#you can dig thru my blog and you can find that. i was leading the 'maybe that finnster guy isn't all that' front | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

there-must-be-a-lock · 4 years ago

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it's fresh and exciting, and I love it, and more than that, I love it for YOU. / And of course your writing has always been GOOD it's not about technically ability. I just feel like we are seeing a different side of you. // And maybe just maybe what you're working thru isnt quite so dark any more. It's still deep, and beautiful, and thank you for sharing! / But.... I hope you can hear what I am trying to say. DO you have any thoughts?

Hooo boy. Okay, so, I’ve been thinking about this some, because I’ve definitely noticed this in my own writing! I had a thought, the other day, that I should apologize to the people who originally followed me for smutty SPN reader inserts… because that is NOT the majority of what has been happening on this blog lately. Oops. I’m not actually sorry though.

Basically, a couple things have changed.

1. At the end of January, I finished Marked. It was the most time-consuming (over two years) most serious (meaningful and personal) and longest (83k) thing I’ve ever written. For the two years I was working on it, I think everything else I wrote was mostly filler: romance, smut, whatever, all of it basically served as a palate cleanser between deep difficult dark excursions into Marked. So when Marked was done, I felt really satisfied, like it would be okay if I never contributed anything else of substance to the SPN fandom, because I was proud of that one thing I’d accomplished. I also felt more confident, because I’d proved to myself that I could tackle a project that big and actually follow through and finish it. Most importantly, though, I felt like I’d worked through a really major trauma, and moved through a major step in my healing process, and I could move on with my life. Now that the Big Trauma was purged onto the page (doc, whatever) I could free up some brain space to think about other serious life experiences and delve into other dark nasty corners of my psyche. Wheee!

2. I joined a lovely little Slack chat full of smart, supportive, talented, creative, kickass ladies, whose opinions I respect beyond measure. Finding that community of people who are always there if I need criticism or brainstorming or support or whatever else is a huge, HUGE boost to my creativity. I used to have random “oh it’d be funny if…” thoughts and I’d kinda brush em off and let them go. Now I share them, and there’s somebody there to come back with “that’d be hilarious, and also this should happen, and also here’s a picture of Harry Styles in a collar, now WRITE THE THING.”

2a. One incoherent flail from one of the Slack crew always means more than any number of reblogs from random people. Not that comments and messages don’t feel good, always, but it means so much more coming from someone whose work I admire and whose opinions I value, and who I care about on a personal level.

3. I realized that reader engagement was seriously down, and that there was no way anything I wrote was going to get as many notes as it might’ve two years ago, and that the amount of time and energy I put into things is never proportional to the amount of notes those things get. When I realized that, I took my one last fuck I’d had to give about notes or whether anyone would read something, and I chucked it out the window. Defenestrated that fuck. I have zero fucks left.

So, where does that leave me? Fuckless and happy.

No, literally though, fuckless. By which I mean, thanks to the Womanizer and some soul-searching, I’ve realized that I’m very content on my own. I’m just not particularly interested in sex right now, and I think that’s come through in a major way in my writing. Not that I haven’t written any smut, but it’s all had an underlying theme/issue/twist to it. Finally was about consent and communication and how difficult it can be to be honest with a partner. Envy was about, um, envy, and how ugly it can be. The most romantic, “normal” smutty things I’ve written were probably Five Seconds and the Everything quarantine ficlets, and those were pure escapism, because 2020 sucks and so I rewrote some of it. We are in a shitty situation and I wanted to imagine it less shitty for a minute.

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is psychology, and very specific, darker facets of the boys I’d never really taken the time to dig into before, and through them, some of my own issues. Prey was a really weird twisted adventure into Soulless Sam and the way his brain worked. Set Yourself On Fire was about what I assume was the darkest time in Sam’s life, and it ended up being about my own depression and addiction issues. Quitting, also about addiction, and the way we perceive ourselves and hold onto patterns. Sharp Edges was about a personal headcanon I have about Sam, which is that he’s a very reluctant sadist who feels guilty about what he needs, but it ended up being just as much about the general psychology of BDSM and kink and the ways we hide from other people. When I stopped looking at the Winchesters as romantic leads, I found a whole lot of interesting material for other stories.

Crossovers have been a ton of fun. I realized I imagine crossovers in my head all the time: what would these two have to say to each other, what do they have in common, wouldn’t it be funny if Valkyrie from the MCU met Gail from Sin City (“My warrior woman. My Valkyrie.”) or if Buffy and Dean had a pissing contest about who could sacrifice themselves the most. Again, there’s SO little overlap of fandoms for some of my favorite characters (see also: the Sam Winchester/Frank Iero fic) but I’ve just stopped caring (see #3 above) because they are so entertaining for me to write. Take a couple cool characters! Smush em together and see what happens! It’s like a chemistry experiment. Let’s see what explodes.

And then there’s Fluff Friday. I’ve always had a tendency to put a lot of pressure on myself and to make everything Deep and Meaningful and Important, but I’ve realized that tropes exist because people fuckin love them, and I fuckin love em, and why the fuck not write a millionth “there was only one bed” fic, because I always love reading those. I’ve been allowing myself space to just do whatever the fuck makes me happy, and I’ve been taking requests because it’s also nice to make other people happy sometimes too. Even if there isn’t a real plot, even if it’s just 300 words where nothing really happens… those little moments can make someone smile. Like I said, it’s 2020. We all need some fuckin smiles.

Tl;dr version: I stopped putting pressure on myself, I stopped worrying about notes, and I started writing the things that interest me. I’m having so much more fun writing these days. 10/10 would recommend defenestrating your remaining fucks.

Thank you for still reading, and for noticing the change, and for sticking with me and my unpredictable brain. Your friendship is one of the best things that’s come out of this whole fandom deal.

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kinfriday · 5 years ago

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Wandering Hops: The Overnight

Dreams are funny things, and, in many ways, are the fuel of ambition. What starts as a simple notion, a far off impossible idea, can gradually resolve into something more concrete. Ultimately leading one to push past their limits, and strive for that impossible goal.

Of course, our definitions of the impossible change as we grow. There was a time when I thought it impossible that I would ever be published. There was a time when I never thought I’d travel much, or see much of the United states. Yesterday’s dreams are often, tomorrow's achievements, but it’s not always that clean. Everyone’s life is littered with broken and discarded goals and dreams, often filling the darker corners of our minds with moody regrets of what might have been.

Gradually, as time passes those shadows can get longer, producing tendrils that drag down our daily lives, miring us in a fog of what could have been.

Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, is one of my dreams. Spanning 2680 miles, it’s a five month thru hiking marathon, that takes you from the searing depths of the Mojave, to soaring peaks like Mt Whitney. It’s an immense technical and fitness challenge that will see roughly 60% of those that attempt it ultimately leave the trail disappointed.

Ah there it is, on the horizon! If you look very hard and perhaps squint, you will begin to see the point of this rambling introduction.

In short, I’m going for it. With a target start date of April 3rd 2020, my plans are to be in Campo, California, just a few feet from the Mexican border as I begin a slow and deliberate trek north, that will most likely not conclude until late September or early October.

Just under 10 months out now, my hiking, planning, training, and even the writing of this blog, has all fallen under that particular focus. I am going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Gear is being bought, miles are being run, exercises are being done, but there is more to it than that. In order to be ready, I need to make certain that I have the skills and experience necessary to get me to Canada, and to do that, I have to overnight.

Backpacking is a technical step up from day hiking, and, in a way, taking it to its logical conclusion. If you can overnight, you can cover more miles, take on more difficult treks, and visit a wider variety of places.

The PCT is the ultimate overnight, and so, a section of it near my home, seemed as good a place as any to kick off my first full, backpacking experience.

As Maya would say, “Let’s get this bread!”

Starting off from Bridge of the Gods, the first section of my hike took me over the Columbia River Gorge, suspended almost 200 feet in the air, with nothing but grated metal below me. It felt like I was walking across the sky, save that I had to share the space with vehicles zipping by after the toll bridge, leaving me only a few inches of room, with nowhere to go but down if something went wrong.

With my heart rate pumping from sheer anxiety, I made my way carefully north, dashing across Washington 14, before I saw a welcome sign that I had been looking forward to seeing for 10 years….

Up and into the woods I went, finding the trail to be extremely quiet. It’s still too early in the season for those thru hiking from the south to be passing through, and with how overgrown parts of it were with brush and bramble, I soon had the sense that I might be one of the few people on that portion.

Spoiler alert… I wasn’t.

Solitude while hiking, is one of the things I strive for. Being alone in nature grants me time to think and plan. Oftentimes, I’ll spend hours listening to the birds sing, as the rhythmic beat of my foot falls provide a strange sharp counterpoint to their song, causing the world to blur into a type of symphony of movement and sound.

The goal for this hike was not to reach any particular point, but to see how far I could go, with the current gear I have. At forty pounds fully loaded, it’s still far too much for any kind of thru hike, but it’s not bad for training. With the straps of my old kelty digging into my shoulders, I continued to climb up the gorge, determined to go for fifteen miles, before setting down for the night.

At four miles in, after rounding a bend, Gillete Lake came into view, and with it, came my first check in. Letting the husband know I was alive, and had plenty of energy. Pack or no, I pressed on, deeper into the woods. As I steadily climbed in elevation, my legs began to burn, and my back began to hurt, but at the moment, I didn’t care.

I was on the trail. The one place I had wanted to be for years, and I wasn’t about to let pack weight stop me. The trail kept heading up, until I came to my first bridge, taking me over a cataracting stream swollen with melt water from the upper Cascades, charging back down the slope, heading for Gillette Lake.

My world was serene and beautiful, full of verdant forest, high above the Columbia, and fully out of its humidity. In short, there seemed no better way to spend a Saturday at that particular moment. That conviction. worked like a fuel, pushing me further on up steepening grades and switchbacks.

However, at five and a half miles, it began to become clear that something was wrong. A knife like pain was growing louder and louder in my left scapula, sending shockwaves of pain up through my neck, and down my left arm. Far from a normal exertion type pain, this, I knew, could be serious if I didn’t address it, but I was only seven miles in, of a planned fifteen.

This was not what I had come to do, even though I had started this hike with no particular destination. My destination was my mileage, and I was far from that yet.

Still, as I approached 6 and a half miles, it grew only worse, and I knew I was coming to a fateful choice. If I pushed, I could injure myself, taking myself out for the rest of the hiking season, and potentially put myself at risk for my stubbornness. The other option though, seemed just as unpalatable.

Turn back, head for Gillette Lake and camp there, giving me time to rest, and recover.

The choice was obvious, if not disappointing, I turned around, feeling humbled, and began my journey back.

At first, I was full of recrimination, but as I walked along, gaining miles now in the other direction, trying to ignore the growing pain in my shoulder, I realized that the choice I made, had been an important one to my success.

My dream wasn’t dead. One moment turning around, accepting my limitations in both gear, and ability, was not me leaving the PCT behind. Rather, by acknowledging and accepting my current limits, and listening to my body, I was better ensuring that I would make it to April 3rd, ready and prepared to take on the challenge of the trail.

This wasn’t the end. It was the beginning.

Returning to Gillete lake, I ended up finding a nice quiet campsite near water, and set up for my overnight. As soon as I dropped my pack and set up camp, the pain quickly went away, only reinforcing the idea I had made the right choice.

With camp established I settled down. With no miles to pursue, hours before sunset, with nothing but the quiet of the woods around me I found myself facing an unexpected challenge.

What was I going to do now?

Sleep would not come for hours yet. Hell, dinner would not come for hours yet. My tent was set up, my gear was organized and packed away; the day had zipped by in a perfect, managed efficiency. Now here I was, listening to the same birdsong, surrounded by the same nature, but in the quiet, with no motion to carry me forward, I wondered what I could do to occupy the time.

Luckily, in that 40lbs of pack weight, I decided to include my kindle, along with a few audiobooks on my phone. Laying out in my tent staring up at the ceiling, letting my shoulder recover, I got caught up with Anaszi Boys by Neil Gaiman, wandering his well crafted universe.

These days happen. In all of my research and reading boredom is something thru hikers often face. After a while, hiking is just something you do. You wake up, break camp, and get on the trail. Even the most amazing experience becomes routine with enough repetition, and being able to manage that boredom is a key to completion just as much as your fitness and preparation is.

My next surprise came with dinner. The day had grown muggy and warm while the insects chirped cheerily and loudly from their bushes. Before my hike I had selected a chipotle soup that seemed a perfect meal after a day of hard work, but sitting there, sweating in the humidity, I instead elected to have a probar and some nuts.

This hike was meant to be dress rehearsal, and an overall test, so I prepped like it was time for the big show. As the sun set, and the frogs began to sing, I began to appreciate the idea that I had left myself with options having packed extra food just in case.

Where I didn’t have options though, was my sleeping bag. It proved to be a sticky, swampy, sweaty experience as I curled up for the night. The warnings in the reviews came back to bite me that it didn’t breathe well. In high humidity, and eighty degree temperatures I might as well have been in a sauna, waking up every few hours from the experience.

You can’t win all the time I guess…

Finally, the morning came, and while I didn’t make my full fifteen miles, and had a somewhat miserable sleep, I still felt like a success. Here I was, on the Pacific Crest Trail, doing my first overnight, and the choices I had made, ensured that it wasn’t a one off, but the first of many.

I was learning what to do, what not to do, and what to change, which matters more than mileage ever will.

Having one of the most amazing oatmeal breakfasts of my life… (thank you Mountain House!) I then broke camp, and set out, back to Bridge of the Gods, already looking forward to my next adventure.

Dreams push us to exceed our limitations, but by accepting where you are today, you can go where you only dreamed of tomorrow.

#hiking #adventure #setback #trailreport #pacificcresttrail #pacificnorthwest #studioprey #rebeccamickley #backpacking #photography #hiker #camping

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jmtorres · 5 years ago

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ok someone on my dash reblogged the actual VIDEO of david tennant with long hair tenderly kissing a man (2013 RSC richard ii) complete with the monologue leading up to it, please tell me if it was you so i can go dig thru your blog to find it again

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years ago

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Fast-Food Buffets Are a Thing of the Past. Some Doubt They Ever Even Existed.

A McDonald’s breakfast buffet. An all-you-can-eat Taco Bell. This isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but a real yet short-lived phenomenon.

When we think of buffets, we tend to think of their 1980s and early ’90s heyday, when commercial jingles for Sizzler might have been confused with our national anthem. We think of Homer Simpson getting dragged out of the Frying Dutchman, “a beast more stomach than man.” I think of my parents going on buffet benders resembling something out of Hunter S. Thompson’s life, determined to get their money’s worth with two picky kids.

What we don’t typically think about, however, is the fast-food buffet, a blip so small on America’s food radar that it’s hard to prove it even existed. But it did. People swear that all-you-can-eat buffets could be found at Taco Bell, KFC, and even under the golden arches of McDonald’s.

That it could have existed isn’t surprising. The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake. It was the physical manifestation of the American id: endless biscuits, popcorn chicken, vats of nacho cheese and sketchy pudding — so much sketchy pudding. Why, then, have so many of us failed to remember it? How did it become a footnote, relegated to the backwoods of myths and legends? There are whispers of McDonald’s locations that have breakfast buffets. Was there, in fact, a Taco Bell buffet, or is it a figment of our collective imaginations? Yes, someone tells me — an all-you-can-eat Taco Bell existed in her dorm cafeteria. Another person suggests maybe we were just remembering the nachos section of the Wendy’s Superbar.

The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake.

The fast-food buffet lives in a strange sort of ether. You can’t get to it through the traditional path of remembering. Was there actually a Pizza Hut buffet in your hometown? Search your subconscious, sifting past the red cups that make the soda taste better, past the spiffy new CD jukebox, which has Garth Brooks’s Ropin’ the Wind and Paul McCartney’s All the Best under the neon lamps. Search deeper, and you might find your father going up for a third plate and something remaining of the “dessert pizzas” lodged in your subconscious. This is where the fast-food buffet exists.

The history of the buffet in America is a story of ingenuity and evolution. Sure, it originated in Europe, where it was a classy affair with artfully arranged salted fish, eggs, breads, and butter. The Swedish dazzled us with their smorgasbords at the 1939 World Fair. We can then trace the evolution of the buffet through Las Vegas, where the one-dollar Buckaroo Buffet kept gamblers in the casino. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese immigrant families found loopholes in racist immigration laws by establishing restaurants. They brought Chinese cooking catered to American tastes in endless plates of beef chow fun and egg rolls. By the 1980s, buffets ruled the landscape like family dynasties, with sister chains the Ponderosa and the Bonanza spreading the gospel of sneeze guards and steaks, sundae stations and salad bars along the interstates. From Shoney’s to Sizzler, from sea to shining sea, the buffet was a feast fit for kings, or a family of four.

And of course, fast-food restaurants wanted in on the action. As fast-food historian and author of Drive-Thru Dreams Adam Chandler put it, “every fast food place flirted with buffets at some point or another. McDonald’s absolutely did, as did most of the pizza chains with dine-in service. KFC still has a few stray buffets, as well as an illicit one called Claudia Sanders Dinner House, which was opened by Colonel Sanders’ wife after he was forbidden from opening a competing fried chicken business after selling the company. Wendy’s Super Bar was short-lived, but the salad bar lived on for decades.”

How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.

In a 1988 commercial for the Superbar, Dave Thomas says, ��I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like it when families eat together.” A Wendy’s executive described the new business model as “taking us out of the fast-food business.” Everyone agrees the Wendy’s Supernar was glorious. And gross, everyone also agrees. How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.

“I kind of want to live in a ’90s Wendy’s,” Amy Barnes, a Tennessee-based writer, tells me in between preparing for virtual learning with her teenagers. The Superbar sat in the lobby, with stations lined up like train carts. First, there was the Garden Spot, which “no one cared about,” a traditional salad bar with a tub of chocolate pudding at its helm, “which always had streams of salad dressing and shredded cheese floating on top.” Next up was the Pasta Pasta section, with “noodles, alfredo and tomato sauce…[as well as] garlic bread made from the repurposed hamburger buns with butter and garlic smeared on them.” Obviously, the crown jewel of the Superbar was the Mexican Fiesta, with its “vats of ground beef, nacho cheese, sour cream.” The Fiesta shared custody of additional toppings with the salad bar. It was $2.99 for the dining experience.

Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet.

The marriage of Wendy’s and the Superbar lasted about a decade before it was phased out in all locations by 1998. Like a jilted ex-lover, the official Wendy’s Story on the website makes zero mention of Superbar, despite the countless blogs, YouTube videos, and podcasts devoted to remembering it. At least they kept the salad bar together until the mid-2000s for the sake of the children.

Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet. Googling the existence of such a thing only returns results of people questioning the existence of this McMuffin Mecca on subforums and Reddit. Somebody knows somebody who passed one once on the highway. A stray Yelp review of the Kiss My Grits food truck in Seattle offers a lead: “I have to say, I recall the first time I ever saw grits, they were at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet in Alexandria, Virginia, and they looked as unappetizing as could be.” However, the lead is dead on arrival. Further googling of the McDonald’s buffet with terrible grits in Alexandria turns up nothing.

I ask friends on Facebook. I ask Twitter. I get a lone response. Eden Robins messages me “It was in Decatur, IL,” as though she’s describing the site where aliens abducted her. “I’m a little relieved that I didn’t imagine the breakfast buffet since no one ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about when I bring it up.”

“We had traveled down there for a high school drama competition,” she goes on to say. “And one morning before the competition, we ate at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet. I had never seen anything like it before or since.”

I ask what was in the buffet, although I know the details alone will not sustain me. I want video to pore over so I can pause at specific frames, like a fast-food version of the Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot footage. Robins says they served “scrambled eggs and pancakes and those hash brown tiles. I was a vegetarian at the time so no sausage or bacon, but those were there, too.”

McDonald’s isn’t the only chain with a buffet whose existence is hazy. Yum Brands, the overlord of fast-food holy trinity Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, is said to have had buffets at all three restaurants. I confirm nothing, however, when I reach out to the corporate authorities. On the KFC side, a spokesperson offers to look into “some historical information,” but doesn’t get back to me. My contact at Taco Bell tells me, “I’ll look into it. Certainly, nothing in existence today. I’ve never heard of it. Looks like there are a couple threads on Reddit.”

Reddit, of course, speculates a possible Mandela Effect — the phenomenon of a group of unrelated people remembering a different event than what actually occurred — in the existence of Taco Bell buffets. But I have a firmer lead in Payel Patel, a doctor who studied at Johns Hopkins, who tells me there was a Taco Bell Express in her dorm that was included in an all-you-can-eat meal plan option, though it only lasted one fleeting year. “You could order anything, like 15 nachos and 11 bean burritos,” she says, “and they would make it and give it to you, and you walked off without paying a cent.” A Johns Hopkins student newsletter published in 2001 corroborates the existence of the utopian all-you-can-eat Taco Bell, saying, “you can also gorge yourself on some good old Taco Bell tacos and burritos. Don’t forget, it’s all-you-can-eat. Just don’t eat too much; you don’t want to overload the John.”

There are some concrete examples of fast-food buffets that still exist today. When a Krystal Buffet opened in Alabama in 2019, it was met with “excitement and disbelief,” according to the press release. Former New Orleans resident Wilson Koewing told me of a Popeye’s buffet that locals “speak of as if it is a myth.” When I dig deeper, I come across a local paper, NOLA Weekend, which covers “New Orleans Food, things to do, culture, and lifestyle.” It touts the Popeye’s buffet like a carnival barker, as though it is simply too incredible to believe: “The Only Popeye’s Buffet in the World! It’s right next door in Lafayette! Yes, that’s right: a Popeyes buffet. HERE.”

Somehow, the KFC buffet is the most enduring of the fast-food buffets still in existence. And yet everyone I speak with feels compelled to walk me through the paths and roads leading to such an oasis, as if, again, it were the stuff of legends. There are landmarks and there are mirages, and the mirages need maps most of all.

To get to the KFC buffet in Key Largo, Tiffany Aleman must first take us through “a small island town with one traffic light and one major highway that runs through it. There are the seafood buffets and bait shops, which give way to newfangled Starbucks.”

The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.

New Jerseyan D.F. Jester leads us past the local seafood place “that looks like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship has been transported 50 miles inland and plunked inside the dining area of a 1980s Ramada outside of Newark.”

Descriptions of the food are about what I would expect of a KFC buffet. Laura Camerer remembers the food in her college town in Morehead, Kentucky, as “all fried solid as rocks sitting under heat lamps, kind of gray and gristly.” Jester adds, “for all intents and purposes, this is a KFC. It looks like one, but sadder, more clinical. The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.”

Then Jessie Lovett Allen messages me. “There is [a] KFC in my hometown, and it is magical without a hint of sketch.” I must know more. First, she takes me down the winding path: “the closest larger city is Kearney, which is 100 miles away and only has 35K people, and Kearney is where you’ll find the closest Target, Panera, or Taco Bell. But to the North, South, or West, you have to drive hundreds of miles before you find a larger city. I tell you all of this because the extreme isolation is what gives our restaurants, even fast-food ones, an outsized psychological importance to daily life.”

The KFC Jessie mentions is in North Platte, Nebraska, and has nearly five stars on Yelp, an accomplishment worthy of a monument for any fast-food restaurant. On the non-corporate Facebook page for KFC North Platte, one of the hundreds of followers of the page comments, “BEST KFC IN THE COUNTRY.”

Allen describes the place as though she is recounting a corner of heaven. “They have fried apple pies that seem to come through a wormhole from a 1987 McDonalds. Pudding: Hot. Good. Layered cold pudding desserts. This one rotates. It might be chocolate, banana, cookies and cream. It has a graham cracker base, pudding, and whipped topping. Standard Cold Salad bar: Lettuce, salad veggies, macaroni salads, JELL-O salads. Other meats: chicken fried steak patties. Fried chicken gizzards. White Gravy, Chicken Noodle Casserole, Green Bean Casserole, Cornbread, Corn on the Cob, Chicken Pot Pie Casserole. AND most all the standard stuff on the normal KFC menu, which is nice because you can pick out a variety of chicken types or just have a few tablespoons of a side dish.”

In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed.

Then she adds that the buffet “is also available TO GO, but there are rules. You get a large Styrofoam clamshell, a small Styrofoam clamshell, and a cup. You have to be able to close the Styrofoam. You are instructed that only beverages can go in cups, and when I asked about this, an employee tells me that customers have tried to shove chicken into the drink cups in the past.”

In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed. The chains folded. The senior citizens keeping Ponderosa in business have died. My own parents reversed course after their buffet bender, trading in sundae stations for cans of SlimFast. Fast-food buffets retreated into an ethereal space. McDonald’s grew up with adult sandwiches like the Arch Deluxe. Wendy’s went on a wild rebound with the Baconator. Pizza Hut ripped out its jukeboxes, changed its logo, went off to the fast-food wars, and ain’t been the same since. Taco Bell is undergoing some kind of midlife crisis, hemorrhaging its entire menu of potatoes, among other beloved items. At least the KFC in North Platte has done good, though the novel coronavirus could change things.

In the age of COVID-19, the fast-food buffet feels like more of a dream than ever. How positively whimsical it would be to stand shoulder to shoulder, hovering over sneeze guards, sharing soup ladles to scoop an odd assortment of pudding, three grapes, a heap of rotini pasta, and a drumstick onto a plate. Maybe we can reach this place again. But to find it, we must follow the landmarks, searching our memory as the map.

MM Carrigan is a Baltimore-area writer and weirdo who enjoys staring directly into the sun. Their work has appeared in Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and PopMatters. They are the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly. Tweets @thesurfingpizza.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/33e4Z8k https://ift.tt/30jEUmf

A McDonald’s breakfast buffet. An all-you-can-eat Taco Bell. This isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but a real yet short-lived phenomenon.

The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake.

How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.

In a 1988 commercial for the Superbar, Dave Thomas says, “I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like it when families eat together.” A Wendy’s executive described the new business model as “taking us out of the fast-food business.” Everyone agrees the Wendy’s Supernar was glorious. And gross, everyone also agrees. How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.

Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet.

The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.

In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/33e4Z8k via Blogger https://ift.tt/36lO2KT

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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themystictigress-blog · 5 years ago

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The invention of our new truth

Energetics of the Aquarius New Moon on 1/24/2020

Woah. Have you been feeling this dense energy? Are you feeling the call? Are you feeling a sense of urgency? The urgency to step up. The urgency for us Mystics and Creators to step into our power and bring in the future.

This last week we have been experiencing the Pluto and Saturn conjunction in Capricorn (which we will be experiencing the unfolding of this for quite a while). Along with the sun and mercury. Pluto has been in Capricorn for quite a while, destroying and transforming everything he touches. Our tangible reality and the systems set in place by those in authority are shifting. We are seeing it in our outer world and also in our personal lives. Down to the way we have been conditioned by the outside world, our family, and what is encoded in our DNA. Everything is being questioned. There are rotten foundations that are no longer serving us. We have been lied to, controlled and oppressed.

The last time Saturn and Pluto kissed was 1982-83 in Libra. Since then we have been in a cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction of relationships. There were highlights of whether or not justice is present in our world. Where are we facing injustice? Are the relationships we are in really serving us? Is there equality? Is the energetic exchange equal in our relationships? If not, they had to go.

Now, the last time Saturn and Pluto met in Capricon was in 1518. Since then, we have been in a cycle of the building of America. Since then we are still asking questions. Are these systems that are put in place serving us? Is our foundation solid? Can we trust those in authority? Are they serving us? We know from personal experiences and observing the world around us the answers to these questions. We are entering a new cycle of building and committing to our lives. Now is the time to trust our own inner authority.

Pluto is bringing in the chaos magick, digging in and digging out what is of no use. Saturn is coming in and going thru all the rubble and rebuilding a stronger foundation, a foundation that will better serve us now that the future is here. What has always been, can no longer be. We are here to invent a new way of being and living. We must witness the tower fall, in some ways we have.

Especially now that Uranus is in Taurus, shaking and awakening us to having a different relationship with money, discovering and aligning with our values, and creating new ways to acquire abundance. We are experiencing a lot of earthly energy. There is a reason why wealth consciousness is of such importance at this moment. It's no coincidence. With the influence of mercury in this grand conjunction, we need to become aware of what stories we are telling ourselves and others as the sun identifies with these stories. We are awakening to a new reality around money.

What would happen if we actually felt valued? That our voices, our gifts, our truths, our inventions actually really mattered? That we are worthy of being abundant doing what we love? Or abundant at all? What change could we bring to our planet if we listened to our soul’s voice? We have been told for so long these things don't matter. That we are incapable. That we are too much. That we are unloveable. Or to shut up. Not only have we been listening to this story of lack and constriction, but our ancestors heard the same exact story. Their stories are in our DND. In our bodies. Our ancestors' experiences of persecution for being their authentic selves live in our bones.

This is why stepping into our power is so scary. It challenges our ego's story that it has identified with for so long. The story that keeps us small, isolated, and broke. Creating a false sense of safety. But we are busting out of this story, and it is going to ripple throughout the world. But it will not feel good. Becoming aware of the stories we have identified with is not going to be easy as it has manifested in our physical bodies. We will experience fear and anxiety in our bodies. Physical pain. And even impending doom. But if we have faith and work hard, we will come out at the end aligned in our divine right. It's our ego feeling these things. Recognizing that it has helped us survive, now is the time to thrive. As the new moon in Aquarius approaches this week, now is a time to revolutionize our story without lack, but with integrity and responsibility. Now is the time to tap into your creative genius and brainstorm your story that you are to show the world. Get organized to make room for the invention of your new story. This story will allow you to step into the world. To share your truth, your ideas, your creativity, your wisdom. It will take a lot of discipline and grit. But it will create a strong foundation for you to be your most authentic self.

If you really want to experience growth, abundance, and expansion you have to do the work. Jupiter is the planet of wealth and prosperity. He creates a lot of space for healing. Right now he is also in Capricorn. So it is thru Capricorn means can we really experience the goodness Jupiter has to offer. Now is the time to really get organized and take responsibility for what you can control. It will require discipline and showing up every day.

It's best to keep in mind what things we are committing to. There may be things that you are committed to that are hurting you that you may not even realize. What do you want to commit to in your life? What mountain do you want to climb? It's time to step into the belief that the sky is the limit.

To utilize this energy, it's best to get organized.

-Using a planner

-Keeping your sacred space (office/home)

-Tracking where your money goes (with no judgment, just observation)

-Making a to-do list

-Write down your negative beliefs as they arise

-Journal

-Care for your physical body (start small)

These things will help create a sense of safety and grounding as we start to notice what stories we have been telling ourselves. This will also create a sacred container as we birth our new identity.

How do we approach this intense energy? To maintain motivation, approach this new 30+ year cycle as a new adventure and with curiosity. Mars is in Saggitarius so it is a good time to disperse the energy and adapt. What would happen if we started using a planner? What would happen if we kept our space a little tidier than usual? What if we ate an apple instead of Doritos? Or have an extra cup of water? Tea instead of coffee? What really happens when we can start committing to the small things? Maybe if we incorporated some of these things, we might be surprised at how much we have accomplished! Pack your bags and only take what you need. We are GOING PLACES.

Now is the time to let your freak flag show. Don't let the belief that you are "too weird" for anyone to resonate with you! Don't let that belief alienate you. Because there are billions of people on this planet. The internet reaches far and wide, the connections are out there. Your tribe is out there. But the only way to find them is to be yourself and show up. Let's build bridges, not walls.

Let this be a new beginning. I know I am feeling a huge shift. On the one hand, I have never felt this grounded and safe in my life. It’s a miracle that I am nearly 25 because there was a time I didn’t think I would make it past 20. But through grit and hard work, I have reached the top of a mountain. One of many. I want this blog to be the start of many. The start of sharing my story and how I got to where I am. How I turned lead into gold and to help others do the same. I need to make a commitment to myself and my life. I have a blank canvas and so many tools to pain with. I am ready for life.

#astrology #mysticsunite #plutosaturnconjunction2020 #paythewitches

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lizziebennet · 7 years ago

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Hi Aurora okay first tysm for your blog It's so lovely to have another person so passionate about my fave things (i.e hp and period dramas) Anyway, i recently read the HP series (again) and found myself feeling SO MUCH. I genuinely teared up at so many different touching parts and I was just wondering what are your favorite most heart-wrenching/emotional parts from the books? I realize this is a lengthy quesition so feel free to never answer this or take a year.

ye S SS i love being passionate ab things and sharing that passion w my followers!!!!! i love yall esp when u ask me questions like this where i get to talk ab my fave things everrrrrrrrr (ps thank u so much for letting me take forever to answer this ur so cute to say that ilysm)

ok so literally i will cry my way thru the entire series when i reread bc harry potter has so much emotional weight for me and so many memories that go along with it. but i decided to limit myself to just 10 bc otherwise id be sitting here typing all day. so w/o further ado:

AURORA’S TOP 10 MOST TEARFUL HARRY POTTER MOMENTS:

((in no particular order))

HARRY READS LILY’S LETTER IN DH: listen harry doesnt actually spend a lot of the books angsting over the fact that he doesnt have parents but in moments like this u remember he IS AN ORPHAN AND IT GETS ME SO HARD. fuk like just picturing harry crouched on the floor of sirius’s bedroom reading that letter… rereading it… crying… wow.gif!!!!! the line that makes me cry eveRY TIME is “She had made her g’s the same way he did : he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil.“ LIKE RIP RIP RIP ABORT ABORT ABORT ITS TOO SAD!!!!!

THE LOST PROPHECY IN OOTP: JESSESCREAMING.JPEG!!!!!!!!!!!! listen ,,, i talk ab this chapter so much on my blog. it is my #1 favorite moment in my #1 favorite harry potter book which is my #1 favorite series of all time. SO ITS A PRETTY BIG DEAL. harry’s reaction to sirius’s death… his anger at dumbledore… his grief… his discovery of his fate… its beautiful writing and its so painful but so amazing to read. LIKE!!!!! MY BABY!!! HE’S LOST SO MANY PEOPLE!!!!!!!! MY SWEET SUMMER CHILD!!!!!!!!!! “I DON’T CARE!“ Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE!” “You do care,” said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”” LIKE LITERALLY WHEN I GET TO THIS POINT I HAVE TO TAKE A BREAK BC IM CRYING SO MUCH I CANT MAKE OUT THE WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!! also fun story: one time i was listening to ootp on audiobook while on vacation and we were in the car waiting to taxi on to a ferry boat and we were listening to this chapter when the ferry guy came by to take our tickets and i had like TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE and jim dale is yelling as harry in the background…. the guy was like ‘is this bitch ok??’ lmaOOOOo

HARRY AND THE MIRROR OF ERISED IN SS: this is another one of those moments where you remember that harry is an orphan and its /so/ painful. thinking about this teeny 11 year old baby harry sneaking out every night just to sit in front of this mirror so he can see his parents………my darling baby sweetheart i love him So Much. it just makes me so sad like hes /so young/ AND HE JUST WANTS TO SEE HIS PARENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHH!! it also gives way to one of my all time favorite hp quotes: “It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

HARRY STOPS SIRIUS AND LUPIN FROM KILLING PETER IN POA: me reading this part is literally ISAYTHATSMYBABYANDIMREALLYPROUD.GIF!!!!!! like!! my boy!! he finds out this man literally caused the death of his parents and he MAKES THE GROWN ASS ADULTS SPARE HIS LIFE… LIKE… he literally acts twice his age and is so mature and is just…….so amazing. it shows such strength and wisdom and it makes me SO PROUD. the way he references james also makes me cry because you see the relationship harry has with james even though he’s literally never met him and its so beautiful. i love harry so much.

HARRY AFTER SECTUMSEMPER-ING MALFOY IN HBP: this is literally the opposite of that last one where im so proud of harry this is def… not one of his best moments lol. he rly rly fucks up and his guilt is so raw and it makes me so emotional because i feel SO bad for him. its def an important harry moment in the books because it shows his flaws and the consequences of his rage, but it also shows how GOOD he is because he feels so bad about what happens and like willingly takes his punishment even though it means that he cant play in the quidditch match. he really like… atones and even tho its rough to read i def love that its a part of the series bc its a really like watershed moment for harry and i think it really reminds him of the wizard he wants to be. this part also leads to i think a more satisfying harry/ginny first kiss bc ginny defends harry and then him not going to the game leads to “several sunlit days” AKA ONE OF MY FAVE HP MOMENTS EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

HARRY AND HERMIONE VISIT JAMES AND LILY’S GRAVE IN DH: “But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing.And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.” THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE MOMENTS THAT I HAVE TO STOP READING BC IM CRYING SO MUCH I CANT MAKE OUT THE WORDS ANYMORE. I CRIED TYPING THIS. IM SO SAD.

THE FOREST AGAIN IN DH: hoo boy. hoooooo boy this is a Big One. this one is really…. wow. just. wow. [deep breath]. there is So Much in this chapter that makes me cry where do i even START. harry realizing that he has to die and ACCEPTING IT BRAVELY LIKE THE HERO HE IS. “Why had he never appreciate what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart?” im crying….. hes so good. HARRY NEARLY STOPPING WHEN HE SEES GINNY and ginny’s crying and comforting some girl and im crying too. JAMES. SIRIUS. LILY. REMUS. WHEN HARRY ASKS IF IT HURTS TO DIE LIKE LITEARLLY I HAVE TO PUT THE BOOK DOWN AND GET UP AND WLAK AROUND THE ROOM BECAUSE I GET SO EMOTIONAL LIKE. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! when harry sees harry and screams at him ……………… rip in pieces me!!!!!!!! ALSO ONE OF HIS LAST THOUGHTS BEFORE THE AVADA KEDAVRA IS OF GINNY AND KISSING HER……….. [GUNSHOTS] [SCREAMING]

BELLATRIX TORTURES HERMIONE IN DH: fuk this scene is no joke scary like it took harry potter to another level of real darkness. hermione being tortured was so chilling like beautiufl amazing smart snarky hermione it was so painful to read like my heart rate goes up when i read it bc im worried for my girl :/ and ron is sHAKING and like screaming and literally throwing himself at the walls to try to get to her and its SO upsetting like. they are still CHILDREN like theyre all so young and they dont deserve this like. hearing her plead and stuff … its just…. too much. these are my CHILDREN i have to PROTECT them.

HARRY DIGS DOBBYS GRAVE IN DH: this is another one of those harry moments where i just want to give him a huge hug. like he insists on digging dobby’s grave by hand which is just ..... [gets choked up] its fine. and his thoughts while he dig make me so sad. he so /tired/. hes so frustrated with dumbledore and he the hallows and the horcruxes and he feels responsible for what happened. and ron coming out and helping him dig silently makes me so happy and its one of those times u really see how much rons friendship means to harry. and harry comes out of this like ... older and more mature? his wisdom and knowledge is rly apparent when he talks with griphook and olivander right after this like. he knows what hes going to do. hes made his choice. hes not going to race voldemort for the wand. i love him so much for that choice. hes such a grown man in this part like accepting responsibility, taking care of hermione and everyone like getting things in order. i love him.

MRS WEALSEY HUGS HARRY IN THE HOSPITAL WING IN GOF: “’It wasn’t your fault, Harry,’ Mrs. Weasley whispered. ‘I told him to take the cup with me,’ said Harry. Now the burning feeling was in his throat too. He wished Ron would look away. Mrs. Weasley set the potion down on the bedside cabinet, bent down, and put her arms around Harry. He had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a mother. The full weight of everything he had seen that night seemed to fall in upon him as Mrs. Weasley held him to her. His mothers face, his father’s voice, the sight of Cedric, dead on the ground all started spinning in his head until he could hardly bear it, until he was screwing up his face against the howl of misery fighting to get out of him.” HARRY POTTER DESERVES MORE HUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he feels so guilty about cedric and god bless mrs weasley for telling him it wasnt his fault because it WASNT!!! he did so amazing in the graveyard like.. .he saw voldemort return and he fought him and he survived and he saw his paretns and hE TOOK CEDRICS BODY BACK SO IT COULD BE WITH HIS FAMILY!!!!!!!! HE TOOK IT BACK FOR THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i would die a thousand deaths if it meant that harry didnt have to experience this pain!!!!

whew so there we go!!!!! the bottom line is obviously that i love the harry potter series more than anything and specifically i love the boy harry potter so so SO much and his suffering is agonizing to read and he didnt deserve any of it!!! i can litearlly think of SO many more heartbreaking moments in the series but here are just a handful. happy birthday to harry!!!

#anonymous #aurora got an ask #hp #aurora RANTS

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danadepth-blog · 6 years ago

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20/07/2018

After years of disappearing from the lime light of social media and coming out to have sunrays on my face. I guess it is safe to say, im healing quite well (physically, mentally, emotionally) :-) Im not just saying this to fake a positive “my-life-is-perfect” post. Because it isnt perfect, and i learned to live fully anyway. I can tell you im recovering from my midlife crisis (everyone goes thru it), i DIDNT resort to any of the following SELF DESTRUCTIVE acts like : alcohol binging every weekend, jumping on dates with new people, hookup with strangers, eating like a pig, or starving myself to death in order to get public attention or to fake to everyone that i am doing oh so well.

But what i did was : I think i kinda disconnected from the fast paced world for a bit. It’s not very hard to do since im not an extrovert. And i recharge better when im alone 😉 Then i dig deep and look at all the pieces that is left of me. And peeled my ears to listen carefully to what my inner self is calling me to heal. I didnt have much time to figure things out and how to adapt because most of the time i just didnt wana THINK, because thinking always leads me to FEEL. And when i start feeling, it’s not very pretty. So i guess you can call this : Being DORMANT. One day while i was busy being DORMANT, i saw 2 pairs of eyes looking at me.... they were my kids ! Their faces literally label “Love us momy ”. And the innocence in their facial expressions just struck me in the head. How can i love my babies, how can i give them the entire love in the world? If i havnt loved or took care of myself enough??? If i am inadequate of self-care, i wont be able to share the overflowing cup of love to these heaven sent little creatures of mine :D I have to stress this, self care is not an overnight thing if you have lived a life of dependency, relying on others to serve or care for you without doing it for Yourself! It was a painful start, but i knew i had to overcome it even every step is uncomfortable, change is never easy.

From then on, my perspective started to change. I figured, in order to make it successful in nurturing these lil humans, i HAVE to tough it up and stop sulking already. And they will never see my gloomy. Motherhood, doesnt look very pretty to those who arent yet mothers, it looks like messy hair, dark eye bags, wrinkles and even stretch marks. But this is what it takes to bring up a human, this is exactly how my mother selflessly brought me and my siblings into this world into full grown adults. My mother had no time for herself because she had 7 kids to care for, and i am so ever grateful even after 7 kids, she’d willingly help me babysit Y coz she knows im about to collapse anytime tryna handle them both 😅😅

There are many styles of parenting, but i want to advocate my own. Just like how you have to wear your own oxygen mask on the plane before wearing your child’s. I wont elaborate anything on my personal growth here, bcoz you dont need to know. Im still working on myself thats all i can share. And I wont brag about what my goals and dreams are either 🤡

Ive tuned back into finding my old self. The one before all that had happened. And im still the same ol poetic me. Thats why im here blogging again. Isnt it fun??? 😂😂 And oh yea,, i am ever grateful to the 1,2,3 beings who are there to talk with WHENEVER. Haha. Seriously i swear they are GOD SENT. Sometimes we get off topic and sometimes we dont speak, but it just lifts a brick off my shoulder day to day. It makes me pass my lifetime with more joy than on my own 😃 and yes, i am happy 😘

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blkwidowsweb · 6 years ago

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A Conversation with Summer Oasis Guest DJ Righteous!

In a musical world that's full of egos and attitudes, it is refreshing to come across a talented, humble spirit that's hungry to do his thing. DJ Righteous embodies all of that. Born and raised in Chicago and now making his home in Detroit, DJ Righteous is excited to be making his Summer Oasis Debut! I had a chance to chat with him about his career, his background in Spoken Word and his thoughts on his Summer Oasis Debut!

Black Widow: Did you have a lot of music in your home growing up? What were some of those influences?

DJ Righteous: My grandmother always played Latin music like Celia Cruz and Tito Puente and my mom was an avid jazz enthusiast. I personally love Stevie Wonder, Roy Ayers, Earth Wind and Fire and of course, Chaka Khan!!! I love her forever! [Laughter] Those were all big influences.

Black Widow: What was your introduction to House Music? When did you decide you wanted to DJ?

DJ Righteous: I’d have to say Ron and Nate Carroll and these guys who were aspiring DJs in my neighborhood, The Harris Brothers. Ron Carroll used to bring records to school whenever we would have our parties. He would play these songs and we just fell in love with them. Then of course, I was listening to the radio WBMX and the Hot Mix 5.

Black Widow: Are you a self-taught DJ?

DJ Righteous: I learned by putting records together. [LAUGHTER] Definitely self-taught.

Black Widow: In doing these interviews I always find it interesting to listen to how DJs select music. Typically, the longer someone has been DJing they tend to have a very specific process of how they choose and select music. You come from the era were DJs were actually looking for music, going thru crates and such.

DJ Righteous: Oh absolutely, you had to dig and look for music. There was an art to digging for records. You didn’t want to play what everyone else was playing. You wanted to find that nugget and play that. You tried to find something fly. You start off digging through your mom’s stack and your dad’s stack. Then when you were able to afford it, you got to digging in the records stores. I was always looking for records. I still do.

Black Widow: How does that affect how you choose music now? It’s different since we are mostly digital nowadays.

DJ Righteous: Honestly, I very seldom go to Traxsource unless it’s something I just have to have.

Black Widow: Like a Black Widow release! [LAUGHTER]

DJ Righteous: OH FOR SURE! All your stuff! [LAUGHTER] I try to go to different sites but I also still dig. I play a lot of digital music but I also still buy vinyl. I order vinyl. It’s just a lot of stuff that you just cannot get digitally. It doesn’t matter where I go; I try to dig for records! I don’t want to sound like anyone else and for me, especially coming back into this scene, I thought that was the formula. I thought I had to sound like “this” in order for people to book me. When I really found my own voice and flipped the script, that’s when things really started happening for me.

Black Widow: I definitely relate. When I started doing poetry, I thought I had to sound a certain type of way. When you are new and coming into this scene, it can be a challenge if you don’t find your voice.

DJ Righteous: Yeah I got that a lot as a poet too! You and I have similar stories! That’s why I used to call my stuff “Unapologetic poetic”. You either accept it or reject it but you gotta respect it. People I grew up with had no idea I was an undercover lover of Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni but I grew up on the south side and we weren’t spitting poetry in the streets you know?

Black Widow: Absolutely! Finding your voice and your own style comes with time as you evolve. There has been a lot of discussion about the categorization of house music. It’s disco, soulful, classics, afro etc. Do you subscribe to that? If not, what are your thoughts on the sub genres of house music?

DJ Righteous: For me personally, I love unscripted melodies. It’s disco, house, soulful, afro beats. It’s everything. I like my sets like gumbo. I want to take people on a journey of sounds. I like to give them textures. For me that’s has helped my evolution as a DJ.

Black Widow: It’s about giving your audience a good mix and honestly, it’s such a personal thing. I see it in my friends who are DJs. I can see them through the music they play. That’s what gravitates me to certain DJs. They give me a piece of them when they play. I don’t want a DJ to just give me what I want. Give me you. It the same as a writer/poet, I want to give you a piece of myself thru my art. That requires a certain amount of vulnerability.

DJ Righteous: That’s that authenticity! I completely get it!

Black Widow: A lot of people don't know you have an extensive background as a Spoken Word Artist.

DJ Righteous: Yeah. I'm known as Righteous Knowledge in those circles. I remember my 1st open mic was on 35th & King Drive in 1999/2000. I wasn’t spitting at the time I was just coming because I enjoyed it. About two years later, I really started writing and we had a group called Third Eye Open Poetry Collective. We started our group on May 19th 2002 and we used that date in particular in the spirit of Malcolm X and The Last Poets. I remember meeting Umar Bin Hassan from The Last Poets and he said that the only way we could use that date was if we show and prove we were worthy of that date. We started performing at festivals and open mics and a year later we had our anniversary show with The Last Poets. It was so dope! Fred Hampton Jr and his mother came. From there, I traveled all around the country performing at colleges and universities, opening up for Common, Eryka Badu, KRS One, ICE-T, Big Daddy Kane, Public Enemy. I’ve performed at the Essence music festival twice. My spoken word history is deep.

Black Widow: Wow! Has you being a spoken word artist influenced you as a DJ? Do you approach DJing differently because you have a writing background?

DJ Righteous: From a writer’s perspective, I write my poems like puzzles. It's putting those pieces together. As a DJ selecting music I approach it the same way. Sometimes, I challenge myself not to play a particular song, even when I know it will get the people going. You don’t want to be the DJ that people know what you are going to play before you play it. You don’t want to be predictable. With writing and selecting music, it’s a very similar process. I don’t have a folder or formula. I go with what I feel. That is what helps me the most in both, playing and writing exactly what I feel. Like I said earlier, I used to think I had to play and sound a certain way. When I started to just play what I felt, the people felt it as well. If I ain’t feeling it, I’m not playing it. How are your people going to feel it if you don’t? I’m going to rock out whether it’s 10 people or 1000s of people. I have to.

Black Widow: Let’s talk about Summer Oasis. What makes Summer Oasis special and different?

DJ Righteous: Because I’m a first timer. I’ve watched from afar. I think what makes it different is that it’s not in your usual location. This is a location that is historic for us. This is the Martha’s Vineyard of the Midwest, where the heavy hitters came to play back in the day. It has serenity to it. When you wake up and look at the lake in the morning, it’s breathtaking and it gives you peace of mind. The fact that I get to play music that started in my hometown at a festival where the greats have all been…it’s just surreal. I get to play house music in Idlewild with people I respect and have been fans of for years. I feel like a kid in a candy store. I’m just honored and humbled to be a part of this. I really am! I can’t wait to express and share my vision with people who may have never heard of me.

Black Widow: You know when I was researching Idlewild and its history I was shocked to discover that my grandfather performed regularly at the Idlewild clubs and jazz festivals. Do you have a personal connection to Idlewild as well?

DJ Righteous: WOW! That’s dope! Yeah I do actually. My great grandfather owned a club called Lead Sensations in Detroit. They used to take artists from Detroit to go to Idlewild all the time. I’ve also performed in Idlewild twice with the Last Poets. We did poetry in the woods with The Last Poets and Savion Glover. I’ve been fortunate enough to perform there twice in a different capacity.

Black Widow: What does the future hold for DJ Righteous?

DJ Righteous: I just want to continue to get booked! I want to do some traveling and have other people hear me play! I’m just trying to do my best and give my all in what I do. I want to continue to build the brand that is DJ Righteous and continue to learn and grow in this thing called house.

Black Widow: I have no doubt that you will. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. I’m looking forward to hearing your set at Summer Oasis!

DJ Righteous: Oh no doubt. It was my pleasure! I’m really looking forward to it.

The countdown to Summer Oasis is ON!!! I hope you enjoyed this interview with this talented artist! The Summer Oasis Festival Blog Series continues this week with more interviews and a special article on creating the perfect camp kitchen, complete with receipes! Stay tuned to the blog and subscribe to get every article delivered right to your inbox!

Until next time!

See you at Summer Oasis

Black Widow

#blkwidowsweb #musicfestivals #idlewild #housemusic #glamping #SOMF2018 #aboutthattentlife #happyglamper #DJrighteous #righteousknowledge

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symbianosgames · 8 years ago

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This interview is part of our Road to the IGF series. You can find the rest by clicking here.

Oiκοςpiel, Book I is an opera in five acts, taking the player on a surreal journey of music, canine programmers, bear assassinations, unions, and a relationship between player and game world, breathing life into it through the manipulation of objects and sending their will to move through the computer.

Developer David Kanaga's heady, almost overwhelming work has earned him an IGF nomination for the Nuovo Award. Gamasutra sought him out to talk about the process of Oiκοςpiel, Book I's creation, and how that, and all are aspects, became a part of an extensive message told through imagery, interactivity, and sound.

I've been working with games for about 8 years. I'm probably best known for doing interactive music designs on projects such as Proteus (with Ed Key), Panoramical (with Fernando Ramallo, et al) and Dyad (w Shawn McGrath). My blog, wombflashforest, has some of my writings on musical game theory.

Before working explicitly in the field, and as a kid loving games, I was brought up Zelda, Conker, group improv, Fruityloops, and D&D -- Josh Bothun, who coded the website, was the one to introduce me to game dev as a doable thing and got me into it!

I'd always wanted to compose for a game in the AAA style. In late 2014, while working on Panoramical, Fernando Ramallo showed me the unity landscape sculpting tool and the unity asset store, and I realized it'd be possible to make my own Frankenstein-ian AAA game with these tools.

I sculpted some landscapes, imagined different activities on the landscapes, and had a desire to run with a pack of dogs and to trigger a few things, including perspective shifts, between First, Second, Third person, etc. So, I bought the dogs and I hired Fernando to make the tools for triggering things, and he made these amazing scripts that after about a month of debugging together, basically never crashed for me again, which means I was able to write the game without coding and without running into fatal "bugs"-- a huge boon.

Unity, the "Oik OS" tools, coded by Fernando Ramallo, Ableton, Money.

A little over two years.

Videogames already have a generic tendency to be operatic, and I wanted Oiκοςpiel to riff on this - that engulfing quality which is the totality of the screen and sound system (outputs), the inputs, and the throughputs which hold it all together. I wanted to be able to accommodate any possible form that I could manage within the game - weaving them together was much of the difficulty and pleasure of working.

If I could code, there would bits that feel more like TurboTax and Bloomberg Terminal in there, so there was this synthetic thing going on, piecing diverse components together, and then there was some kind of pun-warhammering going on, pitting the Pluarality of opera (which means, plurally, works) and dispersion of Form in a playful skirmish with the Unity of the development environment and the idea of Totality and coherence. So, there's also, on yet another scale, the attempt at Unionization in the plot, but also the scabby dog and Koch Games who want to prevent the union.

As an example of this process in action - a murky image of global warming, and the industry of its denial, inspires much of the game's dread. To "write" with this concept or mood, I select potent signs… e.g. GLOBALLY: the Earth, the biosphere, glowing coltan ore, the Epic scale, the north pole, travel, airplane, shipping container; WARMLY: the image of Heat, leads idea of Energy (en-ergos, means In Work), leads to the words of Wind turbines and oil pumpjacks.

With all of these keywords, I search the asset store and find these, and buy them. Thus, an image becomes a word becomes a commodity. And now in Unity, for example, with the wind turbine, which was first just a word, I attach the speed of its rotor to the mouse input scrubber, and it becomes a cyborg creature with the player, who assumes the allegorical role of Wind. And player, being Wind, e.g. Atmospheric- is thus considered the air which the dog breathes.

The internal mythology of the game expands in this way, constructing itself out of words, assets, mechanics, all treated 'flatly' as one substance. In general, the potency of imagery was something I was always keen to follow formally-intuitively, the chains of associations give rise to the 'shaggy dog tale' style.

I like to think of the game as a kind of instrument or animal, and the player is its external world, and the inputs are its various peripheral nerves or sense organs. The outputs are its voice and visible body, the song it sings and movement it dances as it experiences the world of the player's "breath", while the inner game topology is a kind of mentality or central nervous system holding the animal's experience all together.

The game is a kind of bildungsroman about the life of this imaginary "animal", which is actually a piece of material software or musical instrument.

Mu Cartographer & Everything are both enchanting. Excited to dig into Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor & Quadrilateral Cowboy. Inside was really lovely and expensive!

Money of course! In Oiκοςpiel, Book I, everyone is aching to unionize except the loyal dogs. Really, though, I wonder - would indie devs ever collectively band together in a kind of Union-like? Obviously, classical unions are not designed for the kind of precarious freelance / boom / bust economy most indies are caught in, where people are constantly being employed by and employing each other, with ambiguous hierarchies, and no clear "boss"-- but some kind of imitation of the idea might work. Just as a little daydream… from the game, the GPU : General Precariat Union.. just for fun-.

Imagine, each member - and it's all types of devs, programmers, designers, artists, musicians, producers--pays some percentage of their annual earnings as union dues. It could be a flat rate or progressive, ultimately voted on by all members. Let's say 5%. It's an added expense, sure, but I'd guess possible to budget into expenses as a given. Compared to steam's 30% cut of sales (and for many devs, I imagine a large percentage of income is thru steam), it's not a whole lot.

And the idea of sharing money is not new in indie games - itch.io allows the developers to choose their percentage of a game's cut; humble bundles collectivize profits amongst a select group; recent game sales with 100% of profits going to ACLU and other organizations showcase the flexibility of game pricing and profit sharing. Game developers could be more nearly poised to try on some collectivism like this than other culture industries, which I think are not as familiar with the idea of a variable, the means by which collective sharing can be formalized and automated.

So, now, imagine, the GPU has come together, and everyone is potting 5% of their earnings into a collective bin. What next? How would the "union" money be spent? This should be voted on. And for instance, it could be split like this:

50 percent - Internal welfare 25 percent - External action 25 percent - Administration

I've put 50 percent towards that first category, because I imagine that a crucial purpose of the union would be as a mechanism of internal redistribution - that this might end up being the primary function, just like collective bargaining is for the classical union. The history of computer games has coincided with the history of neo-liberal economics - thus, the lack of a safety net has been perceived by many as a state of nature, as opposed to what it is - an explicit set of policy decisions functioning as instruments of ambient violence directed against the poor in order to help the rich grow richer.

Our current US government is not about to better things in this regard - so it's an even greater reminder that it's time to step in at as big a scale as possible. Right now, some people are beautifully supportive about helping each other with Patreons, game-tippings, donations, kickstarters, etc. But these systems of aid are still hyper-individualized - person-to-person - and not adequate. Something more ambient is needed.

The Union could step in, and walk the walk with all this "We love indie games!" patriotism, which doesn't recognize the dark underbelly of this love, which is so much love giving rise to so much concentrated wealth, on the one hand, and so much precarity, mental and physical illness, etc, on the other. It would step in, and play the part of the proto-nanny nurse state for the indie games world. Welfare would most likely take the form of basic cash assistance, although it would be great to help with health care and other such costs if that were practical. The 50% (or whatever) of union income could be netted out equally to all members, a la Universal Basic Income, or it could be inversely redistributed to members based on need.

I would favor strong redistributive measures as an attempt at creating a safety net which ideally would allow game developers the freedom to practice their craft without its being always put to the service of pleasing the marketplace's whims. Thus, richer members would join the union at a loss of profit, but a gain of creative biodiversity (and yes, the top dogs benefit very much from this too-- it's more energy), while poorer members would hopefully join at a profit. The profit would be small, but perhaps an ambience of inter-class solidarity would be formalized to good effect? I believe many of those more well off who pay their dues into the union's pool would do so gladly, and understand this giving as a way to share gratitude for the kind of value indies are making off of the commons community effort.

There is so much unpaid and underpaid labor which makes the game community the vital space that it is. Might even some scoundrels like Notch join in? He was a big supporter of Proteus early on, which I'm grateful for, even while his politics since becoming a tycoon have disappointed me very much. Although, did he support Bernie before he supported Trump, and he's not the only one - once ran into a man in a hot tub who did the same thing - he loves indie games -. Notch, would you join an indie game union that might help the form flourish?

There is so much unpaid labor happening, because people love the work, and paying into a pool would be one way to express gratitude for that, and also a means of joining a community committed to rising up together. Also it would be a small measure of protection against future busts into precarity for even the more well off (who are always afraid of sliding back down).

Aside from the internal welfare, there would obviously be administrative costs. At a bare minimum, a regular voting period would need to be administered at regular intervals, which would probably be a fairly involved systems procedure. This would require a dynamic voting website (though maybe could be as easy as Google form?) and backend needing to be managed. There should be a forum for union members, where ideas for union action are proposed and discussed. I would encourage quarterly voting, as it could stimulate more regular interest amongst members in shaping union policy, and create an ambience of micro-political efficacy which wouldn't be lost in its ripple-out effects. Admin jobs would need to paid, as a matter of principle, as well as to get them done well. The union should be an attractive offer, and its forum a lively place to hang out.

The budget for "external action" would be determined by vote. This could be anything whatsoever. Events at GDC and other conferences, emergency/strike funds, "salt" training, protest sign-making, attorney hiring, even a stash of investments to grow union capital? Party? I imagine this forum of coming up with proposals would be quite a fun project. Again, it would be a little microcosm of the larger political theater, and a kind of training in a way, at least tuning in to a system which allows smaller voices to be heard.

Anyway, that's all just some dreaming, a bit of a D&D campaign of the imagination, but I would love to join something like this (hungry to be organized!), even if it ended up being a chapter of the UAW or something…

I do think material basic needs and free time and their shared symbolic medium MONEY are very clearly the biggest hurdles facing indie devs, as with people in general. And money is very interesting because it is an Ideal-Real, equal parts fiction and material. Check out this info-graphic.

It's tempting to think something must be either one or the other, fictive or real, but with money, that's not the case. And we live in a world conditioned by what Mark Fisher calls the "business ontology"-- which we could also call the ontology of money, one quirky feature of which is that the Real and the Fictional are intimately entangled.

No wonder people are trying to come to terms with "post-truth", "fake news", etc. The business ontology treats these flatly. In any case, I think one of the sad Real fictions attached to money is that each person is responsible for their own, and earns precisely what their merit deems them worthy of (if merit is defined by the market, this is tautological) -- I think a healthier Real fiction would recognize that money is an atmosphere that we breathe-- a commons constituted from a surplus of value generated by a huge community of devs-- and that it should be formalized and shared accordingly.

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years ago

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A McDonald’s breakfast buffet. An all-you-can-eat Taco Bell. This isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but a real yet short-lived phenomenon. When we think of buffets, we tend to think of their 1980s and early ’90s heyday, when commercial jingles for Sizzler might have been confused with our national anthem. We think of Homer Simpson getting dragged out of the Frying Dutchman, “a beast more stomach than man.” I think of my parents going on buffet benders resembling something out of Hunter S. Thompson’s life, determined to get their money’s worth with two picky kids. What we don’t typically think about, however, is the fast-food buffet, a blip so small on America’s food radar that it’s hard to prove it even existed. But it did. People swear that all-you-can-eat buffets could be found at Taco Bell, KFC, and even under the golden arches of McDonald’s. That it could have existed isn’t surprising. The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake. It was the physical manifestation of the American id: endless biscuits, popcorn chicken, vats of nacho cheese and sketchy pudding — so much sketchy pudding. Why, then, have so many of us failed to remember it? How did it become a footnote, relegated to the backwoods of myths and legends? There are whispers of McDonald’s locations that have breakfast buffets. Was there, in fact, a Taco Bell buffet, or is it a figment of our collective imaginations? Yes, someone tells me — an all-you-can-eat Taco Bell existed in her dorm cafeteria. Another person suggests maybe we were just remembering the nachos section of the Wendy’s Superbar. The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake. The fast-food buffet lives in a strange sort of ether. You can’t get to it through the traditional path of remembering. Was there actually a Pizza Hut buffet in your hometown? Search your subconscious, sifting past the red cups that make the soda taste better, past the spiffy new CD jukebox, which has Garth Brooks’s Ropin’ the Wind and Paul McCartney’s All the Best under the neon lamps. Search deeper, and you might find your father going up for a third plate and something remaining of the “dessert pizzas” lodged in your subconscious. This is where the fast-food buffet exists. The history of the buffet in America is a story of ingenuity and evolution. Sure, it originated in Europe, where it was a classy affair with artfully arranged salted fish, eggs, breads, and butter. The Swedish dazzled us with their smorgasbords at the 1939 World Fair. We can then trace the evolution of the buffet through Las Vegas, where the one-dollar Buckaroo Buffet kept gamblers in the casino. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese immigrant families found loopholes in racist immigration laws by establishing restaurants. They brought Chinese cooking catered to American tastes in endless plates of beef chow fun and egg rolls. By the 1980s, buffets ruled the landscape like family dynasties, with sister chains the Ponderosa and the Bonanza spreading the gospel of sneeze guards and steaks, sundae stations and salad bars along the interstates. From Shoney’s to Sizzler, from sea to shining sea, the buffet was a feast fit for kings, or a family of four. And of course, fast-food restaurants wanted in on the action. As fast-food historian and author of Drive-Thru Dreams Adam Chandler put it, “every fast food place flirted with buffets at some point or another. McDonald’s absolutely did, as did most of the pizza chains with dine-in service. KFC still has a few stray buffets, as well as an illicit one called Claudia Sanders Dinner House, which was opened by Colonel Sanders’ wife after he was forbidden from opening a competing fried chicken business after selling the company. Wendy’s Super Bar was short-lived, but the salad bar lived on for decades.” How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce. In a 1988 commercial for the Superbar, Dave Thomas says, “I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like it when families eat together.” A Wendy’s executive described the new business model as “taking us out of the fast-food business.” Everyone agrees the Wendy’s Supernar was glorious. And gross, everyone also agrees. How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce. “I kind of want to live in a ’90s Wendy’s,” Amy Barnes, a Tennessee-based writer, tells me in between preparing for virtual learning with her teenagers. The Superbar sat in the lobby, with stations lined up like train carts. First, there was the Garden Spot, which “no one cared about,” a traditional salad bar with a tub of chocolate pudding at its helm, “which always had streams of salad dressing and shredded cheese floating on top.” Next up was the Pasta Pasta section, with “noodles, alfredo and tomato sauce…[as well as] garlic bread made from the repurposed hamburger buns with butter and garlic smeared on them.” Obviously, the crown jewel of the Superbar was the Mexican Fiesta, with its “vats of ground beef, nacho cheese, sour cream.” The Fiesta shared custody of additional toppings with the salad bar. It was $2.99 for the dining experience. Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet. The marriage of Wendy’s and the Superbar lasted about a decade before it was phased out in all locations by 1998. Like a jilted ex-lover, the official Wendy’s Story on the website makes zero mention of Superbar, despite the countless blogs, YouTube videos, and podcasts devoted to remembering it. At least they kept the salad bar together until the mid-2000s for the sake of the children. Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet. Googling the existence of such a thing only returns results of people questioning the existence of this McMuffin Mecca on subforums and Reddit. Somebody knows somebody who passed one once on the highway. A stray Yelp review of the Kiss My Grits food truck in Seattle offers a lead: “I have to say, I recall the first time I ever saw grits, they were at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet in Alexandria, Virginia, and they looked as unappetizing as could be.” However, the lead is dead on arrival. Further googling of the McDonald’s buffet with terrible grits in Alexandria turns up nothing. I ask friends on Facebook. I ask Twitter. I get a lone response. Eden Robins messages me “It was in Decatur, IL,” as though she’s describing the site where aliens abducted her. “I’m a little relieved that I didn’t imagine the breakfast buffet since no one ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about when I bring it up.” “We had traveled down there for a high school drama competition,” she goes on to say. “And one morning before the competition, we ate at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet. I had never seen anything like it before or since.” I ask what was in the buffet, although I know the details alone will not sustain me. I want video to pore over so I can pause at specific frames, like a fast-food version of the Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot footage. Robins says they served “scrambled eggs and pancakes and those hash brown tiles. I was a vegetarian at the time so no sausage or bacon, but those were there, too.” McDonald’s isn’t the only chain with a buffet whose existence is hazy. Yum Brands, the overlord of fast-food holy trinity Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, is said to have had buffets at all three restaurants. I confirm nothing, however, when I reach out to the corporate authorities. On the KFC side, a spokesperson offers to look into “some historical information,” but doesn’t get back to me. My contact at Taco Bell tells me, “I’ll look into it. Certainly, nothing in existence today. I’ve never heard of it. Looks like there are a couple threads on Reddit.” Reddit, of course, speculates a possible Mandela Effect — the phenomenon of a group of unrelated people remembering a different event than what actually occurred — in the existence of Taco Bell buffets. But I have a firmer lead in Payel Patel, a doctor who studied at Johns Hopkins, who tells me there was a Taco Bell Express in her dorm that was included in an all-you-can-eat meal plan option, though it only lasted one fleeting year. “You could order anything, like 15 nachos and 11 bean burritos,” she says, “and they would make it and give it to you, and you walked off without paying a cent.” A Johns Hopkins student newsletter published in 2001 corroborates the existence of the utopian all-you-can-eat Taco Bell, saying, “you can also gorge yourself on some good old Taco Bell tacos and burritos. Don’t forget, it’s all-you-can-eat. Just don’t eat too much; you don’t want to overload the John.” There are some concrete examples of fast-food buffets that still exist today. When a Krystal Buffet opened in Alabama in 2019, it was met with “excitement and disbelief,” according to the press release. Former New Orleans resident Wilson Koewing told me of a Popeye’s buffet that locals “speak of as if it is a myth.” When I dig deeper, I come across a local paper, NOLA Weekend, which covers “New Orleans Food, things to do, culture, and lifestyle.” It touts the Popeye’s buffet like a carnival barker, as though it is simply too incredible to believe: “The Only Popeye’s Buffet in the World! It’s right next door in Lafayette! Yes, that’s right: a Popeyes buffet. HERE.” Somehow, the KFC buffet is the most enduring of the fast-food buffets still in existence. And yet everyone I speak with feels compelled to walk me through the paths and roads leading to such an oasis, as if, again, it were the stuff of legends. There are landmarks and there are mirages, and the mirages need maps most of all. To get to the KFC buffet in Key Largo, Tiffany Aleman must first take us through “a small island town with one traffic light and one major highway that runs through it. There are the seafood buffets and bait shops, which give way to newfangled Starbucks.” The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die. New Jerseyan D.F. Jester leads us past the local seafood place “that looks like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship has been transported 50 miles inland and plunked inside the dining area of a 1980s Ramada outside of Newark.” Descriptions of the food are about what I would expect of a KFC buffet. Laura Camerer remembers the food in her college town in Morehead, Kentucky, as “all fried solid as rocks sitting under heat lamps, kind of gray and gristly.” Jester adds, “for all intents and purposes, this is a KFC. It looks like one, but sadder, more clinical. The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.” Then Jessie Lovett Allen messages me. “There is [a] KFC in my hometown, and it is magical without a hint of sketch.” I must know more. First, she takes me down the winding path: “the closest larger city is Kearney, which is 100 miles away and only has 35K people, and Kearney is where you’ll find the closest Target, Panera, or Taco Bell. But to the North, South, or West, you have to drive hundreds of miles before you find a larger city. I tell you all of this because the extreme isolation is what gives our restaurants, even fast-food ones, an outsized psychological importance to daily life.” The KFC Jessie mentions is in North Platte, Nebraska, and has nearly five stars on Yelp, an accomplishment worthy of a monument for any fast-food restaurant. On the non-corporate Facebook page for KFC North Platte, one of the hundreds of followers of the page comments, “BEST KFC IN THE COUNTRY.” Allen describes the place as though she is recounting a corner of heaven. “They have fried apple pies that seem to come through a wormhole from a 1987 McDonalds. Pudding: Hot. Good. Layered cold pudding desserts. This one rotates. It might be chocolate, banana, cookies and cream. It has a graham cracker base, pudding, and whipped topping. Standard Cold Salad bar: Lettuce, salad veggies, macaroni salads, JELL-O salads. Other meats: chicken fried steak patties. Fried chicken gizzards. White Gravy, Chicken Noodle Casserole, Green Bean Casserole, Cornbread, Corn on the Cob, Chicken Pot Pie Casserole. AND most all the standard stuff on the normal KFC menu, which is nice because you can pick out a variety of chicken types or just have a few tablespoons of a side dish.” In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed. Then she adds that the buffet “is also available TO GO, but there are rules. You get a large Styrofoam clamshell, a small Styrofoam clamshell, and a cup. You have to be able to close the Styrofoam. You are instructed that only beverages can go in cups, and when I asked about this, an employee tells me that customers have tried to shove chicken into the drink cups in the past.” In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed. The chains folded. The senior citizens keeping Ponderosa in business have died. My own parents reversed course after their buffet bender, trading in sundae stations for cans of SlimFast. Fast-food buffets retreated into an ethereal space. McDonald’s grew up with adult sandwiches like the Arch Deluxe. Wendy’s went on a wild rebound with the Baconator. Pizza Hut ripped out its jukeboxes, changed its logo, went off to the fast-food wars, and ain’t been the same since. Taco Bell is undergoing some kind of midlife crisis, hemorrhaging its entire menu of potatoes, among other beloved items. At least the KFC in North Platte has done good, though the novel coronavirus could change things. In the age of COVID-19, the fast-food buffet feels like more of a dream than ever. How positively whimsical it would be to stand shoulder to shoulder, hovering over sneeze guards, sharing soup ladles to scoop an odd assortment of pudding, three grapes, a heap of rotini pasta, and a drumstick onto a plate. Maybe we can reach this place again. But to find it, we must follow the landmarks, searching our memory as the map. MM Carrigan is a Baltimore-area writer and weirdo who enjoys staring directly into the sun. Their work has appeared in Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and PopMatters. They are the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly. Tweets @thesurfingpizza. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/33e4Z8k

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/09/fast-food-buffets-are-thing-of-past.html

#EasyFoodNetwork #ComfortFoodRecipes #EasyRecipes #GoodFood #BestComfortFoodRecipes #TastyFoodv

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symbianosgames · 8 years ago

Link

This interview is part of our Road to the IGF series. You can find the rest by clicking here.

Unity, the "Oik OS" tools, coded by Fernando Ramallo, Ableton, Money.

A little over two years.

The game is a kind of bildungsroman about the life of this imaginary "animal", which is actually a piece of material software or musical instrument.

Mu Cartographer & Everything are both enchanting. Excited to dig into Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor & Quadrilateral Cowboy. Inside was really lovely and expensive!

50 percent - Internal welfare 25 percent - External action 25 percent - Administration

#IFTTT #Blogger

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