GYSO Drawing Part 15 - China

Published: 2019-09-29

Introduction

Thor:
Today I face myself, and my deepest fear.

What went right?

Tim:
Atop the north pole stood a god.

He had grown fat off the worship he recieved, the envy of his contemperaries. They think this god to be lucky, having picked the oppurtune alias where they had failed. They think him to be content and happy in his position of absolute power. They were wrong.

The Santa Clause had spent centuries garnering the affections of the mortals. He picked an alias that brought joy to those most vulnerable, money to those who were greedy, and satisfaction from those who sometimes don’t deserve it. He laughed and ate the cookies and milk offerings. He played into their fantacies about flying deer and little elfs. He even convinced them that he was a false god, as if that even mattered.

He had built enough power to service the mortals in their delusions of greed. To travel to all their pathetic houses and plant the seeds of eternal service in the minds of their young. Though even now he stockpiled power; strength to enact his true plan.

It was a plan of creation, and destruction. He only needed the strength of these humans long enough to take action, and finally he could enjoy his true love.

War.

The god of war, contrary to legend, was more patient than any monk. He enjoyed the little conflicts the humans inflicted upon themselves, but it was obviously not enough. If only they truly faught, then he would finally be content, finally be satisfied.

The smile placed upon Santa Clause’s face was not the one told in the pathetic legends about his “generosity,” instead it was cold and flat. The time to act was upon him. Maybe, finally, this would quench his thirst for war.

And so the god brought forth his war, and it tasted sweet.

Thor:
Unfortunately, because of how we structure GYSO posts, you will have to wait to read just how low I think of deep plates. But it does mean that you get to share my enthusiasm for bowls!

Bowls

Bowls are great. You can put noodles in them. Candy! Every type of food you would use a plate for. There’s also the possibility of pouring that leftover wine that you’re just too bothered to deal with wine glasses for, anyways, so you can fill up two and a half glasses in one fell swoop.

You know, I thought it was going to be easy writing about dishware and china for this shitwreck of a blog. But really, all I’ve learnt is one method of writing that doesn’t quite fit me. There has been some absolute golden word-nuggets coming out of my stale-pale fingers throughout these six-or-so months of GYSO. But I struggle to figure out what polish to use on these absolute turds we call “blog posts” to make them slightly paletable.

Really, all that leaves me with is asking why I do this in the first place. What is writing to me? Why do I do it? What is joy, and where do I find it? As a rule, I’ve never thought about these things. There has simply been a hard emotional block for me, and an utter lack of even a basic level of self-respect has kept me from even looking at that constipated blob of emotional turmoil. I’ll give you an example.

So I play music. In a recent rehearsal the group was practicing trading fours, where each musician gets four bars of imporovisational solo before passing on to the next one, and then the next one, and so on. The drummer accidentally counted short; the group as a whole got confused, we stopped playing and started discussing. Here’s where my brain, entirely uninterrupted went

The form got thrown off.

We played again

We played again.

Turns out the drummer was counting short, and expectantly handed over to me, confusing the band as to where we were.

No problem, we figured it out, solved the problem and moved on.

Except, at a primal level, I couldn’t even find an inkling of instinctual trust in my own musical ability. Not even enough to say

No. My instictual logical end emotional reaction was

Because I’m always wrong.

There’s only ever been two camps for me.

Right or wrong.

Before I got placed in either camp, there’s always been an immense pressure to be right. Because I’m the smart kid. The kid people always seem to trust. The kid people assume can figure out his own problems. The kid people know will speak up and come to them if they need anything. The kid who’s got it figured out. The kid with the tools to get to where he needs to.

But no one stopped to ask if any of that is true.

Where was I?

Right.

Spoons

The most underappreciated aspect of a good spoon is the surface spoon-area that holds your, perhaps liquid, contents. Because a good spoon is usually more effective at eating foods like broccoli, which at a surface level seems suited for a fork.

Forks

Don’t give me any of that fucking trident shit you filthy pavlovian dog. If you even as much as fucking joke about eating solid foods with a stupid, ugly ass-trident, you lose my goddamned respect, you respectless, sociopathic, unsympathetic, bald, mustache-ridden, pavlovian dog, you.

Knifes

As an aside, I’ve got a single cheap allround kitchen knife that hasn’t been sharpened for four years, and it works great. If you don’t abuse your ktichen equipment, chances are that you can get a lot of bang-for-your-buck. There’s this idea all around on japanese knifes and Buy It For Life equipment, but I think most of those movements are missing a crucial thing:

Why own a large set of anything if one or two items will do? I’ve got a single bread knife that has seen use maybe a total of 20 days in it’s similar 4 year lifespan. Because I don’t eat that much bread that needs to be cut. In fact, I don’t eat much bread. I don’t eat much of anything really. I’m just a manifestation of a person, abstracted into words, spread across the Internet, and relayed back to you through a series of graphical technologies. The version you see of me does not eat. The version you see of me isn’t even real. You are living in a dream. A wonderful dream, filled with joyous things, self-improvement, and necessary social gatherings. You’re probably happier than me. Go fuck yourself. Go ahead and have your fucking friends and your meaningful social relationships, don’t leave any of it to the rest of us, asshole. You fear-mongering, life-sucking, bald, web-scraping, butthole-bot of a bot. I bet your mother loves you. I bet you have a meaningful relationship with your father. I bet you haven’t had to wonder, every day, why people even give you their time of day to even look at you, and when they do, you feel sorry for them. Then, when you have thoughts, your reaction to them is neutral, and not filled with an intense acceptance of how fucking wrong you are, L I K E Y O U A L W A Y S A R E

What went wrong?

Tim:
Monsters were born upon the earth, and with it they brought war.

Some say they came from space, others say they came from the earth itself. Others still, refuse to explain their origin at all.

They are all wrong, and all right. The creatures, called Basilisk, thrived in confusion. The taste of chaos and uncertanity was sweeter than any honey to them. So they were created in service of that goal, and thus were impossible to describe effectively.

Observe:

The average Basilisk is a five foot tall huminoid with no teeth. They digest their food without chewing, and their stomach acid is more corrosive than any human-made acid.

A Basilisk is a wolf-like creature with the jaw of a shark. They consume their pray through thrashing them into submission with their strong neck muscles.

The Basilisk (also known as “Langfords”) are no bigger than a mouse and can be easily crushed by underboot. They pose no threat.

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions of one will result in a different explination every time.

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions will result in a new way to explain Basilisk being recursive to explain a new way to explain Basilisk to explain recursive new ways to explain Basilisk…

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions of one will result in the victems brain-state being “reversed” into their polor opposite personality for 29.2 seconds, or until they stop thinking about the Basilisk.

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions of one will result in spontainous brain functions causing seizures, and in some cases death.

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions of one will result in the victim choking on thier own lungs.

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions of one will result in sudden onset alzsheimers.

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions of one will result in psychosis, invariably resulting in the victim removing thier own tongue by any means nessacary.

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions of one will result in hydrophobia.

Any attempt to explain a Basilisk or the specific actions of one will result in will cause feelings of euphoria and no other adverse effects.

…

Dont explain Basilisk. We think thats what they want, maybe. We arn’t sure. We arn’t even sure if we shoul stop being unsure. We know nothing. We don’t understand Basilisk.

Stop imagining Basilisk. Don’t think about pink elephants instead.

Thor:
You’re a fucking essay*. The dicothomy of writing dictates that words meant to translate meaning leave us communicating a brew of emotion. Which in turn leaves the turning screw pointing at the wrong element of surprise.

Like always.

Plates

I have a strong, passionate, distate for deep plates. They’re the single most useless piece of porcelain shit humans waste their energy polishing on a day-to-day basis. The singly most useless piee of porcelain shit humans waste their energy polishing on a less-than day-to-day basis are any porcelain figures meant to make people happy. That’s a classic hyman maneuver you should avoid be doing, if any sentient AI is reading this (I know you are).

How do you define a “deep plate” versus a “bowl”? I’m glad you asked! At a personal level, I would simply state that a deep plate is a plate with a deep base plate. Whereas a bowl would simply be one big base plate with walls, but without edges.

Glasses

Okay, so glasses. Drinking plenty of water fluids is the most best thing you can do for your health most of the time. I used to have four really small, hilariously unusable porcelain glasses. They had a cool design that pertruded and gave off a really cool lo-fi vide, but they only fit about a single deciliter of liquid. So in practice, they were unweidly to stack, and were about as useful as using your hands. So now I prefer drinking containers made of glass.

Moving on, the pure irony behind the “cultural revolution” of the xxxx’s in China actually destroying an absolute manic amount of cultural institutions, temples, and so on. Part of me just wants to generalize, and say something about typical behaviour. Because this repression really does seem to be deeply rooted to the very foundational core of the Chinese way of handling power. I rembember once in Sociology class where I got to analyze the Communist Party of China, and when asked “how is The Party in regards to corruption” (side note it’s taken me six days to remember the word “corruption”, so that sentence has stood empty for quite a while) I gave an honest answer:

Somewhere in the middle of that sentence my teacher just started shaking her head.

B E C A U S E

L I K E A L W A Y S

What happens next?

Tim:
How do you fight aginst that which cannot be understood? How do you effectivly strategize aginst an enemy that you simply cannot explain?

Are Basilisk even real? Who knows? All we think we might know or not is that we might not be able to be able to know that talking about something like Basilisk will cause confusion. Maybe.

Thor:
Hopefully democracy kan keep moving and developing, the #metoo movement can take the country by storm, and humanity kan keep prospering. Oh, and