My boyfriend is trying to explain cricket to me again. “He’s only got two balls to make 48 runs”, he says. The camera focuses on a man. Underneath him it says LEFT ARM FAST MEDIUM. A ball flies into the stands and presumably fractures someone’s skull. “There’s a free six”, my boyfriend says. 348 SIXES says the screen. A child in the audience waves a sign referencing Weet-Bix
The first time he showed me this I assumed he was pranking me
if people haven’t been exposed to cricket before, here is the experience. The person who likes cricket turns on a radio with an air of happy expectation. “We’ll just catch up with the cricket,” they say.
An elderly British man with an accent - you can picture exactly what he looks like and what he is wearing, somehow, and you know that he will explain the important concept of Yorkshire to you at length if you make eye contact - is saying “And w’ four snickets t’ wicket, Umbleby dives under the covers and romps home for a sticky bicket.”
There is a deep and satisfied silence. Weather happens over the radio. This lasts for three minutes.
A gentle young gentleman with an Indian accent, whose perfect and beautiful clear voice makes him sound like a poet sipping from a cup of honeyed drink always, says mildly “Of course we cannot forget that when Pakistan last had the biscuit under the covers, they were thrown out of bed. In 1957, I believe.”
You mouth “what the fucking fuck.”
A morally ambiguous villain from a superhero movie says off-microphone, “Crumbs everywhere.”
Apparently continuing a previous conversation, the villain asks, “Do seagulls eat tacos?”
“I’m sure someone will tell us eventually,” the poet says. His voice is so beautiful that it should be familiar; he should be the only announcer on the radio, the only reader of audiobooks.
The villain says with sudden interest, “Oh, a leg over straight and under the covers, Peterson and Singh are rumping along with a straight fine leg and good pumping action. Thanks to his powerful thighs, Peterson is an excellent legspinner, apart from being rude on Twitter.”
The man from Yorkshire roars potently, like a bull seeing another bull. There might be words in his roar, but otherwise it is primal and sizzling.
“That isn’t straight,” the poet says. “It’s silly.”
“What the fucking fuck,” you say out loud at this point.
“Shh,” says the person who likes cricket. They listen, tensely. Something in the distance makes a very small “thwack,” like a baby dropping an egg.
“Was that a doosra or a googly?” the villain asks.
“IT’S A WRONG ‘UN,” roars the Yorkshireman in his wrath. A powerful insult has been offered. They begin to scuffle.
“With that double doozy, Crumpet is baffled for three turns, Agarwal is deep in the biscuit tin and Padgett has gone to the shops undercover,” the poet says quickly, to cover the action while his companions are busy. The villain is being throttled, in a friendly companionable way.
An intern apparently brings a message scrawled on a scrap of paper like a courier sprinting across a battlefield. “Reddy has rolled a nat 20,” the poet says with barely contained excitement. “Australia is both a continent and an island. But we’re running out of time!”
“Is that true?” You ask suddenly.
“Shh!” Says the person who likes cricket. “It’s a test match.”
“About Australia.”
“We won’t know THAT until the third DAY.”
A distant “pock” noise. The sound of thirty people saying “tsk,” sorrowfully.
“And the baby’s dropped the egg. Four legs over or we’re done for, as long as it doesn’t rain.”
The villain might be dead? You begin to find yourself emotionally invested.
There are mild distant cheers. “Oh, and with twelve sticky wickets t’ over and t’ seagull’s exploded,” the man from the North says as if all of his dreams have come true. “What a beautiful day.” Your person who likes cricket relaxes. It is tea break.
The villain, apparently alive, describes the best hat in the audience as “like a funnel made of dove-colored net, but backwards, with flies trapped in it.”
This is every bit as good as that time in Australia in 1975, they all agree, drinking their tea and eating home-made cakes sent in by the fans. The poet comments favorably on the icing and sugar-preserved violets. The Yorkshire man discourses on the nature of sponge. The villain clatters his cup too hard on his saucer. To cover his embarrassment, the poet begins scrolling through Twitter on his phone, reading aloud the best memes in his enchanting milky voice. Then, with joy, he reads an @ from an ornithologist at the University of Reading: seagulls do eat tacos! A reference is cited; the poet reads it aloud. Everyone cheers.
You are honestly - against your will - kind of into it! but also: weirdly enraged.
“Was that … it?” you ask, deeming it safe to interrupt.
“No,” says the person who likes cricket, “This is second tea break on the first day. We won’t know where we really are until lunch tomorrow.”
And - because you cannot stop them - you have to accept this; if cricket teaches you anything, it is this gentle and radical acceptance.
Worst part about this is I’ve only ever used that yellow square emoji once and it was just to see how it looked. This isn’t who I am. However, in retrospect, I suppose it is
I found out that Diners were originally inspired by train Dining Cars. some of the oldest ones were actually just old dining cars they put on the street
like one of the really interesting things that people are awfully quiet about is that……over the last thirty years, an enormous amount of progress has been made towards the goals of companion animal welfare movements
there are many areas of the country where demand for adoptable rescue dogs outstrips supply, where competition is legitimately fierce to get your hands on one of these dogs
spay/neuter campaigns have been enormously effective among many demographics, to the point where people get very upset about the idea of a dog having gonads at all
81% of all animals that entered animal shelters in 2022 were saved. only 8.6% were euthanized “needlessly” (no definition provided for what that means). [x]
really, the forefront of animal welfare at this point is human welfare.
most often, animals are being surrendered to animal shelters for human reasons that have little to do with the animals themselves. 31% of owner surrenders are driven by housing issues, health issues, financial issues, or the death of the caretaker (see linked source above)
if you really care about pet homelessness and animal welfare, at some point you have to stop being an outrage-addicted, self-righteous keyboard warrior and start actually caring about other people
looked up the x files spin-off bc i was curious why i’d never heard of it and why it’s apparently not available to watch anywhere (especially given how huge x files is) and. this is crazy
no wonder they wiped this show off the face of the earth
Tumblr is thinking of implementing an algorithm instead of the current following feed to ‘help smaller creators get in front of people’ and I’m like that’s what putting tags on your posts is for?
I’ve curated my following feed over YEARS and I don’t want it all of a sudden junked up with shit I’m not interested in because of some fucking algorithm. If smaller creators want to be seen, then they should put stuff in the tags. Putting random people’s shit all over my feed is not going to make me want to engage with it.
The reason why so many people like this website is because you are in control of tailoring your experience on here. But what that requires is some work— you can’t just come on here and expect it to be immediately altered to you personally. That being said, an algorithm that just throws shit at you that it thinks you’ll like is not the answer. At the end of the day it’s going to actually make it harder for people to tailor their experience on here, which will make the site worse.
whatever man
