I feel called out

Meanwhile I've liked yellow-rumped warblers since before they were cool 😎

[excessive citations]

IIRC, writer Dorothy Parker named her canary Onan because it kept spilling its seed.

And then there's this.

The average teen's word-count must be a wonder to behold. George R² Martin would be envious.

Anyway. which brand of typewriter?

I currently have three, a Hermes Rocket, an Olympia Traveller...

...and a Royal Safari, none of which smell even slightly of brimstone.

Of course that's not counting the five I banged away at in my teens.

Which were a Remington, an Imperial, another Hermes and two Smith-Coronas, also brimstone-free, so stop grinning... ;->

BTW, Satan's takes an apostrophe.

On my typewriters that's Shift then 8 on the top row.

This is truly a crazy post all around, and it what makes tumblr great, but if anyone is interested in the actual passage that churches often claim forbids masturbation is the story of Onan, in Leviticus.

The story itself is wack. Onan’s older brother died without an heir, and religious law dictated that his brother must father her child, so that someone can care for her when she is older. Or something.

Onan’s like, “cool I get to sleep with my brother’s wife, that rocks!” But instead of getting her pregnant like the law requires, he keeps pulling out so that he can keep having sex with her. This goes on for some time. Onan has kids already and wants to inherit his brother’s land.

Onan basically takes a woman who’s grieving her lost husband, uses her for sex, and tries to take her home. He’s a terrible person and treats her horribly. So God blinds him.

The whole point of writing all this is to ask the question: What kind of person would read this story and have their takeaway be that masturbation was the problem here?

I feel obliged to say: the story of Onan is in Genesis (38), not Leviticus. And God doesn't blind Onan, he kills him. The text itself is pretty brief and doesn't include some of the details you said (e.g. it doesn't mention if Onan had kids already), although I imagine those might be traditional interpretations of the story that some preachers include when telling it. But yeah you're right that it doesn't actually have anything to do with masturbation, it's weird that people made that association.

By the way, later in the same chapter, that woman (Tamar) concocts an elaborate scheme to pretend to be a prostitute so she can have sex with her late husband's dad, and have kids after all. This results in her getting pregnant and having twins, and during their birth, apparently one of them sticks its hand out and then puts it back in, which is a weird mental image.

Also, neither of these incidents is even the most fucked up sex thing that happens in Genesis. Genesis is wild.

But back to the topic at hand: later on, when Jesus came along and gave the Sermon on the Mount, he said "everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart", and two sentences later, "if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell." So I think some people also interpret those statements as implying that masturbation is sinful, although of course that can be debated

Thank you. I will

Oh I already am

half a cup of rice is not enough rice but a cup of rice is vastly too much, and I vacillate forever between these sad extremes rather than just making an amount that is somewhere in between the two

Make a cup and save the extra in a Tupperware. I've found there's always some use for it in the next couple days

I have this intuition that I should read American Gods soon, and that if I do, it may become my next intense literary fixation. (I read the first few chapters of it back in 2019)

I put the e-book of it on hold with my library account and now I'm just waiting. I suppose I could just buy it, but I'll give it a little time first

Oh, and @neil-gaiman, thanks for writing it. I'm intrigued so far

So it's spring now, and things are starting to bloom; the promise of a new year is beginning in earnest. Or so it seems -- but I can tell this isn't a real year like we used to have in the old days. They've done something to them, changed the formula, and these years we have nowadays are all wrong. It's fake time, you understand, all processed and loaded with filler, so you don't notice how much empty space there is between now and the last day of your life; they have to put something in there, or it would rattle when you shake it. But it's not a year, not really. I remember what those were like!

I feel some of that, but--

Is this about climate change, or the Covid pandemic, or mental health, or getting older? Or all of them or none of them?

occasional reminder that "oh no! [multinational company] is paying workers in [third world country] only [amount in USD] per hour!" headlines are probably meaningless to you, because you don't know the median wage and cost of living in the relevant third-world country.

This is true

At the same time, nothing I have read about the treatment of workers in third-world countries gives me the impression that most multinational companies (or their suppliers) care at all about those people's well-being or paying them a wage that will allow them a good quality of life. I think people should talk about that, but you're right that that specific type of headline doesn't seem to be the most meaningful way to do so

grieving the loss of what was is hard and grieving the loss of what never was is sometimes even harder

when something never was what you grieve is the potentiality that was and the potentiality is so much sweeter than the actuality

Yeah

I’m slowly beginning to accept the reality that 2007 was not last year but in fact almost four years ago

This is how I feel about 2017

do you ever discover a really good song and listen to it non stop, then realize it came out in 2012 and you’ve missed over a decade of enjoying an amazing song?

No

Yes

I had that with "I Wanna Get Better" by Bleachers (2014) when I listened to it last year. I thought something like "damn, this song could have helped me during the past 8 years if I had known it"

WAIT ME TOO

SAME SONG

Oh nice!

do you ever discover a really good song and listen to it non stop, then realize it came out in 2012 and you’ve missed over a decade of enjoying an amazing song?

No

Yes

I had that with "I Wanna Get Better" by Bleachers (2014) when I listened to it last year. I thought something like "damn, this song could have helped me during the past 8 years if I had known it"