Feathers.

Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention.  Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.

As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities.  This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.

When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.

Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace.  Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on.  In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.

For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you.  It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass.  All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.

*

“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”

“We’re getting to that.”  He waved.

*

The First Incident in January when, due to a serious cock-up by the church, all the hosts Father Pat received were moldering and spoiled and probably would have killed someone if he’d actually fed anyone them.  But it was the first mass of the year, when a peak number of people came in after vowing to got to church more for new year’s.  He couldn’t NOT have communion.

“I’ll bake.” offered Maria, the parish secretary and probably the best baker in the county. “So we have hosts.  Jesus will understand.”

Father Patrick, not one to pass up the chance at Maria’s cooking, immediately agreed.

A Host is supposed to be composed solely of unleavened wheat flour and water, which is why they taste terrible.  It’s a theological point of some importance relating to Exodus or something but Maria had an important theological counterpoint: Jesus both divine and loves all his children, ergo, Jesus would neither be a nasty bland cracker nor want his children to suffer as such and so instead, she made Mexican wedding cookies.

They were a SPECTACULAR hit.  Many praises were heaped upon father patrick for the Much Better Wafers and that they’d be sure to show up next week as long as Maria kept making them.  Father Patrick figuring that hey, anything that gets people in the doors is good and really, if it was turning into Jesus once inside the parishioner, did it really matter what the wafers were made of?  So he continued to let Maria bake the Hosts, and encouraged her to try out new flavors, like nutmeg and cinnamon.

This went on swimmingly for a few weeks until The Bishop showed up for a surprise visit the same week Maria decided to experiment with rainbow sprinkles.

Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”

The matter went clean up to The Archbishop, who decided that while Pat was probably right to not feed spoiled hosts to his parish, he should attend some remedial classes to remember what Communion was all about, so that if it happened again, he’s come up with a more suitable substitute.

Father Patrick returned in late March, full of spite and some fascinating new ideas.

*

“Is this where the Cannibalism happens?” Six-year-old me asked, eager to get to the good parts.

*

At his remedial classes, the teacher had stressed the importance of transubstantiation, aka “That bit where the wafer and wine, Actually, Literally, become the flesh of Jesus Christ and we expect you to swallow.”  Also on the syllabus was understanding the importance of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice.

“So, I was thinking about Easter Service.”  Said father Patrick one afternoon while dad was doing his computer science homework at the church because his dorm was a barely-standing fire hazard and the library was where you went to have sex.

“Well, we do re-enactments for christmas.  Why not on easter?  Why not re-enact the crucifixion of Christ right here? Make it real for everyone.  Trauma’s great for bonding a community together.”

“Who’s playing Jesus?” asked Maria, always one for a good laugh.

“That’s the thing- A Host, it doesn’t look much like flesh, right?  Doesn’t look like much of anything, really.  Not great for reinforcing one’s belief.

What if, instead, we- and I mean you, Maria, I can’t cook to save my life- make a man-sized loaf of bread, maybe in the shape of a T, and we have some of the boys dress up as romans and whip the bread and we pour the wine on so it’s bleeding and them- then we make a big wooden cross and actually nail the bread to it with, I don’t know, railroad spikes, more wine all over. And we raise the cross, all while telling the story of the crucifixion.”

He paused to take a drink, Maria slowly crumpling onto the floor in horrified laughter and Dad now thoroughly distracted from his homework.

“Then we lower the cross, and invite everyone who wants to take communion up to tear a hunk of Jesus off.  Just descend into his corpse like vultures.  I think that’d really be a good bonding experience for the church.”  he nodded thoughtfully.  “The hard, part, I suppose, will be finding enough romans.”

“I WANNA BE LONGINUS.” bellowed my father, barreling into the room.

And so, the plan was hatched.  Dad hit up every other guy in the Church and eventually rounded up four more romans, three of them from the Education Department of Cal Poly, and one guy from Chemistry, who just liked to watch things burn.

This, being a play, naturally meant that there was a rehearsal, and test Bread jesus.  Maria had decided that if they were going to start being extra-literal, she needed to make the most lifelike Bread jesus possible, and made a distressingly buff and human-proportioned Jesus by Advanced bread-braiding, complete with plaited hair, quail’s-egg-and-raisin eyes, bready muscle groups, and an eight-pack because why not make the lord completely shredded?*  She also made the important theological decision that since Jesus loves everyone and was happy to die in spite of all his suffering, he should be smiling, and had a toothy corn-kernel smile.  He was Wonderful and Terrifying all at once.

“Maria,” asked Father Patrick after a few minutes of delighted and horrified cooing over Jesus’ toothy grin and abdominals. “Why is he wearing a tea-towel?

“Well, he’s the Son of God. A Man.  With all that entails.”  She said, pointedly staring at Father Patrick while everyone stared at the suspiciously lumpy tea-towel.  “And he might have… burnt, slightly.”

Everyone nodded and agreed that the tea-towel was the best course of action.  The rehearsal goes splendidly and everyone agrees that this is the most delicious Jesus they’ve ever had.

*

Easter Sunday arrives and the Church is PACKED, from the more lapsed Catholics showing up for a high holiday, parents visiting for spring break and a whole horde of newcomers who had gotten wind that something was up and they ought to come.

Dad is a lanky as hell 21-year old composed mostly of technical jargon and acne but he is STOKED to be playing Longinus, the roman that speared Jesus on the cross, because he gets to do the BEST technical effect in the whole parade.  Since he came in at the end me missed a good portion of the sermon, but did hear the “oooh” from the crowd as the massive cross was dragged in by the other Romans, followed by horrified gasps and high screams and a discernible “What the FUCK” as they brought in Bread Jesus 2.0, whipping him enthusiastically, and hammering him into the cross, the sound of wine splashing onto the floor loud in the terrified silence of that Parishioners.

Finally Father Patrick gets to the part about Longinus, and Dad comes sprinting down the aisle as hard as he can, because in order for Bread Jesus to be seen by everyone, his middle had to be about 10 feet off the ground, so Dad had to run, shrieking latin curses,  down the length of the church, with a big honking spear and take a flying leap at Jesus in order to spear him in the gut.

Please take moment to imagine you are some normal god-fearing catholic who has decided to visit little bobby or maybe patricia at college and you’re all going to church together like a nice family and this Fucking madman has decided to go all Silence of the Lambs on mass and now there’s some sort of underfed translucently pale man in ill-fitting Roman armor and cape flying at a horrifying glutinous effigy of your lord and savior, with an actual fucking spear, screaming like a madman.  Don’t you feel yourself drawing closer to God already? Defensively, perhaps, like an octopus trying to ooze itself into a crevice against the horrors of the ocean.

However, two things happen that were not planned on

1. Dad misses.  In his defense, Bread Jesus is close to but not quite the size of a man- more like the size of a doughy teenager, and his middle is a small target 10 feet up in the air and dad is has a computer science minor, not an athletics scholarship.  He misses by about 8 inches and instead very solidly stabs Bread Jesus right through the groin, leaving a big hole in Maria’s tea-towel and the spear jutting out at a decidedly… attentive angle, as Bread Jesus’s Bread Dick drops to the floor with a splat.  Nobody notices this, however because

2. In rehearsal, Dad had managed to get the spear right in jesus’s navel but neither Father Patrick nor the other romans could get the wine up there to make his middle appropriately bloodied.  

Maria come up with the Genius solution that since wine is made of grapes and Jam is made of grapes, she could make a jelly-filled Jesus for Dad to stab.  There was a normal-sized test loaf and when dad stabbed it on the table, it had a nicely gooey dribbling effect.

However, this time the loaf was torso-sized, still hot from the oven and upright, so when dad speared the very end of the loaf, all the steam-pressured jam had collected at the bottom and a spray of lukewarm smuckers exploded out from bread jesus, turning the first three pews into a splash zone of symbolic entrails.

There was  a hot, sticky minute of complete silence in the church after that. 

Then, Father Patrick indicated it was time for the cross to be lowered, and continued on with the normal preparations of the Host, he himself covered in hot smuckers, as though nothing particularly ordinary was occuring, quietly kicking the bread-dick under the altar. At the end of it all, Father Patrick and invited everyone up with the Last Oration:

“Thou, O God, has kindly allowed us to have a part in this Holy Sacrifice; for this we give Thee thanks. Accept it now to Thy glory and be ever mindful of our weakness. Amen.”

…And everybody came up, shuffling like terrified zombies, pinching off tiny bits at first but then the madness took them and they began tearing apart bread jesus by the handful, weeping as they partook, scattered prayers and begging for forgiveness.  The whole congregation was kneeling about the altar, tearful and united in their guilt and their need for God.

*

“IS CHURCH ALWAYS LIKE THAT?” six-year-old me asked, absolutely stoked.  I’d convert on the spot if I got a show like that.

“No, it’s normally bland wafers and lots of chanting in latin.”

“Well that’s boring as hell.” I remember muttering and Dad snorting the coffee he was drinking out of his nose.

*

As people filed silently out of the Church to a gloriously sunny California afternoon, faces wan and smeared with wine and jam, Father patrick turned to Maria and asked “You don’t think that was too much, do you?”

“No.”  Said Maria with a sarcastic deadpan so intense it was hard to tell from sincerity.

It was the exact same tone she used when the Archbishop and Six other high clergy showed up, clutching a letter someone had written, Livid and almost foaming at the mouth, demanding to know if such blasphemy had transpired.

“No.  That’s crazy.”  She said, staring down the archbishop like he was an idiot.

“Such imaginations some people have!” Said Father Patrick, much less convincingly.

“And you-  you didn’t…  Spear an effigy of our lord and savior?”  the archbishop demanded of my father.

“Do I look like I can jump that high?”  Dad asked, having in the interim been drafted for 51 days then nearly died of pneumonia from it, and therefore no longer afraid of the Church, the Law or God.

Somewhat relieved that he’d only received the extremely detailed ramblings of a doddering parishioner, the Archbishop sat down and complemented Maria on her most excellent Mexican Wedding Cookies, may he please have another plate for his nerves? Perhaps the ones with sprinkles?

Dad went on to help build the internet, Father Patrick converted to Buddhism and Maria became a Nun.

*For those of you wondering, Jesus was made of Challah.

Ieri @figlianumerouno si è fatta inserire nella parte inferiore del braccio il NEXPLANON, un dispositivo contraccettivo sottocutaneo (o LARC, long-acting reversible contraceptive, per dirla all’anglosassone) che per i prossimi tre anni le darà una copertura completa e continuativa.

Il vantaggio di questo metodo rispetto a un COC tradizionale (Contraccettivo Orale Combinato, a base di estrogeno e progesterone) è che il Nexplanon agisce con un rilascio costante di solo progestinico (etonorgestrel), i cui livelli ematici sono sufficienti a mettere a riposo le ovaie senza l’utilizzo degli estrogeni della pillola classica, ai quali sono da imputare la maggior parte degli effetti collaterali che ogni donna ben conosce: ritenzione idrica, aumento ponderale, alterazione del tono dell’umore e della libido, cefalea, secchezza vaginale e, in alcuni casi, rischi di tromboembolia.

A differenza di altri metodi, inoltre, non è ovviamente prevista la pausa mensile di somministrazione (la cui utilità è peraltro dubbia e controversa) e quindi, superati i primi fisiologici episodi di spotting dovuti alla reazione organica al principio attivo, la maggior parte delle donne si libererà dai problemi dell’emorragia da sospensione del COC classico.

Questo dispositivo non è affatto una novità sul mercato dei contraccettivi (è stato utilizzato in modo sperimentale dalle soldatesse americane durante la Prima Guerra del Golfo, 1990-1991) ma ha fatto un po’ fatica a penetrare in Italia a causa di vari preconcetti, tra cui il sospetto nel farsi impiantare quello che a tutti gli effetti sembra un microchip da scia chimica.

In realtà si tratta di un bastoncino gommoso, flessibile e a malapena avvertibile nel sottocute, lungo 4 cm e più sottile di un serbatoio di una penna Bic (2 mm di diametro) 

che la ginecologa vi innesterà, previa anestesia, nel sottocute della parte inferiore del braccio con un iniettore sterile che lo conterrà fin dall’uscita della fabbrica

Sarà sufficiente un bendaggio compressivo da rimuovere il giorno successivo per evitare piccoli sanguinamenti dal punto di inserzione e l’ecchimosi sparirà poi nel giro di una settimana.

Il Nexplanon (a differenza del ‘vecchio’ Implanon) è radiopaco, nel caso in cui, per motivi rarissimi, la rimozione dovesse diventare difficoltosa ma nella maggior parte dei casi, allo scadere dei tre anni, basterà un’anestesia locale e una piccola incisione per farlo saltare fuori come una molla.

Naturalmente, come non mi stancherò mai di dire, DOVETE PARLARNE CON LA VOSTRA GINECOLOGA (mia figlia ha fatto tutto presso quella gratuita del consultorio) la quale valuterà i pro e i contro e alla fine vi farà la ricetta per acquistarlo in farmacia (il suo prezzo è circa 190 euro, più o meno un anno di pillola classica) e ve lo inserirà nei cinque giorni di mestruazione.

Se fossi una giovane donna, questo post lo avrei scritto in strada alle sei del mattino davanti allo studio della mia ginecologa per essere la prima.

P.S.

No… la MSD non mi paga per fare questa ‘pubblicità’. Mi spiace solo di ricevere così tanti ask (a cui ora rispondo privatamente) da parte di ragazze che chiedono in panico informazioni sulla pillola del giorno dopo o sull’aborto farmacologico perché hanno saltato una dose di pillola anticoncezionale e sono rimaste gravide.

Da gennaio però è tornato tutto normale. Anzi, in realtà va molto meglio. Prima soffrivo di crampi addominali e mal di testa nei primi giorni delle mestruazioni (che duravano anche 8-10 giorni). Ora ho un flusso leggerissimo per 3-4 giorni e il dolore si è attenuato parecchio. È possibile che pian piano sparisca anche questo, diceva il doc.

Lo spotting più o meno presente e duraturo è uno delle condizioni che si possono presentare con l’impianto contraccettivo sottocutaneo e che devono essere monitorate e riferite al ginecologo.

I classici effetti avversi della pillola dovuti agli estrogeni non sono completamente assenti nel Nexplanon ma ‘solo’ notevolmente ridotti. Ridotti al punto, però, che è considerata molto sicura in caso di problemi dei problemi di coagulazione sopracitati.

Per rispondere ad altre domande private, l'effetto soppressivo sull’ovaio policistico è meno presente (si chiedano delucidazioni al ginecologo se prendete il COC per quello) ed è completamente assente l’effetto anti-irsutismo (alcune donne la assumono per quel motivo).

The Last Jedi Doesn’t Care What You Think About Star Wars

Emmy Noether

Amalie Emmy Noether was a German mathematician known for her landmark contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. And noether’s theorem is one of the most beautiful equation in all of theoretical physics.

The theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.

It is remarkably surprising that there are a lot of people who are not aware of Noether’s contribution to physics.

This video by ‘Looking Glass Universe’ does a good job (but does not cover the math) in explaining the essence of the theorem.

The elves are the most obvious - with their fading light and their ships sailing away.  Treebeard talks about how the woods aren’t as they once were, about the ents who are falling asleep and withering to nothing.  The dwarves lust after the glory of their forefathers, be it in mountain fortresses or caverns of mithril - now empty and echoing.  Old Tom Bombadil remembers a race of great men and women, reduced simply to trinkets in cold tombs.

And even men, the race set to inherit this new age, even they are experiencing this sense of melancholy, of losing hold of something great.  We see their great cities reduced to rubble on riverbanks, or possessed by evil.  Aragorn longs to return to his throne to restore the glory of ages past, to somehow rejuvenate that which is dying in the race of men. 

One of the many things I love about the world Tolkien created is the exquisite beauty that rises from sadness; lesser stories would transform sorrow and grief into bitterness, but in Tolkien’s world, it becomes a force for pity and wisdom and love. Some of his best and wisest characters are those who have known great sorrow. Melancholy and sadness are a part of Arda Marred, but like Gandalf says: “not all tears are an evil.” 

Perhaps my favourite quote from Tolkien is Haldir’s line from the Fellowship of the Ring, when the company is nearing Lothlórien:

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

You may already know that ASOIAF draws inspiration from the War of the Roses, which occurred in England during the middle of the 15th century. What if Martin took inspiration from that era’s language as well as its wars?

Let’s take a look at a text from that period. In 1485, Le Morte D’Arthur was published. We can consider this a grandfather to ASOIAF, since it inspired T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which inspired ASOIAF in turn.

If you have enjoyed my own fantasy novels, you owe it to yourself to read […] T.H. White.

– Interview with GRRM at blastr.com

Le Morte D’Arthur is quite strange to modern eyes. This excerpt is brought to you by the letter Y:

Terrabyl / So his wyf Dame Igrayne he putte in the castell of Tyntagil / And hym self he putte in the castel of Terrabyl the whiche had many yssues and posternes oute / Thenne in alle haste came Vther with a grete hoost / and leyd a syege aboute the castel of Terrabil / And ther he pyght many pauelyons / and there was grete warre made on bothe partyes / and moche peple slayne / Thenne for pure angre and for grete loue of fayr Irayne the kyng Vther felle seke / So came to the kynge Vther Syre Vlfius a noble knyght / and asked the kynge why he was seke / I shall telle the said the kynge / I am seke for angre and for loue of fayre Igrayne that I may not be hool / wel my lord said Syre Vlfius / I shal seke Merlyn […]

Obviously Penguin wouldn’t pull that off the slush pile in 2015. At the same time, it’s appealingly archaic. Language is a technology, too, and when you write fantasy you want your language to feel contemporary to the crossbows and drawbridges. There are tradeoffs, though; if you want to drive an antique car, you better be willing to sacrifice horsepower for style. Look again at that Morte d’Arthur quote. It doesn’t feel old just because of the orthography. There’s a different psychology at play. Not many fantasists are willing to embrace that. We want the horses, swords, castles, and latter-day psychology – it’s all a metaphor for our society anyway. Gene Wolfe and Cormac McCarthy do present alien voices, and the effect is exactly that. Most fantasists settle for a few linguistic relics to give a historical veneer. (Or opt for a formal diction that isn’t specific to any particular period, but still feels old because we certainly don’t talk that way now.) Martin has a few of these, like the much-teased “must needs”. There’s also “soon or late”, “pretend to surprise”, and “near as” for “nearly as”.

It’s not a crazy strategy. Worldbuilding aficionados overemphasize week one of the Almighty’s to-do list. Lift up the mountains, pour out the oceans, loose the fish of the water and set flying the birds of the air, sure, that stuff has to be there: but you can get away with less than you think. What we need to do is build cultures, not worlds. And before anything else, culture is a language, a voice. Nailing that down is what’s going to make the reader feel like they’re dealing with a native rather than a tourist. It matters if characters are called sir or sire, or if your narrator can use a word like notwithstanding. It matters what kind of trees you name, what sort of animals. I ask again: are there pugs in Westeros?

Tyrion had no doubt that Dancy would be a lively handful. She was pug-nosed and bouncy, with freckles and a mane of thick red hair that tumbled down past her waist.

She was older than he’d thought at first, Jon realized; maybe as old as twenty, but short for her age, bandy-legged, with a round face, small hands, and a pug nose.

There was ice under the big man’s squashed pug nose, where his snot had frozen.

What about longshoremen?

Arya could not read the name painted on the hull; the words were strange, Myrish, Braavosi, perhaps even High Valyrian. She grabbed a passing longshoreman by the sleeve. “Please,” she said, “what ship is this?”

Every word you pass is a marked bill. They all have histories, some much shorter than you’d think. Longshoreman came into English in 1811, according to Etymonline.com. Something as basic and stolidly named as a blueberry debuted in the 18th century, since it’s native to North America. (Blueberry still being available in the 18th century is like ask.com being an unclaimed domain name in 2015.)

Condone is latinate, but it took hold in English thanks to the Matrimonial Causes Act, an 1857 piece of legislation having to do with divorce.

A word like yen, which probably sounds old-timey because it looks like the ancient word ken, is in fact about a hundred years old, and probably borrowed from a Chinese dialect. As Etymonline has it:

“sharp desire, hunger,” 1906, earlier yen-yen (1900), yin (1876) “intense craving for opium,” from Chinese (Cantonese) yan “craving,” or from a Beijing dialect word for “smoke.” Reinforced in English by influence of yearn.

How about burp? Only a few decades older than Martin.

Readers don’t generally think about this until you get into an extreme case, like when Martin mentions snarks. (The snark is a fanciful monster invented by Lewis Carroll, and by using it in the exact same context, Martin shows you the seams of his work.)

So yeah, white-washing is bad, but more often than not unintentional. 

As mentioned above, there have been a few blogs recently that make the claim of being against white washing, yet continuously misdiagnose and lack any fundamental understanding of basic color theory or anatomy. So, the intent of this post is to help give people a vocabulary through which they can address the issue of white washing, while presenting solutions in a way  that other artists can understand and learn from.

The Leatherdos is a hair clip that doubles as a multi-tool that combines 5 different tools in a tiny hair clip: screw-drivers, a wrench, a trolley coin, a ruler, and a cutting edge.

tenitchyfingers:

Anyway the LGBT community is for anyone whose identity is outside of the heteronormative rule (heterosexual, heteroromantic and cis, all three of these) and any “older” LGBT person is gonna confirm BECAUSE THEY BUILT THE DAMN COMMUNITY. Try asking them. Ask a 40-50 year old (or older) gay man or lesbian what the community is for. Ask them. Do it though. Learn some of your own history from them, and then come back to me then try and tell me I’m wrong. 

You’re wrong.

I’m a 59 year old gay man and I’m telling you in no uncertain terms, You. Are. Wrong.

Here’s a history lesson from someone who both lived it and has read extensively about LGBT issues, as well as being involved in many different organizations. I realized what I was when I was very young. I first came out in the late 60s. I was an activist during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s.

This is long, but history is long. It’s important. I tried to break it down into smaller paragraphs for easier reading. But it’s long. I debated not putting this under a cut, but holy hell it’s long. 

If you’re actually interested in WHY you’re wrong, OP, I hope you’ll read it.