Pinned
btw I've found these stretches from the WAK blog very helpful when knitting a lot:
Plus make sure to take breaks regularly - and stop if anything starts to hurt!
especially with gift knitting I know it can be tempting to push through it for a deadline, but it's really not worth causing long term injury. (And anyone knit-worthy should be understanding of that, imho.) Stay well :)
one of my earliest video game memories was my neighbor from down the street burning me a copy of Roller Coaster Tycoon onto a CD and giving it to me for free, with the caveat that one day a week he would sit behind me and backseat game HARD. like "build this here, okay now build this here, no not there, HERE, okay now make a path here," etc etc. i never minded it at the time, i genuinely had no idea how to play so i thought he was teaching me. years later i learned that him and his family were Orthodox Jewish and him backseat gaming me was his way of getting around the Sabbath ban on playing video games
My boyfriend is trying to explain cricket to me again. “He’s only got two balls to make 48 runs”, he says. The camera focuses on a man. Underneath him it says LEFT ARM FAST MEDIUM. A ball flies into the stands and presumably fractures someone’s skull. “There’s a free six”, my boyfriend says. 348 SIXES says the screen. A child in the audience waves a sign referencing Weet-Bix
The first time he showed me this I assumed he was pranking me
if people haven’t been exposed to cricket before, here is the experience. The person who likes cricket turns on a radio with an air of happy expectation. “We’ll just catch up with the cricket,” they say.
An elderly British man with an accent - you can picture exactly what he looks like and what he is wearing, somehow, and you know that he will explain the important concept of Yorkshire to you at length if you make eye contact - is saying “And w’ four snickets t’ wicket, Umbleby dives under the covers and romps home for a sticky bicket.”
There is a deep and satisfied silence. Weather happens over the radio. This lasts for three minutes.
A gentle young gentleman with an Indian accent, whose perfect and beautiful clear voice makes him sound like a poet sipping from a cup of honeyed drink always, says mildly “Of course we cannot forget that when Pakistan last had the biscuit under the covers, they were thrown out of bed. In 1957, I believe.”
You mouth “what the fucking fuck.”
A morally ambiguous villain from a superhero movie says off-microphone, “Crumbs everywhere.”
Apparently continuing a previous conversation, the villain asks, “Do seagulls eat tacos?”
“I’m sure someone will tell us eventually,” the poet says. His voice is so beautiful that it should be familiar; he should be the only announcer on the radio, the only reader of audiobooks.
The villain says with sudden interest, “Oh, a leg over straight and under the covers, Peterson and Singh are rumping along with a straight fine leg and good pumping action. Thanks to his powerful thighs, Peterson is an excellent legspinner, apart from being rude on Twitter.”
The man from Yorkshire roars potently, like a bull seeing another bull. There might be words in his roar, but otherwise it is primal and sizzling.
“That isn’t straight,” the poet says. “It’s silly.”
“What the fucking fuck,” you say out loud at this point.
“Shh,” says the person who likes cricket. They listen, tensely. Something in the distance makes a very small “thwack,” like a baby dropping an egg.
“Was that a doosra or a googly?” the villain asks.
“IT’S A WRONG ‘UN,” roars the Yorkshireman in his wrath. A powerful insult has been offered. They begin to scuffle.
“With that double doozy, Crumpet is baffled for three turns, Agarwal is deep in the biscuit tin and Padgett has gone to the shops undercover,” the poet says quickly, to cover the action while his companions are busy. The villain is being throttled, in a friendly companionable way.
An intern apparently brings a message scrawled on a scrap of paper like a courier sprinting across a battlefield. “Reddy has rolled a nat 20,” the poet says with barely contained excitement. “Australia is both a continent and an island. But we’re running out of time!”
“Is that true?” You ask suddenly.
“Shh!” Says the person who likes cricket. “It’s a test match.”
“About Australia.”
“We won’t know THAT until the third DAY.”
A distant “pock” noise. The sound of thirty people saying “tsk,” sorrowfully.
“And the baby’s dropped the egg. Four legs over or we’re done for, as long as it doesn’t rain.”
The villain might be dead? You begin to find yourself emotionally invested.
There are mild distant cheers. “Oh, and with twelve sticky wickets t’ over and t’ seagull’s exploded,” the man from the North says as if all of his dreams have come true. “What a beautiful day.” Your person who likes cricket relaxes. It is tea break.
The villain, apparently alive, describes the best hat in the audience as “like a funnel made of dove-colored net, but backwards, with flies trapped in it.”
This is every bit as good as that time in Australia in 1975, they all agree, drinking their tea and eating home-made cakes sent in by the fans. The poet comments favorably on the icing and sugar-preserved violets. The Yorkshire man discourses on the nature of sponge. The villain clatters his cup too hard on his saucer. To cover his embarrassment, the poet begins scrolling through Twitter on his phone, reading aloud the best memes in his enchanting milky voice. Then, with joy, he reads an @ from an ornithologist at the University of Reading: seagulls do eat tacos! A reference is cited; the poet reads it aloud. Everyone cheers.
You are honestly - against your will - kind of into it! but also: weirdly enraged.
“Was that … it?” you ask, deeming it safe to interrupt.
“No,” says the person who likes cricket, “This is second tea break on the first day. We won’t know where we really are until lunch tomorrow.”
And - because you cannot stop them - you have to accept this; if cricket teaches you anything, it is this gentle and radical acceptance.
I’m watching an old test match and looked up just in time to see a slow mo of a cricket ball hitting someone in the face.
The commentator said sadly, “He had nowhere to go, and it followed him.”
Cricket is fucking great!
Oh my GOD
He had nowhere to go… and it followed him….
TEENAGE SEX & DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA 2026, dir. Jane Schoenbrun
this is from "research as a leisure activity" by celine nguyen, publs. on stubstack in 2024. it's a very good read
I met someone when I was pretty young who had received a generous inheritance -- not enough to live a life of luxury, but enough to live on comfortably without working. He had chosen to simply keep going to school his whole life. He did get degrees, but he didn't use them for anything other than pleasure -- he had a Ph.D but also two Master's degrees, three BAs, and was currently serving an apprenticeship in blacksmithing while considering trying out some trade schools next. I thought, if I had the money I'd do that too, and then thought about how I still could learn all the time, it would just have to be a hobby instead of the career he'd made of it. It definitely changed the way I saw both education and leisure.
Buckle up, European and Foreigner Tumblypoos, because I'm about to learn you a thing about AMERICA.
You see these delectable motherflippers? These are called STATES. You stupid foreigners might not be able to wrap your head around this, but basically they're administrative subdivisions of the country.
And here's the thing: They are totally heckin' different from each other! For instance, New York:
Looks TOTALLY DIFFERENT from Kansas:
And they both look TOTALLY different from California!
So before you make fun of an American for not knowing where tiny third-world countries like "Check Republic" or "South Korea" are, maybe think about how much we have to learn about the unique regional differences in our OWN country. Maybe you should think about AMERICA more.
me when anything even remotely inconvenient happens
882 days left of the pit of despair
please.
Fucking geniuses made mimes funny
crabs are so gentle, they can be so kind. their claws? precise little things, so careful in the sand, so careful with food. they do what they must to live and wave their claws to express their joy to the world for giving so much to them, for giving such kindness to these creatures known as crabs. please be gentle to crabs
i was on. a new sleep medication last night
Me, trying to impress my date with a display of my boundless humility: I would like to order one single, solitary crumb.
Waitress taking my order: Such arrogance! Not only do you presume to boast under the guise of being humble, but your order employs the most decadent of linguistic excesses - the tautology!
My date, who until recently thought "tautology" referred to the study of tensile strengths and upon learning her mistake compensated by reading through its Wikipedia article: That would be more correctly identified as a "pleonasm".
The editor I hired to curate my posts who styles himself as a sort of scheming court advisor: My liege, this one is getting away from us. The punchline loses much of its impact when the rest of the joke is derailed by this increasingly self-indulgent meta humour. Were it up to me, your Grace, which of course it is not, I would cut the others and leave myself as the only supporting character. You need noone else, Your Majesty...
My card: Declines
Tim Hortons is doing a Harry Potter collab and like. Whatever. I quit going there years ago because the food and drinks are bad. But it's annoying me off how people keeping boiling down folks boycotting Tim's to "People are mad about things JRK said on Twitter" and "People are mad because they don't like Harry Potter". I heard the former stated as the reason on the radio the other day. Jesus Christ, no. People are mad because any money JKR gets from this promotion will be funneled straight into lobbying against transgender rights and access to healthcare in the UK. Very tangible real world harm. It isn't about the ideological purity of the stupid wizard donuts.
There’s a quote from Bert where he says he‘s “known big bird since he was a little bird” and the thought of it makes my heart cry so here’s that
empathic powers will always be my favourite narrative device especially when used dissociatively like yes please do refuse to show the slightest outward expression of emotion even as glass trembles and shatters when struck with the force of your grief and the wall at your back warps and chars in the molten heat of your rage it never gets old
you say you aren't happy to see me but your blade is glowing bright as fuck and shaking like an overeager puppy as i approach so either somebody's lying or i'm even more of a pervert than i thought
bites you. fuckign bites you. bites you so har,d. SO hard. bites you so fucking hard (1 damage).
BITES YOU (1 damage again)
i've been training, you stand no chance now BITES YOU (0 damage, a squeaky toy noise played)
