Google Maps Trip

Sometimes I like to take a trip via google maps. It usually ends up scaring me. Lately I’ve been specifically inspired by True Detective‘s fourth season, Night Country, to look for remote and northern destinations to drop my yellow person down into (if the van has been there, that is).

Anyway. Let’s say I accidentally teleported myself, my essentials (not food though), and a working vehicle into Red Lake, a little town quite a ways west from, let’s say, Niagara Falls Ontario, which is not where I live, but is not excruciatingly far. Red Lake has a nice-looking lake, a harbour called “Government Docks” which looks like a nice place to walk around by, and a restaurant called Antonio’s which appears to have one vegan option (spaghetti with tomato sauce).

I put the yellow person right there on the road close to the lake and was rewarded with a nice image of the sun, and a bunch of snow. I would like to drive on this road. Not in extreme weather though.

So if I want to go home, I’ll have to head east and south. I’ll take the 105.

from google maps

These long two-lane highways bookended by trees are pretty much what I expect driving in most places in this country. I can stop at Ear Falls. They have a beach, and Lac Seul Generating Station, and a splash pad, which I’m sure isn’t operational in February.

A million years later, there’s an intersection with 17 which is going to get me to 11 which is (part of) the trans Canada highway. At that intersection is Bobby’s Moose Creek Trading Post, which a reviewer didn’t like because there were no local or Indigenous goods, no public bathroom, and it wasn’t dog friendly (sad!). I don’t have a dog with me but I’ll skip.

At this point I’m thinking about when I might be able to have another meal. Not since the plain tomato sauce spaghetti have I seen a restaurant with a vegan option. To be fair, I’ve seen a Subway, but they barely have vegan options and even if they did, I wouldn’t do it. I also haven’t been looking hard, but, I think I’m right.

There’s something called “Eagle Lake Floating Vacations” but it says it’s a fishing camp, so I’ll just drive by.

Now there is Dryden, a bigger town that the van bothered driving through. There used to be a restaurant there, Kokom’s Bannock Shack, that apparently had vegan options and is now closed, which is very sad.

They have a Service Ontario if I want to go stand in a line. They have a tourist attraction called Max the Moose with 136 reviews, mostly positive. There is one 1 star review: “Its a moose… that got his balls cut off cause people couldnt stop playing with them.” I can’t vouch for that but that’s bleak if true.

There are many pictures featuring Max the Moose. I suggest you take a look. My personal favourites are the black and white artsy one where Max is looking to the sky, and also the one with the majestic rottweiler lying in front of Max. My canon is that this rottweiler was the dog denied service at Bobby’s Moose Creek Trading. I’m glad they got to enjoy Max at least.

I wanted a nice picturesque image of Dryden so I went for the street view on the little bridge, and I got this.

I wanted to know what that was, so I took a quick peak. It’s Dryden Fibre (paper towels, tissue, and paper). The first google review says, “Company responsible for dumping 9,000 kilograms (20,000 lb) of mercury into the English-Wabigoon River upstream of Grassy Narrows First Nation and poisoning the community, making it “one of Canada’s worst environmental disasters”. The company is all about profit, not caring for people. All the google reviews giving 5 stars are also probably bought off $$” – I don’t know about that either but will do some googling when I get home. [EDIT: soooooooo yes, this company is responsible for dumping mercury into a river and poisoning people from the Grassy Narrows and the Whitedog Indigenous nations and their water and fish. Link to a report on the situation and how it was handled, and the aftermath, with a focus on the community affected. Infuriating. Then there’s this too, about how the former owners, who are responsible for the poisoning, were let off the hook. And this, about the government deciding not to clean it up. And this, about how scientists recommended back then and again recently that cleanup was possible if costly, and could save lives. And this, about how the government is failing to help community members with health effects from mercury poisoning. Despicable, but honestly -93839337829338 star review to all the Ontario governments past and present too. Absolute trash.]

Now passing through Aaron Provincial Park. I doubt I’m in any shape for a hike but I’m going to risk it. The pictures people have posted look pretty great.

Now reaching Ignace, with a skate park and community garden, and a lake nearby.

At the time of this blog writing, just before cute little Hay Lake, there is a tourist attraction on the side of 17 called “Kelsie & Scotts Inukshuk”:

If that’s it, it appears to have fallen over. RIP.

Next, past some more vegan-unfriendly restaurants and campgrounds, there is the Arctic Watershed Marker, and I’d like to stop and read that if I’m not being tailgated.

Finally we reach the 11. It’s here that I went “omg how long is this going to be still.” And zoomed out. And. Yeah. In a careers class in grade 8, I was assigned the trucker career. I sometimes think about what life would be like if I had pursued that, but I think now it’s clear I lack the necessary patience along with the stamina.

So. I think a realistic goal for now is to just get to Thunder Bay, which is a city with a few vegan-friendly restaurants so I can maybe finally eat.

Along the way, I’ll pass by The Barn which appears to be a place you can water your horses. Then there’s a cool-looking river but it appears you don’t see it from the road until you cross a little bridge. At this point I noticed that the highway I’m on is alternatively marked 11 or 17. That must be why it’s a two-lane-on-each-side highway now.

There is a rest area where someone has posted a picture of a dog with some sort of orange thing in their mouth. The reviewer approves of this rest stop. It must be dog-friendly.

Suddenly I’ve reached Kakabeka Falls, and I must stop and take a look. The view from the little bridge over the river isn’t much, but people have posted some beautiful pictures of the actual falls on google. My personal favourite includes an extremely fluffy dog.

Moving right along, I go over Jelly Road which is Wing Road on the other side of 11/17, interesting. A little while later, boom. Thunder Bay.

After stopping myself from starving to death at Bonobo’s Foods (I’d order the Crabby Bonobo. I cannot resist vegan crab-type foods), I probably want to check out several places, including but not limited to:

• the Thunder Bay Art Gallery (currently exhibits are Radical Stitch, about beading, and Wall Pockets, about beaded wall pockets and I am delighted because I love beads and I feel I need many wall pockets and didn’t realize those ever existed until now)
• Centennial Conservatory (the word “arboretum” appears and I must go)
• the Service Ontario (jk)
• omg does Subway pay google to highlight their sub-par food on the map, seriously, I’m not going to Subway ever
• Hillcrest Park (you can get a view of the city from up high there, looks pretty cool)
• Mario’s Bowl (I suck at bowling but whatever, I’ve always wanted to be that eccentric person whipping bowling balls down a lane all on their own, grooving to whatever music is playing)
• Thunder Bay Museum (I like the red velvet people playing instruments the most)
• I’d go to the Boreal Museum too but it appears to be closed for the off-season
• and I might try to visit the Clean Kitchen Coach because I could use some pointers.

Anyway. I realized now that Thunder Bay is right on Lake Superior and I lost my little mind. I have ALWAYS wanted to see Lake Superior which has ALWAYS been the scariest and most existential-crisis-inducing of all of the lakes. The Mission Marsh Conservation Area is on the shore and I’d go spend my life there, so looks like a good place to stop for now.

Some stats:

• just the driving on this trip is somewhere around 6.5 hours, which obviously doesn’t take into account reading highway signs, looking at fallen-over inukshuks, going for random hikes because I can’t resist a conservation area, looking at dogs at dog-friendly and dog-unfriendly places, and looking unsuccessfully for vegan food and finding mostly Subways, sporting goods stores, campgrounds, curling clubs, trees, and so on.
• If I wanted to walk it, and let’s face it, I do, it would be 119 hours, and google warns me that Thunder Bay is in a different time zone from Red Lake.
• There is no transit available for this trip. This makes sense, but I feel that if people in Red Lake want to go to Thunder Bay they shouldn’t have to rely on a car, or a 119 hour walk.
• The trip, now that I’ve reached Thunder Bay, is not even halfway done.

Maybe I’ll finish this trip later. For now I’m hanging with the goddess Lake Superior, peering into her depths and wondering about the nature of life, death, existence itself, and the deep, deep, darkness.

See you next time!

The Family Madrigal: The Strange Predicament that I Now Find Myself In

Heads up: personal ridiculous story time. Spoilers (not really though) for the first 30 minutes of Encanto because THAT WAS ALL I SAW.

On one of my days off, having failed to convince anyone to come with me to see Disney’s new Encanto as it’s the busy holiday season and I guess no one I know has time for a new Disney musical, I decided, hey, there’s a showtime in the afternoon and it’s still the week before school lets out for the holidays, so it won’t be too crowded. Let’s go!

All was going well (movie seems to be great, no surprise there) but then the power went out.

The small number of other people in the theatre and I had just gotten past the I Want song, called “Waiting on a Miracle,” when the theatre went black, and then emergency-light bright. I liked the song, but I preferred the upbeat introduction song “The Family Madrigal” the way I preferred “Where You Are” to “How Far I’ll Go” in Moana, the other Lin Manuel Miranda Disney musical. “The Family Madrigal” is fun, with a lot of punchy lyrics, multiple laughs, full of trivia, communal and familial – perfect for this particular moment in this province, when the cases are exploding exponentially and the very real possibility of a locked down Christmas is looming again.

I went home, annoyed, and bought the only songs I’d heard so as to not spoil myself and noticed that the most popular song, which we hadn’t gotten to, has a name that’s also a lyric (the most intriguing lyric!) in “The Family Madrigal.” I became even more annoyed.

Now I’m in this bizarre limbo, playing and replaying “The Family Madrigal,” and occasionally “Waiting on a Miracle,” but personally I’m just waiting on my next day off so I can try again to see it – provided we don’t lock down in the meantime.

That evening the universe seems to have felt that I hadn’t had enough Disney, so I heard the telltale sounds of one of my foster kittens doing a good impression of Mufasa’s last moments between the rails on the second floor. I’ve heard those specific scratchings before, maybe twice, with previous foster kittens. I’ve either managed to push those kittens up and back through the rails or they manage to scramble back up on their own. In this case I hurried over but I wasn’t even in time to see him dangling. This small white body just fell right in front of my face. Reader, I couldn’t freaking tell you how, but I snatched him out of the air. He would have broken at least one of his legs. Maybe pelvis or mandible. For an animal that likes to impersonate Mufasa a lot, cats are too fragile and not nearly as good at falling as we as a society think they are.

Anyway he realized a split second later (and too soon for me to react and set him down gently) that I was holding him and I guess this was the worst possible outcome in his brain, so he panic-launched himself out of my hands and I got scratched minorly. You’re welcome?

What I learned from this experience is that The Lion King just needed me. I’d have to be the size of a giant but I could have caught Mufasa. Could I explain wtf the plot would be after that? No. It would probably be very bad. There would suddenly be this giant human who had shown up without explanation. You’d have no need for Timon and Puumba so we’d lose out on “Hakuna Matata.” Basically everything would change. Perhaps the lions and hyenas would actually band together to kill and eat me. I mean. I’d watch it.

I’d rather watch the rest of Encanto though.

The Flat Guy in Fellowship of the Ring

It’s Valentine’s Day of 2021, and I hear it is a particularly stressful moment in the pandemic for a lot of people – likely mainly because of how long it’s been. I have the stress too, so here is something that shouldn’t make me laugh, and yet, it does.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, the four innocent hobbits go to the Prancing Pony, which is located in a gated community of human males, for some drinks, and also to expose themselves as having the ring in their possession to spies of Sauran or whatever. Fortunately only Aragorn notices, so they escape.

The nazgul do hear all about it and rush over. When they arrive, the gatekeeper is shocked by their sudden and swift appearance and doesn’t have a chance to get out of their way, and then they knock the door on him.

It starts at 1:29

Since the first time I ever watched this movie, I always noted that the door falls on the guy and he is presumably crushed by the weight of the nazgul and their horses, but he is crushed so severely that the door just falls completely flat on the ground. There’s nothing underneath that. He is paper thin.

I know it’s a cinema trick (kind of a lazy one at that… no disrespect though, I like some lazy cinema) but I can’t not look, and as time has marched progressively on (it came out in 2001) it has only gotten funnier to me.

In fact, if you watch carefully, you notice that he is squashed flat before the first horse even really gets in there, so just the weight of the door itself was enough to immediately turn this gatekeeper into Flat Stanley.

RIP flat gatekeeper man.

(The featured image is someone’s pet ferret at the Prancing Pony, and I never noticed the ferret. The guy becoming flat instantly I noticed, but not the ferret. Sigh, brain, sigh.)

(why is this so funny), Part 2

Please watch this video.

 

I’m at a loss.

I can’t stop laughing.

Why though.

Why.

Though.

Well, partly it’s because of the guy in hysterics in the voice over. That definitely helps. Even the guy who conceived of doing this video can’t stop laughing, and it just adds to the overall absurdity of it all.

But the other part is just that Bee Movie thing.

Bee Movie.

They couldn’t even come up with a name for their movie, in the end. After all the hard work, after getting big name actors and comedians to do the voice acting, after the excruciating animation process itself, they were like, “Uh, well, uh, it’s a movie… about a bee…”

Maybe they’d always intended to call it Bee Movie, though. I don’t know. I also don’t care. I’ve watched the trailer multiple times in multiple variations, I’ve watched Bee Movie in its entirety (though it got faster every time they said “bee”) and I’ve read the premise of the film, and I’ve also read Hive for the Honeybee which is likely out of print right now but it’s an amazing existentialist book about bees and that’s the movie they should have made. My point is that I don’t even have to watch Bee Movie. I don’t need that negativity, the negativity of a woman on a date with the bee she’s in love with thoughtlessly killing a mosquito and then both of them laughing about it even though the event that brought them together in the first place was her saving him from being killed by a human because “Why does his life have any less value than yours,” in my life.

Instead, I’ll take various internet denizens’ offerings, which have thankfully injected Bee Movie with some much-needed value. A reason for even existing, shall we say.

This is part 2 of the other thing I posted. Half of those videos were scrubbed from Youtube because of Dreamworks and copyright law. Damn it, Dreamworks. You’re killing my buzz.

GET IT

A Mini Adventure in Raw Apple Pie

Due to the magic of the internet I started 2018 off right, by receiving an email in error from an Italian woman gifting me with three raw vegan recipes.

The second of those is a raw apple pie recipe and I was skeptical, but also intrigued, especially because I had a tip from the lady: “Yesterday I think I blended the apples too much. If you can shake them a little I think the “cream” might remain consistent.”

So I have no clue what she actually meant in her actual Italian version of this email by “shake them a little.” But. I tried.

I used a huge trifle dish or whatever the hell this horrible thing is. I bought it to make tiramisu in and I don’t know what it’s really for, but the point is that my pictures end up awful because the dish is always in the way.

But this is what it looked like:

lookit that masterful decoration there

I did not blend the apples too much.

Here’s my translation of the recipe:

Il Tortino di Mele

Ingredients:

6 Apples
1 cup Raisins
1 1/2 cup Sunflower Seeds
12 Medjool Dates
3 tablespoons Coconut
1 or 2 tablespoons Cinnamon (adjust the quantity to taste)

Instructions:

Soak the dates for one hour. Soak the raisins for 15 minutes.

For the crust: blend the sunflower seeds in a food processor to reduce them to a powder. Place the sunflower seed powder in a small bowl. Next, use a food processor to blend the drained raisins in into a paste, and then mix with the sunflower seeds until a solid and homogeneous dough is obtained.

Spread the dough thus obtained in your monstrous trifle dish or something else suitable to hold the shape of a raw apple pie. The dough should have a thickness of about one centimeter and will serve for the base.

For the filling: use a food processor or a blender to blend the drained dates into a paste. Place blended dates in a medium bowl. Peel and cut the apples into reasonable slices, then place them in a food processor or a blender. Blend gently and not too much. Shake them a little. I guess. Add the apples to the dates and then add the cinnamon. Mix carefully so as to mix the ingredients and their flavours well. The whole thus obtained has to be poured over the previously prepared base and then leveled with a suitable spatula.

Add the coconut to cover everything. To finish decorating, arrange nicely sliced pieces of apple in a decorative fashion (see photo) (for what not to do).

Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

I bolded the parts that are AMAZING thank you Google Translate and also the Italian Language.

What I didn’t leave in are that “soak the dates” is my translation from “put the dates in the bath” and once again I have to mention that the direct translation from Italian of “food processor” is “robot of the kitchen.”

ROBOT. OF. THE. KITCHEN.

I honestly don’t know if the apples were supposed to be blended more thoroughly than that, but the way I did it was pretty good. Surprisingly, with zero flour and zero vegan butter and zero cooking, this tasted like apple pie. It tasted like a simple apple pie that had gone in the fridge after cooking. I liked it.

Well, next up is the cheesecake.

A 2018 Mini Adventure

On New Year’s Day I got an email from an Italian woman that she was trying to send to her friend, but I guess our email addresses were similar so I ended up with it instead.

It went like this:

Buongiorno, 

Ecco il pdf della ricetta della torta di mele. Ieri credo di aver frullato troppo le mele, se riesci a frullarle un pò meno forse la “crema” rimane più consistente..Ti allego anche la ricetta di una torta crudista al cioccolato che ancora non ho provato a fare ma sembra mooolto golosa…

Sotto trovi il link al sito di ricette crudiste da cui ho tratto quella del cous cous di cavolfiore + tante altre.. (a proposito mi sa che ho dimenticato l’insalatiera di vetro che lo conteneva. Non ho fretta di averla, alla prossima occasione..)

http://www.ricettecrudiste.it/ricette/couscous-crudista/

Couscous crudista – Ricette Crudiste http://www.ricettecrudiste.it Dalla classica ricetta Nordafricana un couscous crudista a base di cavolfiore e ortaggi. Una meraviglia per la vista e per il gusto, scoprite la ricetta!

Grazie ancora per l’accoglienza e la gradevolissima serata. 

Di nuovo Buon 2018 a tutti.

In other words:

Hey.

Here is the pdf of the apple pie recipe. Yesterday I think I blended the apples too much. If you can shake them a little I think the “cream” might remain consistent. I also attached the recipe for a chocolate cake that I haven’t tried yet but it seems soooo decadent.

Below is the link for the website I got a lot of raw recipes from, like the cauliflower cous cous (btw I know I forgot the bowl, I’m in no rush to have it back, next time).

Thanks again for the reception and the pleasant evening.

Again Happy 2018 to everyone.

So I checked out the recipes, using Google translate because though I am Italian I’m nowhere near fluent. As luck would have it, they’re all vegan. All of them. Also raw, which, I think, was more the point, but still. I’m always saying I could use more raw vegan in my life.

I replied and told her she got the email a little wrong but thanked her for the recipes anyway because I’m going to try them. I replied in English, and then she replied with “Hey sorry thanks for telling me enjoy the recipes there’s no gluten or dairy in any of them,” also in English, so I felt like a jerk for not trying to reply in Italian. But it’s fine. Google is a thing.

Look. This is perhaps the most magical thing that’s happened to me via email. And I’ve been offered jobs via email. A job I like, even, once. The first time I talked to my long lost brother was via email.

BUT THIS TRUMPS EVEN THAT.

It probably has something to do with that one terrible guy who has texted me by accident twice now thinking I’m his (probably) terrible friend, telling him to date exclusively virgins, sometimes virgin sixteen-year-olds.

I keep meaning to reply one day pretending I’m someone he knows and say “Bro help I keep obsessing over whether the hotties all my friends are dating are virgins is there a support group do you know help me” or “Bro I’ve started dating this teenage virgin hottie but bro help if we have sex she won’t be a virgin anymore do I then have to dump her and find a different teenage virgin hottie but then if so the cycle starts again or I get arrested so what do, help.”

But I never get around to it.

The point is, someone contacted me by mistake and bequeathed three raw vegan and gluten free recipes and one of them is a chocolate cheesecake.

Thank you, internet.

Anyway. I’m going to blog the three recipes because unlike some people I could mention I’m not worried about anyone’s virginity status, and therefore I have lots of time to do things where otherwise I would be occupied thinking about who’s a virgin and who isn’t a virgin. Fancy that.

I’ve made the first one already! Technically I should have started with the apple pie, and then done the cheesecake, and then the cous cous, but I started with the cous cous because I’m a lot more excited about dessert so I figured I’d just get the vegetables out of the way.

INGREDIENTS

For the cous cous:

1/2 of a cauliflower
Cumin
Turmeric
Curry
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil

For the toppings:

1/2 of a bell pepper
1/2 of an onion
2 tablespoons capers
2 tablespoons olives
5-6 cherry tomatoes
1/2 T of peas
1 carrot
1 stalk of celery
The zest of half a lemon

Blend the cauliflower with the food processor*** so as to obtain a grain similar to the classic semolina. Transfer the cauliflower couscous into a large bowl and season with cumin, turmeric, curry, salt, pepper and oil.

Cut the pepper, the onion into cubes (you can marinate it with salt and vinegar first), the tomatoes, the carrot and the celery. Add the capers, previously desalted, the peas (fresh or frozen) and the olives. Season with salt and pepper Add the cous cous to the dressing, top with the lemon zest and decorate with fresh mint.

***Food processor in Italian is “robot da cucina” which is pretty great news. A direct translation of that is “robot of the kitchen.”

I forgot the peas and cherry tomatoes. I also “forgot” the lemon zest and the mint (I was too lazy for that) but it would have been good. Even without those four ingredients, I actually liked this a lot. The fact that there aren’t any measurements for any of the spices meant that I just added until I liked the taste and I have to say, that makes a difference.

I also DID NOT marinate the onion and pepper in vinegar first, because I HATE THAT. I HATE THAT SO MUCH. I HATE WHEN I BUY FUN LITTLE SALADS ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT IT ALL TASTES LIKE VINEGAR AND ONLY VINEGAR.

But if that’s what you like then go for it. It’s definitely missing a tang and that’s probably because I didn’t add the zest.

Well, that’s it for now. Next time is a raw apple pie. So. Yeah.

Emily’s Best Christmas Present Ever: Whoo Boy

oh my goodness

So.

I found this on my bookshelf a while ago. It was written for me when I was in Grade 1 or something by two Grade 3 students who were my reading buddies. It felt vaguely familiar as I was reading it, but there are definitely things in here that went completely over my head (and, most likely, they went over the authors’ heads too) when I was little.

But it’s delightful so I’m writing a blog post about it. Merry very early Christmas.

So, first of all, excuse my pictures. I was too lazy to not do this while giggling on my bed, and the result is that they’re all really badly cropped and whatnot but it’s fine.

Next, we have to wonder whether the main character is supposed to be me. She does kind of look like me. Honestly, even the parents look a bit like my parents. And if so, it’s lovely that in a book written about me for me, the authors chose to portray my family as being too poor to afford milk. That’s a really fun and not stressful at all imagination game.

Milk is bad anyway, family, no worries.

Page 2 was just Emily’s mom yelling at her that they’re going on a walk. So here’s page 3, on their walk through a dystopian nightmare without any trees or plants at all. And if it’s supposed to be near Christmas, well, I guess they’re also too poor to afford outerwear.

I’m sure the subject of poverty will be treated sensitively by the authors. I can tell by how Emily says sadly that she wants to live in a house “like that,” which probably means, a house that people who can afford milk can afford.

For dinner, they had little pieces of bread.

What.

I’m not going to touch the continuity error. The miserable dinner is enough for me on this page.

Um.

You know what. I’m not going to say anything.

I think the authors were heavily influenced by every Christmas special ever in which some lucky kid gets to go with Santa to do his grueling job. Also, Santa has a beard on this page.

Everyone is bug-eyed on Christmas morning, seems legit.

I do have some questions.

Why are they running downstairs if they’re expecting there to be nothing under the tree?

Also why is that chair so horrible.

Also the dad needs a better outfit. Hopefully one of his presents is an outfit that doesn’t match his chair.

Also I approve of the overalls, which are what Emily is wearing on this page, I assume.

Oh wow, that new chair is even worse than the other one, and it matches the dad’s outfit even more and I’m exponentially more horrified by that and also the fact that Emily changed her sensible overall outfit into a dress that ALSO matches the terrible furniture.

And the wrapping paper changed colours. It’s the magic of Christmas day.

Poverty solved, everyone! Just learn how to build a house, and then if you have lots of kitchen supplies you can eat stuff that isn’t just pieces of bread. Also a doll.

Honestly, though, it’s pretty much on par with every well-meaning Christmas thing that tries to tackle this subject. Remember Billy in The Polar Express? What was that? Why was that? And that was made by professionals! Professional adults! Talk to my sister about it, she has the bluntest takes ever on that aspect of that movie.

Anyway. Hopefully this year is the best Christmas ever to all of you who celebrate it. And to those who don’t, hopefully your December 25th is still really really good. And also, it’s kind of early for Christmas wishes but I’m not even sorry.

And thanks very much to Krista and Amanda. Ladies, you are amazing. Thanks for being my reading buddies. And also for writing me into a story in which my family is destitute and basically starving but it’s OK because Santa fixes it with tools and a how-to book on home construction.

AND. It’s the giving time of the year. Inspired by this story and its extremely naive take on poverty, I’m reminding me and you that food banks exist! They’re easy to give to because many grocery stores have bins for donations all year round, and I basically live at the grocery store so, cool. Check out their most-needed lists.

(Also, as someone who works at a non-profit I can tell you that financial donations are always the bomb) (seriously, cash is good) (non-profits have bills to pay and as nice as it is to get the stuff on the wishlist – and as easy as it is for people to do that if they happen to be at a store with bins or if they happen to be cleaning stuff they don’t need out at home – cash is the most useful thing)

Pegasus was never meant to be screencapped

This is very disturbing.

😦

(why is this so funny)

The Bee Movie is back. So I didn’t know this until just a few days ago, but apparently there was a meme where someone would comment on a post, but their comment would just be the entire screenplay of Bee Movie. I’m pretty disappointed that I never ran into that organically throughout my internet travels because that is just the kind of absurdity that would have made me laugh for hours.

Thankfully, my Youtube recommendations sent me to this whole new world of Bee Movie absurdity, and here are my favourites. I can’t help but share them, in case someone is out there who doesn’t see these as a complete waste of time.

People are getting existential. Now here are all of the variations on the Bee Movie trailer.

I just.

I have never seen Bee Movie and I never will. But this is making me laugh, so, cool.

(Something way more important: link.)

We are Bad at Microfiction

We are the worst.

You’ve heard of microfiction: really short stories. Sometimes as short as one or two sentences, like this post on Reddit. Or this awesome magazine.

We tried it – we went for the two sentence horror story thing, even though we’re terrible at being concise. So it didn’t really work out. But here are the results.