Author: echolalaphile

leeshajoy:

primarybufferpanel:

pieandhotdogs:

soloontherocks:

Carrie Fisher’s my patron saint now. Patron Saint of addicts, mood disorders, and loud women. I just decided. I’m gonna build another shrine.

I second this motion. Canonize Space Mom.

Our Lady of Growing Old Disgracefully

“It is the feast day of the Fisher Saint. This powerful figure is portrayed as a woman haloed by twin suns, holding a dog. She is the patron of sufferers of mental illness, scriptwriters, and generals. The details of this saint’s life have conflated with many legends, but most accounts agree that she drowned in moonlight at the end, and the world mourned her passing.”

– from The Hidden Almanac for 2016-12-28

leaveliestotheliars:

bogleech:

souryellows:

when i was in like third grade i went to this science camp and one night at campfire they told us a story about a ufo crashing into a lake nearby and then later in the middle of the night they woke us all up and told us the aliens were back and this time they’d laid eggs in the woods !! it was our duty to arm ourselves and go destroy the eggs, so we armored up in tinfoil and shaving cream ( ????? ) and marched into the woods ready to save the planet. the ‘eggs’ were whole watermelons hidden around the camp and we had to smash them open on trees and rocks and eat the alien fetus/watermelon goo as fast as possible. i cannot emphasis enough the raw joy of digging into a watermelon with your bare hands and stuffing it into your face in the middle of the night in the woods, barely taking time to chew so that you can save the planet from hostile aliens, and i think i became the person i am because of that night.

me as a camp councelor

I can not stress this enough but, what the fuck.

zombieofdrake:

annechen-melo:

prokopetz:

rowantheexplorer:

unseenphil:

prokopetz:

confusedbyinterface:

prokopetz:

Concept: the Grail Quest retold from the perspective of the Knights of the Round Table’s support staff.

(For context, in real life, your average “knight in shining armour” was incredibly high maintenance, and required an average of 4-6 support staff following him around 24/7 just to carry his stuff, take care of his horses – he’d have up to three – and keep his equipment clean and in good repair. So whenever you read a story about half-dozen questing knights gallivanting about having adventures, there’s a totally unmentioned group of 24-36 additional people trailing around behind them.)

I thought the whole “inconsistently appearing servants/minstrels/monks/army” bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was just a continuity error joke until I actually read Le Morte d’Arthur.

Yeah,
Schrödinger’s

servants have a very distinguished pedigree in the genre; whether the Knights are traveling alone or with a realistic contingent of followers tends to vary not only from story to story, but from scene to scene within a single story, depending on what would be most dramatically convenient.

I feel like the narrator should be the little person who seemed to be part of every Knight’s retinue. So many knights (and ladies in distress)  in Mallory had ‘A dwarf’ following them around that I’ve seen people who think that means D&D/Tolkien style fantasy dwarf as opposed to “Short human who is increasingly tired of having to handhold his knightly charge through the thinkier parts of quests”

It’s one of the conceits in D&D that your warrior/paladin in full plate armor on a horse and with a full set of gear doesn’t have a gaggle of servants following them around, and only takes a few minutes to get in and out of their armor. But I guess it would be inconvenient to go dungeon crawling with 30 people following around a 6-person party.

To be fair, the earlier iterations of the game did have that assumption. It got dropped later on because your retinue would generally wait outside the dungeon, so keeping track of them added a lot of fiddly bookkeeping for something that had little substantive effect on gameplay.

“Right, so in the valley leading up to the Castle Dire, there’s the usual follower’s temporary village.”

“My cleric looks over the area to see how it’s organized.”

“Quite well, actually – it looks like some of the retinues have been here a while.”

“Define ‘a while’, please?”

“Most have been here during the questing season, but there’s a few who have weather-tight buildings. The kids playing in front of the largest house are about three to five years old.”

“My cleric packs his shit and goes back to the order.”

I’d like to add that three horses was actually the *minimum* for a properly equipped knight. One for battle, one to ride when not in battle or expecting trouble, and one to carry all the stuff. Five horses was apparently the standard, with one for war, two for riding, and two pack horses. Some documents reference as many as 24 horses for a single knight.

This was all for one dude, mind you. The squires would have their own riding and pack horses, and maybe a warhorse too. So would the men-at-arms, and maybe some of the more important servants would have riding horses too. Add some mules and donkeys to carry all the stuff they need. One knight plus squires plus servants plus men-at-arms and you’re looking at a cavalry pool of 15 – 20 horses, just for one knight with a small, six man retinue.

Please tell the hannukah story with details and swears, here, so I can retell it to my goyim friends, with details and swears

packbat:

smallswingshoes:

wetwareproblem:

smallswingshoes:

jewish-people-problems:

gentile-tears:

emoyouth:

progressivepayos:

dispatchrabbi:

swanjolras-archive:

CRACKS KNUCKLES. STRETCHES ARMS. OKAY SO LIKE.

so like it’s something something bce and israel/judea/whatever you wanna call it has been INVADED BY THE GREEKS. specifically, invaded by a bro named antiochus, pronounced aunt-eye-oh-kiss, who is a dick.

thing about hanukkah is that, like, there’s the Historical Story, which is important and worthy of study and shit, and then there’s the Hanukkah Story, which is more fun

so in Historical Story the invasion by the greeks was pretty slow and there was a lot of hellenization of jewish culture and blah blah blah 

in Hanukkah Story the greeks SMASHED IN WITH A BUNCH OF SWORDS and were like FUCK YOUR TEMPLE. FUCK YOUR GOD. FUCK YOUR PASSOVER, AND ALSO, FUCK YOU. and they DESTROYED THE TEMPLE and let, like, pigs go running around in it? which, if you know literally anything about judaism: pigs in the temple. they set pigs on the fucking holy fucking temple.

ANyway, then a greek general was like “yo, okay, i am threatening you all with Death unless you sacrifice to zeus.” and everyone was very Stoic and Rebellious until one bro was like FINE!! I WILL SACRIFICE TO ZEUS, GIMME THE STATUE OF ZEUS, IMMA KILL AN ANIMAL AND GO YAY ZEUS. i’m not sure if this also happened in the temple, but i like to think of it happening in the temple, because sacrifices to an idol??? in the holy fucking temple???? and he is almost about to kill the animal WHEN

WHAM, here comes mattathias (a.k.a. matisyahu, a.k.a. no, not the rapper) and CUTS OFF THE BRO’S HEAD.

then he yells ANYONE WHO WANTS TO FIGHT BACK COME TO THE HILLS!!!! and FLEES to the hills along with his sons. their family name is MACCABEE and so they are known as the MACCABEES, which means THE SLEDGEHAMMERS, because this story was apparently NOT METAL ENOUGH ALREADY.

meanwhile the occupation continues. there is a chick named HANNAH, who i have loved for one thousand years because i can either identify with her or hannah-samuel’s-mother, who is boring.

hannah has SEVEN SONS, which is MORE THAN I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE. the greeks capture them all and go “EAT PORK. EAT IT. EAT IT.” hannah and her seven sons are like no!! wtf calm the fuck down with your pork

so the greeks, who have literally no chill, go “okay, we’re gonna torture son #1 until he eats pork.” which they do – except the son does not eat the pork?? and eventually he just like DIES and the greeks are like, WHAT THE FUCK, okay, TIME TO TRY THIS AGAIN.

so they try it with son #2 and it is EQUALLY INEFFECTIVE. NO PORK, NO EATING. the greeks are BEWILDERED, they go on to torture and kill sons #3 THROUGH #7. LITERALLY ALL OF THEM. NONE OF THEM EAT PORK.

the greeks are like “HANNAH. HANNAH. YOU HAVE JUST WATCHED ALL YOUR GODDAMN CHILDREN DIE. EAT THE DAMN BACON.”

but hannah is the most rad of all the jews. she goes “i will not eat your fucking pig because you KILL PEOPLE ABOUT IT. god DAMN calm the fuck down and LET US BE JEWISH LITERALLY WHAT IS YOUR DAMAGE.”

the greeks have an elephant!! the greeks have A HUGE ARMY!! the greeks have a Whole Fucking Empire! the jews have, like, matisyahu and his five kids. (one of them is judah maccabee, who i like to think of as Very Hot.)

and we win.

[intermission: NO-OT BY MI-IGHT AND NO-O-OT BY POWER (TAKE A SHOWER!!!) BUT BY SPIIIIRIT ALONE (RUACH) SHALL WE ALL LIVE IN PEEEEAAAAAAAAAACE.]

so we kick! the greeks! out! of israel/judea/palestine/whatever! and we’re like FUCK YES WE’RE GONNA KICK THE PIGS OUT OF THE TEMPLE WE’RE GONNA CLEAN THE TEMPLE WE’RE GONNA MAKE THE TEMPLE NICE AS SHIT

okay. quick note on the law, for gentiles: one of the most important things about synagogues is that you always gotta have a light in it. it represents god, and it can’t ever, ever go out. it can be electric or fire or anything, but it cannot go out.

so the jews get into the temple and the light is fire, obviously, because electricity has not been invented yet, and the light is almost out.

Oh Shit, say the jews.

there’s oil to keep the light burning. there’s enough oil to keep the light burning for one day. the nearest supply of oil is eight days away, round-trip.

Oh Shit. say the jews.

i mean. what are you gonna do. they send off a guy on a horse to go for the oil. they light up the remaining oil. they scrub the temple floors, and kick the pigs out, and sit, and recover, and wait for the fire to go out.

the fire doesn’t go out.

for one day, it lasts. then for another. for eight fucking days the oil burns, and the horseman returns with the new supply, and the fire is still burning in the temple. the fire never goes out in the temple. we survive the entire invasion and the fire never goes out once.

most jewish stories are stories about survival. this one’s about a little more than that. because we could have assimilated; we could have hellenized. we could have worshiped their gods and eaten pork, and we would have lived.

but we didn’t. we took the worst risk, and we won. and the fire didn’t go out.

This is everything I’ve ever hoped for in a retelling of the story of Hannukah. It fits exactly with the way that I like to tell stories from the Torah, and I shall be adopting its style next week.

this is so incredibly accurate. I love it. 

Brilliant.

Hanukkah with Swears
2015
Oil on Canvas

.

I feel like I should do an audio recording of this for fun

DO IT DO IT DO IT

(also I feel like being at least tipsy, while not required, would enhance the effect.)

Lol you forgot I don’t drink but I’ll do the audio in a few

(the aforementioned audio (with swears) (and added historical commentary))