I disagree with hustle huckster Gary Vaynerchuk on a whole lot of things, but I do agree with him on the topic of comfort zones.
Category: Life
Straight culture could stand to borrow a few ideas from queer culture.
Here’s the text of the poster above:
Things Queer Culture Teaches You That Straight Culture Doesn’t
- You don’t have to get married if you don’t want to.
- You don’t have to have kids if you don’t want to.
- It’s nobody’s job to flirt with you or be flirted with. If you’re into someone, do the work and tell them.
- People will judge you and reject you without knowing you. This isn’t your fault. You’re not the broken one.
- Your clothing and other style choices are to make YOU feel good first and foremost.
- Signaling to other people is the secondary job of hair and clothes. But don’t dress for them. Be you, they’ll see it.
- Anyone who judges you badly for your hair and clothes is not your people and can fuck off.
- Physical affection in public is an act of deliberate courage.
- Family is a matter of choice. Loyalty is a two-way street.
- Mental health is important and it’s hard. Anxiety and depression are natural reactions to the world.
- Sensitivity isn’t weakness. It just means you pay attention.
- People who think “sex” only means a penis in a vagina deserve pity. (They don’t deserve better sex, just pity.)
- Everyone who’s interesting reinvented themselves after their world fell apart. Just like you did.
- Community is a safety net from an unfair world. Let it catch you when you need it. Catch others when you can.
- Don’t live your life for anyone else’s happiness. Live for your own, and share it.
Categories
The ape has a point
Why play a human, elf, or dwarf in Dungeons and Dragons, when you can play a race that really knows how to have a good time: a Floridian?
This D&D parody page does a great job of describing the strange race that inhabits the swamps of America’s drainpipe. It’s actually pretty good — I would want to play as a floridian bard in my next D&D campaign!
Here’s its text:
Floridian
Much like tieflings carry the essence of Asmodeus, the floridians are descendants of a human bloodline cursed by the trickery domain. A floridian parent will pass along this curse to any and all offspring they create. Anyone born to at least one floridian parent is destined to become an agent of chaos themselves.
Floridian traits
As a floridian, your traits combine those of a human with uncanny traits provided by your chaotic nature:
- Ability score increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2, and two other ability scores of your choice increase by 1.
- Age. Floridians age similar to humans and live less than a century. However, they are likely to perish due to an accidental mishap before they reach old age.
- Alignment. Floridians are entirely chaotic with no discernible logic to their actions. Their intentions are difficult to discern but can lead to results of any alignment.
- Size. Floridians are approximately the same height as humans, though their weight is usually above average. Your size is Medium.
- Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
- Hold my Beer. You have the uncanny ability to succeed in the least likely of circumstances. When you fail an attack roll or ability check that you rolled with a disadvantage, you can choose to take the higher of the rolls instead, potentially turning the failure into a success. You must finish a long rest before you can do so again.
- Muddled Thoughts. You have an advantage on saving throws against being charmed and your mind cannot be read by magic.
- Reptile Wrangler. Whenever you make a Wisdom (Animal Handling) check to handle a reptilian beats, you are considered proficient in the Animal Handling skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.
- Language. You can just barely speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice. You can understand the ramblings of intoxicated creatures as long as they’re in a language you know.
Categories
Tonight’s dinner: Mapo tofu!
One of my favorite Chinese dishes is mapo tofu, a Sichuan dish whose name translates as “pockmarked grandma’s tofu”. It’s a nice, high-protein dish as it’s made from ground pork and cut-up firm tofu, and it’s also a high-octane dish thanks to its use of Sichuan peppercorns. It also calls for lots of garlic, ginger, and green onion.
I was out of that really red Chinese chili oil that always ends up on whatever white that I’m wearing. I replaced it with a mix of Chinese chili sauce (not sriracha — this is different stuff), Sichuan pepper flakes, and sesame oil, and it still came out pretty tasty.
I took the photo above on Monday afternoon at the corner of Bloor Street West and St. George while biking towards downtown…under my own power.
There’s something that’s just plain wrong with the many young, healthy, able-bodied people I’ve seen about town using electric bikes in increasing numbers. Use your damned legs, slackers!
Here’s an amusing comic that some of you from the Maritimes might appreciate: East Coast Literature, a quick comic exercise by Halifax-based cartoonist Kate Beaton, who’s behind the webcomic Hark, a Vagrant!
Someone on a site I frequent was immediately reminded of the same thing I was – the Working Class Playwright skit from Monty Python’s Flying Circus: