Do you think Borimir carries around the hobbits in a murse like those rich white women do with their chihuahuas?? 

Someone with better artistic ability than me PLEASE draw this

neal caffrey and peter burke are nate and sophie in a different font and here’s why- *gunshots*

4.10/4.19 Character Development, or The Time Holding Steve's Hand Was Not Helpful For Danny's Claustrophobia And The Time It Was.

Steve was genuine in his offer to help both times but the first time Danny assumed he was making fun of him and got prickly and rejected his hand so Steve got defensive and dismissive in return, because it irked him that Danny assumed the worst of him. The second time not only Danny took his hand without a word, he didn't want to let go, and when he calmly explained how this situation is affecting him, Steve ever so gently tried to calm him down, made sure he was distracted and coping even though he was in a hurry to find some leverage to get the concrete block off of Danny's leg. When Danny shows vulnerability and accepts Steve's help Steve is always there for him and vice versa. These two might be at each other's throats sometimes but when the push comes to shove they always have each other's back. I'm not even talking about the metaphorical implications of Danny finally accepting Steve's hand 😉

You ID’d the weapon from the gunshot sound?

"It's a very distinctive___" and "Dang it Hardison!" are his two favorite phrases.

The progression of the first few episodes of Leverage is so fucking funny bc it's like:

Episode 1- fairly standard pilot, does a lot of legwork of establishing what the show is about and who the characters are, sets up the series well

Episode 2- the US government is inherently corrupt senators are bought and sold at the will of corporate interests

Episode 3- Eliot is a horse girl

Finding out Eliot was a fellow horse girl was the HIGHLIGHT of my day when I watched that episode.

We’ll wait right here and we’ll, I don’t know, shoot the courier when he comes out.

Hardened criminals who brutally murder people on a daily basis but draw the line at doing so in a church/cathedral or to a person in the clergy is forever amusing to me.

My favorite thing about the Hardison-Eliot hug is that just a few episodes (or maybe seasons, I can't remember) before, Hardison tried to hug him and he was all, "Don't touch me or I'll kill you" and now he's practically clinging to Hardison. I love these two so much.

So becuase I’m living in an appartment building and have no yard into which I may release Charlie when his little doggy bladder fills up, I end up walking him at strange hours of the night in all manner of weather, becuase I love him.

So tonight it’s single-digits and snowing, and while we’re walking back, I see a big gray tabby curled up with it’s back to us on the porch of one of the houses that’s not yet occupied.  It doesn’t look up at us when we pass by, or when charlie doubles back and starts climbing the stairs to sniff it.

Understandably worried that someone’s pet is lose or that one of the ferals is goign to be a kitty popsicle, I hurry home, collect the cat carrier and go back to the porch to bring kitty in from the cold.  Since I will probably need both hands to carry it back and there’s enough ambient light, I don’t take a flashlight.

Kitty must be very asleep becuase it doesn’t look up when I put the crate down, or when I walk up to it, but the *second* I touch just one of its little kitty fluffs, It’s head pops up with the loudest, deepest “brrp?” cat start-up noise ever.

…and I realize by the large tufted ears and buff shoulder muscles that the thing I am attempting to pick up is not an unusually large tabby.  

It’s the fucking Bobcat.

Fortunately, instead of maiming me, like my idiot ass deserves, it lets out a demonic YEEEAAUGH and flings itself off the porch, fleeing into the night, and I sit there waiting for my heart to start beating again, presumably to tell it’s bobcat buddies all about it’s attempted alien abduction.

So how is everyone else’s night going?

You Can’t Find My House

I just got off the phone with mom, and we came to the realization that my family has lived in a series of unplottable houses for a couple generations now.

-The First Unplottable House is on my dad’s side of the family, in Delphi, Iowa.  The directions to it are the stuff of Buried Treasure:  Turn off the county road with a fraction in it’s name, to the Named Dirt Road, then turn at The Discount Eggs Sign on to the Unnamed dirt road that takes a meandering path THROUGH a corn field, DO NOT take any forks on that road or the farmer will shoot your ass, then take the paved road that dead-ends on ALL the way to the end- No, farther, the road keeps going it’s not a cliff-The only indication that You Have Arrived At The Correct Driveway is that a fat gray pony will charge the car, screaming, then escort you the rest of the way there.

It’s on the side of an enormous river, they’ve owned the property since 1911, and that’s the ONLY route there.

-The Second Unplottable house is in Bedford, Ohio and belonged to my mother’s parents.  It’s at the corner of two side-streets, right across from the tiny Italian grocery store.  Due to strange development decisions, the house is about 30 feet above street level and rendered invisible by a chestnut tree so majestic Hyao Myazaki would probably put it in a movie.  The driveway, however, is VERY visible from any of the surrounding houses, the grocer, or the street.  

At least in theory and old photos, becuase if you actually GO there,  your eyes slide right past it to the neighbor’s lillac bush, or to the retro neons of the grocery store or up the Chestnut tree.  it is literally HARD to look at that driveway, all the world around it wants to pull you away.

-The Third Unplottable house is in Salinas, CA, home of my paternal grandparents.  It is the single most BORING house possible- like, if you were to ask a third-grader to draw a prototypical house, they would draw my grandparent’s house.  Utterly Unremarkable. 

Except for the part where my Grandfather, spurred by his success with the “non-fruiting” peach tree, decided to plant a California Redwood Tree, and it grew to approximately 150 feet over the course of a few short decades.  It is the tallest damn thing for miles around, and SOMEHOW deliveries keep being missed, mail is delivered to the neighbors, and any non-blood family that tried to visit would end up on the other side of town.

-The Fourth Unplottable House was the one I grew up in CA.  The Directions to it are as follows:  It’s the Bright Orange house Right Across From The School.  You know, the one with six flamingos and the Volunteer Avacado Tree.

SOMEHOW, we got everyone’s mail but OURS (we still wonder about the letter from Fort Knox for Mr. Thomas Saxophone), the other kids got lost trying to visit and ended up in Mr.Phan’s yard on the other end of the block.  Officer Brown, Mom and Dad’s friend, who had GPS back in the early 90′s becuase silicon valley, regularly got lost looking for our place.  The Flamingos did nothing.

-My parent’s current house is the second house on the right  after two right turns off the state highway that runs through town.  Sounds easy, right?  

Except that due to a couple small trees and a bend in the road, the house is invisible from the road.  I have to stand out in the road if i want my pizza delivered.  The Mailman is the only person who could reliably find the box, but he drives a subaru that’s older than my sister from the passenger side by leaning over, and delivers mail based on the aztec lunar calendar, so he’s probably not actually human.  I tried to host a party, tied rainbow balloons to the mailbox, and all nine friends had to be waved in from the street.

-My current apartment building Does Not Exist, according to my Bank, medicaid, Google, and City Hall which was a bit exciting when I first moved in and had to call everyone that yes, I was sitting in a building that really exists.   

Unless it’s my classmates, becuase they can apparently come to parties I don’t host. This Friday I had a friend telling me she had a great time at my place last Teusday… when I was home alone.  She assures me that I held a houseparty with “Those polish things you make” (I make great mini klatchky, but haven’t served them to her) and that “You were definitely there, we talked about Carvaggio and you drive me home”

The only thing that offers any explanation is that you were drunk at the anecdote about your recent house party 🎉 nothing else is explainable

I’m deathly allergic to alcohol, and was definitely at home alone, emailing a former professor about werewolves.  Got the chatlog and everything.

Guliya’s roommate recalls me dropping her off at the dorms, which is really peculiar.  Another classmate, Jeff, was at the party with Guliya, and they thought it was my place too.  Jeff is a jackass and I’d never invite him to my place.

God, I hope I don’t have another doppelganger.

… /another/ doppelganger???

The year is 2014, October.  I have the beginnings of what will prove to be a rotten cold, and I decide to take the precaution of getting an enormous bowl of Pho from my local Vietnamese place in hopes of staving off another respiratory infection.

No sooner do I set foot in the door, and Mrs. Nguyen snaps up and shrieks YOU!!  and I am much distressed and confused, because I adore Mrs. Nguyen.  She kept My Intended alive last passover when the cafeteria covered literally everything in flour.

She insists that some time in august I had dined with a large group of friends and then skipped out on a $200 dollar tab.  This is even more distressing and also impossible, as I had been in Oregon at the time, and only have like 3 IRL friends.  She is livid, and absolutely insistent that it was me, and that I pay the tab or she’ll call the police.  Being very distressed and not eager to have a panic attack in front of police, I pay up $216.87 and am banned forever.  I go home in tears, without my Pho and am very sick for a fortnight.

Two months later, it’s Polish Butter Christmas, and I locate the source of my woes.

Polish Butter Christmas is the invention of my Intended’s friend/domesticated internet troll, where everyone deemed a friend or at least interesting party diversion is invited to their house and we all consume massive amounts of Traditional Polish Cooking, which is about 60% butter by weight.  everyone eats way too much, most people also get shitfaced and i usually end up on the floor playing with 4-6 corgis, depending on who’s invited that year.  in 2014, it was all six of them, rustling under the table like a pack of obese furry sausages.  

Among the guests invited are myself, my Intended, The Troll’s girlfriend, and her friend.  The latter is 5′2″, whiter than mayonnaise, with bright purple hair and green glasses.  I also am 5′2″, glow under black lights, had bright purple hair and still have green glasses.  We learn furthermore, that we have the same first name and live on the same side of town.  This is laughed off as Most Amusing, at first.

The celebration goes on, and I become steadily less amused as I learn that Not-Me is a BITCH.  Racist jokes, yelling at the dogs to make them cower becuase “They look so funny!”, and generally abrasive and cruel.  Everyone is uncomfortable and Troll confides quietly to me in the kitchen that she is not invited next year, but needs an excuse to throw her out, or his dad will have a fit.  Troll’s family is as much a gang of cryptids as mine, and cannot go around Un-Inviting people without Due Cause.  So we agree to suffer quietly and laugh about it next year.

Eventually, the conversation turns to “Youthful Shenanigans”, and while most people have the sense to tell stories where they did something dumb but not actually illegal, Not-Me recounts with utter glee “That time me and my hoes dine-and-dashed that one chink place hahaha”

I suddenly put two and two together and realize that This Bitch Has Personally Wronged Me.

“You CUNT.” I tell her, furious at the realization ad the fact that she’s been steadily ruining Polish Butter Christmas for the last three hours. “Mrs. Nguyen thinks I did that! I HAD TO PAY THE TAB!”

“Oh, uh my bad, haha…” She laughed awkwardly.

“HA. YES. FUNNY. WE ARE GOING TO THE PLACE, YOU ARE APOLOGIZING TO MRS. NGUYEN AND PAYING ME BACK YOU INSUFFERABLE BITCH.”  I yelled, grabbing her arm and dragging her towards the door, Corgis yapping excitedly at our ankles.

“Whaa?  No!  fuck you!”  She said, winching her arm out of my grip and doing an amazing four-inch-heel-sprint for the bathroom, locking herself in.  

She has made a rather serious error in the Troll is both 1. a 6′6″ Sasquatch of a man, and 2. TOTALLY WILLING to take a crowbar to the bathroom window he’d been planning on renovating anyway, esp if it mean he gets to haul a bitch out and toss her into the back of the minivan with the three least-obese corgis, so that we may drive her, sobbing about injustice the whole way.

Nothing in my life will ever be so satisfying as dragging Not-Me into Pho 67, and seeing the look of horror and recognition cross Mrs. Nguyen’s face as she realized what had happened, then having Not-Me withdraw the money from the ATM at the front.

We then returned to Polish Butter Christmas and had a splendid time feeding buttered pork to the corgis.

But you see why I am loathe to deal with another one.

Every sentence that gets added just reinforces that this is a Neil Gaiman story in the Sandman universe near the Ocean at the end of the Lane.

And no one’s gonna question the werewolf email to Prof?

Congratulations on being the first person to ask about the werewolves!  Prof Hoffman teaches a course called Freaks And Monsters, which was THE BEST literature course I’ve ever taken and she was the first person to get my idiot brain to understand symbolism.

I’m writing a book about Crypids In America and was emailing her to see if she had any recommended reading for me, and to introduce her to my Botany professor becuase I think they’d be friends.  She was a little late replying to me becuase she’s in Rome documenting gargoyles, but she and Botany prof are planning an expedition to Moscow to retrieve a book for rare mushroom plates before the crazy cat lady who’s keeping it accidentally destroys them.

You sure the party doppelganger is not the same doppelganger as Bitch Doppelganger?

THANK YOU FOR ASKING BECAUSE I HAVE AN UPDATE.

So last night I’m out walking Charlie at 2AM becuase it was the first break in the lightning we’d had since 6PM, and I go around the corner and literally for half  second I thought I was about to walk into a mirror becuase I found  my local doppelganger and this time it’s WEIRD.

I’ve got weird curly brown hair that goes kind of Bride-Of-Frankenstein when it gets long, have a weird hound mix from AZ, and am art major with a science background.  I grew up in the bay area and moved to CO in middle school.  I’m a night owl with a bad habit of signing up for morning classes.  I’ve got a super-common first and middle name, and a less-common irish surname.  I’m in 105D

SHE has got the same hair and face, her dog is a weird hound mix that’s like a paletteswap of charlie also from AZ, possibly the same ranch, She’s a biology major with an art minor, grew up in CO and moved to the bay area in middle school, is a morning person with afternoon classes. We have the same first and middle names, in reverse order, and she has the other spelling of my last name.  She’s in 105A.

Statistically, some of this is not surprising- both combinations of names are common, and there was a lot of cross-traffic between CO and CA in 2004, all Rez dogs are shaped the same, and Art/science isn’t that odd a major/minor combo.

She did throw that party back in novemeber, and I was much relived, and she was glad to find out I exist-  We’ve somehow gotten into the same circle of art/science/queer friends without meeting up, and Guliya was bugging her telling stories of My Shenanigans, and attributing them to her.

We’ve arranged a coffee-date with Gulia and are gonna show up in the same outfit just to fuck with her.

I am now following you just because I don’t want to miss finding out what happened with the coffee date.

Oh my Zod. ::also follows::

How old is this post? Did the coffee date happen? Has Guliya’s head asploded? I must know!

Yes, I too must know.

Also I live near Bedford and really want to find this house that has a driveway with an SEP field generator.

IIIIIIITS MOTHAFUKKEN UPDATE TIME!! So the date got put off for a bit because of school issues, but Doppelganger and I managed to coordinate outfits and met up at the local coffee place half an hour before Guliya arrives, and plan our strategy.

This coffeehouse has bathrooms located at the end of a U-shaped hallway, so I was going to wait in the hall and Doppelganger in the main part of the cafe.  After a bit of chatting, D would get up to use the restroom and we’d swap places.  The idea was to see how many times we could swap before Guliya noticed something was amiss.  I hear Guliya arrive, and wait.

After about 15 minutes, D comes down the hall, gives me a quick update on the convo so far- the self-inflicted-illness of a professor and the astonishing number of bears about- and I go out.

Guliya notices NOTHING.

We talk more about bears and the terrifying lack of life skills some freshmen have and I go back, complaining of bladder issues.  D and I swap places 3 more times like this, before Guliya notices that we seem to be ill and she can recommend a specialist, so we decide to end the game.  We both walk out while Guliiya is texting someone and sit down across from her.

Knowledge is often described as “dawning’ on people, the soft illumination of understanding. This was like watching someone get caught by the totality of an unscheduled eclipse.  She looked up from her phone, delighted to continue the conversation and watching her face collapse into wall-eyed horror is something that I will treasure for ages.

“There are two of you!”  

“Yes!”  We said, in unintentional creepy unison.

She stared at us for a few moments, surprise giving way to puzzlement, then, relief.

“Thank Fuck.”  She sighed. “I was beginning to wonder when the hell you slept.”

Apparently she had conflated out two identities into some sort of double-major two-jobs constantly-awake superbeing and had been worried about keeping up with Us.

“I mean I don’t anyway. I have terrible insomnia.” I said, unhelpfully.

“Which one of you has the rant about Carvaggio?”  She asked.

“That’s both of us.”

“And the one who nearly got eaten by bears?”

“Still both of us.”

“Well how am I supposed to tell you apart?”  She grumbled.

“I’m the one passed out on the chemistry building couch, they’re the one on the figure-drawing couch.” D offered.

“We can only sleep when surrounded by dangerous chemicals and poor judgement.”  I explained.

“It reminds us of our home dimension of Madness.” D continued.

“Fuck both of you, and any other of you out there.” said Gulia, downing more macchiato for strength.

“Don’t be mean to 27.” I said.

“He had nothing to do with this.” D continued.

Guliya snorted macchiato out of her nose at that one.  We apologized, she thought it was hilarious and now D is #9 and I’m #426.  

i think we’ve found The Most Interesting Person In The World.

Hold on, is anyone going to question the BOTH NEARLY EATEN BY FRIGGIN BEARS???

Since I had someone send me an ask about this chain of events: Yes, I’m the blog (or at least one of them) with a chronic doppelganger problem.  Some Updates/explanations:

(A continuation of This Post)

Sometimes the stars align and you are privileged to see an animal delve into an activity with primal glee, finally able to do the thing it has specifically evolved to do, and it is wondrous and beautiful.

Sometimes those stars align at 1 AM on a moonless night in November in the barely-developed mountains of Durango and it is Wondrous and The Worst Possible Thing That Could Happen.

I’d had Charlie all of 3 months at that point, which coincidentally happened to be how long I’d gone without medication for my anxiety disorder because ~Durango’s Medical and Psychiatric Care Is Terrible~ and I was compensating by taking him out into the rapidly freezing mountains every time the dread started setting in.  For a 10-month old puppy, this was fantastic.

That night we were walking up the short path that lead to the dirt road that circled the neighborhood and I was busy looking up at the stars while Charlie was enthusiastically trailing a scent along the riverbank. I don’t miss Durango but I Do miss the the high mountain stargazing.  You can see the band of the milky way almost every night the moon isn’t full.  It’s reassuring to me, to be so small in the face of the majesty of the universe.

Something in the bushes beside us Crunched.

Charlie froze, his neck back and tail a perfectly straight line as he pointed into the dense willows that lined the riverbank, eyes wide and nose snuffling furiously.

I, mistakenly, assumed he’d sniffed out the jackrabbits again.

I’m distractible as all hell but not a terrible pet owner.  I keep Charlie on leash at all times, and that night he was wearing not only his anti-lurching chest harness, but a glowing orange collar in case he somehow managed to get loose and decided to run into traffic.  The overall effect at a distance made him look perhaps slightly more menacing than a 45lb puppy should have looked:

…Which is probably why the creature lurking in the willows decided to try and make a run for it.

Now, I’d more or less gotten used to the Ominous Jackrabbits and thunderingly stupid mule deer, worked out a peace treaty with the coyotes and and had gotten pretty good at planting my thighs to keep Charlie from launching himself any farther than the length of his leash, but it still too both of us by surprise when the thing that leapt out of the willows to the far bank and started galloping into the night turned out to be a Black Bear.

Not a huge one- probably one of last year’s cubs by the size and legginess, but that was still 100lbs more opportunistic carnivore than I wanted to deal with right now, and prepared to grab Charlie and run the other way back into the safety of the neighborhood.

Charlie, on the other hand, was more than game for this game and lunged with all the might in his tiny little body-

And between our combined stresses, the leash

Snapped.

I don’t know Charlie’s top Speed for certain, but his best friend at the time was a fresh-off-the-track-for-being-aggressive-not-slow greyhound and it only took her about five seconds to barrel the length of a football field, and his nose was rarely more than an inch or two behind her ribcage.

Which for those of you in countries with civilized units puts them at around 70 kmh.

Your average black bear can only book it at 60 kmh.

I can do MAYBE 30 kmh on a good day, or when I am suddenly full of terror, which I was at that moment as I watched my beloved son launch himself over the river after the bear.

Charlie isn’t the most elegant runner- he has a lovely double-suspension gallop that lets him fly but he tends to bound upwards like a gazelle, though this might be a factor of him being shorter than the sagebrush he was chasing the bear through and he needed the vantage to locate it again.  This at least afforded me the occasional glimpse of orange as I booked it after them as fast as my stubby little hobbit legs could carry me, only otherwise able to navigate by the sound of crashing foliage and Charlie’s yelps of glee.

I bolted through the sagebrush and scrub oak as fast as I could, certain I was going to slide on the loose dirt and turn an ankle or clothesline myself on one of the many hidden barb-wire fences the ranchers have erected and abandoned over the years through here.  Eventually we came to an open grazing field and in the starlight I could see that Charlie had drastically closed the distance between them and was now snapping for the bear’s hocks, clearly having the time of his little doggy life.

For some reason, it didn’t occur to the bear that it was twice the size of it’s pursuer and didn’t just turn around to smack Charlie into an early grave, instead opting to keep running for another half-mile across the pastureland until we finally got to the actual treeline, halfway up the nearest foothill, before finally finding a suitable Ponderosa to climb, running up the trunk at almost the same speed it had been crossing the field with.

Charlie, unfortunately, had built up quite a bit of momentum in the chase and managed to use it to bound a good eight feet up the trunk and snap his teeth into the very tip of the bear’s tail.

I caught up to him as he was sneezing the fur out of his mouth, Bear grunting and whimpering from the branches some 30 feet above us.  He danced around the bottom of the tree, barking and wagging his tail hard enough to wag his entire back end.

“CHARLESTON!” I screamed.

He turned to face me, face full of pride.  “Look what I caught!  Just for you!”  he seemed to say.

“NO!” I bellowed, voice hoarse from being unable to catch my breath and tears streaming down my face.

Charlie, for all his gaminess, is a very soft dog that I’ve never had to say “no” about something twice to.  He instantly cowed, crawling up to me and rolling over, trying to lick my face from the ground.

“I love you, you moron but NO.”  I said, picking him up and dragging him by the harness as I backed up, still watching the black lump in the tree that I sincerely hoped was the bear.

The bear was suddenly illuminated by distant headlights and I realized there was a more serious issue.  The neighborhood is bordered by highway on one side, Deserted BLM land on two sides, and a private Ranch on the other, and we had run into neither the highway nor BLM land.  

Farmer McGregor was not over-fond of trespassers.  Especially at 1AM and deep into his land and well off the easy-to-mistake-for-an-access-road.  

I grab Charlie’s harness in one hand and his skinny dog ass in the other and hoist him up like an extremely disagreeable piece of luggage and book it back in what I sincerely hope is the direction of the neighborhood.  It takes what feels like hours to find my way back but eventually I get back to my door, panting and wheezing and covered in dirt and leaves and the skin around my eyes red from crying.

Husband hears me come in at 2:30 AM.  “Did you go somewhere?” he calls from the bedroom.  He is a sensible, Diurnal creature.

“For a run.” I say.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider donating to my Ko-fi or Paypal, or you can subscribe/pre-order a copy of my Family Lore Book containing even more absurd stories at my Patreon .  Thank you all for your support!

JESUS TEA

So it’s Flu Season again, and this recipe for Tea To Fix What Ails You was given to me by a Christian friend, and I’ve taken to calling it JESUS TEA due to it’s miraculous properties.  Even though it, technically, contains no tea.  This tea is as caffinie-free as anything processed in a US plant can get, but be sure to check the provenance and all ingredients in case of allergies.

You will Need:

Recipe:

Bring water to a simmer in the pot.  Add the chamomile, rooibos and spices to steep about 4-5 minutes or longer if you like tea-flavored tar which given you have the flu you probably do.  Add Cider, Lemon Juice and Honey until dissolved.  Drink all of this in the course of an hour to stay hydrated, make more pots as needed or until you pass out. 

FOR MAXIMUM EFFECTIVENESS: gargle warm salt water first for as long as you can, it’ll break up the mucus in your throat and soothe the soreness.

This stuff is hecking delicious, and my dad claims it cured his cold. I’ve taken to drinking it just because it tastes good! Thank you for sharing! :D I also found that you can freeze this stuff in convenient single serving sizes, ready to be heated in the microwave when you don’t have enough spoons to make it fresh. Granted fresh is usually best for most food and drinks, but it’s still good.

I also calculated a single serving version, which I’m putting here in case anyone wants to make it that way:

Mix the spices together in one container, and mix the two kinds of tea together in another. Measure out of these the above amounts. (Don’t try to store the two things together, the spices will sink to the bottom and you won’t get the right measurements.)

Use a tea infuser/tea bag/cheesecloth/whatever to keep the herb bits from floating off into your drink. Steep for the usual 4-5 minutes, then add the cider, honey, and lemon.

Side note: ground cloves is cheaper for me so I use ½ tsp of that instead of 1 of whole. I also like cinnamon a lot so I use ¼ tsp ground cinnamon instead of a stick (also sticks are really expensive here). If you use a stick, break it into little pieces. The downside of ground cinnamon is that it kind of congeals if you don’t stir it periodically, so keep a spoon handy as you drink.

Since people have been asking for this (I guess the flu/common cold is going around agian), have it again, NOW WITH SINGLE SERVING SIZE, THANK YOU @snowfox102  for doing the math for me!

Arwen Shenanigans: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

So I was just home for a bit to visit my parents/help them move a bunch of stuff into storage while they finally Install AC into thier house, which means I got to see Arwen, and Arwen got to see my dog, Charleston Chew.

Arwen is a Husky/Kelpie mix that was trained in prison as an Autism Service Dog and when she’s not wroking she gets up to All Kinds Of Bullshit. She’s eight years old now and still a little asshole, but beginning to slow down, and as such has decided to take Charlie on as an Apprentice Asshole.

[Image Description: Two dogs on leashes standing on a boardwalk with thier butts toward the photographer, who is holding the leashes with one hand and taking the picture with the other, like a moron.  Arwen, the dog on the left, Is fat and very fluffy, and looking for rabbits to eat.  Charlie, the dog on the right is skinny with noth much hair, and also looking for a bunny dinner.  They are both a simmilar black-and-tan pattern that makes people ask if they’re rottweilers or dobermans, despite being neither.

This picture is taken about 2.68 seconds before the dogs locate a bunny and pull the photographer of thier feet as they launch themselves after it like short, hairy rockets.  The Photographer suffers minor injuries, and the rabbit is unharmed.]

Some of the nonsense Arwen taught Charlie this time around:

If you enjoyed these stories, please consider donating to my PayPal or Ko-Fi as telling stories about my ridiculous life is my only source of income. A portion of donations will go towards Dog treats.

Now I want an Arwen. I need some excitement in my life.

First humans ever to leave the solar system suddenly drop out of communications and the ship can't be found with any equipment. After one month of no contact their home countries start reluctantly holding funerals for the space heroes only for them all to turn up, healthy, well fed and extremely disoriented, in the middle of Tokyo, talking about alien abduction. Turns out that aliens found the poor humans straying out of their solar system, presumably lost, and took them to Alien Wildlife Rehabilitation before dumping them back in the middle of their native habitat.

omfg I was watching this sound off but then I was like "wait what if they're making cute lil animal noises" so I turned the sound on and fucking lost it

I remember just staring blankly at the screen when you told us this. Just. Genuine abject blue screen of death

Then a lot of swearing

My family did ivermectin before it was cool! And for the actual intended purpose!

I also knew freegans in California at the hippie art school that was part of my university. I also knew a girl who thought solid food was bad for the environment, and she subsisted entirely on smoothies for most of a year.

Fascinating.

Hang on gotta go see if I can run this one down. See if it was just some wild conclusion she came to personally, or if there's actually a group who claim that.

I knew a freegan in Durango that almost got mauled to death because he was dumpster diving in the Sonic Dumpster that everyone and their dog knew belonged to the local Alpha Black Bear Boar.

Kyle only broke his leg and escaped into the sonic with his friend who had been hotboxing the sonic kitchen with weed he was definitely not old enough to be smoking, which caused him to slip on kitchen grease and stab himself on some kind of kicthen impliment. I got called by them at 12:03 AM, terminally high and panicking because of the weed and the bear circling the sonic, because the Kush-Kabob guy was in my husband's D&D group and Husbeast and I were the only adult-adults he knew.

...Which is how I ended up having to chase a 400lb black bear away from the back door of a sonic so I could drive two of the stupidest people I ever met to the hospital. Whatever vibe I have that makes horses wanna murder me apparently makes bears shit themselves and run tho.

I want to know more stories about horses trying to murder you.

Back in 1066 if you were out of cash you could just go to a castle by the sea and pretend to have washed up and say to the lady when she finds you in the morning “verily was my vessel thrashed uponne y rockes, and was I threwn theroute, and nighly drownèd, but spied I a maiden seated on a cresting waive, and she spoke unto me thus, Thou shalt upon a new land happen, and the Ladie who ruleth there will do good unto thee, and robeth thou in the coloures of her house, and take thy hand in marriage upon y dethe of her Lord, and then that sea-maid sung an a daulphin issued me from y tempest to this gentle cove” and she would just believe you. And then when her husband died the next day of “stomach upset” she would marry you and you’d be fine. It happened so often

around when I first started dating my boyfriend i bought myself this novelty blanket that looks like a photorealistic tortilla because I am SUCH A SUCKER for novelty shit. when he saw it in person for the first time his eyes lit up, which should have been a warning sign for the indignities to come.

so he’s a first responder and his day shifts start obnoxiously early as far as I, a pampered corporate asshole, am concerned. almost invariably when he’s at my place there will be an alarm at an hour that is downright unconscionable that will make him wake up and roll out of bed to get ready and will simultaneously make me burrow under the pillows grumbling about how surely nobody actually NEEDS their lives saved this early in the morning, after which I will promptly attempt to go back to sleep

he is a clever man and he knows this is when i am most vulnerable to attack.

every single time we do this dance, he quietly dresses, packs up, goes about getting ready to leave, and then when i have juuuust fallen back asleep, he returns with the tortilla blanket. He finds it no matter where I have hidden it.

He then creeps silently up to my side of the bed and uses his superior speed, strength, and reflexes to wrap me up in it incredibly tightly while i am still dazed and sputtering, so that i cannot move my legs or arms and am reduced to humiliating halfhearted magikarp flops that do not deter him from at least attempting to kiss my forehead.

then he goes to my bedroom door, opens it, then pauses, turns around, looks at me, the soft human filling of the facsimile of an enormous burrito he has just constructed, and says in his best romantic lead voice “I’ll see you soon, beans.”

you cannot understand how devastating it is to my ego that i am beans.

The Hobbit re-read: favorites, thoughts and honorable mentions

thank u to my tumblr besties for encouraging me to rant abt this book for a little while, and brace yourselves for a LOOONG post; aka We're Going On An Adventure!

The constant sass from Bilbo is my favorite thing about the book.

On this episode of “Tropes that give me life”

When a character sees a loved one in danger and they go hardcore rage mode to protect them. Then they scream “I’m not losing anyone else!”

They have gone through so much pain and loss and at this moment they REFUSE to let that happen again. Always resulting in a burst of power that surprises the people involved

It's even better when it's the sunshine/golden retriever character who's usually so easy going, so when they lose it completely, everyone's standing there going "Oh s@#&"

what if its an antagonist who is actually a hero of the story, but not the main hero? Like say red hood.

That's good too! (Also I don't know who red hood is, but he/she sounds cool)

He learned his lesson

Nah you guys don’t get it. For all that Gandalf complained about Pippin, he better than anyone else knew that Pippin was absolutely crucial. Pippin accomplishes a very impressive feat: not only does he manage to see something in the palantír (most hobbits would perceive nothing, as these stones were designed for use by high elves), but he manages to close his mind against Sauron. That is a seriously impressive feat of ósanwë given Pippin’s youth and almost total inexperience. The only clue Sauron manages to glean from the meeting with Pippin is that he is in Meduseld: which Pippin probably did not even directly give to him. Pippin did not tell Sauron his name, so Sauron is led to believe that Pippin is Frodo. I remind you, in the books, the Good Guys manage to trick Sauron, by making him believe that Aragorn has claimed the One Ring. They can only do that because of Pippin’s ridiculous feat of ósanwë. Far from sabotaging the mission, he is the one who allows it to succeed (albeit, not on purpose). This is why Sauron doesn’t think anything is fishy when Aragorn wins the Battle of the Pelennor Fields by controlling ghosts: that would be consistent with the idea that he is using the One Ring. Which Sauron believes that Pippin brought to him. This is why Sauron pulls out his old “play nice and weak” card from his Númenor days. He first of all believes that Aragorn is a lot more powerful than he actually is, and secondly thinks that the Ring is beginning to affect him.

He should perhaps have remembered that Aragorn is named for Fingolfin. Fingolfin’s mother-name, Arakáno, would properly be translated to Sindarin as “Aragorn”. Most people would not show up to an enemy fortress with an army they knew was far too small, and start a battle they knew they would lose. But Fingolfin famously did exactly that.

When you read the line “fool of a Took!” It is important to understand that in the context of Gandalf calling himself a fool on several occasions. Galadriel too sees beyond the veneer of foolish naivety in Pippin. She gives him and Merry belts that almost definitely were once her brothers’. A golden flower on a gift from Galadriel can only be a golden lily, the sigil of the House of Finarfin. Galadriel, while all hell was breaking loose in Tirion, raided her brothers’ rooms and took their belts from when they were little kiddos, hauled them across the Helcaraxë, and then held onto them for three Ages before giving them to two hobbits she just met. Merry, of course, is comparable to Angrod and Aegnor: his great deed is done in a moment of beserk rage, and it is a feat of strength. This then implies that she is comparing Pippin to Finrod. That’s one hell of a complement coming from Galadriel: but as I just pointed out, entirely warranted. Pippin manages to reproduce Finrod’s feat of radio silence, in the face of torture by Sauron. Which again, is extremely impressive given that Pippin is far younger and less experienced than Finrod was.

You see me <3

Ok, first:

No mention of the fact that Gandalf literally convinced Elrond to include Pippin over Glorfindel the Balrog Slayer, reasoning they were hardly going to run into a balrog (lol)?

Second, Aragorn is not named for Fingolfin. At least directly. Certainly royal elves often seem to indicate kinship by including an element of a patriarch’s name in theirs, resulting in family trees that would have been confusing enough even if everyone’s name didn’t begin with or include Fin or El.

But generations of Aragorn’s family have been using the Ar- prefix, and it seems unlikely that was because of a desire to emulate Fingolfin’s much less used mother-name. More likely, the meaning of the prefix, which is “high” is just kingly enough to get a lot of use.

Either way, Aragorn bears superficial resemblance to Arakano, probably on purpose, Tolkien did parallel the characters a lot, but isn’t a direct translation. We know because, while Fingolfin didn’t go primarily by Arakano, he named one of his son’s that. His name is officially Sindarized as Argon. Arakano/Argon means high chieftain

Aragorn on the other hand is apparently Aracorno in Quenya, (based on passages Tolkien translated into Quenya for fun??? It seems??) though Elfdict tells me this could be just a phonetic translation.

Which would make sense because he WOULD NOT MAKE UP HIS MIND what etymology of Aragorn’s name to use, making it tricky to translate. High Valor is one meaning, with Revered King being another, but there seems to be a missing letter for that one and no one’s positive.

Either way he absolutely is a great foil to Fingolfin, and part of his knocking on the gates to call out Sauron works because he’s the descendent of Fingolfin, who did that with Sauron’s boss, so it’s eminently believable that under the influence of the ring Aragorn would pull the same dumb move.

(Fingolfin wasn’t dumb just extremely pissed and devoid of hope, but Sauron would absolutely think it was a dumb move)

… so yeah. What was this post about? PIPPIN! Pippin saved the world by being a Took and touching things he shouldn’t have been touching, and that’s why Gandalf brought him, honestly.

After all, this isn’t an age of Balrogs! And this is a stealth mission! I’m sure it’ll be fine.

"albeit unintentionally" is basically how Pippin operates. Half the things he does are unintentional but they end up working anyways.