not gonna lie, this actually looks like a good idea.
I was camping this weekend and someone pulled out THREE snackleboxes and lemme tell you, absolute game changer
American bento
I was at a beach bbq yesterday and there were two of these excellent snackleboxes. Stole the show. First time I’d ever seen them, but let me tell you, It Will Not Be The Last.
As someone who lives near the beach this is a response I legit don’t understand. Not in a judgey way. I just literally don’t understand it. Our beaches don’t have restaurants on them here. Maybe all the way off the beach and a few streets in, sure. And there’s a ritzy place on a pier over the beach. All of them are hideously overpriced. Maybe I’m being too literal.
I love this because you have Elizabeth who couldn’t even defend herself in the first one to becoming this master sword fighter and leader of ALL pirates. You watch Will who was just this angsty little brat head over heels for Elizabeth become this grown man who faced all his demons.
and then there’s Jack
“Elizabeth who couldn’t even defend herself”
Do you mean…
Elizabeth who improvised a weapon when pirates invaded her bedroom
Elizabeth who could have run for the exits but instead went straight for the swords
Elizabeth who demanded to speak with a pirate captain and then used the leverage she had to get him to agree to her demands
Elizabeth who CAME AT BARBOSSA WITH A GODDAMN KNIFE and then fucking STABBED HIM when she couldn’t get away
Elizabeth who was trapped on a tiny island with nothing but crates of rum and a man she couldn’t stand and who used those supplies to summon a rescue party for herself
Elizabeth who made a rope out of sheets and climbed down the back of a ship to save the day herself when no one would listen to her about how dangerous the pirates were
Elizabeth who snuck onto the Black Pearl, knocked two cursed pirates straight off their ship, and rescued Jack’s entire crew
Elizabeth who rowed straight back into danger without any backup instead of running away with everyone else
Elizabeth who came to Will’s rescue with a blunt object and a one-liner
Elizabeth who proceeded to team up with Will to take down all the remaining pirates in the cave
Elizabeth who – without being asked or told what was going on – faked unconsciousness to create a distraction for Will’s rescue of Jack
Elizabeth who stepped in front of a ring of muskets, successfully protecting Jack and Will from being shot or captured
Elizabeth may have learned some impressive sword tricks in the later movies, but she was a Badass from day one.
I dislike dogs, I think they’re annoying and I generally dislike their personalities unless they’re a) working (in which case I shouldn’t interfere with them) or b) basically cats (in which case, just get a cat, they’re far more physically pleasant to touch). I’m not afraid of them and I don’t hate or resent their existence, they’re important animals, I just don’t want them around me.
But if a dog comes over and wants pets or play then I WILL pretend I love it and I will pet it so much because it’s not the dog’s fault that I don’t like them. It wouldn’t understand my rejection and I don’t want to make it sad. Just because it’s an unpleasant animal doesn’t mean it deserves to be sad.
There seems to be a deeper philosophy one could derive from this but as it is its solid.
Behaving with basic compassion for other living things regardless of whether they fulfil your own emotional and aesthetic preferences. The world makes me happy but the amount of happiness I bring others isn’t contingent on them making me happy first. It’s not a serotonin transaction.
So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.
Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.
One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.
All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.
So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.
And Mr. Hargrove loved it.
It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.
Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”
And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.
Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.
One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.
That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.
And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.
And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)
So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.
Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.
Dragons are extraordinarily good mimics, escaping human predation by disguising themselves as common airliners, some even going so far as to sport crude copies of carrier logos. This makes them difficult to track, though most sources agree that the dragon population is critically endangered.
While there has been some success with halting large-scale dragon hunting, conservationists are still concerned about a recent spate of crashes in otherwise healthy adults.
Given that dragons communicate via radio signals and that most crashes occur near military radar stations, it is theorized that the radar may be disorienting the dragons. Investigations are still ongoing.
I fixed it
You fixed it!!
Good job!
[Caption: the post contains various drawings of dragons looking like planes, crashing on beaches and being rescued, transported and healed until they can fly again.]
In the future, children will think our ways are strange. “Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?” they’ll say. “Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?”
We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people’s yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines
We will be feeding our grandchildren strawberries and raspberries we grew in our gardens, dragging them along to the farmers’ markets for tomatoes and eggs and goats milk and pickles and pecans and salsa and sunflower seed butter and jars of honey, as they complain and drag their feet because Gramma always stands around talking to people for like an HOUR
and we will say “When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn’t even legal in some places to grow your own food”
and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn’t mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER
But they will go, because there might be baby goats.
