yo why do adults try to tell middle schoolers not to dye their hair or cut it weird or dress strange. Middle school is the most miserable time of anyone’s life, let them have fun and get a mohawk or something. They don’t have colleges to impress or a boss to worry about. They’re 12. Let them be less miserable with their blue hair and bad fashion (so long as it’s weather appropriate! I don’t want anyone wearing only a tshirt and jeans in winter!!!) It won’t kill you to let your kid exercise some control over their appearance that literally will not follow them their whole lives. Who cares if your kid wants to wear unprofessional clothes. They’re a kid, they don’t need to be professional.
Americans are so competitive. Even with people that they like. We ought to start a propaganda campaign like “Sweden has a higher voter turnout rate than us! Are you going to let them win?”
“Britain has better class mobility than us and they literally have a queen! Are you gonna let some corporations stop us from being wealthier than the British, you pussy? Vote for politicians that put higher taxes on the rich and we can beat them!”
“The United States has the worst healthcare of anywhere in the world! Are you gonna just stand by and let that happen? Vote for universal healthcare! Make us #1!”
And then put like some explosions and patriotic music in the background. Get some super famous football players to yell it at the screen. People will listen then. Get a skinny white lady in a stars and stripes bikini holding a big gun to sensually say it to the camera. Slowly create a culture where being a conservative makes you a weenie.
It’s currently fighting a bitter battle to the death against the raspberries attempting to invade from the east while trying to annex the patio.
Could go either way at this point TBH. Unless, of course, I take a shovel and the blowtorch out there and battle both back to within their original boundaries.
And anyone wondering if a blowtorch is overkill for weeding back mint has never actually planted mint.
Our garden plot at my childhood home slowly got overrun by wild blackberries after we stopped managing it while my sister and I were in nursing school. And by overrun I mean it was like a 4 foot tall thicket of wild blackberries. It hadn’t been touched by humans in at least 4 years. I started the ultimately futile task of trying to clear this plot with a machete and discovered to my amazement a patch of mint several feet across underneath the canopy of blackberry, still fighting the good fight all those years later.
Ultimately it took two jars of homemade napalm and some creative fire placement to clear that patch but I damn sure saved that patch of mint. It earned the right to be there.
Yall mother fuckers don’t even talk unless you’ve had to wage war on kudzu (it’s an ivy strain directly from Hell) that shit doesn’t just wage war with other plants, it wages war with all living things on planet earth. It’s some gnarly ass Blood for the Blood God, Chlorophyll for the Chlorophyll Throne demon weed.
breadgunner
Can second the comments of Kudzu.
I forget where I read it but there’s this one tree that creates an extremely flammable substance that’s in both the bark and leaves. Dead trees become torches and crushed up leaves become dust-incendiary, all while the plant’s seeds are Giant Redwood levels of resilient to open flame. IE it has a goddamn scorched earth policy. It’s even more badass than plants that use toxins to starve other plants.
I’d like to third the comments on Kudzu. These are the battlefields:
See those weird pillars? Those were trees. See that strange lump in the middle? That was a house. Everything green you see in this photo is kudzu.
fallenwithstyle
Near my parents’ house in Oregon there’s an old WWII army training camp that’s long been abandoned, and it’s full of concrete remnants of buildings that are completely overrun with blackberries. It’s a really great spot to go berry picking, and it has an eerie, post-apocalyptic feel.
adroitaccelerando
That’s not even considering allelopathic interactions between plants-look up the black walnut tree (its toxin, juglone, is the most famous example)- basically, it wages chemical warfare on nearby plants through the root system (though the nutshells also contain juglone too). Juglone discourages germination rates and even inhibits root growth of already existing plants!
Allelopathy in general is a new field-theres Discourse™ because each particular toxins only works on specific plants, which vary; therefore it’s really fucking hard to regulate & compile enough data to test out the effects of such chemicals compared to other factors (pests, soil depletion, etc), but theres a little community still because Targeted Pesticides™ would be really rad yo
adroitaccelerando
So yeah you go plants go poison that waterhole
adroitaccelerando
Um i was skimming the post and saw PLANT WARS so,,,
I may have dumped a little too much,,,
Suffice to say that plants are super versatile and should be feared
Bow before them
Also, I did have a mint plant a few years back, and I moved out and nobody in my family bothered to care for it, so it got BEYOND OVERGROWN and had taken over the entire plot I had for the mini garden. Mint needs to be restrained to a pot for the good of all gardens
I love this ask because it’s such a polite way of going EXPLAIN THAT POST ELANOR
EXPLAIN YOURSELF
EXPLAIN YOUR PEOPLE
I’m not sure if you’re after the history of the thing, or the actual practice of it, since ‘tradition’ could cover either - so, I’ll give you both, and hopefully your answer will be in here somewhere. I will also include more Frightening Images of the Mari Lwyd because you can never have too many horrifying photos of ornery skull-masked winter horse demons to scare the tits off you.
Okay, so. The Mari Lwyd.
Now, the first concrete recorded incidences of the Mari are from the late 1700s/early 1800s, but as with a lot of Welsh history, that’s misleading. We didn’t write a lot of our own shit like this down for much the same reason that Egypt never mentioned where to find Punt, and the English didn’t generally travel into Wales much if they could help it. Given that it seems to fold into a lot of other older traditions, though (the Hooded Animal, the Mast Beast, etc), and those have pre-Christian roots, I believe there’s a theory that it might have its roots in worshipping Rhiannon, the Welsh version of Epona, the pan-Celtic horse goddess. But there’s no way to be sure.
The meaning of the name is disputed. It’s generally accepted to mean “Grey Mare”. For a while some people thought it meant “Holy/Blessed Mary”, as in, y’know, the Virgin Mary, but this is no longer accepted because
“Llwyd” means grey, not white, and “gwen” is the colour normally used to also mean pure or holy; grey would be more likely to mean venerable/wise, which the Mari Lwyd ain’t;
I think there’s reference to ‘Mari’ being used for ‘Mary’ (instead of ‘Mair’) in the Black Book of Carmarthen, so at least since the 14th century, but that was likely only by poets - there’s no record of common folk using it before the Protestants came and reformed everything, so it seems unlikely that it could have been the original name; and
As far as I am aware there is no record of the religio-historical figure of the Virgin Mary mounting the donkey’s head on a stick and hammering down the door to the inn with a half-empty bottle of gin in one hand while scream-singing insults at the innkeeper so he’d give her cheese.
So, it’s generally accepted now that the connotations with Christian Marian symbolism are part coincidence and part encouraged among the clergy post-Reformation so that everyone could keep getting blind drunk with a horse’s skull and calling each other a willy. Plus, both Ireland and the Isle of Mann have very old hooded horse traditions too, called the Láir Bhán and the Laare Vane in Irish and Manx respectively. Both meaning, surprise surprise, the “white/grey mare”. Given that Wales and Ireland had a lot of historical interaction, this seems like more than coincidence.
Plus, you know, it is kind of a grey mare. Bones are white.
It did have other names in some places, mind - I think Carmarthenshire had some weird name for it, like Y March or y Gynfas-Farch, but you mustn’t ever listen to people from West Wales because then there would we be? Calling woodlice ‘pennysawls’ and claiming the word “Wi’n” is an acceptable variation of the verb “to be”, that’s where.
Anyway. Once upon a time, this was seemingly a mid-winter celebration in Wales, which then became a Christmas celebration until the Church went “You’re doing WHAT” and it became New Year instead. But, it did vary when different villages would do it. Some would do it on New Year, some at Christmas, some in that weird week in between when you don’t know if the bins are going out or not… You get the idea. These days, it’s New Year, as a rule.
Now, Europe does have a lot of varying traditions of doing this shit - google ‘mast beast’ for exciting photos. But usually, the beast is made by someone bending over beneath the sheet to make it look, you know, like the beast they’re mimicking. The Mari Lwyd stands out because, alone of all of them, she stands up straight, and is seven feet tall. She is the tallest of all the mast beasts. In a country where the average female height is 5'4", and men not much taller, that makes her fuck-damned enormous.
So, with that out of the way, let me tell you how it goes!
Traditionally, making the Mari is an important part of the whole thing - most villages would have a set skull they’d use, like, but the decoration was a week-long community affair, because as we all know, it would be creepy if you just stuck a skull on a pole oh my god. You have to put ribbons and glass eyes on it! That stops it being creepy! Obviously!
(Also, as a side note, battery-powered fairy lights have been a gift to the Mari Lwyd.)
The skulls, incidentally, were almost always from a beloved village horse who had at some point died at a ripe old age, and then whose skull was taken to live on as the Mari. Most villages knew their names, decades later. Down the Gower peninsula I think there was one account, mind, that they used to bury the skull for the rest of the year, and just dig it up in time for the Mari. But most kept it in a cupboard, like. Next to the sugar. I dunno. An important point, though - the skulls are also rigged so the person inside can snap the jaw, and incidentally, few things in this infinite and wondrous existence are as creepy and low-key primally unnerving as hearing ten of these things around you snapping in the dark, just btw, just fyi.
Anyway; you’ve spent a week decorating! (Although these days they’re kept pre-decorated.) What now?
The Mari party gathers at about midday. That’s the Mari herself, plus others - it varies who, but classically, I think they dressed up as Punch and Judy characters, those being the mischievous comedy extravaganza of the day. Then they start at one end of the village and go to the first house, where they sing Cân y Fari. That’s a bit like yelling ‘Trick or treat’, except rather than asking for sweets, they’re after delicious alcohol and cheese (side note: Wales’ relationship with cheese goes beyond Peak White Person and out the other side into What Is Wrong With You People. We have myths and folklore about it. It is Very Important.)
Now, the house holders do not want to give away their delicious alcohol and cheese, and so at this point, they begin something called the Pwnco (the ‘w’ is pronounced like the ‘oo’ in ‘book’, while the ‘o’ is short like in ‘hot’.) The Pwnco is, like… sort of like a rap battle? But sung. But that’s the idea. It’s beautifully poetic, and almost always opens with the same very nice verse, to whit:
Wel dyma ni'n diwad (Well here we come)Gyfeillion diniwad (Innocent friends)I ofyn am gennad (To ask leave)I ofyn am gennad (To ask leave)I ofyn am gennad i ganu (To ask leave to sing)
which you can hear a bit of here; I filmed that in Llangynnwyd. But, it’s very much a “So’s your FACE” type of thing. The householders tell the Mari to get straight to fuck, and then the Mari responds in kind. And they go back and forth until one side loses.
Now, if the Mari loses, she goes to the next house. But if the householders lose, they have to let her in and give her their delicious alcohol and cheese. IMPORTANT STEP, HOWEVER: if they have a bare ounce of sense between them, they first make her promise to behave before letting her past the door. Because if they don’t, HA HA all hell breaks loose, and the party do as much mischief as they can, like smearing ash on your walls and stealing your goats and mixing your white laundry in with your colours and hiding your drawing tablet pens. It is a Riot.
Anyway, once done, they leave the tattered ruins of your former house, go to the next house, and start again. More delicious alcohol and cheese!
It all got banned by the Welsh Non-Conformist Church of No Fun ever, because rival Mari parties would get blind drunk and then fight each other in the streets. It started to die out in the 50s, though some smaller villages kept it going - Llangynnwyd never even stopped. And in the last two decades it’s started making a resurgence in places like Brecon, Llantrisant, etc - tonnes of places in the belt between Vale and mountains, really, which makes me think it’s because the Folk Museum is in St Ffagans.
But Chepstow do a modern twist - the town is right on the border with England, so they do a festival of Welsh Mari Lwyd and English morris dancing combined in mid-January each year. Turns out, every goddamn Mari in the country comes to it, too, which is why this year I got to see 24 Mari Lwyds. I had NO IDEA. So, so many Maris…
It also used to sometimes get mixed in with other festive cheese-begging traditions like Calennig, but it is pretty much separate. As a final question: why do it? Well… we dunno. The purpose of the uppity skeletal horse beast is unknown at this point. Like I say, it may well have been a Rhiannon thing; given the way it got folded into some Christian things post-Reformation, it may have absorbed some form of fleeing-on-a-donkey-to-give-birth stuff. It’s hard to even nail down distribution patterns. But, something I find interesting about its distribution is that it was predominantly done in areas that either mined, smelted or sold minerals a lot. Make of that what you will.
Make a Vampire character who’s lived through several waves of the common language’s development and can’t let go if certain gramatical habbits from different time eras.
So like, thou ist a horrid creature, an absolute cur, but go off i guess
Absolutely you can and I encourage more uses of similar phrases that just completely fuck up the chronology of the english langauge. I wanna hear 15th century english mixed with surfer speak mixed with current age internet lingo like all the time.
You are an unrighteous, bastardly gullion. Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell. When you die, I will face God and walk backwards into hell just so that I can beat your ass in the afterlife too.
fuck fuck you’re right uuuuhhhh what’s an example of a person trying to obey the laws and show that they’re aboveboard with everything in the most chaotic fucking way possible.
Honestly, if you see an angel that’s all eyes and wings and wheels of fire, you should be worried. Like, not because it’s going to hurt you or anything, but because scripturally, angels invariably appear to ordinary people in human form. In general, they only show their inhuman true forms to prophets – which means if you’re seeing them like that, they come bearing responsibility.
slightly different message, if you’re curious about what it says, im using the version where the following vowel sits on top of the initial consonant, and im transcribing english words using common mode english
actually someone remind me in the new year to figure out a way to make this into a print somehow - printing gold is a bitch so it’ll probably end up a blackletter with gold deco tho
The generic Adrenaclick will cost $109.99 for two doses, compared with $649.99 for the same amount of drug in an EpiPen. That’s good news, both for financial and safety reasons: STAT reported last year that some parents and institutions had begun filling up syringes with epinephrine as a cost-cutting measure, a DIY solution that could pose great risk to the children who may have eventually needed injections. A more affordable alternative will help ensure safer epinephrine injections.
That’s assuming, though, that the people who need these devices know exactly what to ask for when they’re sitting in their doctors’ offices. Otherwise, they’ll still be stuck with the overpriced product. Here’s why: The mechanism by which Adrenaclick injects the drug is slightly different from EpiPen’s mechanism, so the Food and Drug Administration has ruled that the two are not therapeutically equivalent. That distinction is important because it means a prescription for an EpiPen cannot be filled with Adrenaclick. If you want the cheaper option, you have to have an Adrenaclick prescription.
You must ask your doctor for an Adrenaclick prescription!
I also found a coupon from Impax on 0.15mg and 0.3mg epinephrine injection, USP auto-injectors, which appear to be the generic version of Adrenaclick; these coupons cover up to $100 per pack for 3 packs of these injectors (6 total injectors).
