Ramblings

I got “Demarginalization of white bronies”

@takashi0, I’ve got your back.

I was actually talking to a female client once about cannon-fannon and how much I love listening to her talk comics, and had a male client interupt us to tell me he has never met a chick that is into comics before, he’s never even heard of a girl being into comics before,  and he has always wanted a nerdy girlfriend and that i absolutely MUST give him her number.

I actually had to explain to him that I wasn’t joking when I said she was out of his league. Yes, she is incredible, she is beautiful, she is intelligent, successful, highly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about comics, and she’s also not even going to look twice at you because literally all you got is that she fulfills a fantasy of yours.

Yes bro i get it, she’s your ideal girl. Trust me, she’s a lot of people’s ideal girl. And you’re not even on her radar. You’re not special because you’re into comics. She has a very wide range of potential partners to choose from and ‘never having met a nerdy girl before’ isn’t a good character trait, because it means you know zero women. Or zero women have trusted your creepy ass with the knowledge that they are into comics.

The most concerning part of that entire conversation was his complete inability to grasp the concept that she wouldn’t date him and his insistence that she would.

He insisted that I give her name/number/fb/actually call her and ask her to come to the studio (wtffff???) because he needed to meet her. And then just could not fathom that I refused. He seemed to be running on this idea that if she met him, she would like him. For no other reason than that he was into comics and he wanted a nerd girlfriend.

And I was somehow out of line for refusing to give my best freinds deets to this creepy nerdbro because I couldn’t possibly know that she wouldn’t be into him.

He got really upset. 

He was in my studio for 45 mins arguing with me on and off about this and trying to push me into giving her number.

Out. Of. Your. League. Not on your level. Too fucking good for you. Not a possibility. You’ve got nothing she wants. You’re one of literally thousands who would want her. You have nothing to offer her. You tick zero of her boxes. You do not even meet the minimum requirements for me to even ask her.  

NOT 

HAPPENING 

MATE.

This is why women don’t say they’re women in WoW, this is why women don’t say they’re into games irl. This is why women don’t hang out in comics stores. This is why nerd women hide one of these two aspects of themselves when interacting with nerd men.

I want to see Tony meeting his profs at MIT, admiring them and being genuinely excited to learn from them. They are geniuses themselves, and have been in the field decades longer than Tony has even been alive. I want them to see the potential in Tony and pushing him by giving this mouthy, rich 16 year old hard questions and helping him figure them out. I want to see Tony cultivating his genius while also learning how to problem solve when he gets to a problem he can’t figure out right away. I want to see Tony stumped, having to go to his professors and ask them questions because hey, he’s a genius, but it never hurts to get a second opinion. I want Tony learning that his intelligence is a tool that he has to learn how to use properly, and that he didn’t come equipped with all of the answers to everything. Maybe it takes a little while for him to adjust to not being the person with the most knowledge in the room, but it quickly becomes his goal to absorb all of the knowledge that he can from everyone he meets. I want Tony who just loves learning, and yeah, sometimes he’ll meet an asshole who he knows he’s smarter than, and he gets a kick out of showing them up… but ultimately he has respect for other academics, and once he’s in a university setting, he starts to learn that he can benefit so much from all of the great minds around him. 

Tony being a total nerd, sitting near the front during every lecture and committing every word the prof has to say to his memory. Yeah, he read the whole textbook in a few nights, but listening to lectures helps give him perspectives on things that he can’t get out of a book. He learns by putting up his hand and asks questions. He probably voluntarily asks for more extra and more challenging assignments… not for extra credit, just for fun. 

Yes, Tony is a genius, and he blows his professors away when he sits down with a problem and refuses to stop trying until he figures it out (and then he figures it out in record time), or when he points out flaws in their research, or helps them work out the kinks in a problem they’ve been working on for years. He’s amazing. His brain astounds everyone. He can easily keep up with profs who have been experts for 30+ years. He runs circles around the other students without breaking a sweat. Even so, he’s there to learn… he does it with gusto and gets straight A+’s, but it’s not without any effort on his part.

“It was like a movie, it was like Carrie or something. I see this trickle of blood come down Oak’s forehead. And then more blood. Guys, I cannot overstate how much blood there was. Imagine how much blood you think there was. There was more than that.”

So everyone is still performing and doing the My Shot set-up but all the while trying to figure out if Oak knows what’s going on, if he’s really hurt, if he’s concussed, and Oak is wiping away at this blood like it’s sweat or something. Finally he goes offstage (!) and Leslie said they knew if he didn’t come back for his Herc intro, they would stop the show.

Here’s the thing about when, uh, What’s New Pussycat plays over and over and over and over and over again. The second time it plays, your immediate thought is not ‘hey someone’s playing What’s New Pussycat again.’ It’s ‘hey, What’s New Pussycat is a lot longer than I first thought. The third time it plays you’re thinking maybe someone’s playing What’s New Pussycat again. The fourth time it plays you’re either thinking ‘whoa someone just played What’s New Pussycat FOUR TIMES or at least someone played it twice, and it’s a really long song.’ So the fifth time is the kicker, alright? 

Now, John and I we’re watching the entire diner at this point, alright? Most people have gotten wind as to what’s going on. And we’re staring at this one guy and he’s sitting in like a booth with his stupid kids jumping around, and he’s like staring at his coffee cup like this, and he’s been onto us since the beginning. And he’s sitting there, and his hand is shaking, and he had this look on his face like, aw, like he had just gotten his thirty day chip from anger management. And he’s staring like this, and the fourth song fades out. It’s dead quiet. Then, I don’t know if you know this, but the song begins very quietly…

BWAAAH BWAAAAAH WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT and he goes GOD DAMN IT and pounds on the table, silverware flies everywhere, and it was fantastic. But a word about my best friend John and what a genius he was because when we first walked into the diner, okay? When we first got there and I’m punching in the What’s New Pussycats alright? I’ve punched in like 7 at this point then John says to me ‘hey hey hey before you punch in another What’s New Pussycat let’s drop in one It’s Not Unusual.’

Oh yes. That is when the afternoon went from good to great. After seven What’s New Pussycats. In a row - It played seven times. Suddenly - Dum da dum, IT’S NOT UNUSUAL and the sigh of relief that swept through the diner. People were so happy. It was like the liberation of France. You know for years scientists have wondered can you make grown men and women weep tears of joy by playing Tom Jones’s It’s Not Unusual and the answer is yes you can. Provided that it is preceded by seven What’s New Pussycats. It’s true. Dead honest.

And on the other hand. When we went back. Holy shit. It’s Not Unusual fade out. It’s dead quiet. BWAAAH BWAAAAH WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT people went insane. People went out of their minds. No one could handle it. No one could handle it. And they were surrounded by this seemingly indifferent staff that was just like ‘yup some crap as always.’ 

16 oz of honey requires 1152 bees to travel 112,000 miles and visit 4.5 million flowers.

Most of the honey we get at supermarkets and stores don’t come from natural hives. 

Honey is an animal product, produced when bees digest nectar they have collected and then regurgitate it. It is an animal product, just like an egg or milk. Yes, a bee is an insect and not technically considered an animal by many people, but a bee’s body changes the composition of what it ingests, just like other animals.However, there is another reason vegans won’t eat honey, and that is because it is harmful to another living creature. According to Daniel Hammer, bees do experience pain and suffering while they are being exploited for their products (not just honey but also beeswax, royal jelly, and more). There is simply no way beekeepers, humane or otherwise, can avoid harming or killing bees while they are extracting the bees’ products. Many vegans choose their lifestyle because they wish to avoid harming any other creature, and so they choose not to eat honey.

Check out this couple of articles that are pretty complete about everything around this topic :) 

Why Honey is Not Vegan?

As a vegan, you depend upon beekeeping. It doesn’t matter if you never use beeswax or eat honey. You still depend on beekeeping. It is absolutely impossible not to. 

Because here’s the secret; you know all those delicious fruits and vegetables you eat? You wouldn’t have them if it wasn’t for bees, and here’s another secret; those bees were probably either kept by the farmer who grew them for the purpose of pollinating his/her crops, or moved to the farm during pollination season by a beekeeper. 

If you’ve ever eaten a cherry, almond, blueberry, tomato, melon, squash, raspberry, strawberry…hell, most fruits or veggies…you’ve benefited from beekeeping. There is simply no way to avoid it. If you leave it up to whatever pollinators happen to stop in from the surrounding area, your yields will suffer dramatically, which means less produce and less money for the farmer. Therefore, the easy and universally preferred method is to plop a few hives on the property. The girls will make sure that just about every last almond/cherry/blueberry flower is pollinated (They’re VERY good at what they do) and you can happily harvest a bumper crop. This is a universally used practice among food producers. 

And do you know the best way to help make sure the bees survive?

Keep them. Organically, without using any chemicals. And here’s a secret about beekeeping; you inspect the hives whether or not you take honey, to make sure the bees are healthy and doing well. (There are mites and diseases that can severely harm bees, and even as an organic beekeeper who doesn’t use chemicals on her girls there are methods I use to prevent/treat things like varroa mite infestation that can kill an otherwise healthy hive).

And yes, when you open a hive to inspect it, you might crush one or two bees. But tell me, honestly, that you’ve never killed an insect. Bees themselves will kill sick/non productive members of the hive to ensure the health of the hive as a whole; I don’t see how my accidentally squishing one to ensure the health of the other 50,000 is any different. 

And this is what all beekeepers do. And if you, as before mentioned, ever eat anything that isn’t grain-based, this is what took place to put that food on your plate. 

I would also like to point out that bees will store as much honey as they possibly can…which usually ends up being waaaaay more than they actually can use. To survive a log Iowa winter, my bees need about 100 lbs of honey per hive. Well, last year one hive had TWICE that. (I took 50 pounds, leaving them MORE than enough to get through the winter. I just checked on them today; they’re alive and healthy). 

You are NOT hurting them by taking a little honey for yourself, no more than you already are by looking in on them every two or three weeks to make sure they’re healthy. 

And again, if you ever eat any fruits or veggies, SOMEONE IS ALREADY KEEPING BEES TO POLLINATE THEM AND INSPECTING THEM TO MAKE SURE THEY’RE HAPPY AND HEALTHY. 

KEEPING BEES IS NOT WHAT IS KILLING BEES IT IS WHAT IS SAVING BEES. 

WITHOUT BEES YOUR VEGAN DIET IS IMPOSSIBLE.

WITHOUT THAT “EVIL” EXPLOITATION OF BEES YOUR VEGAN DIET IS IMPOSSIBLE. 

AGAIN, BEEKEEPING IS WHAT IS SAVING BEES NOT KILLING THEM. 

SO IF YOU EAT A LITTLE HONEY IT IS HONESTLY NO WORSE THAN EATING SOME ALMONDS AND FRUIT SALAD. 

Gentleman with 5,000 pounds a year Handsome tragic veteran Dashing officer of good breeding Gentleman with 10,000 pounds a year Liberal-minded heir to a large estate

Your phone buzzes: