NoxieBean

Meet the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides)! Despite its resemblance to a raccoon, it’s a member of the Canidae family and is more closely related to wolves and foxes. In addition to its looks, this fluffy critter has raccoon-like curved claws, which are useful for climbing and grabbing. It has a wide range across Asia and parts of eastern and northern Europe.

Photo: Ryzhkov Sergey, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Cat and butterflies (19th century) by Xu Gu (China, 1824–1896).

Hanging scroll; ink and colour on paper.

 ttps://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/49467

Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so here’s the recipe

4-6 lbs of Hamburger/turkey burger

1 pk onion soup mix OR ranch mix

1 TBs ketchup

1 Tbs spicy brown mustard,

1 Tbs bbq sauce

1 Tbs steak sauce

1 egg

mix, shape into a loaf in a big pan, and bake at 350 for 2 hrs (maybe 2 and a half if you’re feeling dangerous)

(6 servings)

-2lbs red potatoes

-1 cup butter (2 sticks)

-1 cup cream cheese (1 pack)

-Chives (optional)

-Salt & Pepper to taste

1. drop those bad boys (potatoes) in a big ol pot. U don’t even have to chop them just wash them

2. boil til soft!

3. Drain

4. Mash (usually they’re small enough you can use a fork if u don’t have one of those squashers) until its a pretty chunky mix

5. add the other stuff. Keep mashing

Eventually Eddie is a successful tattoo artist, but he’s still playing gigs on the weekends. He also does a mean face paint. There’s always a massive line at the kids’ birthday parties, children cackling with glee at their reflections. Eddie may look scary, with his tattoos and dark clothes, but kids always leave their house smiling and wanting to come over to play again.

They don’t have a huge house, and it’s not in as nice a neighborhood as the one where Chrissy grew up. But one summer Eddie builds sort of an above ground pool (his uncle helps) in the yard and the kids go insane. They’re in the water from dawn until dark and they constantly stink of chlorine and sunscreen and Chrissy turns a sun-kissed honey color and Eddie can’t stop staring at how she glows. (That’s how their fifth is conceived). Eddie’s uncle is always over. He adores the kids and is like a grandparent, spoiling them rotten.

Eddie tattoos Chrissy’s back with their kids names and it’s the shock of the decade when she wears a bikini to the public pool and the other moms can see her ink. Now, I’ll pause so you can imagine Eddie kissing each name on her spine and brushing his fingers over her skin when they’re…ahem…alone. (They always have an amazing sex life, let’s be serious.)

The King & the Alchemist

and how if, in the end, guillermo refuses to be nandor’s wife and insists on being his husband that it sings in total synergy with the entire storyline thus far - it would be guillermo learning to own himself, his sexuality, his self worth, and refusing to be a doormat, and nandor accepting that change is part of life even when you are undying, and that he cannot always be dominant in order to avoid being vulnerable, and in fact needs a partner that will challenge him

I know religious people who work in healthcare and STEM, do regular labwork, author scientific papers, and speak at universities as experts in their field.

In the English language media I’ve seen trolls are generally depicted as big and stupid, though occasionally they’ll just be small and primitive.

And don’t get me wrong, we also have that here in Scandinavia as seen in the Norwegian movie Troll Hunter.

But trolls from nordic folklore are a lot more nuanced than what modern English language media would lead you to believe.

In folklore they are a sort of hidden nature people with cultures that varies between countries and towns. They can be cruel or kind. In Norway they can smell the blood of Christians and eat people, while in Denmark they don’t mind Christians but can’t stand the sound of church bells and will often move at the first sign of a church being build.

They’re also closely entangled with humans. Trolls steal human babies so they can raise them to go places trolls can’t (in Denmark at least), but leave their own babies with the humans assuming humans would find use for someone with a troll’s strength and abilities.

And that’s why in more modern troll media for adults they’re often used as a sympathetic allegory for people who feel wrong and out of place.

You got the Swedish movie Border from 2018 about a woman who couldn’t feel more wrong. People think she’s ugly and weird and she can’t even have sex because there’s something wrong with her genitalia.

But then she meets a man who looks like her and he slowly reveals that they’re both trolls and the only reason she feels weird is because she’s trying to live the life of a human. She’s a perfectly normal troll. It even turns out that troll men give birth and her “weird genitalia” is meant to impregnate, not be pregnant.

There’s also the band De Underjordiske (The Underworldly which is an old Danish word for otherworldly people that live under ground like trolls and dwarves) from Denmark who have the song Trold about Nordic people in general feeling off because we’re forest trolls who long to return to nature, but also Under Skyggernes Kniv (Under the Knife Of Shadows) about a person asking a troll that has lived their whole life under ground to not be afraid and come up into the sunlight and meet people and the video shows a person who appears to be dressing up as a woman for the first time and trying to live an authentic life.

RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE. 

When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by.

I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say.

“What are you struggling with?” he asked.

I gestured around me and said “I dunno man. Life.”

Not satisfied with my answer, he said “No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you?”

I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it.

I wanted to have something more substantial.

Something more profound.

But I didn’t.

So I told him, “Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes.”

I felt like an idiot even saying it.

What kind of grown ass woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with *actual* problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes?

But my therapist nodded in understanding and then said:

“RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.”

I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me.

“Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist, so stop giving yourself rules.”

It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express.

That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times.

I felt like I had conquered a dragon.

The next day, I took a shower lying down.

A few days later. I folded my laundry and put them wherever the fuck they fit.

There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again.

Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower standing up. I sort my laundry.

But at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson:

THERE ARE NO RULES.

RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE!!!

you know what helped?

when i lived on my own in college, i bought a roman gladiolus off a guy in pioneer square for 30$ and i kept it leaned up against my bed. when i woke up from a nightmare i’d stick my hand out and grab my sword and be like ‘okay. so. whether or not monsters are real. this sword is very real.’

it really, really helped. unlike sleeping with a loaded gun, it’s very hard to kill anyone on accident with a sheathed sword, but still extremely goddamn comforting to hug eight pounds of sharpened steel while you try and figure out if the insect man is going to come back out of your closet and keep peeling your skin off.

several years later when i didn’t need it anymore, i sold the sword to a nice lesbian, also for 30$, also in pioneer square, thus completing the cycle of Weird Guy Who Will Sell You A Suspiciously Cheap Sword. keeping portland weird is a sacred duty to all who partake.