The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: sensate on December 13, 2013, 01:02:38 pm
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It's like it's 2002 all over again.
Strip Link (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=12132013)
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It's like it's 2002 all over again.
No we put the Strip Link (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=12132013) in the first post even back then.
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Reading the Robb Report semi-tumescent.
It's like the male version of Town and Country.
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YAAAAAAAAAY T!
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can't help but wonder if this is just some kinda reflection of Onstad's upward-lookin romantic prospects. Like I took enough classes in book-learnin that I know conflating art with artist is a sin, but—as someone here so eloquently put it—T is pretty much just Onstad in a stuffed bear suit.
Also, ima venture that "punk rock motherfucker" is probably one of the least quotable bits of what was, sadly, a fairly unquotable strip. It feels like the dialogue in these recent things is sometimes so obtuse it's verging on self-parody. Like, Ray isn't someone whose words I should have to reread twice to understand. Ray is a man of direct verbiage.
But ima stop being a cock
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Good to see the return of another female character defined 100% by her relationship to one of the males. I love this strip, but it fails the Bechtel test miserably.
And hey everyone. It's like old times. Old times where I am not very good or consistent at online forums.
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And hey everyone. It's like old times. Old times where I am not very good or consistent at online forums.
You just post any old way you want and the Good Lord God will provide.
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Good to see the return of another female character defined 100% by her relationship to one of the males. I love this strip, but it fails the Bechtel test miserably.
Very true. However, in defense of Onstad, he did create Ultra-Peanut, the greatest female character in the history of anything anywhere.
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And in defense of interesting people everywhere, the Bechdel test is a dunderhead parameter with which to judge a work of art anyway.
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I don't know that I completely agree. "Does this work meet the barest minimum of treating women like individuals instead of plot-advancing sex objects" is a pretty good parameter for something made in 2013. The lady herself has said that she is not thrilled about the popularization of her flippant remark as a Test that things have to pass, but it's still a legitimate thing to consider.
Ugh now I feel like my roommate's girlfriend who has to ask, every time she hears a band, if they are all white males.
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I think the Bechdel test is, at least, a good line of defence against people who think real life should be more like Mad Men.
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The Bechdel test is concerned with only a specific subset within the many parameters with which a piece of fiction can be appraised, so it can't help but being limited by its own narrownness in its ability to tell us whether a piece of fiction is good or not. The Bechdel test can only tell you that a piece of fiction passed the Bechdel test or not. It will not tell you anything about all other aspects that we have learned to use to judge a work of art (harmony, unity, rhythm, psychological maturity etc). Since it's possible that a work of fiction can fail the Bechdel test (because, for instance, the author committed the unspeakable sin of making *its protagonist male*) and still be good fiction, it seems to be fairly useless as a general appraisal tool for me.
What I mean is there are richer approaches. What I mean is, yeah, don't be like the lady who asks if all the band members are white males.
Also, before everybody starts telling me to check my cis privilege or whatever is the parlance of the times, I must point out that the question of the test's utility is disputed within the very academic environment where it thrives. The encyclopaedic knowledge pipes in:
"The Bechdel test only indicates whether women are present in a work of fiction to a certain degree. A work can pass the test and still contain sexist content, and a work with prominent female characters can fail the test.[2] A work may fail the test for reasons unrelated to gender bias, such as because its setting works against the inclusion of women (e.g., Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, set in a medieval monastery).[3] For these reasons, the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin criticized the test as prizing "box-ticking and stat-hoarding over analysis and appreciation", and suggested that the underlying problem of the lack of well-drawn female characters in film ought to be a topic of discourse, rather than films failing or passing the Bechdel test.[26]"
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I feel like this test is only ever mentioned in the context of crap Hollywood movies and TV shows anyway, not "works of art."
I think it's fine if Onstad sticks to writing the characters he is good at. I have never felt that what was wrong with the strip was that it didn't have enough characters of my gender.
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(But mostly I'm just incensed at the utter devastation that sociopolitical-oriented thinking has inflicted upon independent, personal, critical reading capabilities, where the diversity and complexity of relations within a theoretical space is replaced by myopic "box-checking and stat-hoarding", to use the article's words).
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I feel like this test is only ever mentioned in the context of crap Hollywood movies and TV shows anyway, not "works of art."
I think it's fine if Onstad sticks to writing the characters he is good at. I have never felt that what was wrong with the strip was that it didn't have enough characters of my gender.
I find myself agreeink with you here, in both points.
So in a way the Bechdel test even makes some sort of perverted sense, like a crude, but necessary tool with which to ward off the worst offenders? "This is pop crap, so there's a chance that it was written by people who may not be the most mature specimens, so perhaps I need a shortcut to see if this is worth my time" (I should have caught that when the woman in the last panel in Bechdel's strip says that the last film she was able to see was "ALIEN". A good film and all that, but hardly your Tarkovsky or Godard-grade flick).
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I think that's exactly right that that's what it's good for. That's what it was for in the first place. As Wikipedia says "originally conceived for evaluating films" and they don't mean, like, Citizen Kane or whatever.
By the way, the Wikipedia entry also reveals that, relevant to our interests here, the concept comes from something a character said in a comic strip, in case anyone didn't know.
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Also from Wikipedia
Nina Power... wrote that it remained to be determined how often real life passes the Bechdel test
LOL. I don't know who that person is but my real life passes that test, like, basically constantly.
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Ugh now I feel like my roommate's girlfriend who has to ask, every time she hears a band, if they are all white males.
But you misunderstand. She asks because she thinks most bands with chicks suck. I don't know about the white part, maybe she's racist.
Also, I've heard of this Bechamel sauce, but was never sure what it meant. Glad we are having this discussion.
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It would be really weird if next year in 85% of the movies and TV shows, the characters that make important decisions and had real conflict were all female, and the men in the story existed to establish backstory and set scenes or be wet blankets, except for a couple of primary male characters who pretty much just acted like women. We'd probably find that odd. Some might complain about the Feminazis.
The Bechtel test isn't even for individual works of art. If an individual show, movie, or comic fails it, it isn't a big deal. It's a big deal that SO MANY shows, movies, and comics fail it.
Onstad writes what he knows, and he knows drinking beers and smoking weed with his bros. When he tries to write beyond that it gets awkward. Can you imagine how terribly he'd fail if he tried to do a plotline where the primary characters were Molly and Pat? Of course, when you're just talking about an individual artist, there's nothing really wrong with that.
And Dykes to Watch Out For was a fantastic strip. I wish the archives were still online.
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I did love that strip!
I do like saying that the Bechamel Test is if two characters talk about the French mother sauces, though.
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hi Colmore here are some cans.
I wrote a big long response that was maybe a little overwrought and my computer luckily deleted it.
I think it's a bummer that including meaningful female characters is such a burden in the year 2013. "do you treat half the human population as walking sex/emotion props" is not the most ridiculous standard to judge a story by.
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Yeah, that reply was edited down from about 1000 words. It had gotten INTENSE.
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Also,
A joke:
"Two women walk into a bar, order drinks, and talk about the Bechdel Test."
[modified to correctly spell the subject I raised in the discussion. duh]
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It would be really weird if next year in 85% of the movies and TV shows, the characters that make important decisions and had real conflict were all female, and the men in the story existed to establish backstory and set scenes or be wet blankets, except for a couple of primary male characters who pretty much just acted like women. We'd probably find that odd. Some might complain about the Feminazis.
A scenario such as you describe would never happen "from one year to the next". That's crazy talk. It's the talk of someone not used to following premises to their logical conclusions, or facts to their possible causative factors (and who doesn't see why this should be important in the first place). It's the talk of someone whose imagination isn't trained to obey the necessary constrains of logic. Such a scenario as you describe would be the possible if human societies had followed some sort of matriarcal organization throughout history, and this would reflect the prominent role that women would have then -- as a result of an organic, long-in-the-making process, just as the prominence of men was due to organic conditions -- among which "might is right" certainly was a definitive factor, just like the 9-months of pregnancy in which women become more fragile and in need of care. You can't blame them: it was a simpler time back then, people had fewer illusions about the world. In ancient Greece, gender roles were closely related to biological realities: "Men protect the polis, women populate the polis". I'm mentioning this as one example pulled from at least 200.000 years of steady development following -- with few deviations -- a determined pattern. I'm not justifying the use of force and coertion of the weakest by the strongest, but I'm expounding to you that there is an organic reason for such a state of affairs, which is as deterministic and mechanicist (also, sometimes brutal and unjust, never forget) as the way in which water flows down an estuary. Back then people didn't have self-reflexion, at least not as much or as sophisticated as we have now. Your "argument" means nothing, because arguments must be at least minimally tethered in reality.
Onstad writes what he knows, and he knows drinking beers and smoking weed with his bros. When he tries to write beyond that it gets awkward.
Bullshit. Use the Bechdel test all you want, just don't try to imply that Onstad doesn't know how to write female characters. I have strip after strip after strip to prove it. The women aren't central to the strips because the protagonists are male. So what? Get over it, and learn to tell the difference:
a) Polly was more than Cornelius' (Cornelius!) match in wit; b) Ray's mom is adorable and relentless (she destroyed Pat's assholery without even noticing it); c) Molly gets a lot of flak for being... well, a well-grounded adult, in contrast to Roastbeef, who most of the time needs a lamp to breathe. But she is the balanced one in the relationship, and she is the voice of reason. That is not so funny? Too bad -- it happens that she's not one of the protagonists d) Even Molly's mom in Wales proved to be Eaorwerth(sp?) match when they argued, and she stated her opinion of men in not altogether kind terms (It doesn't matter if Eaorwerth reacted like an asshole and called her an "harpy". She was right and he was wrong. Fuck anyone who says I'm supposed to identify with a dunderhead character just because he's the same sex as me). Women in Achewood get amazing dialogue (Molly's quip about men being able to eat from solidified farts if they formed a film on linoleum stayed with me). Women according to Achewood: "The lady is the mountain behind the tiny flaming fis.hing cabin of the man". Can you read that metaphor? What do you think it implies (not in terms of how interesting female characters are in the strip, but in what might be the author's opinion of them -- which can't help but colour how he's gonna portray them)?
But no. All the oppressed womyn see is "props to the male cast", doesn't matter if they're written with as much care as they are in Achewood.
This is what saddens me and worries me, because it has to do with the individual's capacity for interpretation and appreciation of art. There's a reason Achewood became such a cult classic: people could tell that Onstad Paid Attention. That includes the capacity for treating each character, even the most peripheral, with the same love and care as the main ones. Art is supposed to be an organic, integrated whole, something that comes out as a result of an individual's life experiences. It is not driven by conscious choices alone -- the subconscious gives it its ballast (like an iceberg of which the biggest chunk is invisible unerwater) . So to come at a highly-sophisticated, intricate, long-in-the-making work and demand that it be not only funny and truthful to the artist's life experience, but also that it should meet some politically motivated requirement that's so tangential to the matter at hand as to be inconsequential -- the meeting of which might as well be impossible (considering the already mentioned process by which an organic work of art answers to itself first and foremost) -- bespeaks a level of arrogance only seen in children, the demented or someone whose critical capabilities were mangled beyond repair by sociopolitical wish-fulfillment. This is the germinal state of the same type of "thinking" responsible for the persecution of artists such as Tarkovsky (the Party used to say that his movies were "bourgeoise reveries" because they underrepresented the proletariat's strugglebalrbalgbagh), and that is why I don't brook it: because it can hurt a good artist's prospects, based in parameters which bespeak a lack of understanding of the most basic aspects of what Art is and what it exists for. It's philistinism disguised as "good intentions". I heard of a place that's paved with "good intentions". It's a nice enough place to visit, I guess, but you wouldn't want to live there.
But you can't see this, because it doesn't jive with the empowerment agenda. It's all about oppression, right? In the end I suppose this is all fair in the sense that everyone of us will get from a work of art what we are willing to put into it in the first place. Some people bring more; some people bring oh so much less.
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A scenario such as you describe would never happen "from one year to the next".
Deja I think you miss the intent of colmore's comment, which is that it's a thought experiment.
And I still think you're getting upset about something that no reasonable person would do, which is to apply this test to actual art as opposed to popular crap. With Achewood being clearly in the category of actual art.
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Onstad writes what he knows, and he knows drinking beers and smoking weed with his bros. When he tries to write beyond that it gets awkward.
This is my beef right here.
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Would that my writing was so awkward.
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Personally I do feel that the female characters in Achewood are mostly props and not as interesting as the guys. It does make Molly less interesting that she has to be the grownup and the guys get to have all the interesting problems, and that does seem stereotypical to me. But I don't care. The strip does what it does brilliantly, and I don't expect it to do everything.
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What test does it pass (or maybe fail, I'm getting confused) if it has two male characters talking about a woman?
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I like the way Onstad writes women. The strip is a boy's club, sure. But female characters, when included, help drive the story and are not at the mercy of anyone or anything. They have agency. And they serve as foils to the aimless flailing of the male protagonists. It works.
Why are the ladies of the board the ones who are the most cool with this?
Also, while a lot of my conversations pass the Bechdel test, many do not. Do you know why? Two reasons: 1) Most of my friends are men, so I don't have conversations with women very often, and 2) I am a woman who likes men, and I like to discuss their finer qualities with my best lady friend. What kind of world would we live in if people got upset every time two straight men talked about a girl on screen?
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I like the way Onstad writes women. The strip is a boy's club, sure. But female characters, when included, help drive the story and are not at the mercy of anyone or anything. They have agency. And they serve as foils to the aimless flailing of the male protagonists. It works.
Why are the ladies of the board the ones who are the most cool with this?
Also, while a lot of my conversations pass the Bechdel test, many do not. Do you know why? Two reasons: 1) Most of my friends are men, so I don't have conversations with women very often, and 2) I am a woman who likes men, and I like to discuss their finer qualities with my best lady friend. What kind of world would we live in if people got upset every time two straight men talked about a girl on screen?
One of the problems with the Bechdel test is that words and communication are often divorced. Two women chattering on about a man may not be talking about a man. They may be using the words as cover fire for body language and jockeying for social supremacy, as we primates are often prone to do. (Witness two men talking about their golf swing.) The words may be about a man, but the thoughts are about each other, and ways to come out as socially superior from this otherwise jejune conversation. This fails the Bechdel test in the letter of the law, but passes in the spirit.
Conversely, a man and a woman who have been married for 60 years and whose marriage has fallen into a rut, but who are both afraid of dying alone, may look at each other over their morning paper during a silent breakfast. Maybe it's a glare, maybe it's a look of longing or yearning for something long past. No words are spoken - but they have each other in mind, constantly. Whether they are kind thoughts, malicious thoughts, or a mixture is yet to be seen, but you can be damn sure they're thinking about each other.
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I think it's kind of conspicuous that there aren't more female characters that aren't attached to a single male character through either motherhood or romance.
I live a pretty Achewoodish life. I have a lot of social free time and relatively minimal responsibility for someone my age. Athens, Georgia is a cousin in spirit and lifestyle to the kind of Bay Area and Portland hangin' out that Achewood depicts. I'm a lot like an Achewood character. I hang out, most often with a close group of male friends in their 30s, drink beers, smoke pot, and crack jokes, it's pretty much my primary thing after going to work and staying alive. And yet all the time, I find myself in situations where it'll be me and two really funny women having a conversation and I'm not trying to sleep with either one of them and they're not trying to sleep with me and nobody is stressing out about the tensions between the sexes and what not. We're just drinking cold ones and telling dirty jokes or making fun of some commercial or something.
And I feel like that sort of thing would happen to guys like Ray and Beef and Teodor. It's pretty darn weird that none of them have any female buddies.
But lots of writers don't write certain types of people well. There's nothing wrong with that. But it is sort of a failing of the strip. And the fact that culture-wide, so MUCH entertainment fails in this respect speaks to some bigger problems.
And it's made worse by the way that so MANY writers make up for not having any female protagonists by creating female characters that wait around in the wings of the narrative to nag and hold the protagonist back. Why is every rogueish anti-hero married to some uptight wet blanket. The guys I know who like getting into trouble tend to date girls who also like getting into trouble. This kind of thing pisses me off.
But please don't get me wrong. Achewood is my favorite non-printed comic strip ever, and I don't mean to suggest something like... Octopus Pie... with better written females is automatically better art, it isn't (but I do love Octopus Pie). But being awesome doesn't make Achewood perfect.
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Ah, the "completely ignore examples that counter your point of view" gambit. A time-honored tactic, if I may say so.
Consensual sex my ass, what really turns me on is some old-fashioned consensual reality. Too bad I won't be getting none today, it's been ages since I got some of that sweet action.
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No, it's more the completely ignore a too-long-for-a-forum rant that seemed like it comes from an unbalanced dude.
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Fuck, spotted again! Damn those structured paragraphs and cogent argumentation! Damn them all to hell!
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No, it's more the completely ignore a too-long-for-a-forum rant that seemed like it comes from an unbalanced dude.
And here I was taking you seriously until I read that.
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No, it's more the completely ignore a too-long-for-a-forum rant that seemed like it comes from an unbalanced dude.
Now, now, this is what a polite "TL;DR" was invented for.
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I mean, that whole rant at the top where he pretends he doesn't know what Colmore was trying to say was a pretty big turn off. I almost closed the screen right there. Give me a break.
But here:
Every one of your examples is a bad example. None of these examples contain a fully formed character.
Women according to Achewood: "The lady is the mountain behind the tiny flaming fis.hing cabin of the man". Can you read that metaphor? What do you think it implies (not in terms of how interesting female characters are in the strip, but in what might be the author's opinion of them -- which can't help but colour how he's gonna portray them)?
If you don't get how putting women on a weird pedestal is part and parcel of misogyny and sexism then I don't know what to say. A woman saying a correct thing in a strip does not mean anything in re: sexism/not writing women well unless our main sexist idea about women was "they are incorrect about things." The idea of a nagging lady who is or is not correct is pretty firmly established as a lady-hating trope. Molly exists only as a foil for Beef. Which is, I guess, fine. The strip is about Roast Beef. But pointing it out, and pointing out that this is true of every other female character, is not equivalent to censorship by a totalitarian government, or even "the germ" of it. That is completely asinine. I didn't come in here and say that your thinking has the "germ" of saying that Minstrel Shows are OK as long as they're well done-- because slippery slope arguments (or is this more reductio ad absurdam?) are not very effective or helpful. I don't see anyone "demanding" that onstad meet an invisible sociopolitical goalpost. I see some people saying, hey, it's too bad he does such crappy female characters. I don't think that that is tangential to the matter at hand, or irrelevant. It's half the damn human population.
But reading your following paragraph, we are not going to agree, because you think Art and Thinking About Art are very important. I don't. I think it's a damn comic strip.
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I mean, that whole rant at the top where he pretends he doesn't know what Colmore was trying to say was a pretty big turn off. I almost closed the screen right there. Give me a break.
If you think what I said in the first paragraph doesn't apply to what colmore was saying, there's not a lot I will be able to do for you. Do you think "thought experiment" is some sort of magical phrase that can excuse speculative scenarios from, you know, making sense? Yes, colmore was doing a thought experiment. A very shitty thought experiment, because thought experiments ungrounded in reality yield results similarly disconnected, and so are useless. I find it surreal that I have to explain this.
But here:
Every one of your examples is a bad example. None of these examples contain a fully formed character.
Again, typed very slowly: A peripheral character (i.e., by definition not as fully formed) doesn't have to be badly written.
If you don't get how putting women on a weird pedestal is part and parcel of misogyny and sexism then I don't know what to say. I like honey muffins.
Now who's ranting? At least my rant was germane (brought to you courtesy of TLAD School) to the matter at hand. Mysoginy is a sad fact of the world, and it's a fine subject for discussion, but I have to insist in directing the topic towards the original point: female characters in Achewood, despite not being protagonists, are well-written and have funny, quotable dialogue. I provided examples. You tried to disqualify them by saying the females are not fully formed characters, but that was never my contention.
But reading your following paragraph, we are not going to agree, because you think Art and Thinking About Art are very important. I don't. I think it's a damn comic strip.
Allow me to clarify: When I mentioned Achewood as art, I meant "art" as craft. There's a very blurry line there that I'm not willing to try and define at the moment, and my post didn't get into that in detail, but I certainly don't think of Achewood as belonging to the same circle as an Eliot play, or Mahler's works. You read so badly, you misread even this: Like you, I also think that Achewood is a damn (fine) comic strip (I do think that Art and Thinking About Art are very important things, so at least you got that).
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It's interesting how the men who are arguing about how women are portrayed in Achewood seem totally uninterested in the women's reactions to how women are portrayed in Achewood.
Was that trolling? I'm not sure, I've never done it before.
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...the men... seem totally uninterested... in the women's reactions
Speaking of people not being interested in other people's opinions, wasn't it funny when colmore admitted purposefully ignoring my post (which she promptly dismissed as a "rant")?
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Oh, for clarification, I am a middle-class southern white hetero cis male well past the age when one is surrounded by 20 year old idealists. And proud of it, like everyone should be proud of who they are. But I'll take that "she" as a complement, given the context.
I didn't really mean to start such a thing as this, and I don't like trying to "win" internet arguments so, I'm going to say my last piece on this subject and that is:
If this storyline results in punk-rock Penny becoming a regular and fun member of the gang and joining in both Stellas and adventures in amusing and likeable fashion, I'll be pleased as punch.
[edited to say a second thing]
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But I'll take that "she" as a complement, given the context.
Haha, dude, you just failed the Bechdel test.
(Disregard if the pun was intentional, in which case congratulations, it was a nice pun.)
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wombat, I am interested in your opinion. But you are expressing it too reasonably for me to know how to respond to it. It is definitely making me question whether part of the problem is my own reading of the characters, since you are both a woman and a person whose opinions about writing I trust. Deja don't read that previous sentence.
No, I do actually know what a thought experiment is. You are incorrect. You wrote a paragraph explaining why his thought experiment would not occur in real life. A thought experiment is imaginary. Colmore's suggestion is this: if roles were reversed, would you still have the same opinion? I don't see anything insane or unreasonable or worth condescending to about that. If, instead, this state of affairs were to happen suddenly (maybe a secret cabal of hyperfeminists take over all media), do you think most people would be upset and think this was unfair? If it helps you use your imagination, you can think about how blood-shitting mad society gets about women achieving equality in some spheres, and how even in our tilted-towards-men society people like Men's Rights Activists exist because they are so threatened by the progress of women.
Again, typed very slowly: A peripheral character (i.e., by definition not as fully formed) doesn't have to be badly written.
Yes, they don't have to be, but they are. The things I said about misogyny and (muffins?) are germane because creating female character after female character who is a misogynist shortcut does not seem like lovingly devoting time to each and every character. Maybe this is my own failing and I am not seeing the brilliance of "mean welsh lady who says a correct thing one time" or "punk chick who likes Teodor" or "witty stripper lady who likes cornelius." You keep pointing out that they are peripheral characters, but I think that is part and parcel of the issue. How many male protagonists do we have? Beef, Pat, Ray, Teodor, Cornelius, Phillippe, Lyle. Maybe Todd, Nice Pete, Liebot, and Vlad as something in between, as they have definitely had their own little plotlines (***** plotlines, murder plotlines, whatever) that are sometimes independent of the big guys. The male characters are developed, and each have at the very least their function/niche-- Liebot is a tricky guy, Vlad's joke is that he is a ***** who acts like The Love Guru or whatever the appropriate reference is, Nice Pete kills people. What is Molly's "function" in the story? Or Polly's? Penny's? Onstad only brings in a female character when he needs a love interest or a mom. When, for instance, he introduces Rod Huggins, Rod has a series of storylines as the funny gay porn guy before he becomes Pat's love interest. The ladies only appear when it's time for one of the male characters to get lucky/get loved. Unfortunately to act as a foil for RB's depression and anxiety and feeling bad about himself, Molly has to be so, so, so boring. Her whole character is "too good for beef, so perfect, and sometimes she gets mad or upset but oh boy does he deserve it."
And I guess I must be real bad at reading, because I am looking at that paragraph again, and you said the words Art and Artist about twice per sentence. Including talking about Art as an organic whole, and referring to the (film) artist Tartovsky. You even mentioned people not understanding what "Art is and what it exists for (your capitals)." So what am I misreading there?
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I've never found Molly hateable. Just boring and one-note. She's the lone normal dull person in a world full of amusing personalities.
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Yeah, I think calling Molly one-note is pretty apt, especially given that she's portrayed more than once as little other than a fleshy thing that ensures Beef can choke down toast in the morning.
And speaking of pedestals, the fact that she's from LITERAL HEAVEN is kind of a giveaway
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A thought experiment is imaginary. Colmore's suggestion is this: if roles were reversed, would you still have the same opinion?
A thought experiment must come from a thought. Not from a "thought", if you catch my drift. "Imaginary" doesn't mean "free from all obligations to a shared, consensual, verifiable reality". A thought experiment is a tool. It is only useful insofar as the conclusions drawn from it are actually useful to illuminate a certain question. If following a thought experiment from its premises to its conclusions doesn't yield anything usable, then the thought experiment is said to be "shitty". I'm gonna show it to you:
a) Due to 200.000 years of historical development, women have taken the active role in society, and thus dominate artistic portrayals in all the arts, including literature. Question: Would I think it "strange" if women dominated the cultural discourse in that scenario? Answer: No, because my knowledge of all the history that led to that current state of affairs explains to me why this is the case. I could still think it was unjust, but certainly *explainable* and comprehensible as the natural, logical result of the development of certain variables throughout a very long timespan. I might not *like* it, but I would not think it was *absurd*.
b) Due to a dunderhead event in which a super feminist cabal takes over the world, 85% of next year's cultural production gets to be centered around women. Question: Would I think it "strange" if women dominated the cultural discourse in that scenario and I knew about that? Answer: No, because a super feminist cabal took over the world -- that is, wrenched the state of affairs from its regular course, and I know about that.
c) Due to a dunderhead event in which a super feminist cabal takes over the world, 85% of next year's cultural production gets to be centered around women. Question: Would I think it "strange" if women dominated the cultural discourse in that scenario and I did not know about said feminist takeover? Answer: Yes, because, unbeknownst to me, a super feminist cabal took over the world -- that is, wrenched the state of affairs from its regular course and took it to a direction so unlike what came before that it couldn't help but draw attention to itself.
Do you see already why poorly thought out counterfactuals might not be your best friends in a debate? The only way in which this "thought" experiment could have helped you is if, in our world, a dunderhead masculinist cabal had taken over society overnight -- that would justify feelings of resentment, injustice etc. -- But that never happened!. As far as we know, biological differences gave men a headstart in physical matters, which opened the way for everything else. Your analogy/scenario/thought experiment fails insofar as you're trying to use it to advance a point in a debate. If you're using it like one of those things you say when you're stoned that makes your pals go "Whoa", it's fine, I guess. This is not even me talking, this is 2.000 years give or take of Aristotelian discourse: Poor premises yield poor conclusions. Poor conclusions muddle the debate. I can't make it clearer than this.
As for your other points, I'll wait to see how this post finds you. Your points are largely retreadings of a faulty argument, and it's a sad reality of debates that refutations are longer and harder to build than a faulty enunciation. I don't have that much free time, but I can be tempted.
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Man, I sure hope Onstaid doesn't bring in a bunch of talky bitches and ruin the strip.
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The Poorly Thought Out Counterfactuals are my favourite post-rock band.
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Thank you for that journey into reason.
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wombat, I am interested in your opinion. But you are expressing it too reasonably for me to know how to respond to it.
First I just have to say this is possibly the best example ever of the Inev character we all know and love.
It is definitely making me question whether part of the problem is my own reading of the characters, since you are both a woman and a person whose opinions about writing I trust.
And second, actually I think my reading of the characters is exactly the same as yours in the long paragraph of that message. It's just that it doesn't bother me. The same things would no doubt bother me in some other strip or book or movie. But Achewood is genius as what it does, so I don't require it to do everything.
But you know, maybe since I'm a female, I'm allowed to give him a pass on how he writes females and the rest of you should be uncomfortable about it. Seems fair to me.
Ash, on the other hand, is totally wrong, and his hatred of Molly is clearly the sign of a deeper illness.
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(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png)
Deja, seriously, I am worried about your blood pressure.Take a deep breath, it's just a message board about cartoon cats.
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so is molly the equivalent of a "manic-pixie-dreamgirl" in the achewood universe? a "balanced-realistic-everygirl"?
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"You can't fight here, this is the war room!"
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Ash, on the other hand, is totally wrong, and his hatred of Molly is clearly the sign of a deeper illness.
Why won't that witch just die for good.
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I go out for a couple hours to shovel snow and get some bagels, and somehow this has turned into a discussion about hypothetical "super-feminist cabals" and the nature of reason?!
(http://media1.giphy.com/media/lLHcdqWmcOJKU/giphy.gif)
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Welcome to TOUAMB, ianmalcolm2. You were always the caretaker.
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I go out for a couple hours to shovel snow and get some bagels, and somehow this has turned into a discussion about hypothetical "super-feminist cabals" and the nature of reason?!
Sometimes there are no posts for like days at a time. Other times you can't turn your back on us for a minute.
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How is it that we (according to the board stats) had 99278 new members this year (including over 20,000 in July alone), and yet
a) our current member count is 930
and
b) Wombat hasn't had all the posts she could want from all the newbies.
Naturally I suspect bots are the answer to both, in which case I'm wondering why we havent been buried under gigabytes of penis enlargement pill ads. Is hitting delete and <drop user> what you and ACAP have been doing with your shared 260 days on TOUAMB?
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New accounts have to be manually approved, which is AugustWest's job, and I'm guessing he deleted like 99276 of those new ones all year. I have no idea how he goes through them all, I assume it's basically a full-time job and that's why he doesn't have time to post much.
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Ima just stand over here looking silently vigilant.
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ain't nothin more stoic than a sunny-side up egg. yolk all silently jigglin. a couple cubes of kosher salt just there. i'm gettin shivers.
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Gotta eat them quick though, or they turn hell of nasty. Throw on some Tabasco, a couple quick swipes with the knife, and shovel that bad boy down before it suddenly becomes loogie-like and makes you gag.
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Gotta dip the toast in that motherfucker too. Only time I like a good ol slab of white toast with margarine is when it's dipped into a yolk.
And the tabasco is spot on. If you can get the brownish chipotle stuff, all the better.
...And another conversation derailed. And here I was sayin' I'd leave.
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this is the weirdest off-topic spiral in a long time. i love it. bechdel to egg metaphor in five pages or fewer.
"choop stamp of approval 2013"
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Deja, the counterfactual you are rejecting is also known as the "golden rule." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule) Maybe colmore did not phrase this clearly enough. That is what he is asking. If it were the other way around (an easier formulation might be "if you were a woman") would you still think depictions of women (type, quality, number) were a stupid thing to care about? It is not necessary to go through all the possible ways this could happen. It does not matter whether it is, in fact, impossible.
Ash, I think part of our differential reactions to Molly might have to do with our personal degrees or types of self-loathing. When people are mean or critical to me most of the time I think I deserve it. Especially when it is ostensibly someone who likes/loves me. I think I am getting better at this.
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Maybe colmore did not phrase this clearly enough.
I hope you understand why it doesn't pay to try and divine the occult processes that happen in written exchanges. I see only words on the screen, so if your mouth writes a cheque, your brain better be prepared to cash it.
(...)would you still think depictions of women (type, quality, number) were a stupid thing to care about?
That is all nice and well, but what if the above had never happened? I never said this, or have implied it. I took exception at one dunderhead box-ticking test and that is all (I don't even know why you keep picking this bone. This discussion has reached its point of diminishing returns a long time ago -- and the returns were already dysmally minimal to begin with. Guys, I'm cool with whatever you wanna think about whatever. But if you're gonna take some cheapo potshots and try to casually diss and dismiss something I like without even worrying about providing a good case, I will think you're an arrogant little punk, and may let you know, and really, is that so unexpected, or even, worth all the arm-flailing about?)
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Or we could talk about eggs.
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what is it about poached eggs i just don't care for? i ought to like them, but i'd rather have a runnier yolk and a crispier white. like, why have eggs benedict when you could drop a sunny on that muffin instead, pop some regular bacon (not that canadian ham) on there, and just skip the hollandaise
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I really don't get the appeal of eggs benny either, but poached eggs have their uses. A lentil soup of a good mid-level thickness for instance, almost always benefits from a poached egg deposited right in the centre of the bowl. Sticking the spoon in a bowl of hot black and finding that delightful gush of yolk is one way to set the rest of your day straight
The way I see it, poaching an egg is just a way of ensuring that the yolk gets delivered to another dish, all hot and liquidy, without it spilling everywhere. The questionable consistency of the white is more so an afterthought.
This advice, however, is rooted in prejudice.
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Now I'm craving that toast I used to have which had a hole and what I suppose could only have been an angel's egg in it, so soft and creamy it was. Also, ever since I read/watched "Thermae Romae" I have been wanting to try an onsen tamago (eggs which are heated for a loong time in lower temperatures). Usually they keep them in the bottom of thermal springs for the bathers. Apparently the texture gets otherworldy.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Onsen_tamago_at_minshuku_Korakuen%2C_Nagano_by_Blue_Lotus.jpg)
Damn. What is the onomatopoeia for simultaneous sexual arousal and hunger? Whatever it is, I'm doing it right now.
Onsen tamago at home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZE4cCncih8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZE4cCncih8)
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And here I thought there was nothing more to learn about eggs. This looks delicious! I'm making some kimchi stew tonight and I wanna make one of these suckers with it!
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Deja, did you see the live human movie of Thermae Romae? I saw it on the plane from Japan last year and I wish I could find it online. I haven't read it or seen the anime.
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Over Medium is the most underrated way of fixing eggs, with or without toast.
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Over Medium is the most underrated way of fixing eggs, with or without toast.
Okay, I'm taking you seriously again.
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Runny eggs are a horror thought. I like my eggs cooked within an inch of their life, and with lots of stuff (meat, cheese, veggies, hot sauce) in or on them.
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Runny eggs are a horror thought. I like my eggs cooked within an inch of their life, and with lots of stuff (meat, cheese, veggies, hot sauce) in or on them.
I'm with the mayor on this one.
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Poached eggs. Eggs Benedict all day. Makes that shit with pork roll, lobster, crab, salmon, sweet potatoes, soup, ramen/noodles, salad. OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE! POACHED. EGGS.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/28/poached-egg-recipe_n_4165033.html
Disclaimer: I microwave my eggs. 2 eggs x 2 minutes in a cereal bowl + spices. Whisk it and throw that on toast over the meat of your choice with a piece of cheese in the middle. Usually bacon or sausage. Efficiency is the name of the game.
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skip the hollandaise
Nooooo! Hollandaise is the greatest egg condiment known to man! Can you imagine the genius behind it? "Let's take a raw egg and mix it with butter and these little grassy things and put it on top of more eggs." It's fabulous.
Poached eggs. Eggs Benedict all day. Makes that shit with pork roll, lobster, crab, salmon, sweet potatoes, soup, ramen/noodles, salad. OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE! POACHED. EGGS.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/28/poached-egg-recipe_n_4165033.html
Disclaimer: I microwave my eggs. 2 eggs x 2 minutes in a cereal bowl + spices. Whisk it and throw that on toast over the meat of your choice with a piece of cheese in the middle. Usually bacon or sausage. Efficiency is the name of the game.
I once had a lobster omelet. My mom took me to brunch for my birthday. It was heaven on a plate.
Also, I have started occasionally making quiche in a coffee mug. 1 egg, half a piece of bread (torn into chunks), salt, pepper, dill or thyme, and a tablespoon each of whatever kind of shredded cheese you got. Throw in some ham, sausage, bacon, veggies and whatnot and nuke it for a minute and a half...it puffs up but good, and it'll keep your hands warm on the way to work.
Leaves a hell of a ring in the coffee cup, though.
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a good egg don't need condiments! the yolk is a damn great condiment! you can just sprinkle dill right on your egg if you want some dang dill!
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Also, I have started occasionally making quiche in a coffee mug. 1 egg, half a piece of bread (torn into chunks), salt, pepper, dill or thyme, and a tablespoon each of whatever kind of shredded cheese you got. Throw in some ham, sausage, bacon, veggies and whatnot and nuke it for a minute and a half...it puffs up but good, and it'll keep your hands warm on the way to work.
Leaves a hell of a ring in the coffee cup, though.
Cool. Guess what ACAP is making for breakfast. The eggs leave a ring on the bowl I use, too, but I wash it right away while the cheese is melting over the sausage/bacon in the toaster oven.
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what is wrong with you anti-runny-egg people. eggs over easy all day.
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Did you all know that if you are a vegan who only lives with vegans for like 4 or 5 years then eggs will smell like the worst, most rotten thing in the world when a non-vegan moves in? Like meat, that smells good (or not bad), but eggs are gross as fuck?
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Dig you know that being a vegan sounds like the worst most rotten thing in the world?
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Tell that shit to yer colon son
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Did you all know that if you are a vegan who only lives with vegans for like 4 or 5 years then eggs will smell like the worst, most rotten thing in the world when a non-vegan moves in? Like meat, that smells good (or not bad), but eggs are gross as fuck?
I believe that. I eat a lot of eggy things, I love a lot of eggy things including desserts like custard and eggnog, but I also feel like eggs are on the hairy edge of edibility. A very badly cooked egg, or eggs when my stomach is feeling a little less than perfect, and then it's like, oh god, how did people ever think to eat this?
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Tell that shit to yer colon son
Have you ever noticed how many vegans are also smokers and/or heavy drug users?
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I...maybe? I guess it kinda leans that way or like super fuck*ng yuppie? I hang with the smoker/drug user parts.
I will say, people are always like wait, you smoke and you're vegan? Like they are surprised, so I don't know? My whole vegan thing started with compassion and not health, though the last few years I've been being really healthy too, diet wise at least.
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That wouldn't surprise me, because I don't know anyone who's a vegan for health, they're all animal nuts. But of course those would be the people I would know.
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That wouldn't surprise me, because I don't know anyone who's a vegan for health, they're all animal nuts. But of course those would be the people I would know.
Right. I only mention it because Keith cited a health concern in his defense of veganism. And we all, with a few notable exceptions (http://www.flickr.com/photos/20698962@N00/4601724185/), know that smoking and taking drugs are the worst thing you can do for your health.
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yeah, recently I did something bad to a hard boiled egg and had to swear eggs off for a while. They are definitely one of the weirder things we eat.
My dad can't eat eggs ever since his grandma died when he was a small kid. She used to cook him eggs, and when he died his mom tried and apparently he was just crying and puking and hasn't eaten them ever again.
Wombat, maybe this is totally weird, but I sometimes think about strange Japanese foods that strike me as totally bizarre, and use that brain space to think that way about American foods. I think it works because both cultures have a lot of interest in convenience and packaged foods, and have turned their idiosyncratic foods into packaged versions.
"yeah, so this is some boiled wheat paste tubes with sauce. The sauce is made from this yellow powder, but it is supposed to taste like carefully fermented milk."
"this drink is a soda, but instead of any flavor you have heard of it is this blend of various roots. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_beer)"
now I can't think of other good ones. this makes eating basic foods seem really exciting.
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Right. I only mention it because Keith cited a health concern in his defense of veganism. And we all, with a few notable exceptions (http://www.flickr.com/photos/20698962@N00/4601724185/), know that smoking and taking drugs are the worst thing you can do for your health.
As long as excessive drinking is included in taking drugs.
I'm also vegan for non-human animal reasons. I don't smoke, rarely drink, and don't consume any other drugs. I also get a moderate amount of exercise. I think all of the vegans and wannabe vegans I know have similar habits. They're also not yuppies, really. I suppose most of the vegans I know aren't much different than the non-vegans I know.
Eggs don't bother me.
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Do we know that? Smoking cigarettes is awful and uppers will kill you (another reason cigs are bad!), but outside of that, I don't think you are right.
Now, most of my (non marijuana) drug use is on that upper tip, but still. Also, it would be silly to think that one thing doesn't effect the other. Currently I run at least 4 miles a day. I eat a clif bar and blueberries for breakfast, a banana, then broccoli sprouts and raspberries, then an apple midday and just whatever for dinner (usually a pretty healthy thing)...if I don't get lung cancer or emphysema I probably won't have super negative effects from smoking (yer heart diseases, etc.). I could definitely get cancer though.
In cigarette smokers, smoking marijuana decreases lung cancer. Opiates are some of the healthiest things you can put into yourself, as far as damage to your body, as long as you don't overdose. Hallucinogenics have little to no effect on your body. What are other drugs? Mephedrone? That shit was the best thing I have ever done, but I've never felt worse the next day, so probably not great? Ketamine and PCP probably aren't awesome to do... I don't know man, I think some drugs are bad and some are neutral and some are good, just like every other fuck*ng thing? But yeah, if you leave your comment at cigarettes you are probably right?
After all, the only reason we are here is cause some Apes found Psilocybin cause they got forced out of the forests.
Edit: Yes...drinking, that is the other awful drug. I don't do that one. IDK, pick your battles, do what you like the most (I love smoking cigarettes and being high off of marijuana) and try to balance that out with other things?
Maybe it is where I live/lived (BOULDER), but there are a shit load of yuppie, holier than thou vegans...sorry.
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Here is something we could all agree on maybe? The two legal drugs, while they may not be the most harmful straight up, are the most harmful with the least positive effects... Like, cocaine ruined a lot of lives. It also got us some great music and psychoanalysis. LSD...maybe some peeps jumped of a roof (probably like 3), it also gave tons of people a greater sense of their place in the universe and gave us the DNA structure (and even more great music than cocaine!) Speed...easy access to amphetamines has been around since we had amphetamines, probably not on accident...etc, etc.
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I refuse to believe that smoking pot the way most people smoke pot is health neutral or positive. I don't think there's any plant you can light on fire and inhale the smoke and have it be health neutral. I wake up with nasty coughs and I've had maybe 5 cigarettes in my life.
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What the fuck is happening in this thread? Have we all collectively dropped acid or is this the new "Today I'm gonna..."?
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Have we all collectively dropped acid
Now there's an idea!
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Wombat, maybe this is totally weird, but I sometimes think about strange Japanese foods that strike me as totally bizarre, and use that brain space to think that way about American foods. I think it works because both cultures have a lot of interest in convenience and packaged foods, and have turned their idiosyncratic foods into packaged versions.
"yeah, so this is some boiled wheat paste tubes with sauce. The sauce is made from this yellow powder, but it is supposed to taste like carefully fermented milk."
"this drink is a soda, but instead of any flavor you have heard of it is this blend of various roots. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_beer)"
now I can't think of other good ones. this makes eating basic foods seem really exciting.
I love this. Perspective.
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I don't know if smoking pot is natural/positive, but I think it is better for me than drinking a bunch on my nights off, which is what I used to do. I never wake up with an upset stomach or a headache after smoking. Smoking a drug and then giggling a lot and really enjoying a record is so much better than, like, drinking beer and being rude to ladies, or yelling at people, or really wanting to ride my bike but not being able to. I also do find that it makes me synthesize information into new knowledge in a different way, and notice things in a way I hadn't before.
I'm sure it is unhealthy for me to do. But I think the societal effects are much better than alcohol.
Also, cigarettes should be illegal. I don't know how/where pot relates to this opinion. If the numbers came out saying pot was as bad for you as tobacco I would say it should not be legal, but I have not seen evidence of that.
(I don't think possession or growing for personal use should be illegal, but you should not be able to legally market and sell a product that kills humans by the million.)
I guess I also never talked about the conclusion of this on here, but I did eventually find a psychiatrist and get prescribed psychiatric medication (slow-release ADD meds). They were very helpful once I found the right dose, but my doctor SUCKED for making appointments with. He was only in the office near me once a week, and I could never make it work out with my work schedule.
There was this interesting effect when I ran out of pills... the self-assurance I had gained stuck around for a few weeks longer, but the cognitive benefits disappeared almost instantly. So I would approach tasks optimistically, and then realize I was making a complete mess out of them. I felt GREAT about my performance at work, for instance, and then one day I realized I was feeling good about myself while making a lot of dumb mistakes and zoning out instead of working. Lots of dropping stuff, lots of forgetting people's orders, lots of staring at people mutely when they were talking to me. Yikes.
I also did this funny thing where I blew off working on my grad school applications for way too long. Good job, inev. Smoking pot and reading the D&D player's handbook was much more important.
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Now there's an idea!
A bad one. Doing so would bring back THA SUGAH RAIN and the other guy that was an aspie troll.
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Thread of the year. 9/10
(Do we still do awards like that? I know it happened.)
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Two tropes of marijuana use are munchies and demotivation.
They are tropes because they are hell of true. I was a lazy procrastinating kid before I started smoking pot. Within 6 months of starting I was kicked out of a state college for poor grades, basically because I never went to class. That did light enough of a fire under me that I wrote a letter basically begging to get reinstated. I didn't stop smoking pot entirely for another year or so, but I definitely noticed my ability to work productively was perfectly inversely proportional to the amount of toking I did.
The munchies for me was a weird experience. I wasn't hungry exactly, but it felt like there was an emptiness behind my ribs, and throwing food down my pie hole was amusing.
Despite the strong association between cancer and smoking, the number of smokers who get cancer is relatively low (its just much higher than the number of non-smokers for specific cancers like lung, esophageal, tongue, and lymphoma). What is almost inevitable if you smoke long enough is COPD, which is not a party. The real smoking associated killers are atherosclerosis and secondary infections to COPD, usually after a nice, long, wretched descent into unwellness. Atherosclerosis contributes to heart disease, kidney failure, and strokes.
What I'm saying Keith, and any other smokers reading this, is that not only will cigarettes kill you, they will make your life not worth living for a long while before that happens. Eating right and exercising provide a marginal benefit, and can't even make a dent in the damage smoking causes. Quitting sucks, and every ex-smoker I know hated the process, and really, REALLY wants to start back up again. Even those who have quit for 30 years. After a while though, like all human behaviors, not smoking becomes a habit and it isn't so much work any longer. I know you like projects - consider quitting a project and maybe it will be something you could be good at.
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Good god you sound exactly like my ex when she went to medical school. She became maniacally concerned about my smoking (cigs). I quit smoking because I hated smelling like smoke and smoking failed the ACAP test*. I'm personally not convinced (despite Education and Research) that smoking is an end-of-life causality. I smoked, at max, a pack a week. I couldn't find data on people who smoked like that. All of the PSAs are of people smoking packs a day and clearly had no lever of self-control. I could quit smoking for weeks at a time, but dude did I ever I want a cigarette at times.
Meanwhile my uncle died of esophageal cancer (never smoked) and my mother developed (about 4 people on earth had her form of) leukemia in her 50's despite living a healthy non smoking life. My father died of something equally odd. An analyst could see how I've easily developed an idea that death and disease Happen. We can run endless regressions on what causes what, but we have no idea.
*ACAP Test: You are about to make a decision
How many up and coming noble laureates would make the same decision?
Will you be able to function at 100% capacity after a night of sleep?
If you are about to break any laws, can you get out by morning with a fine?
Is there more than one person who can corroborate anything you do?
Would you do what you are about to do if your grand/mother was standing over your shoulder?
Can you make money and how much?
There are few more proprietary steps in the spreadsheet. Weights, etc.
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the perfect munchies snack: eggs. crack two in a pan of melted butter or bacon grease, add salt & pepper, break the yolks and stir. don't scramble it all the way, it'll fold together like an omelet. don't add cheese or anything, just buy good eggs.
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the perfect munchies snack: eggs. crack two in a pan of melted butter or bacon grease, add salt & pepper, break the yolks and stir. don't scramble it all the way, it'll fold together like an omelet. don't add cheese or anything, just buy good eggs.
You described the worst omelet ever. I guess if you poisoned it with cyanide or a miley cyrus cd it could be worse better.
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You described the worst omelet ever.
It's all about denyin' expectations at this level (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=02112009)
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<shit about eggs, also cigarettes, also weed>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBHoMvq_tmY</shit about eggs, also cigarettes, also weed>
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A-CAP you got some shit to learn about eggs man
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<shit about eggs, also cigarettes, also weed>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBHoMvq_tmY</shit about eggs, also cigarettes, also weed>
It's funny he should mention Happy Days because Jackson Browne really jumped the shark with this song.
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I believe that smoking cigarettes raises the level of black bile in the body, and to a lesser extent, phlegm. This leads to an imbalance in the four humours and we all know how painful that can be.
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Wombat was getting into comics when she invented A-cap. A family who always lie outside the normal distribution.
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I believe that smoking cigarettes raises the level of black bile in the body, and to a lesser extent, phlegm. This leads to an imbalance in the four humours and we all know how painful that can be.
A good leeching will fix that right up.
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After smoking marijuana for ten years, the only noticeable effect in me is (sorry) the phlegm. Gross, but not lethal. As long as I'm smoking it's here to stay, I'm afraid (it seems to go away by itself if I spend a long-ish period without smoking). Having seen the blackish, tar-like substance that accrues in the hard surfaces of smoking implements, it's not a big stretch of imagination to visualize that same shit in my alveoli. From here onwards it'll be just guessisms, but yeah, that hot smoke can't be good for your pipes. I kinda dread having a medical exam in my throat area, and everytime I have a little painful lump there (I'm constantly having inflammed throat because I have intermittent cold/flu) I start choosing epitaphs (Dejavroom - "Living and Learning").
But hey, apparently vaporizers are mellower on you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aSb5k1hOcI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aSb5k1hOcI). All the high, none of the burn.
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I feel like these discussions about pot and its physical benefits/problems are only looking at like 30% of the picture. How you feel, be it in 'regular life' or on a given substance, is physical as well. And the effects of a drug on one's mental health is a huge, huge part of whether using a given substance frequently ultimately confers positive or negative benefits on its user in the long term.
[N.B. my total prejudice re: this matter——see below]
I stopped smoking weed about three months ago. Weed was amazing the first time I tried it, one of the most bizarre and psychedelic experienced of my entire life. It continued being fun, albeit with diminishing returns, for about half a year after that. After that, I continued smoking pot for four years. All it did was fuck with my sleep cycle, wig out my eating habits, and exacerbate some underlying depressive tendencies that, after an amount of abstinence, seem to have receded, thank god.
So for me, was pot an ultimately harmful thing? Well, my body's probably fine. Hell, I vaped the stuff! I may have even staved off cancer or something, who knows. What I DO know, however, is that I wouldn't have wasted four years of my life being a relative zombie, watching movies and eating corn chips, had I smoked cigarettes. I may have even done something worthwhile!
Alcohol is far worse than pot to your health and organs or whatever, but at least the occasional imbibement results in me going out with the lady and making some new friends, listening to cool music, or discovering something I enjoy.
This little anecdote, though, comes with the caveat that neurodiversity is a real thing, and I myself have known people for whom marijuana is a real gift. I guess all I'm trying to say is that any discussion about whether a given drug is 'healthier' than another is a pretty naive one unless it takes the drug's mental and behaviour-altering effects into consideration.
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ianmalcolm2 what is your problem? Can't you see were trying to talk about achewood? Move your personal issues and opinions to reddit where someone gives a fuck. Stop polluting this achewood board with your dribbles.
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I thought we were talking about eggs.
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I thought we were talking about eggs.
I'm just glad we're talking at all. Normally the conversation peters out by about Tuesday.
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I am a much happier person when I smoke a lot of pot than I am when I drink a lot. Nicer, skinnier and healthier too.
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Well shit, then! At least the conversation's lively. And hey, I'm always happy to mix my dribbles with everyone else's. And even if my sarcasm-detector is off, are A-Cap's own pan-drippings always so sour?
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And AugustWest, that's totally cool——and covered by the caveat in my own turgid rant. I only wish weed did that to me. I guess the only point I'm really trying to make is that sometimes substances can be bad for your brain and not for your body.
But speaking of eggs.... how the fuck do you scramble them? Assholes keep telling me I'm doing it wrong.
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the "official" way is to use too much cream and whip them constantly over low heat until they're basically like pudding. i hate those. you just keep trying different recipes and the good lord will provide. all i need is eggs, some butter, and a rubber spatula, and i got my scramble all set.
try eggs with pot and whiskey, it's called the denver
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try eggs with pot and whiskey, it's called the denver
Wow choop, I'm definitely gonna try this one tonight (sans eggs, they'd just take up space which could be filled with whiskey).
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2 eggs per serving, a dash of milk, and a little cream cheese (1 teaspoon per serving). Whip briefly in a blender, then pour into a buttered skillet at no more than medium heat. Gently fold continuously with a spatula until the right level of moisture remains. Garnish with shredded sharp Cheddar.
I used to be a resolute believer in whipping them with a fork until the right amount of air had been beaten in, but with may wife's last pregnancy she became absolutely ravenous for scrambled eggs and I was in danger of getting some sort of repetitive stress injury in my forearm and resorted to the blender.
I make the egg portion of an omelet with a variation on this recipe, although it is really important not to whip too much air in. The air slows the cooking process and the bottom of the omelet will be overcooked before the top becomes set enough to flip.
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Well shit, then! At least the conversation's lively. And hey, I'm always happy to mix my dribbles with everyone else's. And even if my sarcasm-detector is off, are A-Cap's own pan-drippings always so sour?
That was pure sarcasm. I was living with a few dudes once and one of them asked how to make ramen noodles. I told him "You boil fuck*ng water and pour it over the noodles. Do you need help heating water to a boiling point or are you that fuck*ng dense?" The response from another housemate: "That's the nicest thing Acap has ever said to someone"