Cosmic Starlight

skirt and boots, and you, too can

be a Visigoth.

>thread is from 13 years ago

President itself used to be a much more humble word before it got associated with politics. It was the title picked because it was used for stuff like the leader of your local horse riding club or whatever the fuck.

Like even if the president is an evil dirty rotten nepo baby, he’s supposed to be just some guy. A very powerful guy, but still just some guy.

It’s like how during triumph processions in Ancient Rome they had a guy there to whisper in the general’s ear “remember that you are only a man” to remind them that this was a temporary honor and if they got too ambitious they would be put down.

A president needs to be seen shoveling ice cream into his face. A president lives in a relatively tiny apartment above the White House. A president lives in tasteful but relatively humble surroundings. The White House doesn’t belong to him after all. It belongs to us. The Americans. And anything he does to fuck up the White House he’s doing to our goddamned house so he’d better watch himself.

President 47 is an extremely weird case. Because he wants to be a king. Clearly. But the White House is too humble for a king. It’s not a white palace. It’s a White House. Very important distinction. More important than you probably think.

It doesn’t even belong to him though. So he decided to act like it belongs to him anyways. To treat it like a palace. And it looks bad and the courts keep blocking him from building his gaudy ballroom with real gold decorations.

Why the fuck are we paying for real gold decorations? That’s us paying for it. American taxpayers. Why does it need real gold? Genuine question.

It doesn’t. That house doesn’t need a ballroom. It doesn’t need gold. The gold that he’s putting up is being held on by superglue.

Like his design sense is somehow the cheapest looking and most offensively expensive looking “improvements” that have ever been done to the White House.

Previous presidents added like. A basketball court. A vegetable garden. Solar panels. Some offices. You know. Stuff you’d need in a big house that you invite guests into and also functions as a government office space.

This guy is adding… a ballroom? With gold hubcaps on the outside? Why the fuck do you need a ballroom in a house?

Answer: you don’t. You might need one in a palace though.

The message is clear. He’s not even trying to be just some guy. And does that matter?

Probably not as much as a lot of other things that he’s done, but still yes. Because since the very beginning it’s been fully understood that the president of the United States must constantly be reminded that he is but a man. This guy is doing his very best to remove all of those reminders and make himself the cheapest looking expensive palace he can imagine.

I thought about the interactions of Orange and Pink, but as an orange soul and a mad dummy from the undertale.

Of course Peter Gallagher knows that "dank" is a weed thing. He also knows that "in heat" is a sex thing and that when aliens "probe" someone it's in the anus.

These are words, not things. Heathcliff is a comic about symbols.

You're never going to get a comic where an alien actually probes someone any more than you're going to get a comic where the Man-Eating Giant eats a man. You're just going to get a dozen comics where aliens like the word "probe".

Heathcliff wears the ham helmet because it's the helmet you wear when you eat a ham. You can tell it's that helmet because it says "ham" on it. The helmet's function is determined not by its form but by its label.

summer = beach = sand = desert = mummy and thus there is the Summer Mummy. Because of symbolic associations that do not otherwise cohere.

Robots don't wear clothes but the mere act of labeling them "nude" makes them nude. And once a painting is a nude painting there has to be a fig leaf because a "nude" without a "figleaf" is "indecent".

Lost Kitchen Scrolls

It has a huge variety of historical recipes from different regions, taken from manuscripts, transcribed and translated, and a whole section of notes about the context for the recipe. It's really fun and I AM going to try a couple of these recipes.

Look at how this lamb recipe is presented:

This is just such a fun way to learn more about historical foodways and discover traditional cuisine.

Look at all the filters you can use:

Maybe if I can forage some good blackberries this year, I can make a 300 year old recipe for blackberry wine!