englishmage

[englishmage]

i keep thinking about that tribe of baboons where all the alpha males died from eating poison garbage and then the baby boy monkeys were taken care of by the lady monkeys and never got socialized to be aggressive so they all just live peacefully and groom eachother instead of fighting and killing eachother and its been generations of that, it only took 1 wipeout of the aggressive males to change the whole social order of the species i am crying they must be so much happier

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Classic lit + Onion-style headlines = the mashup you never knew you always wanted. Click here to see all 14!

brought to you by our resident genius, @roonil-freakin-wazlib

[englishmage]

Today I baked with my mom.

Baking is something I always used to do when stressed out. It’s something meticulously scientific and formulaic, yet also something I can get creative with. I love finding recipes with unique flavours, and I especially love fancying things up. You see, if you buy into that whole left-brain/right-brain nonsense (which you shouldn’t, by the way) I’ve always been quite middling and well-balanced.

(Sidenote/rant: maybe that’s why it’s been such an ordeal for me to find my calling, or really anything that can satisfy me and hold my attention for extended periods of time. I find we, as a society, are so focused on specialisation. Leaves little room for “renaissance folks” such as myself.)

Anyway. Yes. Today, I baked. This is significant because it’s something I love so much, but I haven’t done it in probably well over a year. Because, in the slums of my depressive brain, nothing seems worthwhile or fun. The things that once brought me joy seem empty, pointless, meaningless. To top it off, my anxiety tells me that, unless it’s gonna be perfect and pretty and amazing in every way, then there’s no use to it and I’ll be a failure -- so why bother trying anything. Great combo, hey? It’s made me shy away from trying to make these macarons for ages. I’ve always wanted to make them, but I’m just so terrified of failure. It’s a horrible thing when the things you used to do to feel better are taken away from you in a way, because the thought of doing them makes you feel worse about yourself.

Well. I can confidently say that I did it. I beat my mental illness today. And no, not all of the macarons were perfect. Did it upset me? Of course. I don’t think that will change for a long time, if ever (it’s not like making macarons is the magic cure for such things). I definitely picked through all of the goods to find the prettiest ones for photos.

The pink ones are filled with strawberry buttercream and a dollop of strawberry jam right in the centre.

The green ones are filled with pistachio buttercream.

There was a bunch of leftover buttercream -- and it’s so good I put it in ziploc bags and now have it in my freezer. I might make waffles in the near future with fresh fruit and buttercream (because why not have dessert for breakfast? I’m an adult). Seriously though. I don’t do that fake shit with the icing sugar. That’s not real buttercream. This stuff? This is real. It’s almost entirely butter, with a bit of granulated sugar and some whipped egg white. The flavouring? To die for. My mom and I purchased wild strawberry compound and pistachio extract from Duchess Provisions -- a shop that sells specialty ingredients to craft such quality confections as the ones sold in the Duchess Bake Shop (only my favourite place ever).

Needless to say, I’m very pleased with how it all turned out, even if I’m exhausted now.

If you've made it this far, let me know what flavour(s) I should try next. I was thinking coconut/rum. Maybe rose, even.

[englishmage]

sometimes... this world clings to corpses of beautiful things. and sometimes... they are still beautiful

[englishmage]

Emma Watson at the “Beauty and the Beast” Premiere in Shanghai, China (02/27/17)

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One of my favorite quotes. My calligraphy—starting to play around with ideas that might one day be frame-worthy.

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oxford, april 7th 2015

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Shengsi, an archipelago of almost 400 islands at the mouth of China’s Yangtze river, holds a secret shrouded in time – an abandoned fishing village being reclaimed by nature. These photos by Tang Yuhong, a creative photographer based in Nanning, take us into this lost village on the beautiful archipelago.

[englishmage]

Evening dress, 1905-10

From the Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arkitektur og Design

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Illustrator Shamekh Al-Bluwi’s Ingenious Cut-Outs Turn Any Landscape into Clever Clothing Designs

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Sorry That I Haven’t Seen You In Six Months Because I’m Depressed and My House Is a Mess Because I’m Depressed and I Can’t Talk about What I’ve Been Doing Lately Because I Haven’t Been Doing Anything Lately Because I’m Depressed: the Trilogy

[englishmage]

However it originated, though, the usage of “because-noun” (and of “because-adjective” and “because-gerund”) is one of those distinctly of-the-Internet, by-the-Internet movements of language. It conveys focus (linguist Gretchen McCulloch: “It means something like ‘I’m so busy being totally absorbed by X that I don’t need to explain further, and you should know about this because it’s a completely valid incredibly important thing to be doing’”). It conveys brevity (Carey: “It has a snappy, jocular feel, with a syntactic jolt that allows long explanations to be forgone” “It has a snappy, jocular feel, with a syntactic jolt that allows long explanations to be forgone”).

But it also conveys a certain universality. When I say, for example, “The talks broke down because politics,” I’m not just describing a circumstance. I’m also describing a category. I’m making grand and yet ironized claims, announcing a situation and commenting on that situation at the same time. I’m offering an explanation and rolling my eyes — and I’m able to do it with one little word. Because variety. Because Internet. Because language.

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Buttercream piping techniques (source)

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Isn’t it odd how much fatter a book gets when you’ve read it several times? As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells…and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower…both strange and familiar.

Cornelia Funke, Inkspell (via ettesumal)

[englishmage]

Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens.

Cathy Guisewite (via wordsnquotes)