Weekly Weird: May 21st-27th (Goths, Laffy Taffy, Towel Day, and Adult Animation )

May 21st

Today is International Tea Day, and I love tea. Personally I like flavored and herbal teas that are brewed weak but I don't add milk or sugar. And once the temperature drops, I'm usually drinking 3-7 cups of tea a day. The only of my friends that drinks as much tea as me is Joey, and to be honest with how often I'm over to hang out with Cal, as their housemate, I've been inevitably hanging out with him more too.

As for what exact teas I like, I enjoy fruit flavors but I don't like citrus very much. I like a good apple or berry flavored tea, whether from flavored tea leaves or dehydrated fruit in the tea bag. I'm also a big fan of chamomile, and in particular I had a good mango chamomile recently. It's probably going to be a bit warm when this gets published so I might not be drinking tea as much, but I'll definitely go out of my way for a cup.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: What kind of Georgian considers hot weather to be a reason to drink LESS tea? Sweet tea runs in my family’s blood.]

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May 22nd

Today is World Goth Day, A holiday dedicated to a beloved subculture. Modern goth aesthetics can be traced back to post-punk, with bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, and Joy Division. Taking its name and base aesthetics from gothic literature, Goth is categorized by dark, elaborate outfits and makeup, and melancholy and macabre music.

While I'm not much of a music person outside of a few bands, I do have to admit I'm deeply enamored by the influence goth aesthetics has on modern animation. Like you pick any show from the 2000's and there's probably at least one character that fits the bill. That being said, nowadays there's a lot of sub forms of goth, and you shouldn't be surprised that cybergoth is my favorite and I would probably at least buy some rave pants if I had the money.

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May 23rd

Today is National Taffy Day. Now while I love a good salt water taffy, I want to talk about Laffy Taffy, because I'm far more familiar with it and they have some rare flavors I find quite interesting. While the regular flavors for Laffy Taffy are Strawberry, Grape, Apple, and Banana, with Cherry, watermelon, Sweetarts and Blue Raspberry being slightly less common.

Among limited edition flavors, there are some intriguing flavors, but some are more like variations. Chocolate is probably the most common rare flavored, but it has a variation in hot chocolate. Apple has Apple Crisp, Raspberry to Lemon Raspberry, Strawberry to Strawberries and Cream. Rare fruit flavors also include Orange, Coconut, Guava and Pineapple. There's also Pumpkin Donut, Fruit Punch and Vanilla flavors. And none of these flavors are currently in production.

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May 24th

Today is International Tiara Day, for when you need to be a princess. A tiara is pretty much a half crown, and is made of all the things crowns usually are, so precious metals, plastic, or paper. Despite typically being half crowns, they often have a bit more glitz.

Ok I'm going to do the diary thing again. I am on the last leg of the writing ahead marathon. Like I'm literally on article 99 out of 100. And I know it's going to feel weird to stop doing them and slowly watch everything come out over 6 months. I'll probably start putting my energy towards the Valentines comic that is hopefully already out by the time that gets published. If it's not up already I'll probably remove the valentines theming and this will be the main evidence that it was planned for a holiday. Only time will tell.

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May 25th

Today is Towel Day, so 42. Jokes aside, this is a holiday celebrating the classic sci-fi comedy novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". There's few books that will rewire your brain like "Hitchhiker's" will, and I can say having read it at age 14 definitely made me rethink a few things I had previously thought about the abstract and absurd. And now I'm like this.

Written by Douglas Adams, the series started as a radio comedy, but Adams wanted to tell the story a few different times in a few different mediums, including a Television show and a text based video game, both in the 80's. I'm most familiar with the original book, but I really should try that text game. I'm not very good at them, but there's worse ways to kill an hour.

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May 26th

Today is a grab bag day, and I have the wheel. I don't have a proper lead up for this, but here's four adult animation films I've watched and I would recommend. Viewer digression is advised.

1. It's such a beautiful day - Directed, solo animated, and voiced entirely by Don Hertzfeldt of "Rejected" fame, This is a character study of a man named Bill who is sick, dying, and losing his mind. The simple animation is a vessel for a soul crushingly bittersweet and deeply philosophical story about the beauty and horror of existence.

1. Heavy Metal - based on the classic adult comic magazine of the same name, this anthology film is a series of loosely connected shorts that adapt or reflect the contents of the original magazine. That being said this is the raunchiest film on this list, but its lowbrow execution doesn't stop it from being a solid thing to put on for movie night.

1. Loving Vincent - this film might be the perfect love letter to Vincent Van Gogh. This film investigates the famed artists death and the uncertainty of his suicide, and reaches the conclusion that what really killed Gogh was the ableism of a society waiting for him to die to glorify him. What really makes the film, however, is the entire film is rotoscoped to the style of Gogh's painting.

1. Rock and Rule- a masterpiece from the Canadian studio Nevada, this post-apocalyptic musical tells the story of a small-town band who is pulled into a plot by a declining rock star who plans to punish the public for moving past him by summoning a demon from hell and taking over the world. This is all in a dogface dystopia where rat people are living in an eternal 1970's. Despite being a box office bomb It's a really enjoyable film.

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May 27th

Today is the birthday of a movie about animals. Madagascar is another film from DreamWorks that got a ton of sequels and spin-offs, but to be honest, the main thing I retained from this movie is lemurs singing. Like, I know animals from a zoo end up in Madagascar and the ending, but to be honest, I remember this movie's video game better than I remember the movie.

Despite never having seen the film, I got Madagascar on the PlayStation 2 one Christmas and remember it being a difficult yet mostly competent minigame heavy platformer. I specifically remember really enjoying the zoo level and finding the penguin levels remarkably difficult. The games were developed by Toys for Bob, who are now known for the Skylanders series. I guess everyone starts somewhere.