#this is a salami household

[simspaghetti]

Beaker Current Household:

Loki Beaker (pregnant)

Atom Beaker

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for possibly emasculating my husband?

My husband (27 M) and I (32 F) have recently gotten married and bought a house together. For context, we started dating three years ago, and I immediately fell in love with him. We met through a mutual acquaintance and he asked me out after twenty minutes of conversation. He was a perfect gentleman, incredibly intelligent, very handsome, funny, hardworking and kind. On our third date, when we began to get serious, he told me he was transgender – that he had been born female but transitioned to male in his early twenties. This came as a surprise but didn't really change anything. He was the perfect boyfriend and is currently a fantastic husband. He's not out to most people, but a few mutual friends know.

Since we bought a place together, we've both started jobs in the area. He has a very good full-time job at an office about twenty minutes away, and my job is part-time, about ten minutes away from home and five minutes from his office building. His office building has a fast food place next door where most employees get lunch.

Often, my husband forgets his homemade lunch, and I make sure to bring it to him during my lunch break, or after my shift ends. I take a lot of pride in my cooking, and I want to show off to him, so I like to bring him different kinds of meals, in what I've been told is kitchy and cutesy presentation (I write him a love note on the napkin, or make a heart out of vegetables, or fold a rose out of salami slices, etc.)

I take the elevator up to his office, hand him his lunch, give him a kiss, and then I'm off back to work. It's almost like a ritual of ours, and sometimes I find myself looking forward to him having forgotten his lunch. (Does that make me a bad person?)

A mutual friend of ours who works at my husband's office told me in private that I'm emasculating him by bringing him overly cutesy lunches and, her words, not mine, "fawning over him." She also knows about my husband's past, and is very educated and active in LGBT+ rights outside of work. I'm really not as educated, and I grew up in a conservative immigrant household and neighborhood where I hadn't even encountered anyone LGBT+ until I was in college. When she brought this up to me, it made me incredibly self-conscious, and worried that I wasn't validating my husband's masculinity. Recently, I didn't take him his lunch when he forgot it, and he asked me if I was mad at him when he got home. I assured him I wasn't, but now I'm worried.

I'm also worried to ask him what to do, because I don't want it to seem as though I'm treating him any differently because he happens to be transgender. It's never been an issue before, but now I'm thinking more deeply about our relationship and wondering whether I'm unconsciously emasculating him. I love my husband and don't want to hurt him, but I'm wondering whether I have already, by making him seem less masculine in front of his coworkers.

Am I the asshole?

What are these acronyms?

[voparwave69]

can i be adopted ☹️☹️☹️☹️ i can do a little dance if that helps

Yes but you have to be good‼‼‼the dancing is excellent we love to get down up in this household 💯

The rules are: Be nice to Salami

When in doubt,, loop it out

Know that as a tiger clown, I will sometimes carry you by the scruff of your neck, its just an instinct,

Be respectful of the magical miracle room that only chill ass people get to enter,

Never show the haters any mercy,

And always listen to your fathers advice 💯💯

Additionally, this is the family motto you must memorize and truly absorb 💯 We will try and teach you the 2 step as soon as your father wakes up after thart nasty ass fall he had out of that tree he was trying to hunt dinner in (owl)

[a-really-big-cat]

Ok consider this story:

King Xerxes of Persia is still early in his reign, and is having a banquet. He orders that his wife and queen Vashti come before him and his court, so that he might boast of her beauty. When she refuses, he is enraged and strips her of her rank and divorces her, and sends orders that all the beautiful young women of the Empire be brought to Susa, so that he might have a new, better woman as his queen.

While the search takes place, Xerxes* is planning an invasion of Greece. Herodotus writes that that Xerxes ordered two bridges to be built across the Hellespont, but the sea became rough and the bridges were destroyed. He was furious and ordered that the sea should be whipped for defying him. Not long after, an elderly local lord, Pythios the Lydian, made a request of the king to release Pythios' eldest son from the duty of marching to Greece, so that Pythios might have a son to care for him in his old age. Xerxes was enraged by this request, and had the eldest son killed to punish Pythios (Xerxes was insulted because he was going to war with all his family, wealth, and household, and so he saw Pythios request as selfish).

The story continues, lightly touching on the famous events of the second Greco-Persian War such as Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, and other attested moments which highlight Xerxes' wrothful nature.

Once he returns to Susa, the remainder of the Book of Esther takes place. Xerxes is still wrothful, arrogant, and proud, but through his interaction with his brave new queen and her noble cousin, who worship a strange foreign god, he is slowly tamed of his temper and gains some measure of virtue, without losing his passion. Nevertheless, he still becomes furious, rightly so this time when he learns of his advisor Haman's plot to have the king's beloved queen's people all killed, and metes out his harsh justice.

[lunarsilkscreen]

Do you know what it's like growing up poor in a religious household?

Imagine being a kid and reading "Don't eat Pork, Don't eat Shellfish." It's in the same chapter that says "Don't masturbate unless it's inside a woman."

<aside>That's not all what that chapter means, but that's what it's taught to mean these days.</aside>

And then, you're poor. So the meat your mother can afford is discount Pork. Hot Dogs, Bologna, Salami, etc ...

And *then* Cocktail shrimp is considered a "fancy treat" because it's affordable seafood. And cocktail sauce is delicious.

AND THEN: You have to thank God for sending this *bountiful feast* that--by the way; you're going to hell for eating.

AND don't even get me started on Devil's Food Cake.

Simultaneously; the "upper-echelon" religious folk have expensive knick knacks and trinkets that they pass around and then look down on you for not having. Because I'm sorry; the only weekend morning cartoons we can afford are over-the-air broadcasts on the {WB} network.

Which is a real culture shock going from Animaniacs criticism of censoring art to "fire and brimstone" that sentient vegetables teach on the religious straight-to-VHS from "Jesus approved child content vendors."

*Allow us to introduce ourselves*

Did you know that *your Jesus* died for my salad? Bob the Tomato, DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE GOING TO BE SALAD WITH HIM?

Simultaneously, a poor family has no choice but to take part in this sham because they're reliant on the free-handouts socialistic propaganda peddled by the corporate owned Christian Church lobby.

And in order to save face and more importantly; get fed. You have to look the part. That means if you have an autistic child that can't sit still during mass, you're going to be looked down on as *unclean*.

Despite the *unfiltered* *raw* holy water having more bacteria....

Now, plenty of poor families go to church, take part in potlucks, and donate and take from the church run Foodbank during the holidays. But they all act like they aren't those *needy asking for handouts* socialism enforcing liberals they really are.

This is what creates that strange Conservative mindset where the people that need the handouts the most have to support a party that doesn't

AND why separation of church and state is important you corporate church owning bastards. Who make people think that Churches are under fire despite being corporate entities that broke the divide between church and state in the first place. Trying to have the tax-breaks for being religious non-profit agencies AND use that "non-profit" to lobby the government.

This isn't to say your church group can't lobby the government. It's just that your Church can't. And more importantly; church revenue can't. Because it's meant to be used in a manner to support the community.

I DIGRESS...

All that stress and burden gets placed on the poorest families among us. Being talked to like dogs because they can't help but be reliant on handouts, and *wanting* to be stand-alone people that help prop up the community.

That dream where they're not going to hell for being poor.

[kaleiphant]

Loki Streak: Sort of an Uberhood Challenge

I say "sort of" because I got to the end and realized I forgot about Downtown. There weren't any playable Sims there, anyway.

This was inspired by aledstrange's moonbeam trail challenge and "Stranger in a Strange Land" by pascal_curious.

Content warning: This features some dark topics (human experimentation, domestic abuse, you could maybe say Loki and Nervous were trafficked). I'll put more warnings in future chapters as they appear.

-O-o-O-o-O-

Some Sims believed that money could buy anything.

A luxurious house,

the finest foods and fanciest kitchen in SimNation,

only the best skill-building objects,

a fancy parlor and library to impress the colleagues,

very expensive lab equipment for scientific pursuits,

a test subject for some of the riskier experiments (albeit a supernatural one),

and even a husband.

Circe Salamis came from a rather wealthy family. While this had its advantages, it also had its downsides, one of which was the annoying tendency for other Sims to call her a rich brat who never did anything herself and only succeeded by the Salamis name. There were also her scientific critics who doubted the experiments' validity due to the strangeness of the test subject. So Circe found a way to shut them all up and get a non-supernatural test subject in one tidy move.

On the other side of Strangetown lived a woman named Gundrun, her son Loki, and her daughter Ermintrude (who insisted on being called "Erin"). The father, Bjørn, had recently passed away and their combined household income was not quite enough for the small family. The younger daughter was still in high school. The son was in the science career track, a noble calling in Circe's eyes, but Gundrun had little faith in his plans to become an inventor. His father had been an inventor and the salary wasn't great. And being new to the country (all the way across the ocean from Norssimskland), they had no family nearby to help out.

Circe and Gundrun struck a deal: in return for Circe's financial help, Gundrun would offer her son as a "lab partner" and husband. Circe would take the invented surname of Beaker (while Loki changed his name from Bjørnssen), so nobody could call her a product of nepotism.

Of course, she kept the rest of the Salamis money. She wasn't crazy.

Unlike Vidcund Curious, her ex-boyfriend, Loki didn't piss himself in fear at the suggestion.

He dutifully accepted the proposal and endured all that went with it.

-O-o-O-

Nervous was freshening up the kitchen and making dinner when he heard the screams. Circe was playing with the sanity vacuum again.

"Stop struggling," Circe commanded. "You should be used to this by now."

Loki tried his best to cooperate. He didn't want to mess up the experiment, but he was having trouble staying conscious.

This particular experiment always left him feeling a little out of whack.

He was sure that someday he'd get used to it. He was usually able to recover.

Mostly.

Every day, Nervous saw everything. The twitching, the drooling, the talking to an unseen psychologist; he'd seen and done it all before.

Nervous and Loki bonded over their shared plight and each could easily understand the torment the other Sim experienced daily. What Nervous couldn't wrap his head around was why Loki insisted on staying behind.

"We could go any time this week," Nervous whispered to Loki over dinner. "She'll be working overtime at the lab, and I think I've found a way to disable the alarms."

"I'll make something up to cover for you," Loki offered. "She won't suspect you're gone for at least a day."

"What do you mean, you'll cover for me? You're coming with me."

Loki gave a tiny wince of a smile.

Nervous looked Loki dead in the eyes. "Aren't you?"

Loki cast his eyes downward. Every cell in his body, though unthinkingly carrying out its biological programming, wanted to do nothing more than run away with Nervous and never look back at this failed experiment of a marriage.

But as much as Loki loved Nervous, he could never accept the invitation. Circe had paid a pretty simoleon for Loki. He couldn't back out of his end of the deal.

Nervous seemed saddened by his refusal to answer. "I know I'm not the easiest to get along with sometimes, but--"

"It's really nothing personal, Nervous. I just can't leave Circe."

Nervous sighed. "Of course not."

Loki glanced around apprehensively. "She's done so much to help my family. It wouldn't be right for me to leave."

Nervous seemed to understand, but Loki could sense that he wouldn't give up so easily.

-O-o-O-

The experiments continued.

Morale did not improve.

Loki begged Nervous to leave before they got worse.

"I can't go with you, but I'm sure you've met someone else that you really like enough to run away with."

Nervous shook his head sadly. "There's really no one else. Everyone else seems to think I'm crazy. Except for Pascal and his brothers, of course, but they're not planning on leaving Strangetown any time soon."

"You're really the only one." Nervous leaned in close to Loki. "And you're the only one I'd want to go with."

Loki hung his head. There seemed to be no convincing Nervous that he'd have a much easier time looking out for just himself, especially without the fear that Circe would retaliate for "stealing" her lab assistant. Why couldn't Nervous see that he'd be better off leaving without Loki?

"Am I really?" Loki murmured, his gaze planted on the stone floor.

Nervous tilted Loki's face up, forcing eye contact. His bony hand lingered against Loki's even bonier cheek. "I love you," he stated bluntly.

"I love you too." Loki squeezed Nervous's hand, blinking hard. "But they always say if you love someone, you have to let them go."

Nervous let his hand fall to Loki's shoulder. "Then I'll have to give you something to remember me by."

It was at that moment Loki had his first real kiss.

"You're not getting rid of me that easy." Nervous nuzzled his snub nose around the pointy tip of Loki's aquiline one, causing Loki's twirled moustache to tickle them both.

Loki smoothed Nervous's mohawk. "I wouldn't want to."

-O-o-O-o-O-

I have to split this into two posts and Loki's not even out of Strangetown yet. What did I get myself into.

[ccthewriter]

CC's New Watch Ranking - May 2023

Every month on Letterboxd, I make a list of the 10 best films I’ve seen for the first time. It’s a fun way to compare movies separated in time, genre, and country of origin, and helps me keep track of what I’m watching! This is a breakdown of those films.

May! An honored month in my household as my partner enters her time of astrological power. Taurus would have us laze around in the sun enjoying life’s hedonisms, but I’ve been resisting that call and working like a madperson instead. I got cast in a movie! Only a background role, but it’s been an incredible learning experience. You can watch a ton of films (and reader, I have) but nothing will teach you quite like being there. Being able to watch it all unfold before your very eyes? Fascinating. Besides that, Tears of the Kingdom has been occupying my time. I love throwing that twink off a cliff. He soars just right. The protagonist of one of this month’s films would be delighted to see him fly. 

Click below to read the breakdown! Click HERE to view the list on Letterboxd! 

10. Accattone

 1961 - Pier Paolo Pasolini

I watched many films by Pasolini this month. He’s one of the most interesting figures in Italian cinematic history, an openly gay marxist who stood up for ideals that were on the extreme fringe of the culture he was working in at the time. His career was tragically short-lived, cut short by either political assassination or extortive murder, depending on who you believe. Wild that it was films like this that made him the target of such ire. The story is so basic, so familiar: A horrible man is horrible to those closest to him. They suffer; he suffers; eventually, he is killed as a result of his horrible decision making. That tagline calls this “The poor man’s Dolce Vita?” While shot beautifully and containing some compelling moments, I don’t find this nearly as interesting as the other works in Pasolini’s filmography. It was made for a very specific time, and I think if you’re not plugged into the particulars of Italian class and gender dynamics, this just read as typical criminal melodrama. It is funny that Accatone’s criminal career culminates in an attempted salami heist. He and my cat have a lot in common. 

9. Othello

1951 - Orson Welles

Any adaptation of this text is going to bear a ton of baggage. An adaptation made in the 1950s especially. But my main criticism of this film is that it represents a style of Shakespearean performance that I find dated and boring. It’s so stagey - which is a ludicrous complaint given the nature of the work and the sorts of movies I love. But this is false-stagey, containing people making proclamations and japes, without any human emotion behind the vast majority of their lines. It’s a shame, because this is one of the most beautifully shot Shakespeares I’ve ever seen. They gain so much by shooting in Venice, and using the striking contrast of light and shadow that Welles is famous for. That just barely sustained my interest through an otherwise flat adaptation. Maybe it’s just the bias of the time I’m viewing this in - I prefer a much more psychologically rich take on the Bard’s work, rather than a bunch of people wearing tin crowns and signing towards medieval behaviors. 

I watched this with my cat. She sat in a chair next to mine and seemed engrossed. Add this to the “BirdTV 10+ Hours Nature Noises for Cats” rotation. 

8. Shanghai Express

1932 - Josef von Sternberg

I’ve been reading a ton of Agatha Christie lately. This movie, made around the same time as many of Christie’s best works, evokes so much of the era: the glamor, the manners, the ignorance of how the world will change in a few short years, the omnipresent racial caste system. It’s so amusing to read Christie’s work when you hold the knowledge of how the world is going to change. It’s a similar pleasure watching this movie - these wealthy colonizers are passing through a China that will no longer exist, whose trajectory for the rest of the century is going to be a reaction to their actions and attitudes. How peculiar that the center of this film, then, should be Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong, two figures who defy all the trends and assumptions one would make about this era. Their sapphic attachment bubbles under the surface of all their scenes. It motivates a movie that would otherwise be heavy-handed and patronizing. While it has its problems, I’d still recommend this to anyone who wants to see some of old Hollywood’s biggest queer icons working at the height of their power. 

7. Theorem

1968 - Pier Paolo Pasolini

Where Accattone looks at the urban working-class folks who live their lives by petty crime, Teorema is concerned with a more provincial elite. I kept thinking of the wannabe literati that I grew up with - boys who read Freud too young and were convinced that this coked-up Austrian held the secrets to the universe. Boys who would lean in at random points in a discussion to say “Well, this really comes back to Oedipus, doesn’t it?” As with Accattone, I think this is speaking to a specific time and place so succinctly that it won’t work for people outside that bubble. A young man basically wanders into a rich family’s home and sleeps with all of them. Through different situations and personas, he gets to each of their psychosexual cores. The most remarkable scene is the exact middle of the film. In the wake of all these sexual encounters, each family member basically addresses the fourth wall and states what this intimacy will do to them. “I will be forever changed; the shadow of this sex will live in my heart forever.” The rest of the film proceeds exactly as they predict. There are some incredible, surreal images bound up in the action, and I enjoyed watching it, but overall there are too many messy edges and pseudointellectual implications for me to heartily recommend this to everyone. Maybe once I’ve completed this mog I’ll see this film in a new light. 

6. Face/Off

1997 - John Woo

Oh man, this is the polar opposite of the navel-gazing art house nonsense of the Teorema. Simple premise: What if Nic Cage and John Travolta swapped faces? Wouldn’t that be fucked up? A thoroughly enjoyable 90s action flick without much beneath the surface besides satisfying action. (Though, on reflection, this film also has a bit of incestuous implication - Cage-Wearing-Travolta flirts with Travolta’s daughter, and she seems to reciprocate? They drop that plot beat quickly, but it is uh, awkward to say the least.) While this wasn’t quite the exceptional genre entry some people had told me it was, I still had a blast watching two of Hollywood’s weirdest actors get a chance to imitate each other’s energy. They do it perfectly. Really makes you appreciate the way a person can truly transform within a performance 

5. Mamma Roma

1962 - Pier Paolo Pasolini

I’ve preferred Pasolini when he’s plugged into *some* degree of realness. As a director who lived through the neorealist era, and was once a close collaborator with Fellini, I feel like his work really shines when he accentuates a grounded reality with just a touch of dream-logic. This happens brilliantly within this film. A middle-aged woman has earned enough through sex work to purchase a fruit stand, and uses this entry into “respectable” life as an excuse to reconnect with her estranged son. But she finds it difficult to shake off all the ghosts of her past. She cannot just snap her fingers and have the life she dreamed of decades ago when she gave her son away. He has grown into his own person, and struggles under the weight of her dream as he tries to pursue his own. It’s a wonderful, messy tangle of competing desires, fantasies, and realities. The extreme highlight of this is two separate oners that take place late at night, during her time as a sex worker. Wandering through these pitch-black streets with only strong, skinny street lights to illuminate the scene, Pasolini follows Anna Magnani with a handicam type-setup, following her as she has a continuous monologue with several passersby. It’s a brilliant shot by Tonino Delli Colli who would later go on to shoot The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The dreamlike, anchorless way she walks through this void reflects how disconnected she is from her own life. She does sex work, but does her best to forget it - she holds some standard for herself that is based in a society that despises her, yet loves and adores her at the same time. The happy way she trades jokes between johns and other sex workers, while stumbling through this featureless space… it’s just incredible. Pasolini really did see the tangled web of his society and captured it like no other. It really reflects this social mobility and economic boom after the devastation of World War 2. An entire nation desperate to forget its past, yet unable to do so. Desperate to forge a new middle class while sneering at those who would comprise it. 

4. Seven Chances

1925 - Buster Keaton

My beloved Blank Check has been covering the films of Buster Keaton, and I’ve been watching along. Buster is one of the geniuses of this medium, whose films remain timeless because of his relentless precision and thoughtful craft. This is one of his best films. Through silly circumstances, a young man learns he has to get married in less than 24 hours in order to inherit a large fortune. There are seven women with whom he could have a chance, and he messes it up with them all. Honestly, the title-to-premise connection is a bit weak, as he made many changes to the source material this film is based on. There’s a lot more rockslides than that plot description would have you believe. Even after nearly a hundred years, this succeeds in getting a real laugh out of me. There are too many jokes packed into each little moment for me to really isolate. It’s just perfect slapstick, perfect physical comedy the whole way through. Put your phone down and drink it in. 

3. Europa ’51

1952 - Roberto Rossellini

A devastating film about a woman who changes in the wake of her young child’s suicide. My review on Letterboxd:

“Honestly this is too rich in psychologies, philosophies, and ironies for me to fully understand in one viewing. But I *loved* the transformation Bergman depicts over the course of the film. An incredible performance - going toe-to-toe with Giulietta Masina in one of her best cameos, too! I think this is something I'll be revisiting for years to come.

I write this in the wake of Jordan Neely's murder. It is incredible how mental illness is defined by what causes the slightest annoyance to those in power. We - and by 'we' I mean a specific class that operates our above ability to consent - lock up or kill the people most in need of understanding. Those who really just need positive human connection.”

This film creates an interesting parallel with Mamma Roma. Spoilers ahead: Mamma Roma also has a young boy who kills himself, but indirectly, dying of illness in a prison cell. He’s in prison because he was lashing out, just like the kid in this film was desperately crying for attention. His death was merely more direct, more immediate. These films form an interesting dialogue of similar subject matter, only really changed by the social classes of their protagonists. Mamma Roma longs for the status that Bergman starts with in Europe ‘51. Bergman ends up as shunned as Mamma Roma is at the start of her film. Fascinating examples of the cyclical ways women are demonized, no matter where they begin. 

2. Out of Sight

1998 - Steven Soderbergh

What a fun film!!! Soderbergh is one of the best directors working right now, and my, does he work. I can’t think of anyone else who makes movies at the rate he does, and who is involved in so many different projects and genres. His films have wonderful movement and great characters. He’s a natural fit for Elmore Leonard’s writing. Leonard is a mystery to me - I’ve been watching a lot of films based on his stories with some friends, and on paper, they are all very generic tales with boilerplate characters. A female FBI agent who can “keep up with the boys.” A smooth talking criminal with a violent impulse. A charming thief. You’ve probably seen these characters in a million different works and can’t remember a single one of them - yet somehow, Leonard finds the situations and plot beats to make characters like Karen Sisco soar. Sisco is hunting Jack Foley, played by George Clooney in one of his steamiest appearances. He kidnaps her right before she can catch him, and they are forced to have a long conversation together while locked in the trunk of the getaway car. This starts an attraction that supports the rest of the film, filled with many twists and turns as one tries to reunite with the other - to fuck? To kill? To rope into the robbery? It will keep you guessing until the very end. I really love crime thrillers, and it’s no surprise that the director of Ocean’s Eleven is able to work with these incredible characters and craft some amazing scenes. Come for the romance, stay for the heist. Or come for the heist and stay for the romance. Just see it! It’s great! 

1. The Wind Rises

2013 - Hayao Miyazaki

I had been holding off watching this for a long, long time. It can be hard to watch a film that you know will devastate you. When I heard Miyazaki had made a film about the act of creation and its futility, how even the best minds with the highest aspirations can lead to terrible destruction… oof. I was afraid of the mirror this film could turn out to be. Its tagline is “We must live” - how devastating is that? My mind goes to the final scene of Uncle Vanya.  

The film soared even higher than I could have imagined. Yes, it made me cry, but it also left me feeling more hopeful about the world than I could have hoped for. It follows the life of Jiro Horikoshi, an airplane engineer who lived during the early 20th century and designed some of Imperial Japan’s fighter planes. The film flows seamlessly between his life and his dreams. It’s the perfect subject matter for Miyazaki. You can feel aspects of Miyazaki’s own life bleeding in at the edges - his quest for perfection, his relentless work ethic, the literal machinery that occupies his dreams. An early scene has Jiro speaking to one of his idols in a dream, literally having a sort of psychic communication as they trade notes on plane design. It’s immaculate. Anyone who is a creator has likely had similar conversations playing through their head, dreaming of what their heroes would say if they could read their work. I know I have. As our world faces disaster after disaster, as conflict becomes bloodier and the pursuit of art seems more pointless than ever, works like this reignite my will to keep going. We make the world a little better every time we use our imagination. When we dream, we can envision things as they should be, as they could be, not as they are. It lets us see all the wonderful possibilities that are out there. And if dreams just aren’t enough, remember, there is always love. Fragile, precious, everlasting love, which is immortal even when the people who share it die. This is what makes the wind rise. It’s what gives me hope for the future. 

Reader, if you take anything away from this fleeting blog post, let it be the power of dreams and love. They are the best tools we have for fighting evil. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! If you liked any of these thoughts feel free to follow me on Letterboxd, where I post reviews and keep meticulous track of every movie I watch. Look forward to more posts like these next month! 

[luxtallis]

I love how this Strangtown turned out so much. Also I almost finished the first rotation, only Salamis and Loner householdes left and it took me like a couple of months, lmao.

I guess I'll be playing early Pleasantview when I'm 40. If I don't get distracted with my Midnight Sun -> plasticbox's Elsewhere project again.

[baby-tart]

It is quite a thing to experience, being the only "guy" in a household of women all getting ready for a wedding. Everyone, old and young, is so stressed out and miraculous looking. They're juggling a million things, and they are putting on their gorgeous dresses, and they are being oh so careful to make their makeup pristine. Helping zip up a dozen dresses and helping to put together the appetizers because your mom needs to make things perfect, and recently she's needed you to be her second pair of hands. She doesn't want you to come out. And she doesn't want you to take the pills that you got from Planned Parenthood either. "Not yet," she tells you. She wants to make sure it's safe for you, she wants to get your blood taken first. She wants you to lose weight first. She wants it to be comfortable for her for you to transition. She asks you to arrange some slices of salami into a rose. When you're done with it, your sister asks you if her eyeliner wings are even. She's not really your sister, but your mother kinda adopted her, so even if she isn't your sister, she kinda is. Or was. When was the last time you texted her? It's not like you text your biological brothers at all either. Maybe you two are siblings, but you're just a bad sibling? You compliment her makeup. You wish you looked like her. Maybe you could, someday. The pills call to you from your bedroom drawer where they are still in the bag you got them from the pharmacy in. You go back to the kitchen and cut some strawberries. You focus on cutting the strawberries. On not cutting your hands. It's not a problem, you're trained how to use a knife, but neither a carrot, onion nor celery cuts quite like a strawberry. Guess you get what you pay for from a free federal program. This is a good train of thought. You're not looking at the bride's soon-to-be stepdaughter, and how beautiful the shade of green she's wearing is. You're not noticing her chest. You're not jealous. You're not ashamed. You're not... ok, what else needs doing? Everyone's ready to leave now. Everyone but you. No dress, no makeup, your hair is a mess... It doesn't matter. You're not going. You can't. You can't really tell people why. Not only is she marrying an asshole, but you don't have a suit. You don't really care about having one. "Have fun!" as you finish loading up the car, and all the girls speed off and away because they're late because that's how weddings are. You finally feel it. You're alone. All alone. Sitting in the wreckage of the storm that was all the preparation. No more tasks. Time for yourself. Nothing to distract you. You can't help it. The memory of everything you just saw and felt can't be denied anymore. It isn't fair. Even if you had a dress, even if you had all the time in the world to do your makeup, you don't wanna cause a scene, you don't want people to ask questions. It's not YOUR big day, after all. It's a more than logical conclusion. It's empathetic. It's sensible. It feels like rain. What a horrible day for rain. And the noisy quiet of your wailing sobs, that you're attempting to fill the space with, it is broken. There's a knock at the door. You make yourself a man again and open the door. It's your sister. She left something behind. You let her in so she can get it. She gives you another hug before she leaves and she says something you're not expecting. She asks you, "Are you okay?" and you can't even sob out a lie. "You can still go to the wedding in just a nice shirt and pants, you know?" she suggests. She's so close, but she doesn't get it, "but it's not a dress." you don't even think, it hurts so bad. but oh god. you said it. she frowns at you. oh no. "i'm so sorry, honey." oh god. "You're right, it isn't. I love you though." and she pulls you back into her embrace. She lets you cry into her should for a few minutes, "but watch the dress." And she leaves with whatever she came back for. I don't even remember anymore. I just remember the sweet taste of freedom dissolving under my tongue from that first little blue tablet. I remember two years ago today.

May 8th, 2021

[mycatissped]

why do people eat plain ingredients

“oh yeah, we’re an ingredient household” bitch the fuck you eating at 2 am, a slice of salami?

[simspaghetti]

STRANGETOWN: ROUND 3

Phew, it's finally here! It felt like it took forever to get through Round 3 of Pleasantview, but we're finally back in Strangetown :)

Since the last round, a few households have joined and left the rotations, so the new order is:

⭐🔭Curious-Subject / ⭐🏋️Grunt (Tank) / ⭐🤔Curious-Beaker /📡Curious / 👻Specter / 🧪Beaker / 👽Smith / 🏀Grunt /💧 Loner

And if you're new or haven't been following Pleasantview, I should mention that Circe Salamis now lives there with her daughter Ceres (after she and Loki divorced), so she's no longer part of this town's rotation! But you can view her round here

Now I'll stop waffling, let's get on with the households!

[vbartilucci]

Posting only to illustrate how far spelling and pronunciation can wander from the original.

This is traditionally pronounced in American Italian households as "Pasta Fazool".

See also "Gabbagool", which is actually Capocollo, a kind of salami.

[ainews]

Plastic wrapping for food might seem convenient to shoppers, but there's growing evidence that it's a risky choice for one food in particular — salami.

The strong, cured meat has an acrid aroma of its own, but it needs to breathe and “sweat” in order for it to taste its best. Plastic packages that fully enclose the food effectively “suffocate” salami, leaving it dry and flavourless, and almost as salty as the packing itself.

Unfortunately, even if it breaks through the plastic, salami can’t breathe, as the space between packs of plastic-wrapped food is too small to provide even the slightest air circulation. As a result, airless salami gets spoiled much faster, leading to an increase in food waste.

Plastic packing isn’t just bad news for salami. It’s bad news for the environment as well. In 2018, UK households actually recycled less plastic than ever before - less than 30%. As a result, almost 700,000 tonnes of plastic are going to waste.

It’s time to go back to the tried-and-true paper-wrapping for salami and go plastic-free. Not only will this help preserve the flavor and texture of salami, but it will help reduce household and global plastic waste as well. It’s time to say goodbye to the brusk plastic packaging for salami.

[timeofgist-blog]

"God has been merciful and kind to my household"- Veteran actor Adebayo Salami gives thanks to God ahead of his birthday

[zorabianfoods]

Why Zorabian Chicken is a go-to Household Brand in Mumbai & Pune for Chicken Products | Order Online

Why settle for anything less than the best? At Zorabian, we grow our own chicken and carefully craft each product to meet the highest standards of quality and taste.

From Indian delicacies like kebabs & tikkas to healthy breakfast options like sausages & salamis, to party starters like Momos, Burger, and more. Order Chicken Online

Our product range is carefully crafted to meet the specific needs and palates of our quality-conscious customers.

For us, at Zorabian a healthier you is a happier you. Come join the Zorabian family and taste the difference!