Storytime. Cooking in a different country makes you realize how many things you take for granted are just, Not A Thing Here. Like apple juice. Surely you can find apple juice at your local Athenian grocery store, right? Wrong. Greeks drink orange juice and peach juice and mixed fruit juice and sour cherry juice, but… plain old apple juice, nope, not so much. You’ll have a hard time finding vanilla extract in Greece too, since Greeks are used to vanilla powder in little plastic capsules and you have to go to specialty shops for the liquid stuff. Sour cream is virtually nonexistent here (but hey, it’s the land of yogurt, which is a good enough substitute). But surprisingly cornmeal (which is a specialty ingredient in the UK) is everywhere, since Greeks have their own versions of cornbread and corn pudding.
So basically: I knew it might be impossible find vegetable shortening (aka Crisco) for my Thanksgiving pie crust here in Athens. Crisco is pretty uniquely American, and Greeks are more likely to use phyllo than shortcrust anyway. That said, there are a handful of specialty shops in central Athens that sell things like Heinz baked beans and custard powder and Worcestershire sauce and other Weird Foreign Foods™ so us Sad Homesick Expats don’t have to go hungry (I’m always reminded of A Passage to India and their corned beef and tinned peas). So I went on Skroutz (the search engine for buying stuff in Greece) and typed in “vegetable shortening” to see if any stores carried it.
A notification came up asking me to confirm that I was over 18 years old?
???
I clicked “yes”??
Turns out there is, in fact, one shop in Athens that carries vegetable shortening. It’s a sex shop. The shortening is listed under “sex essentials”, as lube. For fisting. It’s literally called “βούτυρο για fisting” – “butter for fisting”.
I decided I didn’t need a flaky pie crust that badly.
for those not in the know, night witches were russian lady bombers who bombed the shit out of german lines in WW2. Thing is though, they had the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world. The engines used to conk out halfway through their missions, so they had to climb out on the wings mid flight to restart the props. the planes were also so noisy that to stop germans from hearing them combing and starting up their anti aircraft guns, they’d climb up to a certain height, coast down to german positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair, and get the fuck out of dodge.
their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.
how the fuck is this not taught in every single history class ever
pilots (◡‿◡✿)
girl pilots (◕‿◕✿)
girl pilots killing nazis ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* (◕ヮ◕✿)/ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
But, remember, women never did anything in history.
I’m reblogging this again. Always reblogging. Always
And the Nazis called them “Night Witches” because you couldn’t fucking hear them. They basically appeared out of the night as if they were flying on brooms and dropped bombs.
Hell yeah
There’s actually a song about them by Sabaton, it’s fucking amazing and it’s called “Night Witches”
They had to make the option available from the very beginning because they’re committed to staying ad-free, and offering premium features is how they get by.
Also, there’s only 1 dollar of difference between what you’d pay by buying 12 times 1 month of premium service compared to the 12 months pack in one go, so you could decide to pay 3 dollars for 1 month and see how you like the added options and if they’re worth it, otherwise simply leave it, you can perfectly use the site with just the basic features.
carrochan I’m getting a warning when I try to access the link to the new community. What’s its name?
Apparently some are having problem opening links from tumblr mobile. The url is https:(//)the-great-tumblr-purge(.)dreamwidth(.)org
Dreamwidth would be perfect for me if it had image hosting. Just, y’know, format-wise, easier to look back at older things, not so focused on the now.
Hard same, but it’s also true that DW has been a very lowkey website until now, it never needed image hosting. If it started getting traction again it would be possible to ask for features that are closer to the current needs.
It does have a little bit of image hosting. Obviously, nothing like what a Tumblr user wants, but it’s technically there. There’s a 500mb limit per account, and you have to go to the image upload page. After the image is uploaded, you can then embed it in your posts.
So this would be fine for occasional cover art for fic or graphs to go with meta. It would not be adequate for someone who does a lot of blogging of visual stuff or who wants to host their fan art gallery.
Types of Japanese Ghosts, Illustrations by Matthew Meyer, Text from: yokai.com
Ame onna
Ame onna are a class of yokai that appear on rainy days and nights. They summon rain wherever they go, and are often blamed for kidnapping and spiriting children away. They appear as depraved, haggish women, soaked with rainwater, often licking the rain off of their hands and arms like wild animals.
Onryō
The most dreaded type of yūrei is the onryō. They are the ghosts of people who died with such strong passions –jealousy, rage, or hatred – that their soul is unable to pass on, and instead transforms into a powerful wrathful spirit who seeks vengeance on any and everything it encounters. Onryō appear as they did when they died. Often they were victims of war, catastrophe, betrayal, murder, or suicide, and they usually display wounds or marks indicative of the way they died.
Hone-onna
Not all who die turn into vengeful beings of grudge and jealousy. Hone onna retain an undying love that persists long after their flesh has rotted away, allowing them to continue to be with the object of their affection despite having died. These ghosts appear as they did in life – young, beautiful women in their prime. Only those unclouded by love or with strong religious faith are able to see through their disguise to their true form: rotting, fetid skeletal corpses returned from the grave.
Shiryō
Shiryō are the ghosts of the dead, and are contrasted with ikiryō, the ghosts of the living. Shiryō is almost exclusively used to refer to unpleasant, malevolent spirits. They appear to be relatives or close friends of the deceased, a shiryō appears in the moments just after death. Often they come to take their loved ones away with them into the world of the dead.
So I was outside watering the mums in front of the shop and I see this little dude flapping his wings against the window.
… from the inside.
And I’m like, okay… that’s not where you’re supposed to be. So I went back in and apparently he’s been hanging out in the front half of the shop for the past two days- which is kind of cool from our perspective but when your adult life span is only four weeks it sucks big time. He rode in on a customer and has been stuck there, trying to get out.
Like he’s a psychopomp, he’s got a busy schedule. Ain’t got time to stop and hang around with the living.
So I get him to hop onto my hand and take him outside to set him free.
Just as I’m giving him the gentle loft into the October air, a woman comes up to me and asks for directions to the CVS.
“Uhhh… yeah, you take Morse Crossing to Morse,” I said, pointing with my hand, currently adorned with butterfly. “And then you take a left and its a couple miles down on your left.”
“I’m sorry, I take a…”
“Take a right out of here ‘till you get to Morse, take a left, and it’ll be on your left off of Cleveland.” The monarch is crawling up my arm, not getting the hint.
The woman is… distracted. “Is that… a real butterfly?”
“Yeah, he’s not getting the hint that he’s supposed to fly south,” I said.
Then, as if being reminded that it’s migration season, he launches himself from my wrist and takes off flying towards her face. She ducks, and then runs.
I shrugged to myself and went back to watering the mums. A few minutes later, I just see this blur of orange when the butterfly decides to come back, latches onto my hoodie and starts crawling around. I had to physically detach him from me and set him down on one of our big pots of mums.
Because apparently he’d rather hang around with weird humans instead of eat actual food.
But anyhow, he takes a pretty picture.
Weirdo.
That woman is pretty sure she got directions from an actual fae
WHENEVER YOU SEE THIS POST ON YOUR DASH, STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND WRITE ONE SENTENCE FOR YOUR CURRENT PROJECT.
Just one sentence. Stop blogging for one minute and write a single sentence. It could be dialogue, it could be a nice description of scenery, it could be a metaphor, I don’t care. The point is, do it. Then, when you finish, you can get back to blogging.
If this gets viral, you might just have your novel finished by next Tuesday.
Two innovations in the new hotel were of particular curiosity to Flagler’s first customers. Each room was equipped with steam heat, which to many seemed an odd fit for a Florida hotel. The system would not see a great deal of use, of course, but imagine the satisfaction of the guests on the days when it was needed! The other novelty was the presence of electrical lights in every room. Many of Flagler’s guests were not yet acquainted with the concept of having electrical lights in their personal space, let alone being the ones to operate the switches. At first the hotel was forced to hire extra staff to turn the lights off and on for its guests, because they were afraid of being shocked!
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