Adeline Area

"Sorry, I don't mean to offend--"

Which of course, I brace for hell, since he is around 60, and i am a gangly cryptid that people usually struggle only to find the right slur to apply to. But i dutifully keep my work voice and go "nah nah, don't worry, what can I do?"

He hits me with "Are you--uh, I've been saying 'thank you ma'am' but are you... okay with that? What should I call you?"

And i live in a small conservative pocket within one of the most liberal states in the US, so my experience in public is varied. People have guessed, they've gone with she, he. they, they've awkwardly avoided it, but no stranger had ever asked me.

So i panicked and chuckled. This felt kind of like walking into a fake tumblr post. I said "Oh, you can call me whatever you want, its fine."

Any cis person would probably sound a little insulted. i knew i was confirming some kind of gender fuckery, but giving him the out that he didn't have to change anything. Fucker kindly smiles though, and like. Pounces. Asks, much more confidently, "But would you prefer sir? What are your pronouns?"

He's on script now, I'm astral projecting to a different plane where i'm a bug on a well lit microscope and my throat's a little tight all the sudden. I say, "Oh. I uh--I use they/them."

I use they or he, but 'they' is the language curveball. I know this, which is why i usually just let people use whatever. He nods, and I choke out (because its been a bad bad day, autoimmune flare pain on top of record high patient numbers) "Thanks. No one... has ever asked me. Have a good day."

He told me the same, I booked it, because the dim room was hiding watery eyes but not for much longer. Got it together in a nearby closet (ha) and moved on.

Came back later on in the evening because I had promised to visit when his wife was there earlier in the day. She's sweet, he's sweet, I do my usual spiel, he avoids any 'ma'am' studiously, but on me going to head out again, hits the dilemma of having no polite substitute for 'ma'am' or 'sir' that isnt gendered in some subtle way, and he's fucking trying, but this is not second nature obviously.

So what comes out is "Have a wonderful night, Them!"

Beaming, proud, right next to his extremely confused wife, who he seems to have not outted me to (nice) who now thinks he's probably having a stroke (funny, but not nice lmao)

Botanically, a tomato is a fruit. A fruit is scientifically defined as the part of a plant that develops from the ovary after flowering and surrounds the seeds. It’s defined by its structure and function. In botanical categorization, apples, peaches, grapes, tomatoes, bananas, avocados, pumpkins, peppers, and corn kernels are fruits.

Culinarily, a tomato is a vegetable, because it’s a plant food that is neither starchy nor sweet and you usually don’t just eat it raw. Vegetables are culinarily defined by their flavor and how you cook them. In culinary categorization, any part of a plant can be a vegetable: roots (carrots, parsnips), leaves (lettuce, kale), stems (celery), seeds (peas, lima beans), and yes fruits (tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins). In culinary categorization, “fruits” are usually botanical fruits, though occasionally they are other parts of the plant instead, as long as they’re juicy and sweet (strawberries are actually the stems of a plant; the ovaries surrounding the seeds are the little seeds on the outside! Pineapples and figs are a weird flower-ovary fusion called multiple inflorescence!)

These are simply two different categorizational schemes that through the weirdness of historical linguistics use the same word “fruit” to mean different segments of the totality of plants. Neither is incorrect, because they are two different ways of categorizing plants for two different purposes.

Categories aren’t “real.” Categories don’t exist in nature. Things exist in nature, plants exist in nature, rocks and animals and genes and hormones and human experiences exist in nature. And humans look at the totality of everything and we come up with names and categories to sort and understand them. A category is not real; it is only useful or not useful. Botanical categories are useful for different reasons than culinary categories are, but they’re both useful ways to break up and understand the world. And they are useful in their own contexts, and may not be useful in other contexts. Botany has no use for defining what is and isn’t a “vegetable” so that’s just not a category in scientific botany. It’s a useful category for low-sweetness low-starch plant parts you cook in order to eat, though.

And we put everything into categories, and we have reasons for categorizing things the way we do—but we choose what traits are important to group by, and what traits aren’t. Vegetables, nuts, fruits, and grains are culinary plant food categories. And some categories are silly, like “is a taco a sandwich?” That’s a categorization game: what traits do we decide make an individual item part of the category or not?

@will-ruadh sharing my favorite works on ukrainian folklore, all of which can be found online for free. overall, i can recommend any works of foundational ukrainian folklorists & ethnographists: pavlo chubynskyi, mykhailo maksymovych, mykola sumtsov, khvedir vovk, mykhailo dragomanov, mykola kostomarov, volodymyr hnatiuk, philaret kolessa, oleksa voropai, oleksandr potebnya. just google their works and you can read, as they are all in free access. but below are things where you may start

mythology & demonology

• "Первісна міфологія українського фольклору", Віктор Давидюк.

• "Нарис української міфології" та "Знадоби до української демонології", Володимир Гнатюк

• "Українська міфологія", Володимир Галайчук

• "Звичаї нашого народу. Етнографічний нарис", Олекса Воропай. comes in two tomes. it's both mythology and calendar rituals, so it's kind of in-between topics

calendar rituals & liminal rites

• "Дни и месяцы украинского селянина", Михайло Максимович. ukrainian academic, but worked during russian empire, so the work is in pre-revolutionary russian.

• "Обряды: родины, крестины, свадьба, похороны", Павло Чубинський. again, russian empire ukrainian academic, written in pre-revolutionary russian.

• "Переправа через воду, как представление брака", Олександр Потебня. same as above

• "Хлеб в обрядах и песнях", Микола Сумцов. same as above

ethnomusicology

• "Ритміка українських народних пісень", Філарет Колесса.

• "Студії над українськими народними піснями", Іван Франко

• "Український музичний фольклор: навчальний посібник", Анатолій Іваницький

customary law

• "Звичаєве право в Україні", Олена Івановська

cultural anthropology

What we know is we have found a cache of complaint tablets about him selling low quality copper as high quality, in a site that was probably his own residence. We know multiple people complained he was a cheat. It's entirely possible they were right. It's also entirely possible that he kept these complaint letters as records of people he would no longer do business with, because they had made accusations and threats in order to bully him into giving them free copper. That is an equally valid interpretation of the evidence.

1. A lot of dudes. Just a ton of fucking people from beginning to end of the process.

2. Ancient people weren't stupid, they just figured shit out the same way we do: fuck around until you find out.

3. We're gonna plan this out and it's gonna take ten fucking years, and you will cope.

4. Sticks and string are surprisingly versatile and can be used for a variety of purposes, like moving stuff and making sure things are even and go in the spot you wanted to put them in!

Imagine if one day you were given a choice: Become immortal and indestructible for eternity, unable to be harmed by anything ever again, and get to live forever.

However, in order to achieve that you must give up whatever your purpose in life is. Whatever it is that you were always meant to do, what you were supposed to contribute to the overall scheme and future of the life of the universe, your purpose… the whole reason you were even created, even born in the first place. You must give that up. You don’t know what that is. You’ll never know; But, regardless, you say yes.

Perhaps you assume you wouldn’t have made any sort of significant difference anyway. That butterfly effect theory or whatever they call it? Nah, you call bullshit. It doesn’t matter - you don’t matter, at least not to anything outside of your immediate connections - and it’ll all be fine, and you’ll just live forever with minimal (or maybe even no) consequences.

So, yay! You’re now immortal. You’ll never die or get hurt ever again. Wee!

But then, centuries and centuries later (not to mention that by this point you’ve gone through horrible heartbreak and misery and despair because every loved one you ever had, every friend you ever made, ever person you barely got to know, has passed away, died as you lived on long without them, helpless to do anything for them as you watched them perish, unable to ever go with them or ever see them again. But I digress), now, you learn you actually were important in the grand scheme of things. You were supposed to be a key factor in the world’s survival, long ago; but, because of the choice you made (immortality over individual purpose), you were never given the knowledge or awareness or resources or ability to save the world that you were always supposed to obtain, before you unknowingly made the wrongest choice to ever wrong.

Needless to say, you’ve fucked up big time.

The entire universe as we know it is destroyed soon after this horrifying revelation. It implodes, collapses in on itself, essentially forming a massive black hole or something. Stars, nebulae, galaxies, solar systems and planets, worlds and worlds of living people and things, and light-years of time and space and life, all sucked up into absolute, indefinite nothingness.

But you remain.

Just you. Floating amongst, spiraling around, rocketing through, suspended in… nothing. With a feeling of such unbelievable loneliness that your feeble brain can hardly perceive, can’t possibly hope to comprehend. Not only are you the only living thing left, you don’t even have one inanimate object to keep you company. You have literally. Nothing. And you are literally nowhere. I mean, technically, you are now the universe - if it would bring you petty comfort to think about it that way. You. Only you. With nothing, no one, nowhere. Forever. And ever. And ever.

All because you thought you didn’t matter. That you had no real, meaningful purpose. That you could never possibly make a difference.

But you did. And now look what you’ve gotten yourself into, you silly nugget. You’re gonna be pretty bored and lonely for that eternity, huh?

Or maybe it was out of selfishness. Maybe this wasn’t because you felt useless, but because you simply only cared about prolonging your own life and nothing else. Hm.

The moral here? Be selfless, and always know and remember that you matter.

Or else, one day, you might destroy the universe. And be left to suffer, and be tortured horribly and endlessly by the void of nothingness that has consumed you. With no way to escape. Ever.

Other moral because I got sidetracked from my initial point - all things considered, would you choose longevity over purpose? Immortality over meaning? 

OR, IDK, MAYBE SOME IDIOT JUST LAMINATED A STUPID PIECE OF PAPER TOWEL FOR NO GOOD REASON

AND MAYBE I SHOULDNT BE LOOKING FOR THE ANSWERS TO THE MEANING OF OUR SHORT, FRAGILE LIVES IN

A LAMINATED

PAPER

T OW E L

IDK MAN,

and the pages of that book

were made out of

laminated