murdering itself? here's how!

i encourage you to reblog this so we can get as many people leaving feedback as humanly possible. we need to let staff know this is an utterly terrible idea

by the way, tumblr has turned off asks on all of their staff blogs, so this is the only way to tell tumblr how you feel

here it is again because uh. seems relevant.

Overwhelmed

Shoutout to the hackberry tree in our back yard that we think is dead every single spring because it puts out leaves like 3 weeks later than every other hackberry in the area but then later in the summer it's always literally fine

Good evening to the next door neighbor's American sycamore that they bought a lil over 25 years ago as just a stick, which is now like 70 feet tall and extends its branches vastly wide and made sycamore seedlings in every pot and flower bed I have.

She is one of the formative trees of my childhood. I remember, before the neighbors built the fence, sitting underneath her branches in a light rain and staying completely dry because of the protection of her huge leaves

Miss you, grove of black walnut trees that grew behind the hundred year old farm house where I lived as a kid. Last year I tore off a leaf from a tree that grows at the place where the road changes to gravel cut off by a cattle gate, and the smell brought the memory rushing back.

I remember you, white pine. You were easy to climb and so tall I could easily get higher than the second story windows. You tolerated all the contraptions my friends and I rigged in your branches.

I love you, oak trees at the corners of the yard in the house I grew up in; you were like a fortress grove around my home. My mom used to say that all your leaves made her appreciate the concept of infinity -- for no matter how many leaves you shed, they were not infinite.

I miss you, linden tree outside my sister's bedroom. Your leaves were impossibly huge, so it looked like she lived in a treehouse. And as your saplings sprang up every summer, my swing set became like a jingle or enchanted forest. And my mom always pruned the suckers off, anyway, and they made great magic staffs and bows and swords, and, later, wands.

[tweet]

Sue zhao/Ryan O'Connell

Mary Oliver, from “When Did It Happen?,” Felicity: Poems (Penguin Press, 2015)

"Shaymin and Roselia" I created this Pokémon fanart traditionally with watercolors on a small ATC (artist trading card) format ♫ Size: 3,5 by 2,5 inch > Please do not repost, recreate, edit or trace, thanks~ :3 Reblogs are appreciated (ꈍᴗꈍ)

Hey. Gentiles. Listen up for a sec.

When September and October are nearing and you’re planning an event: google “Rosh Hashanah *year*” and *Yom Kippur *year*” and then, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t plan your event on those days. In fact, don’t plan any events starting sundown the night before. Those are the three most important days of the Jewish calendar, and, once again, I cannot stress enough how much this little bit of forethought and kindness will make every Jew you know cry tears of joy.

in 2023, the night before Rosh Hashanah is Thursday evening, September 14.

Rosh Hashanah ends Sunday evening, September 17.

calendar date

in 2023, the night before Yom Kippur is Saturday evening, September 23.

Yom Kippur ends Monday evening, September 25.

calendar date

Butter Cake

YOU hates terfs

rb if u hates terfs

Don't forget that neighboring regions experienced cultural syncretism and did not just 'copy/paste' religious beliefs and their Gods. Different cultural interpretations of the Gods are just as valid as the culture from which they may have originated.

There is no single interpretation of a God. Pagans are allowed to worship syncretized Gods without feeling guilty or judged for not following mainstream beliefs.

This was commonplace in ancient regions. Not everyone followed a strict pantheon with rigid boundaries. It has always been normal to have overlap between neighboring cultures.

Please do not insult other religions of which you know nothing about. You are just perpetuating misinformation.

Do you ever simply cry bcos you’ve been seen too clearly?

[ID: tweet by Owl! at the Library @SketchesbyBoze:

I want to move through this world like a film by Miyazaki: gentle where the world is chaotic, unafraid of rest and silence, sympathetic to children and animals and forgotten people, radiating a sense of enchantment and the sheer beauty of things. End ID.]

somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.

and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.

I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me

So I just found the most useful photo album in existence for tumblr arguments

I HAVE FOUND MY FAVOURITE POST ON THE INTERNET

@georgeorwell @lordhellebore @francisperfectionbonnefoy @janiedean and everyone else have you guys seen this gem

OH MY GOD I’M SAVING ALL  OF THESE RN

This is awesome

@aces-to-apples @elouanwrites thought y’all might like to save these for future use 😘

@ayeforscotland dunno if you’ve seen this but I feel you could use it when the aresholes get a bit too cocky in the reblogs

Just need one with ‘Foul: Wee fud talking shite’ on it.

— ERIN BOW

So, so very much this.