Hello! Tis I, your local boy scout/girl scout/avid gay camper, here to give some top notch Advice™️ about camping! The season is nearly upon us and the woods are a callin' so let's get out there and be safe kiddos!
Before you Go!
- Make sure you find a campsite you like and that fits your comfort level! There's ZERO shame in picking a place with cabins, public restrooms, showers, heated pools, hot tubs- whatever your looking for!
- Once you pick your campsite, make sure you know the area around it- especially if camping somewhere your unfamiliar with! Example questions to make sure you know: Where's the local hospital? Where's the closest grocery store? Gas station? Are there rangers at your campsite and how do you get in contact with them? Does your campsite provide anything at all as a courtesy?
- Also make sure you know the wilderness around you and prep accordingly -- if your camping in a site with bears during their non hibernating months, make sure you bring bear safe trash recepitecals if your campsite doesny provide them
- Bring people with you. People you know and trust. Seriously, the buddy system saves lives. Do NOT camp alone unless you are an EXPERT and know the area EXCRUCIATINGLY well. This is also not the place to go with your new romantic partner/friend/friend or partners family -- some people are very good at pretending to be safe and getting you alone in the woods is when they stop pretending.
- Pack layers. Make sure you bring at least one set of sweatpants and hoodie, bonus points if their insulated. It gets very cold at night in most wilderness locations, even in the summer.!
- Bring at least one set of waterproof clothes, including rain boots and a waterproof coat.
- Pack however many sets of underwear and socks you think you need to bring, then pack more. Bring an overwhelming number of socks
- Bring good sneakers that are broken in but not worn out
- Flashlight with extra batteries and a portable battery cube, fully charged
- Make sure you have sunscreen and bugspray, your skin will thank yoi
- While packing food, make sure you bring things that will last the trip in an insulated bag or cooler. Don't buy your ice until your close to your camp. Some campsites will even offer bags of ice at the ranger station!
- Bring PLENTY of water. My brother always packs ten nalgenes full of water, others bring a big pack of water bottles. Stay hydrated!
- If you're bringing a furry friend, make sure they are fully up to date on their rabies and Lyme shots
Pack In!
- Make sure you have a full tank of gas when you arrive at your campsite
- I personally like to leave my phone in my car while I camp. Bring books/art supplies/journals or whatever you do for fun -- if that's your phone and you have service, great!
- Having said that, if you ARE having a technology free camping trip, pick one person in your group with the best phone and declare them the emergency phone person
- Best doesn't mean newest -- your friend who hates capitalism and has a Nokia that can survive nuclear fallout should be picked over your friend with the brand new super fragile iphone
- Make sure the emergency phone remains fully charged and comes with you when you leave the campsite. Most emergency calls will work without cell service, but a dead phone can't make calls
- Make sure you get the rangers number! Rangers are your friends, they want you to have a safe trip and are there for all your questions!
- Also make sure to respect the rules of whatever campsite you're at -- if you're on boy scout property for example, you absolutely CANNOT bring alcohol. If you're having a fun adult camping trip, make sure you know the weed laws in that state before your puff and pass.
- While setting up your campsite, try to find somewhere dry, that's not located near the bottom of a hill or next to a river.
- Try to find places that don't have a ton of loose rocks or dirt, but where the ground is soft enough to nail in stakes for tents/canopies
- Most campsites will have an assigned area with a fire pit, but if yours doesn't, make sure you collect enough rocks to build a fire circle before roasting any s'mores!
- If your campsite doesn't let you bring cars past a certain point, make sure you know the fastest and safest route to the parking lot
- I cannot stress how important it is to make sure you know the emergency numbers -- if theres a medical emergency, you may not be able to get someone to the car. Rangers will have ATVs and paramedics will have the skills to get people out of situations
- Make sure your first aid kit is well packed with plenty of bandaids antiseptic and gauze- triangle bandages are also a versitle tool that can help with sprains splints and holding bandages in place. Preferably bring someone who knows at least basic first aid or CPR -- if you can't find a friend with that knowledge, make sure to be extra nice to the rangers
- Bring an extra large bottle of your preferred over the counter painkillers -- dehydration and too much time in the sun can cause headaches! Also nifty for twisted ankles or sore backs from sleeping on the ground.
- If you forgot your tent stakes, that's okay, put a spare cooler/bag/something heavy in the center of your tent to weigh it down in case of high winds.
- If you forgot your rain canopy, a ripped trashbag will work in a pinch, but be warned: it's gonna get hot as HELL in that tent
During your Trip
- Sunscreen and bugspray every day- even cloudy days have high UV rays, melanoma kills
- Whether cooking on portable grill or campfire make sure your meat is fully cooked.
- Chopping your produce and meat and cooking them in two separate packets of tin foil makes delicious meals, plus it's easy to check how done it is
- Speaking of fires, make sure you have fireproof gloves and tongs if cooking over a campfire
- Zip tents if rain is predicted but believe me, tents are like fucking hot boxes, so try to get as much air movement as you can.
- If your campsite doesn't have latrines/portapotties/bathrooms (and you didn't bring one) be a good friend and make sure your camp's designated potty site is down wind of your camp. Also, human droppings can attract animals, so make sure it's a good distance away
- (seriously though consider bringing a porta potty they make ones for campers)
- CHECK FOR TICKS!!!! CHECK FOR TICKS EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU CAN!!!
- Ticks like warm, dark places, so make sure you check behind your knees, under your arms, the back of your neck, in your socks and your privates! Ladies- that includes under the boobies. Wearing long pants, high socks, or long sleeves can be a simple and efficient tick deterrent, especially in marshy areas or tall grass. Don't forget to check your pets if they came with you!
- If you find a tick, get some tweezers, grasp as close to the skin as you can, and slowly but firmly pull down on the tick- remember, you want the head out. You can also use a credit card or any other dull edge to help push downward.
- Wet feet cause blisters, so always wear socks and change them often. If you get a blister, DONT POP IT, cover it with a bandaid or surround it with moleskin
- Hydrate hydrate hydrate hydrate, drunk water every fifteen minutes even if your not thirsty
- Remember to respect the nature around you- don't go pulling leaves off trees or disturbing animal dens, stay away from pretty much any animal- yes, even deer, bucks can and will gore you If frightened enough, deer can tramble you and even the cutest little Birdy can carry rabies and other diseases.
- Poison Ivy has three leaves, poison oak looks like a strangling vine, and poison sumac has berries. Make sure you know what grows in your camping area.
- If you brought a pet, don't let them eat any plants!
- Make sure to use the buddy system especially if someone starts feeling ill- a lot of really dangerous illnesses start out looking a lot like colds and flu
- Make sure to have a bucket of water next to your campfire, and every night make sure to completely douse your fire before turning it. Splash water on instead of dumping and make sure every ember is out- remember, only you can prevent wildfires
- If you brought a gas powered generator for your campsite, make sure it's as far away as possible from the fire pit. Also, they're quite loud, so maybe don't put it near your tent. Put it on the outskirts of the campsite and don't leave it running when you're not there
Pack out!
- LEAVE NO TRACE!!! make sure you clean up ALL your litter, all of it, every single one. Check and triple check your entire camp site.
- Make sure everyones tent poles and stakes end up with the correct tent- you'd be surprised how brand specific stuff like that is.
- Especially don't leave any food items -- there's likely going to be another person filling that campsite soon, they don't need moldy food attracting critters!
- If there's a sign out sheet, don't forget to sign out at the ranger station! If they had to evacuate the campsite for whatever reason, they'll need to know you're gone!
- Do a final tick/other bug check- you don't need to be bringing bugs home with you! Also check that there are no critters are in your supplies -- this sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised where snakes and mice can end up.
- Give your pets an extra good bath when you get home. You don't know what could've gotten stuck in their fur!
- Tick/spider bites tend to look like bullseyes. If you develop bullseye shaped rashes after you get home, seek medical attention.
Most of all, have fun and be safe!!!
big fan of creatures that are both divine and mechanical
there’s some kinda connection to be made between angels and robots but i can’t make it. someone else make this post for me
Everyone may *think* they hate country music, but when Jolene, Before He Cheats, Take Me Home Country Roads, or Life is a Highway comes on, everyone is suddenly a liar.
I know this is a funny post but
There are a few major points in Country Music’s history that got the entire genre labeled as ‘annoying’
- Post 9/11 nationalism
- A term that I couldn’t make up “Bro-Country” which intensifies themes of booze, objectifying women, and partying that were present in past decades but not to such an extent
- This is Gospel Music But With an Accent
Now looking at the songs op listed there is
- A woman pleading to another woman
- A woman wrecking a shitheads life
- A guy loving the scenery of where he lived
- A song that could easily be mistaken for a number of other genres
But it is easier to say that one hates country while privately enjoying select songs than explain why one doesn’t like the current market oversaturated with our nation’s problems of nationalism, sexism, and so on
see also jhonny cash/willie nelson era songs which were deeply emotional stories often about painful and deep subjects. prison, loss of loved ones, hard labor, facing despair, passion. ‘ghost riders in the sky’ and the like are also deeply satisfying as they bridge more into folklore then ‘murica fuck yeah im sponsored by bud light yall’ another example- ‘midnight in montgomery’ where hank williams junior sings about the ghost of his father
“ … And felt the wind die down, And a drunk man in a cowboy hat, Took me by surprise, Wearin’ shiny boots, a nudie suit, and haunted, haunted eyes, He said: “Friend, it’s good to see you, It’s nice to know you care” Then the wind picked up and he was gone, Was he ever really there? ‘Cause when the wind is right, You’ll hear his song, Smell whisky in the air, Midnight in Montgomery, He’s always singin’ there, “ the reason we ‘hate country’ is because we know its supposed to have FEELING and its infuriatingly absent now
70s country - bluegrass traditional
80s country - power ballads
90s country - pop crossover
00s country - white supremacy
it’s about the folkloric story-telling tradition of oppressed poor folks vs marketable capitalistic ass-kissing.
Yes. So much yes. See Dolly Parton and Wille Nelson and Johnny Cash sing about something real and they mean it and they are amazing. Modern country with some rare exceptions doesn’t start with something meaningful to say, it analyzes the market trends to figures out what will sell and then they do that. That or it just plain caters to white nationalists.
But there’s some damn good country out there. It’s just crowded out by utter garbage written and performed by sell-outs.
Can confirm.
“Curses” by The Crane Wives is a great song, and I legitimately have trouble singing along to it because I choke up at a couple lines.
…though I do tend to listen to it at 125% speed.
Oh I love that song!
Colter Wall and Corb Lund also understand the assignment! Dig Gravedigger Dig; Horse Soldier, Horse Soldier; The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie; Sleeping on the Blacktop: all bangers. Even Poor Man’s Poison, who got really popular for a minute via memes, consistently puts out good songs because they mean something!
I have new music added to playlists now
I would like to add a recommendation for my close personal friend and amazing musician, the First Lady of Queer Country, Cindy Emch aka the Secret Emchy Society.
When I was growing up (1980s Alabama) there was an AM station that did not discriminate between Rock and Country, and periodically I will have to be reminded that x is a country group.
Also, for the country gem nomination: “Angel of the Morning” by Juice Newton, which is the monologue of a woman who is having a one-night stand with a man she’s actually in love with.
Thinking today about how as someone with major texture issues around most fruits and vegetables, it would have helped so much if someone had come to me years ago and said
Hey:
- Make it tiny
- Mix it with something Good Texture that you like
"Eat healthy!" they say, and then they show you pictures of a smiling woman digging a fork into half a butternut squash or eyeing a bowl of whole blueberries like a ravening wolf and your spine wants to crawl out through your skull at the thought of that Texture in your mouth.
But you know what I can do? Cut zucchini into paper-thin slices and cook it with noodles and marinara. Chop that spinach fine and scramble it with eggs and cheese. If I'm having a day where the thought of a grape popping in my mouth makes me nauseous, I can cut it in half. My chinese takeout gets diced into tiny pieces and mixed into the rice. It doesn't work with everything - seeds are still a Major Problem - but the number of fruits and veg and even world cuisines that I can eat has expanded SO MUCH since I discovered this. YMMV, but it's such a stupidly simple thing to do, and nobody ever told me.
everyone saying this didn’t happen reminds me that none of you guys have any concept of how age works. you just assume any child under the age of 13 doesn’t know how to say full sentences, much less be funny. i started and ran a 300+ person discord server when i was 11. no one ever asked me how old i was. i even recall when we learned a member of a groupchat was only 13 and being all “…” with the other members. looking back they probably suspected i was on the younger side but not that i was only 11 years old. also this did terrible things to my psyche but that’s unrelated.
I promise. Doing it scared will you give you the best results in the end. I’m learning to step more out of my comfort zone this year, and so far I’m proud of myself.
John Wojtowicz poses at the Brooklyn branch Chase Bank that he robbed in 1972 in an attempt to fund sexual reassignment surgery for his lover.
I wonder how much food gets wasted because of people thinking the date on it literally means “throw this out now or you’ll get sick”
See, it’s like this: businesses want to sell the food, but they don’t want to risk getting sued if the food is bad. So what the dates really represent is the period during which the business is willing to take responsibility for the product’s quality. You know how lots of household products are intended for many years of use but only have a warranty of a few months, so it’s more likely to only break after you can no longer return it? It’s like that. A given food could actually be fresh and tasty and safe for weeks, but the distributor might still put a “use by” date of only four or five days from the time it got put on the shelf. The narrowest window they can possibly get away with *promising* you’ll be satisfied with the purchase. 90% of the time it’s also just an estimate of how long it will taste best, not an estimate of safety. Some foods are actually safe for years and years but they will lose all flavor in only months, for instance. They just don’t want you to be returning a box of cereal a year later because it tasted like dust.
"ILLINOIS is 1st STATE to BAN BOOK BANS! Per HB 2789, state funding ($62 millions) will not be awarded to public or school libraries that remove books from circulation and do not “adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights.”
Quote:
So far, the bill is the only one of its kind in existence. Since being passed in the Illinois Senate, it is now being sent to Governor J.B. Pritzker to be signed. It’s expected to go into effect, as the democratic governor has already voiced his support for the measure.
“and the fans are throwing celebratory rats on the ice” god I love hockey
the beautiful game!!!!!!
Diane di Prima
ursula k. le guin, the lathe of heaven
The poll feature really took off because it taps into tumblr's favorite activity: being extremely opinionated about things that don't matter
Update!
A fun meme for y'all
i’m sorry what
Pog as slang comes from the twitch emote, taken from a video with pogs in them. What is a pog? A small cap from a juice drink that is traded and used in games by 90s kids. The juice drink was called POG, short for passion fruit orange guava. Passion fruit was named after its flower, the passion flower. Passion flowers were called "flower of the five wounds" in Portuguese, eventually being translated as passion fruit by the English in reference to the passion of Jesus, aka his last moments alive before being crucified.
I love history, language, words, communication, and humans.
truly possessed with envy any time i drive by someone sitting on their porch with a beverage
made this post bc I saw a fat man with a mustache zonked out in a rocking chair and it made me so jealous that I almost threw up
You know, it occurs to me that the known internet phenomenon of Reddit “am I the asshole?” posts having completely misleading headers is actually a really great example of a far less known but far more common practice of extreme journalistic spin in cases where there are large monetary incentives to diminish the story in question.
Like, if you see a Reddit post titled “Am I the asshole for buying my wife a new dress?”, the post is pretty much always something totally deranged like: “I (48) really dislike the way my wife (20) dresses, because I think it’s too revealing and makes her look slutty, which was fine when we started dating five years ago, but it makes me feel like she’s going to cheat on me now that we’re married. I’ve politely asked her to get new clothes multiple times, and every time she refused because she said she liked her clothes, and didn’t want to waste money buying new ones. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore so I threw out a bunch of her old dresses and bought her a new one that was more modest looking. She started crying because one of the dresses I threw out had been left to her by her mom who died when she was a teen, but I couldn’t have known that it had sentimental value. She said that I should have asked, but obviously if I asked she’d have just told me not to throw out any of her clothes, including the ones that weren’t sentimental. Also, the more modest dress I bought was pretty expensive, and she never thanked me for it. Am I the asshole here, or is she being unreasonable?”
Similarly, whenever you see a headline like “Woman Wins Millions From McDonald’s Because Her Hot Coffee Was Too Hot”, if you dig a bit, you’ll almost always quickly find out that what actually happened was: A 79-year-old ordered coffee which, unbeknownst to her, was being served extremely dangerously hot, because McDonald’s was trying to have coffee that stayed warm over a long commute without spending any extra money on cups with better insulation. The coffee spilled on the old woman’s lap, giving her severe third degree burns over a huge portion of her body, including her genitals. She got to a hospital and they managed to save her life with skin grafting, but she became disabled from the accident, and her genitals and thighs were permanently disfigured. She tried to settle with McDonald’s for her medical costs, and McDonald’s refused to cover any portion of her medical expenses at all, and so she sued. At trial, the jury discovered that this same exact thing had happened seven hundred times before, and McDonald’s had still decided not to change their policy because paying out individual suits was cheaper than moderately reducing their coffee profits. As a result, the jury awarded punitive damages designed to penalize McDonald’s two days worth of their coffee profits, in addition to the woman’s medical costs.
I think it’s largely the same phenomenon, but I know a lot of people who are familiar with the first case, but don’t know to look for the second. If you see some totally outrageous “how could a person ever sue over this stupid thing?” case, you should immediately be incredibly suspicious that that’s all that actually happened, because a lot of the time, it absolutely isn’t. The people who have the most incentive to make their opponent look not only wrong, but completely crazy for having any sort of grievance at all, are often the actually unreasonable ones.
Anyway this is all to say that if I see ANY of y’all automatically siding with McDonald’s over the recent case where 4-year-old girl was severely burned by their chicken nuggets because “hurr durr dumb kid didn’t know that chicken nuggets were hot, people sue over anything lol”, I will grab that McBoot you’re licking and shove it all the way up your McFuckingAss.
2nd degree burns actually heal pretty quickly and that’s in adults, children have a borderline superhero-level healing factor. Also the nugget was pressed against the child’s skin for a full 2 minutes. The mother is more at fault than McDonald’s here for giving the small child the food almost immediately after getting the order that was cooked at a fairly normal temperature and collected swiftly. Of course it was gonna be hot. Hot like the handle of a cast-iron skillet, you can hold it for some time but after a bit it’s gonna hurt, and for longer you could blister.
The chicken nuggets were being served at a temperature of ~200°F, despite McDonald’s supposedly having a policy of serving food at temperatures no higher than 160°F. The girl is autistic, and the chicken nugget remained in contact with her body that long because she was unable to communicate to her mother where the chicken nugget had gotten caught as it was burning her. She has a permanent scar from the experience. The family was only asking for $15,000, which is not for anywhere near the level of profit that we know that McDonald’s has made from repeatedly choosing cost-cutting tactics over the health and safety of their consumers and employees. And by the way? Most insurance companies require the victim to sue, and won’t cover any medical costs if they don’t.
What part of all the way up your McFuckingAss did you not fucking understand?!
Ronald McDonald isn’t going to fuck you, and if you want to pathetically simp for a multi-billion dollar corporation, you should do that on your own fucking post.
Wait what? 200°??? Permanent scarring? My info put it at a second degree burn at worst, even a pretty bad one typically heals relatively well.
Second-degree burns can range from quite mild to fairly severe - they can absolutely lead to permanent scarring if they are on the severe end of the spectrum. In this case, yes, the incident in question left permanently scarring - and the girl’s mother testified that her daughter (now seven years old, as this incident was three years ago) refers to the still-quite-visible burn scar as “her chicken nugget”.
And as for not having read anything that mentioned the “served at 200°F” part of this whole case? HMM IT’S ALMOST LIKE THERE WAS SOME EXTREME JOURNALISTIC SPIN APPLIED TO MAKE THIS CASE SOUND WAY MORE FRIVOLOUS THAN IT ACTUALLY WAS.
Wild how people will do that in cases where there’s a huge monetary incentive to minimize what happened, huh? Maybe someone should make a post about it.
strawbebbie………. 🍓 blubberrie…….. 🫐 oraneg……… 🍊 peeache…….. 🍑
can’t believe i forgot…..,.. abble………. 🍎🍏 :]
froops...
fun fact: the reason that the plural of goose is geese but the plural of moose is not meese is because goose derives from an ancient germanic word undergoing strong declension, in the pattern of foot/feet and tooth/teeth, wherein oo is mutated to ee. however ‘moose’ is a native american word added to the english lexicon only ~400 years ago, and lacks the etymological reason to be pluralized in that way.
Oh baby. Keep talking dirty to me.








