Go Ahead, Reblog This

OKay, so I know people are going to have a lot of misconceptions about why, particularly, I have such unbridled hatred for this song, and most of them would be wrong.

Oh, Doc, you hate it because it’s heterosexual! So is literally all of Titanic and we know I eat that shit up, so while I would never say Love Story is anywhere close to Titanic, it’s also not that hard to imagine as gay, being as there’s no real spots in the lyrics where she details his fine manliness and oh my god I love how he’s a dudley man and wow the...manness, of it all. Nowhere to be found, I come from the elderly lesbian shores, where we had to imagine all the lesbianism for ourselves, as no one was going to give it to us, so please rest assured that this was no barrier to entry. 

Oh, then, you hate Taylor Swift? No, it is a mark of my general sanity that I have no managed to have a complete thought about Taylor Swift at any point in my not terribly young life, and I don’t intend to start now. I am certain she has written some real club bangers or whatever, I have heard her in passing, but I don’t have any feelings about her in the way that I have no feelings about any other young pop chanteuse. 

You hate it because its insipid! Oh no, if I hated things merely because they were insipid, Toto’s Africa would not enjoy a place in my cooking mix. Things do not actually become “good” as they get older, contrary to the many old people who will tell you that music “back in my day” was somehow superior, it’s just that the Diet Pepsi of the brain becomes our chosen aspartame. I encourage the youth to have their own dumb bullshit. 

No, no, what FUCKING ENRAGES ME about the song Love Story is that it is a retelling, supposedly, of a Romeo and Juliet type relationship, name checked and everything, and it has the audacity, the UTTER GALL, to end with this:

Marry me, Juliet, you’ll never have to be alone/I love you and, that’s all I really know/ I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress. 

I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress. 

I TALKED TO YOUR DAD, GO PICK OUT A WHITE DRESS 

Please imagine with me this world in which the entirety of Romeo and Juliet, a story that, at its core, is about how pettiness and tribalism will kill your children, could have been solved by TALKING TO LORD CAPULET. That’s it, just a fucking conversation, problem solved. I am not joking this is the ENTIRE conclusion to the problem within the song. Trisha Yearwood’s “She’s In Love With The Boy” manages to at least have the barest scrap of actual conflict with actual fighting and some sort of intervention, so it’s not like a song cannot have this with a very similar structure. 

Did Taylor Swift simply never ACTUALLY READ Romeo and Juliet? I am willing to imagine that she just skipped out on 10th grade English entirely, as she also mentions in the song that “You were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter” which leads me to believe that she never cracked Nathaniel Hawthorne, either, unless her aim in this part of the song was to dunk on her parents by saying “I have no idea what they’re getting so fucking shirty about given that I was the obvious product of their adultery” and yet somehow I doubt that. Full kudos to Mlle. Swift if that was her intention in the work, though. 

Every time I fucking hear this song and it gets to that part, I EXPLODE*. What a willful fucking misunderstanding of a piece of work. What a way to reduce everything going on in  play that in itself isn't even that deep! What the actual fuck. Why? Why am I being forced to deal with this? This makes me want to fucking die and/or forcibly sit every fucking American down** and make them study literature all over again, only this time, I am the teacher and I am a harsh and unfeeling God. 

*Which I imagine is why Jetty sent this. She’s seen it in real time. 

@katrani‘s commission was a little odd this month–she asked that I condense my thoughts on Yuri Kuma Arashi, which she’d heard I’d seen part of. It was a little odd, but I was happy to do it! Warning: None of this is complimentary to the show. 

SHOOOOCK! KUMA SHOCK!

Shock is possibly the only realistic reaction to 99% of what goes on in Yuri Kuma Arashi, or, at least, the four episodes I committed myself to before remembering that I have a full and happy life with people who love me, and I don’t have to lash out in self-harm. So it may well be that after ⅓ of the goddamn anime is over, it actually starts to engage with the audience in ways that aren’t “Hey, check out me licking honey off a lily spurting from this girl’s body, in a way that you will be forced to remember is being written by a man constantly and all the time.”

This show is literally about predatory lesbians.

This show is about lesbian bears, who pose as schoolgirls, and literally consume girls. And kill them. By eating them.

I loathe reality TV. I hate the lies of it, I hate the inane personal dramas that I’m meant to give a shit about, I hate the tragic anime backstories, I hate the artificial driver of competition. It is absolutely the lowest common denominator of television, and I especially hate it when it posits to be doing something valuable or teaching anything. 

Venture capitalism is a way for the very worst of people, whose only skill is in hoarding money, to make more money based on the clever ideas of others. It’s asking people to chip away at ownership of their dreams and feeling literally no guilt over it as you climb into your next yacht. Billionaires are bad people. There is no way to become a billionaire and be a good person. Millionaires are pretty close behind. 

But apparently when you combine them, ALL IS BLISS IN THE COURT OF DOCTOR HOLLIGAY, as she slorps her ramen noodles on the couch. 

The basic premise of Shark Tank, for those of you with a currently functioning system of taste and morality, is that “Sharks” who are just millionaires and billionaires who have apparently ~built their own way~ lololololol okay, hear out ideas for different companies and products and decide what to invest in, for what share of the company. It’s literally making a game out of watching people try to defend their dreams, and no one is happier than when someone breaks down crying because the sharks tell them it’s fucking stupid. 

This woman is crying about natural and organic cookie mixes. 

What makes it even worse is that I get invested enough in watching this show that I SHARK PREFERENCES. I look at these millionaires and billionaires and instead of rightly taking them to the guillotine I apparently decide to make them my waifu because bootlicking wasn’t enough. THIS SHOW MAKES YOU WOOBIFY PEOPLE WITH PRIVATE PLANES AND YET HERE I AM, LINING UP. 

MARK:

Look at this man. He is the epitome of every smug, know it all dude that takes pride in “not being fancy” (translation: slovenly and refusing to look nice for other people) because he thinks it makes him “real”. This man has probably explained the American West to me in an airport bar. He owns a fucking SPORTS TEAM, for god’s sake, he’s like if Bezos and Bros had a baby. 

He’s the living embodiment of the “why are you booing me, I’m right meme,” and he is absolutely my favorite shark. In my tiny defense, he is always the one to jump on any health claims, not matter how well it sells, and yell at the other sharks for even considering buying them, so it suggests he has one crumb of morality (as a treat!) also in fairness he paid his hourly workers during the closure of the center he owns, but like, let’s not scream comrade Cuban to a billionaire just yet. 

ROBERT:

This man is laughing because he literally just evicted me from my home in the middle of winter, and I let him do it because he always has a nice pocket square and a positive attitude. 

BARBARA:

This photo says everything I need to say about why I vibe with Barbara. 

This show brings nothing of value to the table other than the joy of being an armchair investor. I sit there in my fucking giant beanbag, drinking a beer going, “Oh, that is just not enough profit margin to be sustainable. And those customer acquisition costs? You must be fucking stupid.” It allows me to feel smarter than someone who actually got up off their ass and did something about an idea they had while I’m sitting here complaining about how nobody makes a synced step counter that’s tiny and simple. AND I WILL CONTINUE TO DO NOTHING. 

INITIAL DETAILS ON THIS EVENT

I'm trying to raise about $500 for each charity, which I know is a tall order! that's about $2,000 total.

I do not see a single cent of this. I don't want to! You will do this all completely through the website set up to accept donations from Yellowstone Valley Gives. I want to do something to make a difference, and more than I can do anything else, I can offer myself up to try and help out these places that really need it.

Please note that if you are American, this is tax deductible! Everything is a certified charity, and nothing I do is actually considered value ahahahah. If you are in another country, i don't know but I assume not.

So here's how it's going to kind of work, I think.

Tip of literally any amount: I will thank you on the stream or in a post, depending on what it is I'm doing. I am still kind of working with how fast I get notified of donations. This is my first year! So please be patient with me.

Live Auctions: (This could go for any price, bidding starts at 20 bucks) For things like FMA 2003 English Dub, Sailor moon, and anything else that seems like it might be fun for, I'll be doing a live auction to pick the episode. I have the whole run of SM in both the original and the Viz, and I have up to episode 15 of FMA 2003 in English (One of the few no no zones: I won't skip around on anything I'm currently liveblogging, because that's disrespectful to my patrons. So no going ahead in FMA.)

There's Too Much Money in Politics: $20, quadruples your vote in any live votes!

Change the channel, $50: For whatever I'm doing, for 50 bucks you can change the channel! (my choice)

Change the channel plus:, $100 For whatever I'm doing, you can't change the channel to whatever YOU want for the next hour or so (assuming I can get my hands on it relatively quickly)

Change the Channel Plus, locked: $250. For whatever I'm doing, you can change the channel to whatever YOU want for the next two hours (or so), and it is locked. No one can change it!

AHEAD OF TIME OPTIONS:

DocDoc Guide: For $150 bucks, you can get a two hour slot, whenever you want it in the 24 hour period (assuming it's not already taken by a paid slot) FOR $200 IT IS UNCHANGEABLE. NO ONE CAN CHANGE THE CHANNEL ON YOU. I WILL PIN SOMETHING TO EVERY POST OR THE TOP OF THE CHAT. And girl, you call it. Want me to watch Digimon? Babygirl, you got it. Play a fast-twitch reflex video game? This scrub will not get gud but she will die over and over. Want me to Noted Scholar Doc that stupid fucking episode of FMA 2003? I've always thought Psiren was making a statement about the soft power of feminine authority. Want me to drink an entire bottle of champagne while pretending to be various blorbim? This one might kill me, but it would be fun the whole time I died.

Like Sailor Moon fics that focus on the lesbians?

Like poignant and insightful commentary like you've seen in some of my Utena reblogs and Everything Everywhere All At Once?

This is the go-getting tiny Jewish lesbian I follow for that content. And I've learned a lot from her liveblogs to inform my own. She's hilarious in the most clever of ways.

I live in a "historically underprivileged" neighborhood. I'm a part of the neighborhood committee. I was talking to a man that's a member of a car club that's mostly young men with low riders. He was telling e how frustrated he was that people in the community didn't see the car club as an asset that helped keep them out of trouble.

I offered up the idea that they might want to do something to show good faith in the community. To engage with instead of just riding by. He was super receptive!

They're sponsoring an Easter egg hunt in our park with a few cars that the kids can get in and honk the horns of, some food and music, all free to our local neighborhood.

I bought Lyle’s Golden Syrup on a whim in our international grocers months ago, nestled between the Marmite and jarred clotted cream. I didn’t know what golden syrup tasted like, I had no use for it, and no recipe I had ever read included it. Naturally, I bought it immediately. Walking by the racks of Japanese candy and multiple incidences of ramen noodles, I asked myself, “Is there a particular reason I’m buying this, or am I just pissed they don’t have Walker’s and don’t want to walk away empty-handed?” 

Months later, I end up watching a video on parkin. Uses golden syrup. In this moment, the stars align. 

How did I stumble on this? Well, I’m interested in historical food, and even more so historical baking, and November was coming up. Try the Guy Fawkes day cake, it proclaimed to me, and as I watched it, and it was described to me as an English gingerbread-style cake, i thought, “There’s nothing about that idea I don’t like! I can make parkin, it can’t be that hard. Not like i’m going to be able to buy it here to try it.” 

And hard is not the word for it. Let’s go on a journey. 

So the first thing is, that Yorkshire parkin isn’t the only parkin in town and so, as I glanced at recipes, i discovered that there were multiple theories of the business, and many of these theories involved insulting each others’ grandmothers. Lancashire parkin uses mainly golden syrup, resulting in a sweeter and softer-flavored cake, and I guess that’s why the only things a civilized human being knows about Lancashire is that it’s in the North of England, and it features in the Merrily Song from the Wind and the Willows. No, the more I read, the more I realized I wanted Yorkshire parkin, a dark, aggressive form of the cake that makes heavy use of black treacle and threatens to kick your teeth in. It’s no wonder that Yorkshire gets all the great wonders of the North, like Wuthering Heights, The Secret Garden, and that one pizza place I really liked. 

It turns out that Yorkshire parkin uses a very small amont of golden syrup, and so you may be saying to yourself at this point, “Doc are you unnecessarily complicating your life to say you literally opened this stupid plastic bottle of sugar syrup?” to which I say, ‘No one asked you, okay?” 

Black treacle is the first thing on this list, and this was actually the easy part. One of the ‘fun’ things about reading recipes from English to English (and sometimes even to English!) is that you have to make substitutions, and people’s attitude toward substitutions for ingredients run the gamut from questionable to hysteria. The good news is that this unites us all, and I am sure there will be several fine Brits yelling at me that unsulfured molasses is nothing like black treacle, in the same way that many Americans lost their mind at the mere suggestion that a digestive might be more or less equivalent to a graham cracker. I welcome your hatemail, Hail Satan , Lord of Spiders, just use unsulfured molasses and you’ll be fine. 

But then we have the problem of “medium oatmeal.” The Brits are running on a completely different system than we are with our paltry three or so styles of oatmeal: Rolled, steel cut (often called Irish oats), and instant. There are some outliers, but they are mostly the exclusive purview of places where one might buy free-range ostrich farts and consensually squeezed oranges. Meanwhile, on a rainy rock in the North, we have seventeen separate grades of oatmeal, some of which are only found on one specific moor where young maidens cry over it, keening into the wind (An expensive delicacy not unlike kopi luwak) Try as I might, I found it near impossible to get medium oatmeal, and so I took the most reasonable out possible: Buying steel cut oats and frantically googling photos of medium oatmeal until I had processed it down to the rough appearance. 

This is medium oatmeal. Probably. 

The assembly of it is stunningly old-fashioned, and I’m not making a joke when I say it seems basically unchanged from the 1700s: You mix the sugar and butter ingredients together in a sauce pan until the sugar melts, and then throw it into the dry mix, putting it together and then throwing in an egg as some desperate attempt to give so loft to what is going to be a doorstop or perhaps the blunt object that was originally used to kill Guy Fawkes, as well as a splash of milk, though what it hopes to contribute to the action I can’t possibly imagine. 

Having read over all this at 9:30 pm on the 5th of November, I ready myrself to assemble the parkin so I can leave it out for King James or whatever. Then I read the cook time on the cake: Seventy to Ninety Minutes. 

“Fuck this shit, I’m American,” I said, cracking open a beer and heading upstairs with my sixteen guns while eagles cried and sang “God Bless The USA” overhead. 

REMEMBER, REMEMBER, THE SIXTH OF NOVEMBER, WHEN ALL THESE INGREDIENTS ARE STILL SITTING IN MY KITCHEN. 

So, I have followed the recipe. The cake is in the oven. What will it become? Stay tuned!

There's only one problem. Apparently you have to remember, remember, the 3rd of November, as this needs to essentially cure in an airtight container for three days before you eat it.