Welcome, Please, Won't You Stay?

OR

If you want to make the cookies from scratch (that’s what I did for the 1989 Secret Sessions), you can use this recipe I found on a baking blog I like, joythebaker.com and I believe it was originally from a book called The Pastry Queen. If you want another great baking blog, I get a lot of great ideas from smittenkitchen.com too. This is a recipe for basic insanely good sugar cookies. I added the chai element to the recipe because I thought it would infuse cozy holiday vibez into the cookie and it really did. So I’ll star the part that I added in the recipe.

http://joythebaker.com/2009/06/giant-vanilla-sugar-cookies/

***after you add the egg and vanilla, cut one chai tea packet open and empty the crushed up tea leaves into the batter CAUSE CHAI COOKIES ARE ABOUT TO HAPPEN UP IN HERE***

I made an icing for the cookies, but they’re fine on their own. If you want to make icing for them, just mix 1 cup powdered sugar with 1/4 T-spoon of nutmeg, 1/4 T-spoon of cinnamon and 3 TAYblespoons <—-(I’m so annoying, it astounds me sometimes) of milk or eggnog if you can find it this time of year. The more milk/eggnog you add, the more your icing will become a glaze. But glazes are legit too so basically just LIVE YOUR LIFE.

I lightly sprinkled cinnamon over the icing once the cookies were baked and iced, but there are so many icing options you can pair with these cookies—I mean it’s out of control. If you’re really feeling like living on the edge, you can go ahead and add a few drops of food coloring to the icing to make it festive. No one is going to stop you.

Why?

Cause the bakers gonna bake bake bake bake bake.

I have this one white friend.

And - [mocking] I have this one white friend, I’m not racist. And like - where was I even going with this? [laughs] She’s not even my friend, she’s just someone I know. Okay, whatever, ‘kay, so this one white person that I know - [under breath] (I know a lot, my entire town is white.) Anyway, um, one day, she comes up to me, and she’s like,

“Jenny, what are you?” and, you know, that’s like white person talk for like, [sarcastic mocking] “what FUCKING country do you come from? Like obviously you’re not from here.”  And I’m like, “um, I’m Chinese.”

And she’s like “What? You’re Chinese?”

And I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know why that’s so much of a surprise.”

And she’s like “Well, I thought you said you were Asian.”

And - [deep breath] [pause] there was a moment, a good minute and a half, where I left my body and ascended onto another plane, and I screamed into the abyss of that plane [pause] because she did not know that Asian and Chinese are… I, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t even… you know, whatever.

So, return to my body, from the [pause] other plane of existence in which I scream. A lot. And I tell her: “You know, China, China, you see, the country that I’m from, is a part of Asia.”

And she’s like, “Where’s Asia?”

[whispers] She asked me. Where Asia is.

And I say, “Well, Asia consists of, you know..” and I list the different Asian countries and she’s like “Whaat?”

And I’m like [sarcastically] it’s, it’s this thing, you know, that you learn about in like third grade geography. It’s a continent! And she’s like “A continent?”

And I’m like “Yes.”

And she goes, “so it’s not a country?”

I’m like, “No.”

And she’s like “What’s the difference?”

And I’m like [deep breath] “America, you see, has like North, Central, South, so like, take somewhere from Canada; they are North American but they’re also Canadian…”

And she’s like “I don’t understand.”

so, i was exploring the map and i was pretty far away from my home base, basically using a boat to cross deep ocean biomes and investigating islands and smaller landmasses and such 

one of the islands i came across had an ABSURD amount of wolves roaming about. “holy shit,” i thought, “this swamp biome is full of free dogs.” 

so of course i go on a wolf-taming spree. i wasn’t paying attention to how many i was amassing. by the time i’d covered the island, i had a pack of about twenty dogs in my entourage. 

i think, ok, perhaps it’s time to go home, at least so i can leave some of these pups in a safe place while i keep exploring. 

problem: there’s a huge fucking ocean between Dog Island and the continent my home base is on. 

my stubborn ass thinks, “ok. ok. dogs can swim. we’ll FORD this river ocean.” 

this, obviously, did not go well. the dogs are v good swimmers, but also very slow, and if i get too far ahead of them, they don’t catch up, because they can’t teleport to the player if you’re not on land. it took forever to get to the nearest small island, and i’d lost about a third of my dogs. 

“i need a better plan,” i think to myself. i mean, i could abandon this ridiculous ‘transport 20+ dogs at least 5000m across multiple deep ocean biomes to my home base’ idea and find some free dogs closer to home. i mean, they’re not really that hard to find. but these are my dogs. i gave them bones and now they love me. i must not abandon them. 

…and that’s how dog water skiing was born: 

ishouldhavejustdonethisinthefirstfuckingplace.jpg

anyway, by the time i got to the next landmass, i hadn’t lost any more dogs. success!

and not only had i not lost any more dogs, but this new landmass was ALSO full of free dogs. and i still had some stacks of bones, which obviously trumps my own sense of self-control. 

fast forward ten minutes:

look at all these pups! and also a really rude spider.

still more pups!

…oh jeez. 

this is basically Homeward Bound, but instead of two dogs and a cat, it’s just me and like thirty goddamn dogs. they were continuously teleporting in front of me, i was tripping all over them. it was chaos. 

now, i should mention, this was a long-ass trek home.  at some point my sword AND my backup sword broke, because frankly i just was not expecting my expedition to last this long and i did not bring a backup backup sword, so i was flailing at creepers with an axe. i definitely lost some good pups, especially since at least half that travel was at nighttime peak monster spawn time. AND i have the Mo’ Creatures mod installed, so not only do i have to worry about the standard monsters, but also lions, tigers, bears (which are usually pretty chill but apparently can become hostile when thirty dogs suddenly teleport on top of them), manticores, ogres, SPECIAL wolves that instead of being tamable are just Very Angry All The Time, etc. 

but the thing is, i kept finding more free dogs. and, sometimes when i’m walking, two dogs will just breed out of nowhere, so occasionally i’d turn around and there’d be a puppy. who did this. we’re, like, climbing a mountain here. control yourselves  

anyways, by the time i got back to my home base, i counted forty-eight doggos. 

just look at these Good Dogs. i couldn’t get them all to fit in the frame. 

i have nowhere to put them. i feel like Roger and Anita at the end of 101 Dalmatians.