alright. i very unfortunately have to say something about this post. yesterday, i had a tonic-clonic aka grand mal seizure, yknow what you usually picture when you see the word “seizure”. anyway, as one would expect, coming out of this seizure i couldn’t remember most things. i had no idea what time, day, month, etc it was. i couldn’t remember what i was doing before the seizure or even what i did that morning and i still have no idea. i couldn’t even remember what i did for fun and i’m still kind of trying to remember. anyway, what i DO remember is that when i was coming out of the seizure a slowly regaining consciousness, this was the only thing i could think of. over and over in my mind, all i heard was “it’S GOOFY. from mcdonalds”. over and over. and i literally had no idea of anything that was going on or anything that had ever happened ever, so i couldn’t just switch thoughts. i was stuck with this stupid video replaying in my head over and over. it wouldn’t stop. this had a big enough impact on me to be the only thing i could remember, out of all the things to remember. thanks i guess.
If you’re an American and ever go to another country my biggest advice to you is to go someplace “American themed”. Even if it’s just a seasonal section in a grocery store. It’s always a good time and sometimes it’s even cute.
When I was in Germany my cousins dragged me to a “rodeo” and it was hilarious. It was just a clown and his assistant in bad cowboy outfits lassoing things. Literally a clown. I’m not making that part up. There were no horses or bulls. I’ve seen more impressive lasso tricks from four year olds.
It was so fun. The American section of the grocery store in Switzerland had blueberry juice in it. What the hell is blueberry juice? Delightful, is what it is. 10/10 not accurate in the slightest would recommend. I’m glad they’re having fun.
My middle school teacher’s wife is from Japan. And the first time he visited Japan around Christmas her family plopped a sponge cake with strawberries in front of him like “look!!!”
And my teacher is like “???? Nice!”“
And they tell him "it’s Christmas Cake!”
So he learns Japan has Christmas Cake, which is an “American thing.” Except if you’re American, you’re realizing Christmas Cake is NOT a thing we do.
They were pretty devastated that their American custom was made up. But hey, Christmas Cake is GOOD. so win lose
We do? Have Christmas Cake? At least, in Canada we do. But it’s not the same thing as they apparently have in Japan. But it definitely exists.
This is Christmas Cake:
It’s like a dense spiced cake with tons of fruit bits in it, and it is definitely a real thing
You can find a million recipes if you google it, so be free in your newfound Christmas Cake knowledge, and enjoy this upcoming holiday season!
I swear to God if people keep telling me about fruit cake which is not even close to what I described
At least you’re not the op and getting every single mention of fruitcake on the post. Good god there have been so many mentions of fruitcake. I never used to think about fruitcake ever. I’m like *this close* to just blocking people that mention fruitcake at this point.
Alright here’s an fun infographic for those of you who have trouble reading
but my favorite lab equipment will always be our hand crank centrifuge
im sorry the what
this bad boy, for when you’re too lazy to walk up two flights of stairs to the shared lab space with the preparatory centrifuge but not too lazy to put some elbow grease into spinning your shit down
Method:
Samples were centrifuged at whatever rotations per minute (RPM) Joey “the beast” McRipped could achieve on his saucy days. We’re not sure how fast, but it was impressive. Supernatant decanted off and….
I know the Star Wars extended universe treats “spice” like it’s this big scary drug, but I kind of like to imagine that it’s basically just space weed, and the only reason Han got in trouble with the Imperials over Jabba’s cargo is that he was evading import tariffs.
If we’re just looking at mentions in the original trilogy, is there evidence it’s even a drug and not something you put on bland food to make it taste like something? What if Han was just carrying a cargo of like cilantro, mint, etc, none of which grow on Tattooine and are thus highly expensive and heavily taxed commodities?
I am fully prepared to believe that the infamous Han Solo ended up in a life-or-death vendetta with the most notorious crime lord in the galaxy because somebody didn’t want to declare taxes on three thousand kilos of cilantro.
Every who pays a certain amount of attention to Star Wars knows this story already, but I was lucky enough to hear it recounted first-hand last year, so I’m gonna give it yet another retelling.
So The Husband and I were at Sci-fi Weekender (a British based annual Sci-fi and Fantasy convention) last year, and one of the guests that year was Kevin J Anderson, one of the very notable Star Wars Expanded Universe writers. During one of the events, a quiet little interview in a cafe on the event site, he fielded a question from an audience member about what it was like to write for a franchise like Star Wars which often had lots of cooks working on one broth, and he had the following to say (wording recounted as best as I can from memory):
“So in one of my stories, Han Solo, he, he travels to this asteroid planet called Kessel, which is where a lot of Spice comes from, these Spice Mines of Kessel, and I got to really describe the effects of this Spice, this terrible drug and the addiction and all this and before publication I get this call, I get this call from the lawyers, and they say “Kevin, you say in this story that Spice is a drug, you can’t say that, you can’t say that Spice is a drug”, and I say “What? What do you mean it’s not a drug, of course it’s a drug”, and they say “Han Solo used to smuggle Spice, and you cannot, let us be clear, you cannot imply that the Hero of Star Wars used to be a drug dealer”. And I just stood there, at a loss for words, and I eventually said “So what is it then?” and they said to me, very sternly, “It’s a food-additive”. Now, now obviously this is ridiculous, and I won’t back down, and they won’t back down, and none of us will back down, and the book is very close to getting pulled, which I don’t want because I worked hard on it and they don’t want because they already paid me the advance, and eventually, with this great air of superiority they say “OK Kevin, we’ll take this to the top. WE’LL TAKE THIS TO GEORGE”. And they go to all this trouble, this was a long while ago when such things were not so easy to arrange, they go to all this trouble to set up a conference call with all of them and me and with George Lucas and they say “George, Kevin is trying to say in his new book that Spice is a drug, it’s a food additive, tell him it’s not a drug, George”. And there’s this long silence on the other end of the line and eventually George says “It is a drug, though. It’s, it’s a drug, it’s a food-additive? What? Of course it a drug, it’s space heroin, what else would it be? What?” And that was then end of that.“
