#A day in April

[petermorwood]

How on earth did these goats get there?

*****

In reality the goats are lying on their sides on rocky ground, looking up at a crane-mounted camera. The photograph was taken some years ago, part of a series reconstructing Central European folk customs and traditions which have fallen from favour or are now prohibited.

This old-fashioned rural blood-sport was originally practiced in parts of Anatolia, Turkey, where the game was called keçi fırlatmak, and also in the Carpathian Alps of Romania, possibly imported during the Ottoman conquest. The name there was aruncarea caprei.

*****

The goats would have been coated in a strong adhesive traditionally distilled from pine resin.(represented pictorially here by darker patches of dye on the flanks) and were then thrown upwards towards a cliff or rock-face with makeshift catapults, often a primitive form of counterweight trebuchet assembled from wooden beams and weighted with rocks.

The game ended when the glue dried and lost adhesion, and the goats fell to their deaths. They were then cooked and eaten, their meat being valued like that of Spanish fighting bulls.

The meat of the last goat to fall (başarılı keçi or cea mai durabilă capră) was prized as a special delicacy and selected cuts from the legs of this particular “winner” goat were often smoked and dried into a kind of jerky.

*****

In his “Grandes Histoires Vraies d'un Voyageur le 1er Avril” (pub. Mensonges & Faussetés, Paris, 1871) French folk-historian, anthropologist and retired cavalry general Gilles-Etienne Gérârd wrote about witnessing a festival near Sighișoara, Transylvania, in 1868.

There he claims to have seen catapults improvised from jeunes arbres, très élastiques et souples - “very springy and flexible young trees” - which were drawn back with ropes and then released.

Bets were placed before the throw, and marks given afterwards, according to what way up the goats adhered and for how long. The reconstruction, with both goats upright, facing outward and still in place, shows what would have been a potential high score.

The practice has been officially banned in both countries since the late 1940s, but supposedly still occurred in more isolated areas up to the end of the 20th century. Wooden beams from which the catapults were constructed could easily be disguised as barn-rafters etc., and of course flexible trees were, and are, just trees.

*****

Gérârd’s book incorrectly calls the goat jerky “pastrami”, to which he gives the meaning "meat of preservation".

While pastrami may be a printing error for the Turkish word bastırma or the Romanian pastramă, both meaning “preserved meat”, at least one reviewer claims that Gérârd misunderstood his guide-translator, who would have been working from rural dialect to formal Romanian to scholarly French.

Since this jerky was considered a good-luck food for shepherds, mountaineers, steeplejacks and others whose work involved a risk of falling, Gérârd's assumption seems a reasonable one.

However, several critical comments on that review have dismissed its conclusion, claiming "no translator could be so clumsy", but in its defence, other comments point out confusion between slang usage in the same language.

One cites American and British English, noting that even before differences in spelling (tire / tyre, kerb / curb etc.) "guns" can mean biceps or firearms, "flat" can mean a deflated wheel or a place to live, "ass" can mean buttocks or donkey and adds, with undisguised relish, some of the more embarrassing examples.

This comment concludes that since the errors "usually make sense in context", Gérârd's misapprehension is entitled to the same respect.

*****

The good-luck aspect of the meat apparently extended to work which involved "falling safely", since its last known use was believed to be in ration packs issued to the 1. Hava İndirme Tugayı (1st Airborne Brigade) of the Turkish Army, immediately before the invasion of Cyprus in July 1974.

Nothing more recent has been officially recorded, because the presence of cameras near military bases or possible - and of course illegal - contests is strongly (sometimes forcefully) discouraged, and the sport’s very existence is increasingly dismissed as an urban or more correctly rural legend.

The official line taken by both Anatolian and Carpathian authorities is that it was only ever a joke played on tourists, similar to the Australian “Drop-bear”, the Scottish “Wild Haggis” and the North American “Jackalope”.

They dismiss the evidence of Gérârd’s personal observation as “a wild fable to encourage sales of his book”, “a city-dweller’s misinterpretation of country practices”, or even “the deliberate deception of a gullible foreigner by humorous peasants”.

And as for those paratroop ration packs, Turkish involvement in Cyprus is still such a delicate subject that the standard response remains “no comment”.

[jue-jack]

Kirby is a star!!!

[lotostar]

Go little guy, go!🎵

[phosphorus-noodles]

Reblog to let your followers know that they’re safe from jumpscares/screamers/etc from you on April 1st but they are NOT safe from getting boop’d like an idiot amen

[oh-munda-kukkad-kamaal-da]

Reblog if its ok to spam you with boops

[sabertoothwalrus]

guys..... I'm re-entering my klance era...... and I redrew this old comic to start us off <3

more thoughts under the cut ⬇️

april fools

jesus christ can you imagine 🚬

I had fun redrawing this though! cool to see the improvement 🤭

[oh-look-car-horns]

IM NOT READYYYYYY

[isabela-merceds]

happy 12 year anniversary to the most memorable event in tumblr history

[notamamiboye]

Happy April Fools 2024

[rainyshades]

[shisasan]

16 April, 1939 Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov

[eldritch-elrics]

obsessed with the april fools day joke from the another crab's treasure devs

[copperrust]

me when i fuckging get you

[lacyblades]

౨ৎ satoru's a goddamn psycho. and, okay, you knew it was a bad idea. but, hey, april fool's, right? a flimsy excuse, at best. you'd thought that would make it better, but you've never been more wrong.

yeah, you knew faking a hushed call, stringing him along with that cheating bullshit, was playing with fire. but, how the were you supposed to know he'd snap like this? he's the king of pranks. that hypocrite.

"s'different," he growls, his hand a fucking vice around your throat. a choked sob escapes, your back arching, every nerve fried. it's some ungodly hour, two or three am, maybe. "some lines — fuck —shouldn't be crossed, you get that?"

he rams into you, deep, every thrust hitting (bruising) your cervix. his other hand digs into your waist, a painful grip. "too much," you whimper, too fucked-out to even twitch. you just pray he'll stop his relentless assault.

"whose pussy is this?" he demands, his voice a low, filthy tone. you can't even form words, just a broken moan. "look at you," he grunts, his hips rutting against yours. "can't even talk right. bet no one else could get you this fucking wrecked, huh?"

satoru's hand slides down, pinching your nipple hard. you whine, whether from pain or pleasure — you couldn't tell. "i asked you something, bitch," he hisses, and, as if he'd punishing you, he pulls almost all the way out, relieving you (if only for a second), before slamming his thick length back into you.

"y— yours!" you scream, the heat coiling in your gut, a familiar, desperate burn. you're just a toy now, his to use, and you know he wouldn't have it any other way.

satoru groans, his words slurring, a sure sign he's close. "ngh, don't fuckin' forget it."

your boyfriend didn't, in fact, let you forget it — spilling inside you, hot and thick, your body convulsing around him as you came again, another wave of raw, mind-numbing pleasure. all for another round.

you're officially retiring from april fool's.

[sapphicpond]

Tumblr rn

[horserad-ish]

reblog only if you’ve received less than 1000 boops! we can all get each other to “max”