wanna hear a wild story? my brotherās history professor is closing in on 80 and basically lives at the university. one night my brother visited him for a meeting, and it came up that my brother was gonna be performing as a court jester at the castle the following day. and his professor busts out: āah, that reminds me of my youth!ā
he then proceeded to tell the tale of when he and his friends went backpacking to greece back in their early 20s. then one day they found themselves completely penniless. so they decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to set up acrobatic shows in skimpy outfits on the beach at day, and then drink up the money at night.
after a week or so they gained some traction, and a gang of young greek men walked up to them like āhey yāall are cool as hell, can we join yāall for drinks tonight?ā and my brotherās professor was like āof course! yāall have to wear these revealing outfits and do somersaults with us thoā and the greek gang said āsounds dope. yāall are invited to live with us for however long yāall want.ā
anyhow, they proceeded to live like this for the better part of 3 months, doing shows, drinking, and sleeping at the greek gangās apartment. but after a while they decided enough was enough, and said thank you for everything, but weāre going back to sweden now. and the greeks said āsure! love yāall have a safe trip xxā
half a year later my brotherās professor gets contacted by the greek police. they ask him about the months they spent in greece, and then informs him that their greek friends have been convicted of serial homicide and robbery. that the group of young greek men had joined up with several tourist groups for several years āfor drinksā, and then killed and robbed them all, terrorising the beach city for several years. with one exception, of course, because āthis one group of swedish acrobats in slutty strongman suits were just āso damn niceāā.
and thatās the story of how one swedish history university professor survived sharing a flat with a group of serial killers for several months by performing acrobatics in slutty outfits on the beach. moral of the story? be kind of heart, thicc of ass.
alright so during into the spider-verseās introduction to peter b. parker, we see his wedding, and he stomps on the wine glass right? this is a jewish wedding tradition, which makes this version of peter parker jewish (further confirmed in interviews ā however, i believe this is enough by itself). itās a nice nod to the jewish roots of the character.
we get to see a bunch of peter parkers throughout the spider-verse films, and none of them have any explicit religious associations like peter b. parker. except for one!
here we have gwen stacyās peter parker and aunt may, from earth-65, saying grace over a meal. from my understanding, this is generally a christian practice ā in judaism, we prefer to say short prayers before eating, and save the long, in-depth ones for afterwards. so to me, this was a clear example of the character being coded as christian. i was a little disappointed that they didnāt make peter parker jewish here too, but since across the spider-verse discusses variants and the differences between instances of the same person between different universes, i interpreted this as a continued commentary on peter parkerās ethnicity ā although he was initially jewish-coded and one of his two creators, stan lee, is jewish, this is often erased, especially in more modern interpretations of the character.
and then i remembered that this peter parker also literally turns into the lizard.
I recently discovered laundry stripping and yāall, no matter how much of a crock of shit you think fast fashion is, youāre underestimating.
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OKAY SO. You know how we talk about how one way fast fashion has made itself ānecessaryā is that the clothing looks like shit and feels horrible after just a few washes?
Let. Me. Tell. You. Something.
Laundry stripping is a process where you load your laundry into a tub or bin (Iāve been using my bathtub) with warm water, half a cup of borax, half a cup of washing soda, and half a cup of laundry soap (not detergent, SOAP, thereās a chemical difference). Leave it there for at least eight hours. Iāve been going for 12-24.
What you will come back to is a tub full of nearly-opaque black-gray-brown water that absolutely REEKS. This is normal. You are looking at (and smelling) hard water buildup, body sweat and oils that were embedded in the fabric, dead skin, and just regular grime.
Wring out your clothes. Throw them in the washer. (I like to do a spin-only cycle before going any further, because I have one of those washers that determines by weight how much water any given load needs.) Wash as usual.
You will notice I didnāt suggest any further pretreatment, and thatās because 1) you donāt want to layer too many chemicals on top of each other but also 2) you may not even need it.
When your clothes come out, check each one as it goes into the dryer, and if anything else s still stained, set it aside to run again with a regular pretreatment. One of the sweaters I did this with apparently did need a second treatmentā¦to deal with what appears to have possibly been a hot chocolate stain that was previously invisible due to āwell, itās oldā dinginess. Iwasplanning to throw this sweater out. It looks almost new now. I need to wash it one more time for the probably-a-hot-chocolate stain, and then it needs to have the hem weighted to block it and bring it back to evenness, but dude. I wear my clothes to rags and I thought this thing was unfixable. āI need to reshape itā is nothing.
Remove clothes from dryer when done. Fucking MARVEL at the colors and how good the fabric feels. Give them a smell. Get righteously and royally angry that you can rejuvenate this stuff so easily, with a process that does take awhile but is 90% hands-off, but weāve been trained to believe itās all got to be binned once a year because discoloration and gross fabric is ānormal wear and tearā and canāt be fixed.
Itās utterly unreal! I just pulled a seven-year-old work undershirt out of the dryer and this thing looks NEW!! It FEELS almost new!!! One of the shirts I hung up from the last load is older than some of the people on this site and it went from āI keep this to wear on laundry day, for sentimental reasonsā to āI could actually wear this out of the house, it looks old but respectableā! The pajama bottoms Iām wearing were from Goodwill and they have BRIGHT YELLOW in them! I thought it was goldenrod!!
I do not know how often youāre supposed to do this (doing it every time can strip the dye out of your clothes, not to mention itās way too much work to do every time), but once or twice per season seems respectable. I donāt wear white, so I canāt test the āit will make whites look almost-new as wellā claim, but Iāve seen a lot of people on the cleaning subreddit attest that it works.
Just remember: WASHING soda. Not baking soda. I tried baking soda and a little bit happened, but not a lot.
Go forth. Rejuvenate your clothing. Strip your laundry.
