I Can't Believe It's Not An Index CCXXXIII - Jasdoif's Random Banter #233

[Bartmanhomer]

So no. You've only ever seen it once from youtubers trying to get views. That's not a normal thing people do.

Does Nikocado Avocado count?

[enderlord99]

Does Nikocado Avocado count?

Is that a YouTuber?

[Peelee]

Does Nikocado Avocado count?

A fame-hungry youtuber? Do you sense a pattern emerging here?

[Bartmanhomer]

Is that a YouTuber?

Yes

A fame-hungry youtuber? Do you sense a pattern emerging here?

What pattern?

[Rater202]

Changeing Subject:

What fictional house would you like to have, if you got to have one and things like food, utilities, and other necessities are taken care of(so, for example, you don't have to worry about proximity to a town for groceries.)

I'd kind of like Kamehouse from Dragonball. The first floor is basically a studio apartment and the second floor is a cozy bedroom, decent sized building, efficient use of space, it's located on an island in the middle of nowhere someplace tropical and yet the weather is always nice. Despite this, the house is built to be able to shrug off tsunamis, the property apparently includes at least two other larger islands, and at any time you can push a button to collapse the house down to a lightweight capsule that fits in your pocket. Despite this, somehow has functional indoor plumbing. explicitly noted to have inexplicably good reception for things like phones and television.

Bathroom's a little cramped, but that's workable.

[Mystic Muse]

Changeing Subject:

I really like the Heroes Guild from Fable, and if I had an unlimited amount of money I'd love to build it and live there.

Anor Lando is a bit more than a house, but that is also a place I love, even though I'm pretty sure it's physically impossible to actually build.

[Keltest]

They're hand-made in-house. Or at least that's how they're being advertised.

Im going to tell you a secret, and it will probably make you sad. So read on at your own risk.


When most stores or restaurants say something is "made fresh in house" what that almost invariably means is that they get some container of frozen dough or whatever is applicable, and they heat it up and finish baking it on the premises. Like buying a roll of premade cookie dough, except you actually manage to bake it before eating it.

[Rater202]

Im going to tell you a secret, and it will probably make you sad. So read on at your own risk.


When most stores or restaurants say something is "made fresh in house" what that almost invariably means is that they get some container of frozen dough or whatever is applicable, and they heat it up and finish baking it on the premises. Like buying a roll of premade cookie dough, except you actually manage to bake it before eating it.

Yes, and mozzarella sticks are just breaded or battered pieces of string cheese.

My point is that judging from how they talk about it, it seems that the intent is that they're claiming that the battering is done in-house.

[Keltest]

Yes, and mozzarella sticks are just breaded or battered pieces of string cheese.

My point is that judging from how they talk about it, it seems that the intent is that they're claiming that the battering is done in-house.

Honestly, i dont know enough about mozza sticks to know what the last step for them is. Its possible thats the last step thats done in-house, in which case they may have just gotten some extra thick mozza to make the core that day/week.

[LaZodiac]

As someone who has worked in the food industry, typically speaking you just get the frozen mozza sticks and deep fry them. Generally speaking, mozza sticks do need to settle in the fridge so that the batter stays on them, so this is reasonable.

[Peelee]

I really like the Heroes Guild from Fable, and if I had an unlimited amount of money I'd love to build it and live there.

Seconded.

Also a nice place on Cloud City, a penthouse on Coruscant, Theed looked delightful, Ahto City was beautiful, and hell, why not keep a place on Tatooine even if only to enjoy the binary sunset (still the best scene in any Star Wars movie hands down).

[BisectedBrioche]

Im going to tell you a secret, and it will probably make you sad. So read on at your own risk.


When most stores or restaurants say something is "made fresh in house" what that almost invariably means is that they get some container of frozen dough or whatever is applicable, and they heat it up and finish baking it on the premises. Like buying a roll of premade cookie dough, except you actually manage to bake it before eating it.

I can confirm that, at least in supermarkets, they're delivered frozen and preshaped, to ensure uniformity (albeit with some variation between batches).

You can actually buy boxes of the same frozen pastries on ebay and the like.

[Anonymouswizard]

In doing research for my book to make the mysticism more real I finally bit the bullet and bought an introductory academic work on Alchemy. So looks like I'm going to have to struggle through some sixteenth century writing so I can understand this field properly.

Sadly anybody successfully baking the philosopher's scone will have to wait until I a) manage to understand what this darn elixir is actually meant to be, and b) a different book. But I made the decision to actually research this stuff, and I'm going to struggle through these texts.

[Fyraltari]

Sadly anybody successfully baking the philosopher's scone will have to wait until I a) manage to understand what this darn elixir is actually meant to be

It turns raisins into chocolate chips?

[Peelee]

In doing research for my book to make the mysticism more real I finally bit the bullet and bought an introductory academic work on Alchemy. So looks like I'm going to have to struggle through some sixteenth century writing so I can understand this field properly.

Or you can make it whatever you want. 16th century historical alchemy didn't work because they were doing it wrong obviously, here's how alchemy actually works! [story]

[Anonymouswizard]

Or you can make it whatever you want. 16th century historical alchemy didn't work because they were doing it wrong obviously, here's how alchemy actually works! [story]

Sadly I said mysticism, not magic.

Like, I'm not going to actually file what the texts say, but starting by reading the things will help me work out stuff like, well, what was the goal of alchemy (which sorry was relatively consistent amongst the traditions this book deals with).

[LaZodiac]

Sadly I said mysticism, not magic.

Like, I'm not going to actually file what the texts say, but starting by reading the things will help me work out stuff like, well, what was the goal of alchemy (which sorry was relatively consistent amongst the traditions this book deals with).

Alchemists wanted to make lots and lots of gold and maybe also become immortal. It's pretty simple, honestly.

[Fyraltari]

Alchemists wanted to make lots and lots of gold and maybe also become immortal. It's pretty simple, honestly.

Hey, now, some of them also wanted to make little men in bottles.

[Anonymouswizard]

Alchemists wanted to make lots and lots of gold and maybe also become immortal.

Don't we all?


Honestly, I think if alchemists actually wanted to created miniature humans they'd have been better off studying courtship.

Not quite sure how the bottle plays into it though.

[DataNinja]

Don't we all?

I think we have the immortality discussion, like, once a month.

Honestly, I think if alchemists actually wanted to created miniature humans they'd have been better off studying courtship.

Not quite sure how the bottle plays into it though.

I think the bottles were for the drinks.

[LaZodiac]

Hey, now, some of them also wanted to make little men in bottles.

Alchemy has three schools of thought; get rich, never die, make a little guy.

Don't we all?

Honestly, I think if alchemists actually wanted to created miniature humans they'd have been better off studying courtship.

Not quite sure how the bottle plays into it though.

Get money!

Generally speaking the idea is that a homunculus, due to being a divine creation without a divine creation (humans are divine creations made through divine means, homunculi are made by science and thus out of that realm), would know the secrets of the universe. Look these people ate mercury I don't know why they thought these things.

They needed to be in flasks because otherwise they'd discorporate, as an aside. Can't make a stable living being, ergo seal them in a protective jar made of very hot sand.

[Fyraltari]

Honestly, I think if alchemists actually wanted to created miniature humans they'd have been better off studying courtship.

Considering some of the *ahem* more interesting methods they employ, I think it's safe to say the lot had a very keen interest in one particular part of courtship and no clue about the rest. Sex. I am talking about sex.

Alchemy has three schools of thought; get rich, never die, make a little guy.

These are all the same really, gold was thought to be immortal lead and if you can create life, surely you can create "longer life".

And tobbe fair to them, this was all more about religious symbolism than actual results.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think we have the immortality discussion, like, once a month.

Yes, I've been thinking that it's been a while.

I think the bottles were for the drinks.

I thought that was the purview of glasses?

Get money!

Generally speaking the idea is that a homunculus, due to being a divine creation without a divine creation (humans are divine creations made through divine means, homunculi are made by science and thus out of that realm), would know the secrets of the universe. Look these people ate mercury I don't know why they thought these things.

They needed to be in flasks because otherwise they'd discorporate, as an aside. Can't make a stable living being, ergo seal them in a protective jar made of very hot sand.

Yes, I was making a pretty bad joke. It's the entire basis of a major charactern in one of my favourite works, I know the very basics but there's a difference between 'picked up on the interwebs' and 'went back to the sources' in research quality.

Considering some of the *ahem* more interesting methods they employ, I think it's safe to say the lot had a very keen interest in one particular part of courtship and no clue about the rest.

Is this where the part where tab A meets slot B, or the past before that which people keep telling me is supposed to exist?

Sex. I am talking about sex.

Ah, yes. The French national sport. Got it.

These are all the same really, gold was thought to be immortal lead and if you can create life, surely you can create "longer life".

And tobbe fair to them, this was all more about religious symbolism than actual results.

And then the mean physicists came along and showed that actually it's a bit more complicated can eternal gold?

But yes, I believe all this stuff was interlinked and made logical sense. It was just wrong and covered in mysticism.

[Rater202]

Look these people ate mercury I don't know why they thought these things.

I think you answered your own question. Heavy metal poisoning is a terrible thing.

If Discussing alchemy doesn't go over the line, an interesting thing to note is that the creation of the philosopher's stone, with which the user could turn led into gold, generate a universal panacea, and create the Elixir of Life that makes the drinker immortal(all of which were tied to the idea of taking flawed base materials and making them perfect) may have been a metaphor rather than a literal pursuit of more alchemists.

In addition to the physical steps of the process, an alchemist needed to have achieved a certain amount of personal growth by the time they got to certain steps, and every major milestone was expected to be accompanied by physical and spiritual transformations within the alchemist.

For example: Actually pursuing alchemy would be an expensive endeavor, you pretty much either needed to already be wealthy or having a wealthy benefactor willing to keep giving you funding for years without a major return on investment. By the time you can turn base metals into precious metals, it would be expected that you'd gained the humility to be satisfied with what you have.

The physical act of creating the philosopher's stone was supposed to make you immortal: By the time you could ake the Elixir of Life, you would have no need for it.

If people are familiar with the climax of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, where-in Harry is able to retrieve the stone from the Mirror because he wants it, but only to protect it and has no real desire to use it for himself, that was in reference to this.

So, arguably, the entire process was a metaphor for gaining wisdom and understanding that some people took literally.

[Anonymouswizard]

Spoiler: FMA

Show

I guess that's another pro for the manga/Brotherhood over the 2003 anime. While many people who got the stones did use them, Hohenheim fits b the model much better.

It did annoy me that the 2003 anime states that Hohenheim intentionally created and used at least one stone but doesn't explore that at all, while the manga is willing to go into the affect that accidentally becoming a stone had on him.

Was it ever established if Hohenheim can transmute without using his stone? It's not something that Father would do, but I know in Brotherhood he's never seen to do so (not got far enough in the manga to check). If he can't that puts him in an interesting position, where he didn't have the knowledge or enlightenment to make the stone, ended up with it anyway, and is now forced into a choice of not performing alchemy or using the stone.

One of the ideas I've got written down for later on is various kinds of alchemical stones that work as 'impure' philosophers stones, allowing you to make something eternal without enlightenment but with drawbacks (I've fully worked out two varieties, just settling on names for them). The real thing is a physical changes you work upon yourself and others, although it doesn't come up in the book I'm currently writing and I'm not certain I want to use it.

Look, I'm writing a book, hopefully series, about Alchemy, the Stone/Elixir has to come up at some point. And as Peeler pinned out I'm free to say 'historical alchemists got it wrong, it is an actual physical thing' if I want to.

[2D8HP]

Hoping it all goes well.


*Is grappled and pulled out of the room before they can start ranting about polyamory*

Bah! You kids and your honesty and openness, that's not the proper way at all!

The traditional proper way of having multiple romantic partners is you both meet together in a different city from where your other partner is, get a tape deck, play "Heroes" by David Bowie", and "Pale Blue Eyes" by Lou Reed while you dance together on the stage at Stern Grove, cry some, and pledge to be together always even as you both look at your watches so as not to linger.

The depth of tragic finiteness is the point!

Where's the sport if it's not very likely to end in tears?

And on that note: two different ladies this week have cried a bit while telling me the stories of their lives, including ex-husbands, and more boyfriends than I could keep track of, and both insisted that they're "not polyamorous" (I didn't ask if they were), the lady who was most emphatic about it is a married woman still sharing a house with her husband who was on a date with me, a married man who is still sharing a house with my wife.

Oh, and she took me to lunch and this tomato, balsamic vinegar, and cheese dish was absolutely delicious, best tasting meal in decades!

Don't feel bad. At least you still have at least a vague understanding of romance,

I understand the desire for companionship. I understand the appeal of physical intimacy. I understand the appeal of two or more people making some major commitment to each other.

But Romance... Sounds exhausting. It takes effort just to maintain a romantic relationship. More effort than regular relationships. Utterly exhausting. Constant communication, constant... If it's a healthy relationship then you're emotionally invested enough that every minor disagreement runs the risk of turning into a major fight... If it's not a healthy relationship, then every minor disagreement will turn into a major fight. If there's a deal-breaker in the relationship you probably don't find out until it's too late... It's expected that eventually you'll be living together and sharing a bedroom eventually...

And it's not just them you need to worry about. You could be seeing someone for a year, there are no secrets between you, they are perfect for you, they're The One and then you meet their parents and their mother is a total narcissist who feels threatened by your presence because she wants her little boy to be emotionally dependant on her or her father is some psycho who reacts violently to the slightest implication that his baby girl is anything but an eternally pure child with no conception of the wicked things predatory men (IE all of them) will do to her and God Forbid you tell them that their child is an adult who can make their decisions and you can't convince your SO that their parents are toxic so the relationship stalls.

Or their friends are immature, or judgemental, or encourage them to do stupid things, or insist that you must be cheating on them any time you don't come straight home after work or want a little me time.

Or their siblings could be criminals and they refuse to cut content.

Or maybe you get invited to the family reunion and it turns out that their grandma, who cooks all the food, puts onion in everything up to and including the deserts and even the food you brought separate specifically because you will go into anaphylactic shock and die if even a trace of onion gets into your system and Grandma refuses to accept that allergies are real and gets offended at you not trying her food that everyone else loves.

Or, or, maybe, and probably worst of all, everything goes well, you hit it off, get married, and only find out when the first kid is on the way that they're a hardcore anti-vaxxer.

Now, these are all worst-case examples, but...

I'm sorry. I don't get the appeal. If you're in a romantic relationship that worked out, great, good for you and a thousand blessings(no sarcasm) but from where I'm setting a healthy romantic relationship is too much work and too much risk.

The way I see it, companionship can be achieved much easier by having one or more close friends and physical intimacy... That one doesn't have an easy answer but in this day and age, casual hookups are more and more accepted.

As are non-traditional families, if raising a child is a life goal.

...All cards don't the table, I'm probably aromantic. I'm also a major introvert, as an autistic person most social interactions are exhausting and frustrating in general, and I've personally seen a lot of dysfunctional romantic couples. I might have a biased perspective.

It's a addiction @Rater202, after the first time you're in-love and feel loved your brain chemistry changes and you seek the "high" again, even (sometimes especially) when it ended in tears.

[...]Gonna take a swing at this; while relationships can be exhausting, a good one is such that no matter how things get, the end result is you have someone to rest on at the end of the day. Is every conversation a risk for conflict? I'm going to say no, absolutely not, especially in a healthy relationship. Part of being in a healthy relationship is understanding each other, so it's actually quite hard to get in a fight if you're actually empathetic with your partner. But, fights can and do still happen, rarely, and here's the big twist; fighting is okay. Fighting all the time always and being super resentful and hateful of certain aspects of your partner, that's wrong and bad and unhealthy, but having the occasional spat? That's normal, you can't be perfect every day and humans will grind against each other eventually. That does not, however, mean the relationship is in trouble. It's not the fight itself, it is how the people involved react that matter. I uh... don't really have any examples to share because every partner I've had has been perfect, literal evil, or a very casual fling so... take my word for it?

Hating your in-laws because they don't really like you is something that feels far more sitcom-y to me than an actual thing that happens... but, acknowledging that it does happen, I think it's a kind of normal thing as well. Your parents need to adjust to this person, or theirs need to adjust to you, so it's okay if things are a little rough at first. And, honestly, if the parent is bad to you, they were likely bad to their kid, so that minimizes the amount of conflict because your partner will also want to avoid them. And honestly, all the situations you're describing are situations where it is kind of the responsibility of the child to realize "ah, my parents/family are toxic as hell, lets just forget about them". Which is totally a thing you can do; if your family or friends are bad you can just leave. They don't have to be in your life.

In this day and age it should be quite easy to figure out if someone you want to spend your life with has... lets say problematic or conflicting beliefs, and if you DIDN'T realize that stuff, you didn't communicate well enough. Though, like you said yourself, these are all extremely worst case scenario situations, and I do think you're biased, though that's not... wrong, because everything about this particular subject is biased. I'm sure some of what I'll said will get people rolling their eyes or loading up their discourse gun to shoot me with logic bullets or whatever.

For me, the benefits of having a partner outweigh the potential issues. But... I mean, sometimes when I sit down and think about it, the only real major difference between "good friend" and "lover" is that I get to kiss one of those. I love all my friends and I consider them very close, and while I do feel there is some different texture, this... hard to describe feeling, my partner is special. I don't know, this is something that I occasionally spend a fair amount of time thinking about.

Like, cutting back the curtain a bit; when me and Blue broke up our relationship became... closer? Somehow? which doesn't really make 100% sense to me because you'd think you'd be closest to the person you're dating, but I guess all the Baggage of Being In A Relationship made the friendship more... we are dancing around each other in a different way. Conversely, I feel like I have a far closer relationship with my current partner than I did when we were just friends.

I'm rambling, so I'll stop now. But I'll finish it with this; romance is weird and messy and complicated but can bring so much joy. It's why I love being in love, and also why I love writing romance.

Well, bless you @LaZodiac, and FWLIW on my last date we went into a bookstore and she said of the "Romance" section: "That's one section I never go into", and I laughed and said that I do buy books from there, including this week - yet another example of how in some ways I'm more "girlie" than the woman I'm with.

And here I am trying to work out how many of my partners would also enjoy seeing HMS Pinafore (one definitely would, not certain about the others. I'll get that film version of Pirates of Penzance and trial them with that). But there's no need for everybody to be on one date anyway.

Oh, and I built a coffee table today. It's almost will built, but I put the top on too far backwards and can't be bothered to fix it.

I don't think that's this extreme.

I look at the benefits of a healthy romantic relationship.

I look at the effort it takes to maintain a healthy romantic relationship, something that I am gonna be honest I'm not sure I've ever seen in real life only heard of in stories, which from what I can tell is comparable to the effort it takes to own an old car: The second you stop constantly maintaining it is the second that everything breaks down.

I look at the risks of a romantic relationship: Having to deal with toxic people. The examples I gave are extreme, probably a minority, but are common enough that it's a risk you need to be aware of.

And I don't see the appeal.

And I admit the fact that I don't see the appeal might mean something fundamental about the way I see this is different, much the same way that an asexual person might just... Not see the appeal of physical intimacy(though I also understand that Ace is a broad category that also includes people who see the appeal but just aren't interested and people who just think it's kind of icky,) the fact that I am the kind of people that can be perfectly fine only leaving the house three times since the pandemic started and be fine with that, and the fact that I find social interaction, even pleasant social interaction, exhausting, frustrating, and irritating in general may be factors in this view.

And "frenemies with benefits" sounds like an awful situation. Why would someone want to have "benefits" with someone who is sometimes their enemy, that's just leaving yourself vulnerable to them.

That's the social of smoking pot and having sex at Camp Crystal Lake while Jason's running around... Seven movies into the franchise when everyone should know better.

I know one lady my age who's been married since the '90's, she, her husband, and her daughter all seem very happy and speak lovingly of each other, I first met her in the '80's when we were both teenagers, before the end of the '80's she was a heavy drinker and basically a groupie, in the mid '90's to my surprise she was with a younger man who was a customer at the motorcycle shop I worked at, and they've never parted since.

Apparently goth girl and biker boy work as a couple.

[. ..]I've seen both The Mikado and Pirates of Penzance, both incredible (I even saw the latter in San Francisco sung in RP, very big props to that group). I'd recommend the second, The Mikado is probably the better play but Pirates of Penzance has both the well known G&S song and the absolute show stopper that is With Cat-like Tread. However you do have to sit through orphan frequently only once.

As for finding them, my only real suggestion is checking local theatres and Google. They're public domain, so I suspect smaller companies will likely put them on quite a bit (if they can manage RP).

I actually really wish they they were used more for school lessons and productions. They're probably the only English playwrights that you can call as influential as Shakespeare with a straight face.

I saw "The Pirates of Penzance" in San Francisco as well, I remember Jim Belushi was in the cast, it was really fun!

[Peelee]

Jim Belushi was in the cast, it was really fun!

I'm having trouble reconciling those two things going together. HEYO!

[Beeftank]

I know we changed the subject from Mustard/watermelon, which doesn’t seem very good, but I am pretty fond of a kielbasa/mustard sauce/ pineapple dish my mom used to make for family gatherings and stuff, so sometimes weird combos of food somehow work.


Hey man, Jim Belushi is…

well he’s fine. According to Jim was ok.

[Rater202]

So it turns out that I watched enough of Zodi's videos that they pop up in my suggested youtube feed without my having to start watching that suggested video.

First time I was first viewer on a video.

Psychonats... Is a game that I've heard a lot of good things about and a lot of weird things about.

And uh, wow.

Creepy meat flower in teachers mindscape.
"I've been having recurring nightmares about this exact creepy meat flower"

I know that the big bad has issues with meat because I don't live under a rock. It might be different when not spoiled but that foreshadowing has all the subtlety of a brick to the face.

[LaZodiac]

So it turns out that I watched enough of Zodi's videos that they pop up in my suggested youtube feed without my having to start watching that suggested video.

First time I was first viewer on a video.

Psychonats... Is a game that I've heard a lot of good things about and a lot of weird things about.

And uh, wow.

Creepy meat flower in teachers mindscape.
"I've been having recurring nightmares about this exact creepy meat flower"

I know that the big bad has issues with meat because I don't live under a rock. It might be different when not spoiled but that foreshadowing has all the subtlety of a brick to the face.

First off, that rules. Second off... yeah, Psychonauts is not a very subtle game at times... but also I completely forgot about the meat stuff during my first playthrough.