Winter is the Best

Here are some of the reviews:

YES ABSOLUTELY

so perforated batons are a type of paleolithic tool that was in use for THOUSANDS of years. weve found hundreds of examples across Europe and Asia of these. theyre typically made from antler or ivory, and are long batons with at least one hole thats been drilled through

at first they were called "batons of command" and the assumption was that these were ritualistic or symbolic items that represented strength or status in a group of individuals.

more modern interpretations include that they couldve been used as spear throwing tools, or that the holes couldve been used in spear or arrow making to pull them straight.

in a more recent study done on this mammoth ivory baton, which was found in Hohle Fels cave in Germany, they were specifically interested in the spiralized carvings feeding into each perforation

they studied small pieces of organic matter that were found inside the holes, and they were found to be FULL of plant fibres in way higher concentration than the other nearby soil, indicating that this baton at least was a tool used on plants. the idea came up that it could be a rope making tool

so they made a replica, and wove rope.

these tools were likely multipurpose, and we can never know the motivations of the ancient people who made them, but we have at least proven that these tools are capable of making rope very efficiently!

And sometimes what you thought was the reason or purpose? Turns out to be a wild guess that was way off mark.

A lot, and I mean a lot of guesswork assigns ritualistic significance to archaeological finds (speaking of the objects, not any conclusions, here). "If it was important enough to bury with them, then it must have religious significance!" is a thought that sounds plausible, but a lot of what a person would need "in the next life" would be tools similar to what they used in this life. Making rope? Very important.

How important, you might ask?

Well, bushcrafters, survivalists, and so forth all have come to agree with what survivalist instructor Dave Canterbury calls "The 5Cs of Survival". These are the 5 tools you need to survive just about any situation (on land). They are: Cover (which starts with clothing, not just tarps, tents, etc), Cutting Tool (as sophisticated as steel, as simple as a sharp-edged stone), Combustion Device (matches, lighter, ferrorod, fresnel lens, magnifying lens, and any sort of friction or compression setup, such as a fire drill bow drill, and so forth), Container (for boiling and carrying water), and Cordage (threads, cords, ropes).

Cordage is absolutely a survival need. With it, you can tie things to your body, such as a gathering basket, wear a blanket as clothing, etc. You can tie up a tarp to serve as a rainfly. You can bundle together sticks to carry back to your camp for firewood. You can make netting for a fishing net, a net bag, a net basket, a hammock to sleep up off the ground where snakes and scorpions, etc, cannot get at you. You can lash together tripods for supporting the rain tarp or the hammock, and put together furniture to sit on, to process gathered materials on, and even a platform to build a fire on if the ground is too wet, or too dangerously peaty to build a fire. (It does require mud & stones for insulation, but it is doable! Some areas, you do NOT want to build a ground fire, because it'll lead to forest forest.)

In the modern era, we've come to rely heavily upon nails & screws, which thanks to industrialization are cheap and plentiful, but while we could also use wooden pegs and holes, it's difficult to drill the hole in a Stone Age setting. (Not impossible, just difficult and time-consuming.) Notching two sticks so they fit against each other a little more closely and then binding them with lashings--cordage!--is a valuable tool for constructing drying frames for preserving meat and plant-life, as well as crafting a nice chair to sit on. Cordage can be used to get your food high up off the ground, out of the reach of wild animals--a trick we still use to this day in bear country!

Cordage is incredibly useful, and absolutely, if our fellow humans from ages ago had invented a tool to aid in rope-making, you can absolutely bet they'd want to have a tool that helps them make evenly constructed rope that would be solid enough to be reliable. And they'd absolutely want this useful tool for making more consistently successful rope with them in the next life.

Why is it important to have well-made rope? If one strand in a ply of cordage is more tautly pulled than the others, then more of the load placed on that cordage will be placed on those specific fibers, while the other ply (2-ply, 3-ply, however many are involved) will not be taking up nearly as much of the load.

Cordage is only as strong as its weakest fibers, but that weakness can come not just from materials quality, but also from having too much stress applied to one set of fibers. A ropemaking tool like the one in the posts above absolutely will help even out the stresses applied to the fibers, redistributing the weight more evenly. After all, if one strand of a 3-ply cord is taking 80% of the weight and the other two are taking 10% of the weight each, then the moment that 80% snaps, the very abrupt shock of that part of the cord breaking will likely cause the other two to snap as well, because suddenly they're having to support 50% of the stress when the third section breaks. But if you can get all 3 cords close to each one sharing 33% of the weight, they have a lot more "cushion room" to share out the stresses involved.

Well-made cordage can save lives, whether it's keeping the parts of a hut lashed together, or a rope used to ascend and descent a cliff to go after honeycomb, or even just as the rotation string on a bow drill that is being used to start a friction fire that'll keep you warm and dry and scare off predators in the night.

we called them musk-ox because we thought they must be some kind of cow thing, but they are actually a goat thing; this is to a normal wild goat what a woolly mammoth is to a normal elephant, only these things survived.

and i absolutely cannot help myself because of the tizzy my brain goes into over the twin facts of

1: ice-age megafauna that is still alive! and

2: EIGHT HUNDRED POUND GOAT

you can see the goatishness a little more in their babies

i just, i am crazy over the fact that these guys are still alive on our planet

Open IbisPaint go to a canvas (any canvas, or make. a new one)

Select the font tool (if you don’t know what or where that is, press the tool icon (normally a paint brush or eraser) and press the T button

From there you should be able to create a text box (writing is not important…). Find the font button and add a new font. I can’t remember what it’s called but you’ll know when you see it

It’ll automatically search for you “free fonts.” Do not follow this. Your app is misdirecting you. Instead search up whatever it is you’re looking for in the search bar, and that should work

Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.

Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.

my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.

in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.

so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-

PFFFFFFFFFRRRRRBTFTBTBFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.

Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.

The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.

Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.

Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.

Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.

Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.

Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.

Sunday Night:  Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.

It was awesome because when people saw the play and didn’t know the girls were identical twins, it literally looked like it was one actor doing multiple, uber fast costume changes.

One of our first performances was for our peers and it was a big school so lots of people didn’t know the twins. This - for some reason - was also the performance they chose to record.

Listening to the confusion of the audience during the playback was fantastic and completely topped by the moment Viola walked off stage left just as Sebastian walked on stage right and someone right beside the camera goes “OH WHAT THE FUCK” so loudly it drowned out everything else.

It’s like our third show and everything has been going surprisingly well. Hook and Smee climb to the top of the “tree trunk”, supposedly looking for Peter and not knowing they’re standing above his hiding spot the whole time.

Turns out someone didn’t close the trapdoor properly, because the second Hook steps on it, he plunges through the thing. He’s able to catch himself, but he’s got his ass and one leg dangling through this hole where it’s like a ten foot drop to the ground. All of us stage crew are literally two feet away from him offstage, just gaping at him because???? Y'all this fall looked BAD. Looked like my dude did the splits in mid air. The whiplash caused his fucking wig to come off. The audience is dead silent, all of us backstage are dead silent, the director is like already looking up how to treat a broken groin.