for those following along at home I went back with my parents and tried a sample of the honey mustard. it was nothing like I expected at all and also actually pretty decent but I'd probably never want to eat anything like that ever again because i am scared of that which I don't understand (dipping sauce flavored cucumbers)

Today's post is sponsored by @eclecticboogalooo! We've got the Hobbs Pickles Spicy Dill straight from my tourist adventures!!!

Flavor: This pickle has a phenomenal flavor. It's clearly a dill blend with a hint of spice without being overwhelming. The garlic is also quite present. This is a clearly high-end pickle. I also tried a free sample of their horseradish pickle which was also quite good. It's a good flavor but not particular memorable. My friend's review: "yummy." 8/10

Crunch: Admittedly, I may have artificially altered the crunch quality here because we walked a lot with the pickles and then put them in the fridge but not for that long. I may have said my free sample pickle had good crunch (this is debatable. Memory is fickle). The crunch was good but not great. These were... large baby pickles so I would have preferred a bit more of it, but there's not much to complain about. 7/10

Brine: Did not drink this brine as these are not my pickles and I am a polite houseguest. N/A

Cost: Once again, thank you to my patron. Pricy but quality. 6.5/10

Overall Score: 7/10

I definitely recommend this pickle if you ever get the chance. I also highly recommend trying other free samples from Hobbs Pickles - we were intrigued by the Honey Mustard but didn't get a taste! Pickle Nation Forever!!!!!

clark kent is lois lanes husband and everyones known that for ages. Superman saves the day post identity reveal? The only headline I want to see is "Husband of Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Lois Lane, involved in stopping potential doomsday"

girls with no car on grocery day

“I’ve been a massage therapist for many years, now. I know what people look like. People have been undressing for me for a long time. I know what you look like: a glance at you, and I can picture pretty well what you’d look like on my table. Let’s start here with what nobody looks like: nobody looks like the people in magazines or movies. Not even models. Nobody. Lean people have a kind of rawboned, unfinished look about them that is very appealing. But they don’t have plump round breasts and plump round asses. You have plump round breasts and a plump round ass, you have a plump round belly and plump round thighs as well. That’s how it works. And that’s very appealing too. Woman have cellulite. All of them. It’s dimply and cute. It’s not a defect. It’s not a health problem. It’s the natural consequence of not consisting of photoshopped pixels, and not having emerged from an airbrush. Men have silly buttocks. Well, if most of your clients are women, anyway. You come to male buttocks and you say – what, this is it? They’re kind of scrawny and the tissue is jumpy because it’s unpadded; you have to dial back the pressure, or they’ll yelp. Adults sag. It doesn’t matter how fit they are. Every decade, an adult sags a little more. All of the tissue hangs a little looser. They wrinkle, too. I don’t know who put about the rumor that just old people wrinkle. You start wrinkling when you start sagging, as soon as you’re all grown up, and the process goes its merry way as long as you live. Which is hopefully a long, long time, right? Everybody on a massage table is beautiful. There are really no exceptions to this rule. At that first long sigh, at that first thought that “I can stop hanging on now, I’m safe” – a luminosity, a glow, begins. Within a few minutes the whole body is radiant with it. It suffuses the room: it suffuses the massage therapist too. People talk about massage therapists being caretakers, and I suppose we are: we like to look after people, and we’re easily moved to tenderness. But to let you in on a secret: I’m in it for the glow. I’ll tell you what people look like, really: they look like flames. Or like the stars, on a clear night in the wilderness.”

— What People Really Look Like

all around the world there are cats sleeping so happily with their owners

I LOVE ROCK N ROLL! SO PUT ANOTHER DIME IN THEJUKEBOX BABY

for a while i lived in an old house; the kind u.s americans don't often get to live in - living in a really old house here is super expensive. i found out right before i moved out that the house was actually so old that it features in a poem by emily dickinson.

i liked that there were footprints in front of the sink, worn into the hardwood. there were handprints on some of the handrails. we'd find secret marks from other tenants, little hints someone else had lived and died there. and yeah, there was a lot wrong with the house. there are a lot of DIY skills you learn when you are a grad student that cannot afford to pay someone else to do-it-for-ya. i shared the house with 8 others. the house always had this noise to it. sometimes that noise was really fucking awful.

in the mornings though, the sun would slant in thick amber skiens through the windows, and i'd be the first one up. i'd shuffle around, get showered in this tub that was trying to exit through the floor, get my clothes on. i would usually creep around in the kitchen until it was time to start waking everyone else up - some of them required multiple rounds of polite hey man we gotta go knocks. and it felt... outside of time. a loud kind of quiet.

the ghosts of the house always felt like they were humming in a melody just out of reach. i know people say that the witching hour happens in the dark, but i always felt like it occurred somewhere around 6:45 in the morning. like - for literal centuries, somebody stood here and did the dishes. for literal centuries, somebody else has been looking out the window to this tree in our garden. for literal centuries, people have been stubbing their toes and cracking their backs and complaining about the weather. something about that was so... strangely lovely.

i have to be honest. i'm not a history aficionado. i know, i know; it's tragic of me. i usually respond to "this thing is super old" by being like, wow! cool! and moving on. but this house was the first time i felt like the past was standing there. like it was breathing. like someone else was drying their hands with me. playing chess on the sofa. adding honey to their tea.

i grew up in an old town. like, literally, a few miles off of walden pond (as in of the walden). (also, relatedly, don't swim in walden, it's so unbelievably dirty). but my family didn't have "old house" kind of money. we had a barely-standing house from the 70's. history existed kind of... parallel to me. you had to go somewhere to be in history. your school would pack you up on a bus and take you to some "ye olden times" place and you'd see how they used to make glass or whatever, and then you'd go home to your LEDs. most museums were small and closed before 5. you knew history was, like, somewhere, but the only thing that was open was the mcdonalds and the mall.

i remember one of my seventh grade history teachers telling us - some day you'll see how long we've been human for and that thing has been puzzling me. i know the scientific number, technically.

the house had these little scars of use. my floors didn't actually touch the walls; i had to fill them with a stopgap to stop the wind. other people had shoved rags and pieces of newspaper. i know i've lost rings and earring backs down some of the floorboards. i think the raccoons that lived in our basement probably have collected a small fortune over the years. i complain out loud to myself about how awful the stairs are (uneven, steep, evil, turning, hard to get down while holding anything) and know - someone else has said this exact same thing.

when i was packing up to leave and doing a final deep cleaning, i found a note carved in the furthest corner in the narrow cave of my closet. a child's scrawled name, a faded paint handprint, the scrangly numbers: 1857.

we've been human for a long time. way back before we can remember.

when florence and the machine said "I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject" and when romeo x juliet said "a simple life with you would be paradise" and johnathan coulton said "it's okay, I like you in glasses" and everything everywhere all at once said "in another life I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you"

ISHIKAWA Toraji Ten types of female nudes (Rajo Jusshu 裸女十種) series (1934) colour woodblock National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Blue parrot Morning Youth Resting In the bathroom Reading Black cat Sound of the bell Leisure time Dance

I unironically love when games have a fishing mechanic in them if there's water, I wanna fish. like Stardew valley, animal crossing, duh. breath of the wild or Skyrim, where fish you catch and cook count as a healing item because they're food? makes sense. but like, Hades? having fishing? just to flesh out the world and add a silly side quest and make collectible items feel like more than something you have to go into every room in the game for? incredible.

there needs to be more content specifically aimed at people who grew up in the middle of rural bumfuck nowhere who love the shitty worn down rusty pickup truck unclean gas station bigfoot sighting 200 degree weather dirt-eating redneck vibe of it all without the whole homophobic white christianity thing

i was ranting abt this w my wife last nite like. i think people have forgotten the whole “dont assume stuff about people based on their appearence” thing and that it also applies to people who are “straight-looking” “cis-looking” “normal-looking” etc. ultimately you dont know anything about how someone identifies or what their life is like unless they tell you, especially not at a glance. dont project your ideas onto strangers, its weird.

the opposite but also the exact same feeling is me playing my "cursed covers" playlist and then cringing every time I get to the point I know what it's a cover of

love the euphoric moment of realizing the next song on an album of all songs you love is a song you love even though youve listened to the album enough times you know the transitions between the songs better than the actual distinct songs