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drpeppertummy · 10 months

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[stuffing, mild burps]

"Sunny, I think you might be the dumbest guy I've ever met," said Laurie, sipping her Coke. The two sat alone in her ancient minivan in the McDonald's parking lot.

"Even dumber than that guy you were seeing a couple months ago?"

"Yeah, you just might be."

"I can't believe you would say that!" Sunny looked up at her with exaggerated woundedness. "I never stole your hubcaps and tried to give them back to you as a present."

"Maybe not, but he never tried to eat ten filet o fishes just to prove a point," said Laurie.

"You're the one who made a bet out of it," Sunny said defensively. Laurie shrugged and ate a fry.

"It just seemed like an easy victory," she said.

"Yeah, for me," said Sunny.

"Yeah, right! You're gonna owe me, Sunshine!" Sunny stuck his tongue out at her and shoved the first sandwich in his mouth. Filet o fishes were his not-so-guilty pleasure, and the last time they'd been to McDonald's, the conversation had shifted into a grand debate about how many of them Sunny could hypothetically eat. The debate had ended in a bet: if he could eat ten of them in one sitting, plus a large soda and an order of fries, he got to pick the music in the car for a month. If he couldn't, he had to pretend to be Laurie's date when her grandparents came to visit next week. Truthfully, losing didn't sound awful to either of them; Laurie liked Sunny's music taste, and Sunny liked the promise of Laurie's grandmother cooing over him. That didn't matter, though. The real prize was victory itself.

Sunny had been thoroughly confident in his ability to put away all those filet o fishes, and that confidence held up until the third one. The first two went down easy, but as he worked on his third, the feeling of fullness began to creep up on him, and it began to creep fast. By the fourth, he was slowing down enough for Laurie to notice.

"Getting full?" she asked, smiling sweetly at him. He looked away, furrowing his brow.

"No."

"Slowing down a little."

"I'm pacing myself," he said.

"Sure you are," chuckled Laurie, returning to her fries. She'd finished her burger already and was now happily watching Sunny struggle through his task. The four sandwiches crammed into his small stomach had long since begun to show, and his tummy bulged uncomfortably out over the tight waist of his jeans. He swallowed the last bite of number four and opened up number five. He paused for a moment to take a breath, resting his free hand on his stomach, then grabbed his belt and tried to inch it lower. It didn't help much. Sighing, he started on the fifth sandwich.

"You can quit whenever you feel like it," said Laurie.

"I'm not quittin'," he said with his mouth full. He'd been eating his fries alongside the filet o fishes and was making good headway on them, but he was trying not to think about the soda. He knew it would fill him up too much to get through the sandwiches, so he was saving it for last in the hopes that he could chug the whole cup at once. This wasn't a particularly sensible plan, but sensible wasn't the first word anybody would've used to describe Sunny. He finished number five with a strained gulp and moved on to number six.

Laurie stared down at Sunny's bloated belly with fascination. For as small and slim as he was, he could certainly put away a lot of food, although he didn't exactly look comfortable doing it. When they'd first made the bet, she'd been almost positive he wouldn't be able to do it, but now she wasn't so sure. She hadn't expected him to get this far. Looking at his belly, though, she also wasn't sure he'd get much further.

Sunny finished the last of the sixth sandwich, shoved the box into the bag, and let his head fall back against the headrest. With a heavy sigh, he held both hands against his distended belly. He looked down. His stomach was straining the buttons of his shirt, and a tiny sliver of hairy skin was becoming visible just above his belly button.

"So, what're you gonna wear when my grandparents come down?"

"I ain't goin' to see your grandparents."

"Come on, you can't seriously still be doing this!"

"You better believe it, baby." Sunny unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants, letting out a sigh of relief as he did so. "Four to go, and I'm gonna do it."

"Four and a soda," she reminded him, tapping the lid of the large Dr. Pepper sitting in the cup holder. He waved his hand dismissively.

"That's nothin'," he said, pulling the seventh filet o fish out of the bag. Reinvigorated by the closeness of his victory, and by the little bit of space he'd freed up by adjusting his wardrobe, Sunny quickly wolfed down number seven and started on number eight. He'd managed to slowly eliminate the fries, and now only three sandwiches and a soda stood between him and victory. Eight went down a lot more slowly than seven, but down it went, and he opened up number nine. While he'd freed up a little space, there was no denying the fact that his stomach was unbelievably, immensely, unbearably stuffed. Still, victory was close. He forced up a burp, punctuated by a soft groan of pain and relief, and finished number nine.

He paused again, resting his hands on his belly. It was so tight and solid that for a moment his brain didn't even register it as part of his body. Not to his hands, at least. As for his belly itself, his brain was very aware of its status. He pulled the tenth filet o fish out of the bag, but didn't open it yet. He sat it down on top of his stomach and closed his eyes. Rubbing his belly, he forced out another burp. A soft moan escaped him as he did. He couldn't recall ever having been so full in his life. Listlessly, he opened up the final sandwich and stuffed the box back into the bag. Laurie watched, astonished, as somehow, by some miracle, he ate the whole thing.

"Jesus Christ," she said, looking both horrified and impressed.

"You ready to lose?" He'd intended to sound cocky, but his voice came out more exhausted than anything.

"Shit, Sunny, I'll let you have it without the soda!"

"I don't need your pity win," he said, picking up the Dr. Pepper. "I'm winning this thing fair and square." He took the lid off the cup and tossed it into the bag with the rest of the garbage. He looked at the cup for a moment, took a deep breath, and started drinking as fast as he could. Laurie would've sworn she could see his stomach swelling as he demolished the soda. His gulping grew louder and more frantic as the cup emptied, and finally, in a dramatic climax, one of his shirt buttons popped open just as he finished. He tossed the cup aside and an enormous belch erupted from his mouth.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Laurie exclaimed. Sunny laid his head back against the headrest, panting and clutching his stomach.

"I told you so," he said, sighing heavily.

"Was that really worth it just to pick the music for a month?"

"Put in Tina," he said, disregarding the question.

"Shit, Sunny, after all that, you can have it for two months!"

"Really?"

"No."

"You suck." Laurie laughed.

"Let's get out of here," she said, starting the car. Sunny reclined his seat a little before buckling up. Between the button popping and his pants being wide open, his bloated belly was just about on full display, but he was too full to care. Laurie gave his stomach a reassuring pat and pulled out.

They listened to Sunny's trusty Tina CD as they drove, along with the soft sounds of his stomach gurgling away and the occasional sickly burp. Laurie reached out and rested one hand on his belly, giving it a gentle rub. He looked up at her.

"I could still be your date if you want, y'know," he said. She laughed and glanced down at him, then back at the road.

"What the hell for? You won, didn't you?"

"Well yeah. But like, if you really wanted me to."

"It's fine," she giggled, patting his belly. "I don't need a date." He nodded and gazed out the window, and they listened to the CD for the rest of the ride.

#writing #belly kink #tummy kink #stuffing #stuffed belly #xsunnyx #xlauriex #sorry if this is incoherent i was watching the bl*es br*thers the entire time i was writing it

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rchtzr · 4 years

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hi can u tell me what you think each of the losers fav fast food restaurant is? :’) ❤️

I am embarrassed that I have thought about this before. thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about this.

Eddie: McDonalds. He has a distrust for most fast food places but McDonalds seems like a safe bet. His go-to order is a cheeseburger (he gives his pickles to Richie 💕), small fry, a root beer, and a hot fudge sundae.

Richie: Taco Bell. I may be projecting my comfort food onto my favorite comfort character but Richie just fits the Taco Bell ~vibe~. The crunchwrap came out in 2005 so I’m just gonna say that 00’s Richie’s go to is a crunchwrap supreme, Baja Blast, crunchy taco and a chicken soft taco and mild sauce.

Bill: McDonalds. It’s a classic, in fact Eddie probably only every tried it because he was with Bill’s family and they got it. His go to order is either a double quarter pounder with cheese, large fry and a Coke, or a filet-o-fish.

Stan: Wendy’s. He gets a classic chicken sandwich, fries, a water, and a Frosty (sometimes chocolate, sometimes vanilla, just depends on his mood). He dips his fries in the frosty.

Ben: Subway. He gets a 6 inch spicy italian, provolone cheese, all the veggies, with the vinaigrette. For chips he gets nacho cheese Doritos and for a drink he gets a Sprite.

Mike: Dairy Queen for the chocolate dipped cones, Burger King for the food. His go to order is a Whopper, fries and a Dr. Pepper.

Bev: also Taco Bell. Her go to was Mexican Pizza and she is not okay with them taking it off the menu. She’s not handling it well. She also likes the chicken quesadillas, nacho chips and cheese, and the raspberry Brisk iced tea.

#ty ally <3333 #eddie has a vendetta against taco bell but he does like the cinnamon twists #the losers club #it headcanons #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #bill denbrough #mike hanlon #ben hanscom #beverly marsh #stan uris #also iirc in the book stan’s family isn’t strict in their beliefs so i just went with that #ba da ba ba ba I’m loving IT

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aswithasunbeam · 5 years

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Of Camp Fires and Bear Attacks

[Read on AO3]

Rated: G

Summary: Summer 1801. While the Grange is being built, the Hamilton’s take a camping trip to oversee the construction and enjoy the riverside air. There's fishing, stories around the camp fire, and, of course, the odd bear or two. __ Just some fun, sweet Hamilton family fluff

Summer 1801

Eliza leaned back on her hands to watch the bright blue sky turn to a hazy purple. The breeze kept the worst of the summer heat bearable, rustling the light cotton of her dress and the blanket she spread out over the sand. Alexander’s arms wound around her torso from behind, squeezing her tight. She smiled, turning her head to the side as his lips found her neck.

“Papa! Papa, watch!” William shouted. “Watch me!”

Alexander made a contented sound deep in his throat and nuzzled her.

“Papa!” William insisted.

“Are these all right, Papa?” Johnny asked from the other direction, struggling with a bundle of sticks. “Jamie’s bringing more.”

“Put them over here, away from the water,” Alexander said, releasing her from the embrace to gesture towards the pit he’d constructed for their fire.

“Papa!”

“I’m watching, Billy,” he called.

William attempted a somersault on the soft sand near the water, but ended up in the river when he turned sideways. He stood up and held his arms overhead triumphantly, as thought he’d intended to soak himself all along. She heard Alexander squelch a laugh.

“Very good, son.”

Eliza noticed Johnny fumbling with the tinderbox. “Johnny,” she said, rocking forward to stand.

“I’ve got it,” Alexander said, already on his feet and moving to assist with the fire building. He’d been on top of everything all day, she considered, as he rushed over to their ten year old. He seemed to be delighting in the simple joys of parenting.

“Tent’s up,” Pip reported, skidding down the hill behind them with Alex and Angelica in tow.

Camping had been Alexander’s idea. The Grange, though beautiful on paper, was little more than a wooden frame, and the farmhouse nearby was cramped and stuffy. So, to enjoy the land and oversee the construction, he’d suggested pitching a tent for a week. They’d all been thrilled at the notion, the older children included, right up until Alexander had set them to work assembling the tent.

“Took you long enough,” Alexander teased. “At your age, I could get a tent up all on my own in ten minutes flat.”

“I think you were a little more in practice, what with the war and all,” Pip replied as he plonked down onto the blanket beside her. “Hi, Mama.”

“Hi, honey,” she said. When he leaned against her, his head resting on her shoulder, she kissed the crown of his head and ran a hand down his back. Her sweet, darling boy.

A spark from the tinderbox caught on the kindling. Alexander nudged Johnny back a little as he fed the fire, keeping the blaze contained and tidy. The smoky smell mingled with the salt air on the breeze. “There now. We’ll be able to start cooking soon.”

“What are we cooking?” Johnny asked.

“Fish, of course. We spent all that time catching them. We wouldn’t want to waste them, now, would we?”

After spending the morning measuring out pathways for their would-be gardens, Alexander had piled the whole family into a fishing boat. She hadn’t been fishing since she was a girl, but he’d patiently refreshed her on the finer points of casting off, Johnny and William listening closely at his knee. She’d picked it up without much difficulty. In fact, she’d ended up catching four fish to his two.

“Good thing we have Mama to provide for us,” he’d joked good naturedly after fumbling a striped bass over the side of the boat back into the water.

“Fish?” William paused from shaking his hair out like a dog to fix his father with a skeptical look. “That’s all?”

“That's all?” Alexander repeated, comically scandalized. “What more could you want?”

“I have some crackers, cheese, and fruit,” she assured the boy, having anticipated some fussiness from the little ones over the menu.

“I bet you were happy to get fish when you were in the army, Papa,” Pip said pointedly, sitting up and sending her a wink. She smiled at how well Pip knew his little brother. William adored Alexander’s war stories, and he’d seize any chance to be like his father.

“Yeah?” William asked, interest piqued.

Alexander grinned at the ploy. “Oh, yes. We’d be ecstatic to have some fresh fish. Much better than army rations. Meat jerky and mealy biscuits can only satisfy you for so long.”

“Mealy biscuits?” Eliza asked with a laugh. Serving under General Washington, he’d just as often enjoyed fine wines and delicacies as army rations. “Did you suffer from the scurvy, too, sailor?”

“Maybe,” he parried, pulling a face at her playfully.

Little Eliza toddled by, clutching something in her tiny fist. Eliza reached out to catch her shirt. “Sweetie, what do you have?”

“No.” Her new favorite word.

Prying the little fist open, she saw three twigs. “Are you helping collect sticks for the fire, honey?”

“No.”

She chuckled and freed her daughter to continue on. “Alexander, incoming.”

He turned and held his arms out, lifting little Eliza high up into the air and producing a delighted squeal. The twigs tumbled back onto the sand, unmissed. The girl settled happily onto Alexander’s hip as he went about preparing supper. He assigned the little ones simple tasks to make them feel useful while he sliced the fish into filets and cooked them in the little traveling pan on the metal rack he’d placed over the fire.

The children did an admirable job on the fish he handed out, more for the novelty than the taste, she suspected. When they’d all finished, they laid back on the sand to watch the stars, the fire crackling merrily nearby. Eliza held their little daughter in her arms, the girl already fast asleep. William snuggled into Alexander’s side, and predictably demanded, “Tell a story, Papa.”

“Hm,” Alexander hummed, pondering over his memories. “How about the time General Washington ordered us across the Delaware?”

“Is that when you blasted off the King’s head with a cannon ball?” Johnny asked eagerly.

“That was just a portrait, Johnny,” he said with a chuckle. “And it was at Princeton, a little bit after Trenton.”

“I want to hear about blasting off the King’s head!” William demanded.

“I’ll get there,” he promised. “Well, it was freezing cold night in December when the order came down that we were to move our artillery down to the gunboats. The river was filled with ice, chunks so thick you could barely row through. We had to move quick and quiet as possible, so as not to warn the enemy of our advance.”

The children all listened with rapt attention as he related stories of marching through snow, surprising Hessians still sleeping off their Christmas cups, and then later, firing artillery into the College of New Jersey, beheading the image of King George in the effort. “And the Demos call me an Anglophile,” he noted wryly. “I’d like to know if Jefferson ever beheaded King George.”

Eliza noticed Jamie give a huge yawn. “I think it’s time for bed,” she said, nudging at Alexander with her foot. “It’s getting late.”

“Bed sounds like a good idea,” he agreed, yawning himself. “Come on, up we get.”

After encouraging all the children to stand, Alexander kicked sand over the dwindling fire and collected the blanket. They herded the sleepy children back up the hill towards the tent. She lit a lantern as they all dressed for bed and fought over space in the mounds of blankets arrayed on the tent floor.

“Uh-uh,” Alexander tutted when William tried to curl up on the stuffed pallet towards the back of the tent. “That’s for me and Mama.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m too old to sleep on the ground. And I like to hug Mama while I sleep.”

William scooted over grudgingly.

“I heard something,” Johnny said, pressing his face against the canvas as though he could see through. “I think something’s outside.”

“Probably a squirrel or a bird,” Alexander dismissed.

“It’s sounds bigger than a squirrel,” Johnny insisted.

Jamie sat up. “Maybe it’s a bear!”

“I want to see the bear,” William said, bouncing up with sudden energy.

“It’s not a bear,” Eliza said, though she shot Alexander a concerned look. The woods were close by. Could there be a bear?

Meeting her eye, he sighed. “I’ll take a look.”

“I’ll come,” Pip offered.

He slipped through the tent folds with Pip close on his heels, and she belatedly wondered what exactly they would do if they did find a bear hunting around their camp site. They both wore only a nightshirt, and they hadn’t brought the hunting rifle or any other kind of weapon for defense. Waiting tensely, she listened right along with the children.

She heard them whispering outside, voices muffled as they moved around the tent.

“What’s that?” she heard Alexander ask in a loud whisper.

Pip let out a shout as something barreled into the back of the tent, swiping at the canvas. Startled, she jumped back, then realized the roar was most definitely coming from her husband. She groaned even as she smiled. He thought he was so funny.

“Bear!” Johnny shouted, all too happy to play along.

Pip yelled from the side of the tent, “I think there’s another one!” He then let out a roar of his own and began swiping and rattling the tent from the side.

William squealed in delight at the game as he raced around, trampling over Jamie and Alex as he went.

Alex gave a great “oomf” as William pressed a knee into his stomach. “Get off.”

“It’s only Papa and Pip,” Angelica said, voice tinged with the disinterest of a teenager, though Eliza could see amusement dancing in her eyes.

Little Eliza had woken at all the noise and commotion, and she watched with one eye open as William barreled into the tent where Pip was playfully swiping, shouting, “Bears!”

Crawling over to where Alexander was roaring, the little girl pushed herself up and took a run at the tent, pushing out with her hands. Eliza heard Alexander stumble backwards a step, laugh, then lower himself to push at the tent closer to little Eliza’s level. In a low, gravelly voice, he proclaimed, “I’m going to get you!”

Little Eliza giggled and looked back at her, grinning. Pointing at the tent, she said, “Papa!”

“Yep, that’s him. Your Papa’s silly, huh?”

She clapped happily and pushed back on the tent again.

At last, Pip and Alexander moved around to the front and stepped back inside.

“That was scary,” Pip said, grinning. “Those were some massive bears. I think we scared them off though, right Papa?”

“I don’t think they’ll come back any time soon,” Alexander agreed.

“You’re not funny,” Eliza scolded, though she couldn’t seem to wipe away the smile on her face. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alexander said.

Little Eliza let out a tiny little roar and charged at him, still playing.

“Oh no, a bear cub!” Alexander cried, kneeling down to play with her. “How did a bear cub get in here?”

Eliza watched fondly as William jumped on his back to wrestle him, the three falling into a jumbled heap on the blankets. She plunged herself willingly into the mass of blankets and wriggling babies, tickling William until they could hardly breathe from laughing. Johnny dove in as well, followed quickly by Pip and Jamie, and finally Alex and Angelica.

Later, as she laid curled beside her husband on the stuffed pallet, she gently pressed her lips to his, heart close to bursting with affection for him. He responded lazily, not quite awake, and gave a sleepy sigh. She whispered softly in his ear, “I adore you.”

#hamilton fanfic #hamliza #alexander hamilton #eliza hamilton #hamilton's children #camping #the grange #family fluff

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jlf23tumble · 6 years

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Lmaooo everyone who dares to be positive has been getting those apocalyptical anons and thats clearly someone who doesnt know how to enjoy anything ever like i said in my first ask!!! (Also i NEVER talk about this but has anyone seem louis with that kid THIS YEAR? No, so people calm down)

It’s honestly the best...for my own personal amusement, I mean, I’m not a monster, I genuinely feel sorry for people who are somehow internalizing a rich, white guy’s turmoil to the point where they’ll go out and attack people who, idk, don’t see it that way? My hunch is that this person is going after anyone who liked/reblogged April’s earlier brilliance and/or isn’t whingeing about Louis’s ~predicament with this fake kid nobody’s seen in forever. My advice is to unclench, but I think we passed that point long ago.

Real talk, I’m sure it sucks sitting that close to Simon, especially when he’s ordering up filet-o-fish sandwiches at Micky D’s (it would suck for *me*, and I have no skin in that game), but meanwhile, the world is falling in love with Louis, he’s wearing kick-ass message shirts, he’s fucking GLORIOUS (I would say flawless, but that pickle thing still irks me...it’s the one flaw), and he’s moving into the next phase. NOBODY knows what the fuck is happening behind the scenes, but I’ll bet my life is marginally happier because I’m not that pressed about it.

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bastardtravel · 6 years

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August 11, 2018. Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In the deepest hidden recesses of the internet, on a vague Wikipedia page about “brewing in New Hampshire“, I learned that there is one beer that stands above all others. It is a Russian imperial stout lovingly handcrafted by an unusually tall hill dwarf, undoubtedly from an ancient recipe that his clan brought from under the mountain untold ages ago.

Wikipedia claims it is “the best beer in America” and also “the most sought-after beer in America”. It’s called Kate the Great, and legend has it that it can only be obtained by locating this master brewer on his home turf, the Portsmouth Brewery, and praying to whatever gods you keep that the stars have aligned and it’s in season.

It was drizzling on Mystery Hill, but it hadn’t quite started to monsoon in Portsmouth yet. Thunderclouds loomed in the sky like hanged men, shrouding the little downtown in portentous darkness. Everyone we encountered hated us. This isn’t altogether foreign to me, I’ve chosen the Bastard moniker for a reason, but the Girl tends toward amicability and we hadn’t done anything yet.

In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, an archaeologist crossing New England in search of genealogical information finds a foggy, derelict port town. He thinks it might be interesting to check out, so he books a room and pokes around. The locals seem to share a common deformity, a scaling skin disease, puffing around the face and eyes, and unusual hydrocephaly. They spurn him outright. We’re talking like, Amish shunning. The inhabitants call him an outsider and refuse to sell him anything. They bar most public places against him, and retreat into their homes if they see him on the street. As the novella goes on, he discovers that the inhabitants of Innsmouth have been interbreeding with a race of cannibal fish-people, the Deep Ones, who conduct grisly rites in worship of a bloodthirsty aquatic god called Dagon.

I thought the parallels were cute at first, but as our time in Portsmouth wore on, they got more distressing. We’d driven across New Hampshire into an HD remaster of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

The Portsmouth Brewery was wall-to-wall with people, easily the most active building in the town. The hostess sneered that the wait for a table would be 20 minutes. The Girl said that would be fine, and asked if we could get a drink while we wait.

“Yeah, I guess.”

We dodged around the teeming masses of people and, for some reason, all their infant children, to get to the bar. When did the bringing babies into bars phenomenon start? And why? Babies don’t go in bars. Babies go in, I don’t know, parks. McDonald’s Playplace.

Eventually, the girl tending came over to us.

“Hey, we’re here treasure hunting,” I said, trying for charming. “Legend has it this is our best shot at getting Kate the Great. Do you have that right now?”

She scoffed. “We’ll never serve THAT beer again.”

I exchanged a glance with the Girl.

“Is this like, a sensitive subject?”

“No,” she said, providing the exposition she really should have led with, “It’s just, the brewer just quit working here, it was this whole big thing, so we don’t have Kate the Great anymore.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“He opened his own brewery, Tributary. It’s in Maine. But here, you can see our draft list.”

This was technically true. It was in Maine, across a bridge, an 8 minute drive from our present location. It was also technically true that we could see the draft list. It consisted entirely of IPAs, which would have been clutch if I’d ever liked one.

“Can we have a minute to think about it?” the Girl asked. The bartender nodded and drifted off. We escaped to the place next door, which had a similar draft list, substituting one of the IPAs with Budweiser which it listed as a “light lager”.

“I can’t Yelp,” the Girl said. “This is impossible. Two for two. You do it. I’m losing hope.”

dolphins have had it good for TOO LONG

A few blocks away was a brewery called Earth Eagle, which specialized in a hopless proto-beer called “gruit”. It’s a Danish word, and should be pronounced “gryoo-IT”, but I pronounce it groot and will continue to do so until dead.

We made our way past the cute little technicolor New England cottages to Earth Eagle. Random assignment from day two of any outdoor music festival would give you the clientele. It was also crowded, but not as bad as the Portsmouth Brewery.

“Could we sit outside?” the Girl asked. The waitress glared at us balefully.

“You can if you want,” she said. “But it’s gonna rain.”

“If it starts to get bad, we’ll move back in,” the Girl said.

“You should probably just sit inside.”

The Girl was ready to fight her on this. She was hangry. I’m always hangry, and so I’ve developed a tolerance. I steered her aside.

“Not worth it,” I said. “If we sit outside, no one’s going to come take our order.”

It looked like no one was going to anyway. After a while, one of the Deep Ones waddled over, and we ordered gruit. It tasted like beer-flavored juice. They also played the entirety of Rancid’s “And Out Come the Wolves”. I found that suspicious. Like they were humoring me, and when I left they’d return to their backward recordings of whale song and those high-pitched meditation bowls.

The scene was about to turn. I could hear them sharpening their knives. During the next ponderous waitress’ circuit, we waylaid, paid, and am-scrayed.

“I’m so hungry,” the Girl said. “This is where we die.”

“Very possible. I’ll bet they have a sacrificial table here, too.”

“Bastard, we need to find something,” she said. “I’ll go back in there and eat tofu puffs if I have to.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “Listen. We’ll go back to the pizza place. We don’t need to drink there. We’ll just get a pizza. It’s impossible to ruin pizza.”

She was hesitant, but I kept saying, “Huh? Piiizza?”, and that eventually won her over. That’s a pro strat for you, fellas. No charge. Just remember where you learned it.

They were kinder at the pizza place, probably because it was in a basement full of aquariums, and being below sea level and surrounded by their brethren soothed the agitated merfolk. They had a giant neon sign for RED HOOK, which I presumed to be of “The Horror At” fame, and would have won me a prize had I remembered my Mythos bingo card.

We asked the first pleasant waitress in New Hampshire for garlic and it baffled her.

“Garlic? Like, whole garlic?”

“No, like, powder,” the Girl said. “Or salt, if that’s all you have.”

“We… might have some in the kitchen.”

“That’s only a thing where we’re from,” I told her. “When I went west, none of the pizza places had garlic. A lot of ’em didn’t even have oregano.”

The Girl looked as though she might cry. “But… but why?”

“Forgive them. They know not what they do.”

We were given this.

garçon! a ration of garlic powder, s’il vous plait, and your finest sprinkling fork

We walked back out into the building tempest. The fishfolk were growing stronger as it became soggier. It was like you could hear the Jaws theme playing in the distance.

“We gotta look at the whale wall,” I said. “That’s like the only other attraction. Then we get the hell out of here.”

We looked at the whale wall. It was both.

Then, we scurried back to the car.

mood

Unfortunately, the Deep Ones were lying in wait for us. A supply truck was sitting in the middle of the street, right next to my car, parking us and only us in. I couldn’t get around it, and there wasn’t enough sidewalk for any real desperate escape maneuvers. I waited, crouched in the driver’s seat with a fileting knife clutched to my chest. The Girl sat shotgun, slowly pumping up a super soaker full of tartar sauce.

Some other lost tourist/genealogist had parked in front of us, and finally returned to her car. She got the hell out of my way and we made our daring escape.

We crossed the bridge into Maine. It immediately stopped raining. Whatever ancient cult magic held sway in Portsmouth didn’t extend beyond its borders.

Tributary Brewing Company even had a parking lot for free! It was busy, as one would expect for the chosen brewery of the creator of America’s alleged best beer. We sat on the bench along the wall and had a flight and took in the ambiance, most of which consisted of impressionist paintings of this dude’s face.

Mott the Lesser is what he renamed Kate the Great, presumably in order to avoid legal disputes with Portsmouth Brewing. It wasn’t in season, but that was all right. Ask Tennyson. It was never about the Grail. The quest is all.

The man himself sat at a table, eating his lunch and grinning the grin of a man presently living his dreams. He was surrounded by a squadron of adoring Dads. I will admit the dude had an aura, and his biere de miel and porter were magnificent. The porter tasted like smoked joy.

We went next door to a tasteful mermaid-themed restaurant with walls colored in equally tasteful mermaid tiddy art. In retrospect, I should have photographed that, instead of whatever the hell it was we ate. (I know mine was scallops, and I know they were excellent).

Our next stop, continuing with the supernatural theme along New England’s eldritch ley lines, would lead us to the most haunted restaurant in America.

But that’s a spooky campfire story for another day.

Love,

The Bastard

The Shadow Over Portsmouth August 11, 2018. Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the deepest hidden recesses of the internet, on a vague Wikipedia page about "

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kfdirector · 6 years

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Student Awareness of Nonstandard Danger Society

“Alright, people, that wraps up the preliminaries. Now that everyone knows how to use the school library, we’ll start actual U.S. history on Thursday with the Fall of Constantinople. Class..." Niewitzski watched the second hand sweep forward on the wall clock. “...dismissed.” He concluded, drowned out by the school bell and twenty-odd students standing up and grabbing bookbags.

Auditions were discontinued that day to give Bustamonte time to clean up for Back to School Night - and Niewitzski time to figure out how to walk with crutches without crushing his suit for the same purpose. He did not, however, come up with any good solution by the time the deadline rolled around, and so he was at rather less than his best when he arrived to pick Miss Early up from her house.

It was...aggressively ordinary. Tan brickwork, beige siding, dark roof - a small ranch house in an eclectic neighborhood. Jacob could almost hear a voiceover on the evening news: “Neighbors described the owner as ‘quiet’.” He shook his head as Sara got into her car.

“Yeah, it ain’t the best neighborhood,” she said as she buckled her seatbelt. “But I really need to own my own place, and in this economy, ya know?”

Jacob thought about that, and had no response. The economy was...fine, as far as he could tell, although unemployment in the job sector he would have rather been in than teaching was too high to have an admission to law school be in the cards. The neighborhood was...also fine, really, he didn’t know what she was comparing to. And why would someone ‘really need to own’? He realized that his look of skepticism and questioning was going on for too long, and he couldn’t think of just the right question to ask, so he just barked out a laugh -

“Eh, who am I to judge? I live in a hole in the ground!”

She laughed with him for a moment, then stopped - a glint of alarm in her dark eyes. “What, literally?”

“No.” For the moment, he lived in a double-wide. The hole in the ground, slowly being developed into a combination bunker, earth-sheltered home, and hobbit hole, was not yet ready for human habitation.

“Good. It’s hard to tell with the guy who wrecks boats and planes just going on dates. So, steak!”

Jacob mentally calculated how a woman living alone, at their age, driving a gasoline car, in a owned house, in this neighborhood, on their salary, could possibly make ends meet. Factoring in her claimed diet, it was almost achievable with a side job or two. She hadn’t mentioned any side employment yet, though Jacob hadn’t mentioned his, either.

He blinked. He was being asked a question about steak. He tried to remember what she had just said, and respond appropriately. “Actually, I can’t remember.”

Sara frowned at him. “Y’all can’t remember what your favorite kind of steak is?”

He blinked again. He hadn’t remembered the question properly. And yet, he could continue with this. “I actually have this selective amnesia when it comes to steak varieties? I know it’s either filet mignon, sirloin, porterhouse, or a New York strip. But I can never remember which one it is. Every time I go out for steak, I’m guessing. And I never remember to take notes, so I can’t even work it out by process of elimination.”

“Well, not to worry! I’ve got strong opinions on steak, I can help you out.”

They were strong opinions, but not strong enough. With them seated in the dim lights of the steakhouse, the waitress’s foot tapping with impatience, she panicked - and ordered two.

“A moment of silence, please, for my wallet,” Jacob muttered.

“Sorry! But hey, between your order and mine, that’s three out of the four. We’ll definitely finish this quest of yours tonight, once and for all.”

“The knowledge isn’t worth that much to me! And you’d better not leave half of them on your plate, for this kind of money. Hey! Don’t go filling up on bread!”

“Relax, dad.” She smiled, but did not relinquish the buttered roll. Jacob growled at her, she giggled back. “So, anything interesting happen lately?” She motioned to his injured leg.

“What, this?” He thought about answering. And then he thought, as he had started to think before - this was a woman who had appeared in his life at about the same moment everything else went pear-shaped. “Mmm, I’ll tell you if you tell me why you were on the roof.”

“Nah, I don’t care that much.”

Jacob sighed. At a certain point, no conceivable answer could justify the delay; whatever he heard was sure to disappoint him. But that moment was not yet here. “Alright, then, Miss Early, complete change of topic: what do you think about aliens?”

“I thought you said change of - ” She coughed. “I don’t think anything about them. At all.” She grabbed another bread roll. Jacob watched her eyes avoid his.

He weighed whether a biology teacher of her age could have no opinions whatsoever on the topic. “Oh, you don’t read much science fiction?”

“Nope, nada.”

“Never read guys like Bobby Asimov, Isaac Heinlein - ”

“Isaac Asimov, Robert Hein - aw dang.” She froze, mid-chew. He smiled. She finished chewing, swallowed, and sighed. “Alright already, busted, I’m a geek. What do y’all care what I care about aliens?”

“Just thought it’d be an interesting topic.” He also needed to test some thoughts he’d had, to distinguish demons from aliens from...whatever Craig’s third theory had been. “You must have some thoughts.”

“Well, of course I do. I mean, I did study biology. One of my papers was on hypothetical extraterrestrial life.”

“Cool. So, they’d have to obey all the same laws as us, right?”

“You’re the one thinking of law school, you tell me, hon.” She grinned, he rolled his eyes, she continued. “Yeah, yeah. Conservation of mass and energy, entropy, development through natural selection, chemistry follows the same rules even if it ain’t carbon-based - that’s gonna be the same wherever. You could see some weirder stuff inside a sun or a neutron star or in a system made of antimatter, except y’all’d never see it because we couldn’t interact with it.”

“So, if there were an alien here, it would have to play by our rules.”

“Sure! Just...distinguish carefully what’s a rule and what’s just a strong local tradition in these parts.”

Jacob rubbed his beard. “Could something teleport?”

“Biologically?” He nodded. “Can’t see how. No basis for that. Uh, well, wormholes, might be mathematically possible but I can’t think of that being done with biology.”

“Hmm.” He thought more. “And could something just...disintegrate, without a trace?”

“Quickly?”

“Yeah.”

“Writing a book?”

“Writing my workman’s comp claim.”

She snorted. “Changing from a solid to a gas, which I’m guessing you mean by ‘without a trace’, involves a lot of energy. Quick, even more so. Even dry ice doesn’t turn to gas all that fast.”

The platters of steak arrived, curtailing the discussion. Jacob considered the disappearing monster as the three steaks slid into place - he should have had a burn or a freeze or something if it had disintegrated, and it probably couldn’t teleport under its power, by his best guess. Then what?

* * *

They pulled into the school parking lot, packed with much nicer cars than usual. “Hon, did you keep that receipt?”

Jacob checked his pockets. “...no?”

“You’re kidding me. Now I can’t remember what all we just ate. And I had two of them!”

“I told you. Selective amnesia. Anything I should know before we go meet some parents?”

“Donors are weird. The archdiocese is one thing but I hate dealing with the elitists who drop the big checks at these. That’s why I decided I was allergic to fish.”

“Oh!” Jacob said, brightly. “Is that all?”

“I also kinda want to see how often I can get you to buy me dinner. I’ve got a little bet going with myself.” She punched the side of his arm lightly. “And maybe I’ve been telling my mom that we’re dating so she shuts up about some things. But don’t worry! We’re not actually dating. I’ve got enough on my plate without your bad luck.”

He made a stern gesture towards his face. “Don’t even joke about plates right now, young lady.”

#student awareness of nonstandard danger society #serial novel #urban fantasy #fiction

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abiteofnat · 5 years

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AIN’T NO CHICKEN BITCH

Because when it comes to a) stretching how vegetarian I am b) eating ungodly amounts of food, I am certainly no chicken. I order as if I have three stomachs and no cholesterol, and someone that one Core Power class a week keeps me in good enough shape to feel invincible after eating enough fried food to kill a horse. Hopefully no horse has eaten a fried fish sandwich with vinegar aioli though, because that would be weird.

After working close to sixty hours last week and forgetting what sustenance outside of coffee and the occasional V8 juice tastes like, I was over the mother-freakin-moon to spend my Monday night on a picture-perfect patio in Lincoln Park, digging into what may be my perfect meal. My foodie soul mates and I met up at Parson’s Chicken and Fish to enjoy the most beautiful, seventy degrees and sunny evening that begged to be spent with a beer in hand, and oh boy, did I enjoy it. The menu at Parson’s relies heavily on chicken and chicken of the sea (or is that just in reference to tuna? idk), however the appetizers could easily be made into a meal for a true vegetarian, and not a pescatarian like me. I was already salivating over the idea of a fried fish sandwich coated in hot sauce and entirely ignored the veggie sandwich and mac & cheese, both of which I will absolutely need to go back and try as well.

Now this foodie group and I- we do not hold back. We eat big, boldly and fearlessly, leading to a LOT of Tums later. I love how predictable and yet dangerous it is to sit down at a table with them, especially in the summer when shoes are kicked off under the white picnic table on the sprawling Parson’s patio, red and white umbrellas cute as a button above us, not a care in the world. Shall we order a Parson’s house lager and then order the entire menu? Sure, why the heck not! For example, typically, bread as an appetizer is reserved for Italian restaurants and not really thought twice about. At Parson’s, Texas toast slathered in butter, garlic and seasoning is served for $4, and it feels absolutely sinful to just eat giant slices of buttery toast at dinner. I want every meal to center around that Texas toast from now on. If I should ever be asked what I would spend my last $5 on, it would be that Texas toast. Get the pimento cheese spread too- it’s the perfect creamy texture and the right about of tang/spice. Sometimes pimento cheese just tastes like salt and old cheese sticks, but WOW they nailed it and it comes with more bread and hunks of crunchy lil pickle bites. Did we also put the pimento cheese on the Texas toast? You bet your ass we did! Goodbye, arteries!

The main course centered around sandwiches because that seemed like the only right choice. I got the fried fish sandwich and it was essentially a glorified Filet-o-Fish from McDonald’s, which will always be my favorite fast food item ever. For all of you gasping and gagging, you’ve clearly never taken a moment to truly appreciate the beautiful simplicity of a Filet-o-Fish. The Parson’s take was much, MUCH better though: big, soft bun, thick fish filet deep-fried but not oily, melty American cheese, slaw and pickles, finished off with a generous amount of aioli and their hot sauce. Side of house potato chips that are just the right amount of thin and crunchy, without being like burnt crackers, as so many house potato chips are. Y’all, I had a chat with God when I bit into this sandwich, and he told me to get back to Earth and finish this sandwich. It was the right amount of everything, and the type of sandwich you have to man-handle with two hands to ensure it stays together and gets into your mouth. I loved it. Juicy, crispy and fresh- entirely worth the $12. And, do not miss out on a side order of the vinegar aioli- you WILL WANT TO DIP EVERYTHING IN IT.

It’s a really magical feeling to sit down at a restaurant for the first time with a group of longtime friends and just know it’s going to be a memory you look back on and smile, and I'm so thankful Chicago has so many little pockets of true paradise for nights like tonight. Sun shining, picnic tables covered in gorgeous food meant for digging into and people ordering beer like it’s not a Monday night, right in the middle of what used to a be a pretty shitty area of Lincoln Park. I know this because I used to live a street away from it, and all we had was the jank taco place and some questionable Thai food. Just when you think you’ve done it all, something new pops up that makes you fall in love with the city all over again. High five, Parson’s Chicken and Fish.

Until next time, Happy Eating!

-Natalie

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psychicadviceus · 7 years

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Mind Body Healing

New Post has been published on http://aopsy.com/index.php/2017/04/23/mind-body-healing/

Mind Body Healing

The body is a difficult machine to maintain. It often takes years to master a good nutrition plan that keeps you in tip top physical shape. Millions of people all over the world suffer from bodily ailments on a daily basis. Some don’t understand or even know why they are having difficulties when it comes to their physical body. The body is one in which takes time to repair. You have to be willing to open up to something that will work for you. The body often likes healthy fruits and vegetables. Many vegans claim that they even feel more spiritual when they are not eating meat. I love meat, starch and fruit. These are not the most healthiest for you to eat and so I tend to eat a very little bit of them. The body, mind and soul must all work together in order for you to have peace on a daily basis. Giving psychic readings is hard work. It often takes a lot out of me to give just one reading a day. I need my ultimate nutrition in order to function properly. I usually start my day off with a nutritious green drink consisting of a half a pound of sunflower sprouts, 1 cucumber and 4 sticks of celery. This is often my morning breakfast. I usually don’t have lunch until around 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon. If I am having a good day, I will have sunflower, pea and buckwheat sprouts with some dill homemade dressing. I tend to switch the dressings around often so that my diet does not become boring. I have the same for dinner along with another green juice drink. During the day I drink at least two protein shakes that are vegan proof. I also snack on berries, fruits and nuts.

When I am having an off day, I tend to eat chicken breast, flounder filet fish or a lean piece of steak. I try to stay away from pasta as much as I can. It is important to stay away from pasta in your mid 30’s and 40’s. This will help you to keep your sugar intake down. Many people don’t realize that pasta contains a lot of sugar in it per serving. I usually only eat a 1/2 cup of wheat pasta if I am having any. I put some homemade Italian sauce on that and you bet the sugar starts packing on. This is why I keep my intake down. It is important to come up with a diet plan that works for you. Some people can be a raw vegan 100% of the time. I however like to mix my diet and keep it 80/20. This means that I eat 80% of my meals as raw food and 20% of my meals cooked. Many vegans are against eating meat at all. I love meat, so I don’t think that I can ever cut it out of my diet completely. However, the older I get, I realize that I must take good care of my health or else I could be looking at some health issues in the future. Many senior citizens today are on cholesterol medication because they are eating to many of the wrong foods. Others are on blood pressure medication because of to much salt intake or other issues. I am trying to stay away from pills or anything that could put a stain on my liver and other organs. The more healthier you eat, the longer you can expect to stay off most medications for the most part. Of course, everyone’s medical condition must be looked at by a doctor.

I also listen to spiritual music every single day along with prayer. I ask Jesus for guidance and prayer every single day. He always comes into my life to comfort me. Praise God for giving us an ear each day. I don’t know what I would do without it.

If your spirit is not fed each day with some sort of word from God, it will cause your other parts to suffer. You may feel depressed, angry and fearful. You may even worry. This causes your body to become saddened. Many people take depression medication because they are simply not happy and think about their life troubles. My cure for this is to keep busy. Don’t allow your mind to think about sad things. If you have a sad thought, find a solution for it right away. If you can’t, then let it go. It is not meant for you to take care of right now. Bad effects on the body can be hard for most people to deal with. Life is hard to deal with for most people. Having a healthy mind, body and soul makes it all better.

When I stayed at the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, FL, I was introduced to early morning meditation, walks and the importance of physical exercise. This can often boost up your day and make you feel more in sync with your surroundings. Pay close attention to your body and what it is trying to communicate to you. Try to stay away from fast food as it is full of chemicals and trans fats that are not exactly healthy for you. In my opinion, you can do good for yourself by just following some homemade recipes for yourself.

#post- .CPlase_panel display:none;

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tortuga-aak · 7 years

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This cardiologist is betting that his lab-grown meat startup can solve the global food crisis

Memphis Meats/Facebook

Memphis Meats founder Uma Valeti sought out to find an alternative to the meat industry after discovering the brutality and unsanitary conditions behind it.

Valeti, a doctor, teamed up with a molecular biologist, Eric Schulze, to create meat products in a petri dish.

The startup, backed by Bill Gates and Richard Branson, has already cultivated and harvested edible beef, chicken, and duck in its bioreactors.

Memphis Meats is working towards making its homegrown meat more affordable for mass market — and also more appetizing.

Uma Valeti remembers the first time he really thought about where meat comes from.

A cardiologist turned founder, Valeti grew up in Vijayawada, India, where his father was a veterinarian and his mother taught physics. When he was 12, he attended a neighbor's birthday party.

In the front yard, people danced and feasted on chicken tandoori and curried goat. Valeti wandered around to the back of the house, where cooks were hard at work decapitating and gutting animal after animal to keep the loaded platters coming. "It was like, birthday, death day," he says. "It didn't make sense."

Valeti remained a carnivore for more than a decade, until after he had moved to the U.S. for his medical residency. But in time, he found himself increasingly disturbed by food-borne illness. He was especially grossed out by the contamination that happens in slaughterhouses when animal feces get mixed in with meat. "I loved eating meat, but I didn't like the way it was being produced," he says. "I thought, there has to be a better way."

In a tiny R&D suite in a nondescript office building in the unglamorous Silicon Valley exurb of San Leandro, a lanky, red-haired molecular biologist named Eric Schulze is fiddling with a microscope, and I'm about to get a look at that better way. Like the specimen he'll show me, Schulze is something of a hybrid.

Memphis Meats/FacebokFormerly a Food and Drug Administration regulator, he's now an educator, TV host, and senior scientist at Memphis Meats, the company that Valeti founded in 2016 and whose laboratory he is showing me. Lining one wall is a HEPA-filtered tissue cabinet, to which someone has affixed a "Chicken Crossing" sign, and a meat freezer labeled "Angus." Along the opposite wall is an incubator dialed to 106 degrees Fahrenheit, the body temperature of Anas platyrhynchos domesticus—the domestic duck.

Schulze plucks a petri dish from the incubator, positions it under the microscope, and then invites me to look into the twin eyepieces. "Do you see those long, skinny things? Those are muscle-forming cells," he says. "These are from a duck that's off living its life somewhere." The cells look like strands of translucent spaghetti, with bright dots—nuclei, Schulze says—sprinkled here and there.

He removes that petri dish and inserts another. In it, scattered among the spaghetti strands, are shorter, fatter tubes, like gummy worms. Those, he explains, are mature muscle cells. Over the next few days, they'll join together in long chains, end to end, and become multicellular myotubes. These chains will form swirls and whorls until they look like the sky in Van Gogh's Starry Night. Also, Schulze casually notes, "they'll start spontaneously contracting."

Wait. Contracting? As in ... flexing?

"This is all living tissue. So, yes," Schulze says.

The idea of a dish full of duck mince suddenly beginning to twitch and squirm makes me shake my head. What's making duck bits move if not a brain and nerves? Schulze is used to this reaction. "For the past 12,000 years, we've assumed that when I say the word 'meat,' you think 'animal,' " he says. "Those two ideas are concatenated. We've had to decouple them."

Meat without animals. It's not a new notion. In a 1932 essay predicting sundry future trends, Winston Churchill wrote, "We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium."

The basic science to grow meat in a lab has existed for more than 20 years, but no one has come close to making cultured meat anywhere near as delicious or as affordable as the real thing. But sometime in the next few years, someone will succeed in doing just that, tapping into a global market that's already worth trillions of dollars and expected to double in size in the next three decades. Despite a bevy of well-funded competitors, no one is better positioned than Memphis Meats to get there first.

Operating with a team of just 10 (though it's expected to grow to 40 in a matter of months), the startup has already cultivated and harvested edible beef, chicken, and duck in its bioreactors, a feat no one else has achieved. Even allowing for the vagaries of regulation—it's not clear which federal agency will oversee a foodstuff that's real meat but not from animals—the company expects to have a product in stores by 2021.

"They're the leader in clean meat. There's no one else that far along," says venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, whose firm led Memphis Meats' recent $17 million Series A.

Before he met Valeti in 2016, Jurvetson spent almost five years researching lab-grown meat and meat alternatives, believing the market was set to explode. "They're the only one that convinced me they can get to a price point and a scale that would make a difference in the industry," he says.

Memphis Meats/FacebookGoing in with Jurvetson was a lineup of household-name investors that includes Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Jack Welch; their money will be used to build up Memphis Meats' already formidable trove of intellectual property and to fine-tune the process of combining cells to produce the tastiest steaks and patties, and drive down the cost. The infusion of prestige also boosts competitors. Memphis Meats' lineup of backers "is enormous, especially for a small company like mine," says Mike Selden, CEO of lab-grown fish-filet startup Finless Foods. "When investors tell me, 'Great idea, but we can't really vet the technology,' I can say, 'Richard Branson and Bill Gates think it's great.' "

The business case for clean meat, as the fledgling industry's progenitors prefer to call it, could hardly be plainer. As emerging middle classes in places like China and India adopt Western-style diets, global consumption of animal protein skyrockets. (Memphis Meats is working on duck because it's so popular in China, which consumes more of it than the rest of the world combined.) But the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 90 percent of the world's fish stocks are now fully exploited or dangerously overfished. More than 25 percent of Earth's available landmass and fresh water is used for raising livestock. Only one of every 25 calories a cow ingests becomes edible beef. And meat processors often must pay disposal companies to haul away their inedible tonnage—hooves, beaks, fur, cartilage.

But it's not just the financial opportunity that has the likes of Gates and Branson so excited: Meat is an ongoing environmental and public-health catastrophe. Livestock account for 14.5 percent of greenhouse gas production—more than all transportation combined. As meat demand soars, virgin rainforest gets razed to grow feed, and freshwater sources are diverted from drought-prone regions. Overcrowded pig and poultry farms are reservoirs for global pandemics; animals raised in them are pumped full of antibiotics, spurring the rise of drug-resistant superbugs.

A subset of affluent consumers is willing to pay higher prices for free-range beef, cage-free eggs, and other animal products marketed as sustainably produced and cruelty-free, but that's a tiny slice of the market. With the FAO expecting meat consumption to nearly double by 2050, only a radical break with the past will prevent doubling down on practices such as high-density feedlots and vertical chicken farms.

The idea of such a radical break attracted Branson, who stopped eating beef in 2014 out of concern over deforestation and slaughterhouse practices. "I believe that in 30 years or so," he wrote in a blog post, "we will no longer need to kill any animals and that all meat will either be clean or plant-based."

Big as it would be if Branson's prediction comes true, those behind Memphis Meats believe they're part of something even larger. Already, so-called cellular agriculture produces everything from leather and vaccines to perfume and building materials. Within a few years, proponents say, it could eliminate organ donation, oil drilling, and logging. The possibilities are as broad as life itself. "Human civilization was largely enabled by the domestication of livestock," says Nicholas Genovese, Valeti's co-founder. "If we can master producing meat without livestock, it's really going to be the second domestication."

Valeti's meat-without-animals epiphany came soon after his cardiology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in 2005. In a cutting-edge clinical trial, he used stem cells to repair damage caused by cardiac arrest. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that can become different types of tissue as they mature; injected into a heart that's been ravaged by a coronary, they can form healthy new muscle to replace what has been lost. If stem cells could be cultivated into heart muscle, he thought, why couldn't they be manipulated into making a drumstick or a porterhouse? Why not grow just the porterhouse and skip the rest of the cow? And while you're at it, why not grow a steak with a healthier nutritional profile?

A bit of research showed Valeti that he was far from the first to have the idea—but also convinced him that what hadn't been feasible was quickly becoming so. Rapid DNA sequencing was making it radically faster and cheaper to, say, program yeast cells to manufacture proteins. Advances in data science made it possible to tease out relationships in huge volumes of experimental data. Meanwhile, the growing high-end market for sustainable and humanely raised foods pointed to a path for a product that was bound to be expensive in its earliest incarnations.

"If I continued as a cardiologist, maybe I would save 2,000 or 3,000 lives over the next 30 years," Valeti says. "But if I focus on this, I have the potential to save billions of human lives and trillions of animal lives." His ambitions got a major boost in 2014, when a friend from New Harvest, a nonprofit institute that supports work in cellular agriculture, offered to introduce him to Genovese, a stem cell biologist. Like Valeti, Genovese had become vegetarian. As a high school student, Genovese was a member of his local 4-H Poultry Club, competing to raise the largest chickens. "Everyone would get their baby chicks on the same day. A few months later, there's a weigh-in, and they give out trophies," he recalls. "As a teenager, it's very exciting." It was also sobering. Those chickens, he says, "looked up to you for their feed, and looked up to you to protect them. You lock them up at night so the foxes don't get them. But at the end, you send them to their demise."

Getty Images/William Thomas CainHe earned degrees in cell biology and tissue engineering and eventually got a job in a lab run by Vladimir Mironov, who was investigating the use of bioprinting—3-D printing using living cells—to generate replacement organs. In 2010, Genovese accepted a three-year fellowship from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the controversy-courting animal welfare nonprofit, to conduct research into cultured meat. The PETA connection also made him a target for protest from local hog farmers, who objected to his presence after he moved to the University of Missouri. After learning about Valeti's work, Genovese quickly nabbed a position in his new lab at the University of Minnesota.

By 2015, with Genovese on board, Valeti realized it was time to ditch academia. Another New Harvest contact suggested he reach out to IndieBio, the life-sciences-oriented tech accelerator. He did, and within an hour he was on the phone with its director, Ryan Bethencourt.

Bethencourt, a vegan, was well versed in the challenges and promise of cultured meat. He had previously tried to persuade Mark Post, a Dutch researcher who'd produced the first full hamburger patty out of lab-grown beef, to bring his work to IndieBio. (Post demurred but subsequently launched MosaMeat, backed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.) "I said to Uma, this is an opportunity to become a leader in this space and transform food as we know it," Bethencourt recalls. IndieBio became the first outside investor in Valeti and Genovese's startup, initially dubbed Crevi Foods, after the Latin word for "origin." (The founders quickly realized that it was a bit too clever. "Nobody understood it," Valeti says.)

In September 2015, the two men moved to the Bay Area and started culturing cow muscle and connective tissue cells. (We think of meat as synonymous with muscle, but much of meat's flavor and mouthfeel comes from the breakdown of collagen, a component of skin, ligaments, and fascia. It's necessary to blend different types of cells to make lab meat that tastes like the real thing.)

By January, they had enough to make their first tiny meatball. "I'll never forget when we first tasted what we had harvested," says Valeti. "It just immediately brought back all the memories you get when you eat meat." It had been 20 years since Valeti had, but it nonetheless confirmed that, as far as they still had to go, they'd produced, on the most fundamental level, meat.

That helped validate the idea of trying to grow meat in the first place. All the aims of Memphis Meats and its ilk—making food healthier, more humane, and more ecofriendly—could arguably be better served by leading consumers to plant-based alternatives. Such options are getting more sophisticated: Another Silicon Valley startup, Impossible Foods, has raised almost $300 million for a veggie burger that browns like ground beef and even "bleeds" when served rare, thanks to the presence of heme, a component of the blood molecule hemoglobin, which is also found in plants. The Impossible burger mimics the taste of a haute fast-food patty, though its consistency is not quite there—the outside caramelizes, but the interior is a tad puddingy. (Gates has put money into Impossible, as well as in its competitor, Beyond Meat.)

But the lab-grown-meat crowd believes plants will never be the whole answer. Meat is simply too complex and culturally ingrained. "Humans evolved over thousands of years eating meat," says Valeti. A high-tech veggie burger might be able to replace ground chuck, but that's one narrow application. Lab meat, he says, "because it's meat, can be cooked any way meat is cooked. People can buy it off the shelf, take it home, and cook it in the ways they've known for centuries."

Those arguments led Hampton Creek, one of the best-known and best-funded plant-based food startups, to expand into clean meat. For its first four years, Hampton Creek focused on using plant proteins to replace eggs in products like mayonnaise and cookie dough. But CEO Josh Tetrick came to appreciate consumers' attachment to what they know. "A big limiting step to plant-based meat is culture. My family wouldn't go to Walmart and buy something that says 'plant-based hamburger,' " says Tetrick, who grew up in Alabama.

Tetrick's pivot toward clean meat happened amid a conflict with the company's board of directors, which led to all five outside directors resigning. That followed a long series of company stumbles, including an attempted coup by top executives who tried to go behind Tetrick's back to the board and were promptly shown the door; accusations of a large-scale buyback program to boost sales, which drew scrutiny from the Justice Department; and the loss of one of its biggest distributors—Target.

Skeptics wonder if the company's surprise June announcement that it will have one or more cultivated-poultry products in stores by the end of 2018 was a diversionary tactic. The timeline seems optimistic. Even if the kinks can be worked out that quickly, there's no guarantee regulators will sign off in time. Still, Hampton Creek has raised more than $200 million in venture capital and has a team of 60 working on R&D, including top cell biologists from academia and industry.

In September, to punctuate an announcement that it had secured patents around its clean-meat processes, Tetrick tweeted a video of what looks like a burger sizzling in a skillet; a spokesman declined to say whether the video shows the company's first clean beef. A knowledgeable industry insider says Hampton Creek's progress and dysfunctions are real. "I think the only thing that will prevent Hampton Creek from being first to market with this is the company exploding," says the source. (Asked for a response to this statement, Hampton Creek declined to comment.)

For Memphis Meats, with its significant head start and singular focus, the path to success is straightforward. It needs to make its meats more appetizing and much cheaper. One morning this summer, Valeti assembled his full team to talk about how far they had come and how far they still had to go. A few weeks earlier, Memphis Meats had held its first-ever tasting for outsiders, inviting more than 25 people to sample fried chicken and duck à l'orange.

The event was deemed a success.

"They really nailed the texture and mouthfeel," one guest, sustainable food advocate Emily Byrd, said. But it was expensive. Growing that "poultry" cost about $9,000 per pound. At his company meeting, Valeti revealed that the most recent harvest, in May, had been considerably cheaper, with the meat costing $3,800 per pound. "I want it to keep going down by a thousand dollars a month," said Valeti. "Our goal is to get to cost parity, and then beat commercial meat."

Memphis Meats/FacebookThat remains a distant goal. But theoretically, cultivating meat should have high startup costs but low operational costs: Given the right conditions, living cells divide on their own. The major factor governing costs is the nutrient-rich medium in which those cells grow. All the companies that have successfully grown meat have relied on fetal bovine serum, which is extracted from cow fetuses, as a key medium component.

But FBS is expensive, and significantly weakens claims cultivated-meat companies can make about vegan or cruelty-free products. Hampton Creek says it has grown and harvested chicken without FBS, although it has been tightlipped about its methods. Memphis Meats acknowledges it used FBS to start its cell lines but says, "We have validated a production method that does not require the use of any serum, and we are developing additional methods as we speak."

Tetrick likens the expense of medium—it's called "feed" at Memphis Meats—to the need electric-car makers have to develop better batteries. "If we figure out how to surmount that limiting step," he says, "suddenly all the economics start looking better."

Electric cars are an apt metaphor, because whenever clean meat does hit supermarkets, it will almost certainly be pricier than conventional meat. Memphis Meats and its competitors will likely spend a few years courting consumers who buy wild-caught Atlantic salmon and grassfed sirloin at Whole Foods. "They're going to have to somehow position it as something worth paying more for," says Patty Johnson, an analyst who covers the meat industry for Mintel Group.

One possibility, she says: Like Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats could persuade influential chefs to feature its wares on their menus. Another would be genetically engineering nutritional profiles so the company could tout increased health benefits—adding, say, omega-3 fatty acids to beef to make it as healthy as salmon.

Valeti is careful to avoid sounding as if he wanted to put Big Meat out of business. He argues that the big meat processors will be keen on clean technology, whether as licensees, customers, investors, or acquirers. (Agribusiness giant Cargill joined Gates and Branson in Memphis Meats' Series A; Tyson Foods has a venture fund that invests in similar technologies.) Cows and pigs aren't getting any cheaper to raise or slaughter, but if lab meat follows the course of other early-stage technologies, it can continue to get more inexpensive for years to come. "It's not crazy to think you might one day be able to brew meat at $2 per pound, $1 per pound," says Bethencourt. "At that point, we can replace pretty much all industrial meat. In 20 years, I think people will look at growing and killing an animal as bizarre."

And while Missouri's pig farmers may see their doom in a world of meat without animals, companies that buy meat from farmers view it very differently, explains Jurvetson. When an outbreak of avian flu or mad cow strikes, "if you're in their industry, it's a very scary world," he says.

Valeti won't mince words, either. "The status quo in animal agriculture is not OK. That status quo is going to kill a lot of people." All the more reason to bring on the second domestication.

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bastardtravel · 6 years

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August 11, 2018. Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In the deepest hidden recesses of the internet, on a vague Wikipedia page about “brewing in New Hampshire“, I learned that there is one beer that stands above all others. It is a Russian imperial stout lovingly handcrafted by an unusually tall dwarven man straight out of Lord of the Rings, undoubtedly from an ancient recipe that his clan brought from under the mountain untold ages ago.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Eventually, the girl tending came over to us.

“Hey, we’re here treasure hunting,” I said, trying for charming. “Legend has it this is our best shot at getting Kate the Great. Do you have that right now?”

She scoffed. “We’ll never serve THAT beer again.”

I exchanged a glance with the Girl.

“Is this like, a sensitive subject?”

“Do you know where he went?”

“He opened his own brewery, Tributary. It’s in Maine. But here, you can see our draft list.”

“I can’t Yelp,” the Girl said. “This is impossible. Two for two. You do it. I’m losing hope.”

dolphins have had it good for TOO LONG

“Could we sit outside?” the Girl asked. The waitress glared at us balefully.

“You can if you want,” she said. “But it’s gonna rain.”

“If it starts to get bad, we’ll move back in,” the Girl said.

“You should probably just sit inside.”

The Girl was ready to fight her on this. She was hangry. I’m always hangry, and so I’ve developed a tolerance. I steered her aside.

“Not worth it,” I said. “If we sit outside, no one’s going to come take our order.”

The scene was about to turn. I could hear them sharpening their knives. During the next ponderous waitress’ circuit, we waylaid, paid, and am-scrayed.

“I’m so hungry,” the Girl said. “This is where we die.”

“Very possible. I’ll bet they have a sacrificial table here, too.”

“Bastard, we need to find something,” she said. “I’ll go back in there and eat tofu puffs if I have to.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “Listen. We’ll go back to the pizza place. We don’t need to drink there. We’ll just get a pizza. It’s impossible to ruin pizza.”

She was hesitant, but I kept saying, “Huh? Piiizza?”, and that eventually won her over. That’s a pro strat for you, fellas. No charge. Just remember where you learned it.

We asked the first pleasant waitress in New Hampshire for garlic and it baffled her.

“Garlic? Like, whole garlic?”

“No, like, powder,” the Girl said. “Or salt, if that’s all you have.”

“We… might have some in the kitchen.”

“That’s only a thing where we’re from,” I told her. “When I went west, none of the pizza places had garlic. A lot of ’em didn’t even have oregano.”

The Girl looked as though she might cry. “But… but why?”

“Forgive them. They know not what they do.”

We were given this.

garçon! a ration of garlic powder, s’il vous plait, and your finest sprinkling fork

We walked back out into the building tempest. The fishfolk were growing stronger as it became soggier. It was like you could hear the Jaws theme playing in the distance.

“We gotta look at the whale wall,” I said. “That’s like the only other attraction. Then we get the hell out of here.”

We looked at the whale wall. It was both.

Then, we scurried back to the car.

mood

Some other lost tourist/genealogist had parked in front of us, and finally returned to her car. She got the hell out of my way and we made our daring escape.

We crossed the bridge into Maine. It immediately stopped raining. Whatever ancient cult magic held sway in Portsmouth didn’t extend beyond its borders.

Our next stop, continuing with the supernatural theme along New England’s eldritch ley lines, would lead us to the most haunted restaurant in America.

But that’s a spooky campfire story for another day.

Love,

The Bastard

The Shadow Over Portsmouth August 11, 2018. Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the deepest hidden recesses of the internet, on a vague Wikipedia page about "

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psychicadviceus · 7 years

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Mind Body Healing

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