Here you will find the stockpile of the social media associated with the Creature's Cookbook experiment. You can scroll through it, or simply use the search feature to find posts by keyword.
Everyone wants to talk about Harringdon and all that balderdash, about “Johns” and where they think this originated. I can tell you where. Well, partially.
Let’s spin time back a bit. Well, a large bit. For centuries, sewage and waste was indeed a problem. Humans found a way to cope, and as usual, it was a stupid way. They dumped their refuse into moving water, thinking it would be carried away! Yes. And then downriver, or back up onto the coast during high tide, only to besludge the shoreline during low. People would toss pots out windows, into gutters, and all that filth would just slowly slurp down whatever godforsaken hill, until it ended up in the laps of those who had to live on the bottom. And heaven forbid if you had to relieve yourself away from the pot. There were no public toilets! How could there be? We had the most basic of plumbing.
Enter the industrious human piss pot.
You think I’m joking. Sadly no. There were men or women, carrying utilitarian buckets, some with leather sacks around them drawn with strings. Some had gloves, nosegays, and other helpful paraphernalia for assisting you through the process. They wore large cloaks, and for a farthing, you could settle in, concealed by their curtain, and let it go. For that farthing, you could walk away from your refuse and let the “jake” deal with it.
In those days, “Jake” was like “John” but had a uniquely derogatory bent to it. It was like saying “That jerk”. You could say it to someone’s face, because it had binary meaning as a simple name to give a stranger. It all depended on the tone of voice, and so a man with a bucket was a “Hullo, Jake, here’s a farthing” to his face. But to your mates, he was a “filthy jake”. A modern parallel might be “Bubba” or “Tom Dick and Harry” And yes, this carried through, even to the Victorian, when it was largely replaced with “Jack”.
Enter the “modern” era, and by that, I mean the Early Modern, the 1600′s, when public toilets were constructed on bridges over the river or bankside at crossings. The human toilets diminished, but they didn’t vanish entirely. However, the public pots were still commonly called “Jake’s house”.
Most of you know that London is a city on a river. To be truthful, it’s a city twixt rivers. Or tributaries, or waterways. Whatever you want to call them. Jake’s house was everywhere. A Frenchman wandering through London could get mighty confused, wondering who this Jaques person was, that he had so many houses. Which only added to the use of the word, because that was a time in which the English were not overly fond of the French.
So if your name is Jake…I do apologize to you, but whenever I hear the name…All I can think to do is toss you a penny and shit in a bucket.
Example: “Give me a moment to visit with Jake, would you?” or “I need to knock on Jake’s door.”
If anyone wants me to discontinue this series, please do let me know. I cannot tell if it has gotten out of hand or if people enjoy it.
Interesting. You see, i don’t think I’d hesitate to dream if possible. I can’t see how the threat of possible temporary fear is dissuasive.
It’s like eating things you don’t like, You can spit it out, or just swallow it. You don’t need to avoid it. It’s temporary. Temporary suffering is meaningless and trivial.
idk how common it is, but i can and often do feel intense physical pain in dreams, so that’s a pretty dissuasive thing for me personally. though a lot of the time it’s not necessarily fear of pain so much as it is “i’m not a fan of this situation anymore, i’d rather be awake.” i once woke myself up from a dream just because i didn’t want to have to answer an awkward question.
our minds also work a lot differently during dreams? we’re a lot less capable of complex thought and at the same time that i manage to understand i’m in a dream, it still feels VERY real. the decision to wake up feels more like i’m about to transport from one dimension to another, rather than just… shifting my attention from the stuff my brain is making up to the waking world. like my consciousness has physically travelled somewhere else – somewhere i have even less control than i do here.
but then, i also actually DO avoid eating anything that i don’t already know i like. bad tastes in my mouth, no matter how brief, are one of the worst experiences possible for me. most of us have a limited amount of time to live, simon! i want to enjoy as much of it as i can!
Surely you can simply say to your brain, again and again, if I feel any pain I will know I am dreaming and wake up?
Can you not condition yourself to do that? Is that not something humans can do?
the thing is, i kind of DO do that, but it’s kind of like how people will mess up something they’re otherwise very good at while under pressure.
say there’s a monster coming for me in a dream (usually something very large, like a dinosaur). if/when it gets me, i will almost surely feel some very real pain. the closer it gets, my fear and anxiety mounts. and thus the more difficult it gets for me to wake myself up because i simply can’t put all my mental effort in one place as easily.
i’ve waited until the last second to wake myself up a couple times before, and had a bad headache both during and afterward.
also, i know the level to which i can do this isn’t common at all. and if anyone can condition themselves quite like that, i’m not sure how they’d train themselves to differentiate from dream pain and real-life pain. though with me it’s almost always like needles in my spine, and once it gets to that point, i can’t possibly focus enough to wake myself.
Everyone wants to talk about Harringdon and all that balderdash, about “Johns” and where they think this originated. I can tell you where. Well, partially.
Let’s spin time back a bit. Well, a large bit. For centuries, sewage and waste was indeed a problem. Humans found a way to cope, and as usual, it was a stupid way. They dumped their refuse into moving water, thinking it would be carried away! Yes. And then downriver, or back up onto the coast during high tide, only to besludge the shoreline during low. People would toss pots out windows, into gutters, and all that filth would just slowly slurp down whatever godforsaken hill, until it ended up in the laps of those who had to live on the bottom. And heaven forbid if you had to relieve yourself away from the pot. There were no public toilets! How could there be? We had the most basic of plumbing.
Enter the industrious human piss pot.
You think I’m joking. Sadly no. There were men or women, carrying utilitarian buckets, some with leather sacks around them drawn with strings. Some had gloves, nosegays, and other helpful paraphernalia for assisting you through the process. They wore large cloaks, and for a farthing, you could settle in, concealed by their curtain, and let it go. For that farthing, you could walk away from your refuse and let the “jake” deal with it.
In those days, “Jake” was like “John” but had a uniquely derogatory bent to it. It was like saying “That jerk”. You could say it to someone’s face, because it had binary meaning as a simple name to give a stranger. It all depended on the tone of voice, and so a man with a bucket was a “Hullo, Jake, here’s a farthing” to his face. But to your mates, he was a “filthy jake”. A modern parallel might be “Bubba” or “Tom Dick and Harry” And yes, this carried through, even to the Victorian, when it was largely replaced with “Jack”.
Enter the “modern” era, and by that, I mean the Early Modern, the 1600′s, when public toilets were constructed on bridges over the river or bankside at crossings. The human toilets diminished, but they didn’t vanish entirely. However, the public pots were still commonly called “Jake’s house”.
Most of you know that London is a city on a river. To be truthful, it’s a city twixt rivers. Or tributaries, or waterways. Whatever you want to call them. Jake’s house was everywhere. A Frenchman wandering through London could get mighty confused, wondering who this Jaques person was, that he had so many houses. Which only added to the use of the word, because that was a time in which the English were not overly fond of the French.
So if your name is Jake…I do apologize to you, but whenever I hear the name…All I can think to do is toss you a penny and shit in a bucket.
Example: “Give me a moment to visit with Jake, would you?” or “I need to knock on Jake’s door.”
Interesting. You see, i don’t think I’d hesitate to dream if possible. I can’t see how the threat of possible temporary fear is dissuasive.
It’s like eating things you don’t like, You can spit it out, or just swallow it. You don’t need to avoid it. It’s temporary. Temporary suffering is meaningless and trivial.
idk how common it is, but i can and often do feel intense physical pain in dreams, so that’s a pretty dissuasive thing for me personally. though a lot of the time it’s not necessarily fear of pain so much as it is “i’m not a fan of this situation anymore, i’d rather be awake.” i once woke myself up from a dream just because i didn’t want to have to answer an awkward question.
our minds also work a lot differently during dreams? we’re a lot less capable of complex thought and at the same time that i manage to understand i’m in a dream, it still feels VERY real. the decision to wake up feels more like i’m about to transport from one dimension to another, rather than just… shifting my attention from the stuff my brain is making up to the waking world. like my consciousness has physically travelled somewhere else – somewhere i have even less control than i do here.
but then, i also actually DO avoid eating anything that i don’t already know i like. bad tastes in my mouth, no matter how brief, are one of the worst experiences possible for me. most of us have a limited amount of time to live, simon! i want to enjoy as much of it as i can!
Surely you can simply say to your brain, again and again, if I feel any pain I will know I am dreaming and wake up?
Can you not condition yourself to do that? Is that not something humans can do?
the thing is, i kind of DO do that, but it’s kind of like how people will mess up something they’re otherwise very good at while under pressure.
say there’s a monster coming for me in a dream (usually something very large, like a dinosaur). if/when it gets me, i will almost surely feel some very real pain. the closer it gets, my fear and anxiety mounts. and thus the more difficult it gets for me to wake myself up because i simply can’t put all my mental effort in one place as easily.
i’ve waited until the last second to wake myself up a couple times before, and had a bad headache both during and afterward.
also, i know the level to which i can do this isn’t common at all. and if anyone can condition themselves quite like that, i’m not sure how they’d train themselves to differentiate from dream pain and real-life pain. though with me it’s almost always like needles in my spine, and once it gets to that point, i can’t possibly focus enough to wake myself.
Everyone wants to talk about Harringdon and all that balderdash, about “Johns” and where they think this originated. I can tell you where. Well, partially.
Let’s spin time back a bit. Well, a large bit. For centuries, sewage and waste was indeed a problem. Humans found a way to cope, and as usual, it was a stupid way. They dumped their refuse into moving water, thinking it would be carried away! Yes. And then downriver, or back up onto the coast during high tide, only to besludge the shoreline during low. People would toss pots out windows, into gutters, and all that filth would just slowly slurp down whatever godforsaken hill, until it ended up in the laps of those who had to live on the bottom. And heaven forbid if you had to relieve yourself away from the pot. There were no public toilets! How could there be? We had the most basic of plumbing.
Enter the industrious human piss pot.
You think I’m joking. Sadly no. There were men or women, carrying utilitarian buckets, some with leather sacks around them drawn with strings. Some had gloves, nosegays, and other helpful paraphernalia for assisting you through the process. They wore large cloaks, and for a farthing, you could settle in, concealed by their curtain, and let it go. For that farthing, you could walk away from your refuse and let the “jake” deal with it.
In those days, “Jake” was like “John” but had a uniquely derogatory bent to it. It was like saying “That jerk”. You could say it to someone’s face, because it had binary meaning as a simple name to give a stranger. It all depended on the tone of voice, and so a man with a bucket was a “Hullo, Jake, here’s a farthing” to his face. But to your mates, he was a “filthy jake”. A modern parallel might be “Bubba” or “Tom Dick and Harry” And yes, this carried through, even to the Victorian, when it was largely replaced with “Jack”.
Enter the “modern” era, and by that, I mean the Early Modern, the 1600′s, when public toilets were constructed on bridges over the river or bankside at crossings. The human toilets diminished, but they didn’t vanish entirely. However, the public pots were still commonly called “Jake’s house”.
Most of you know that London is a city on a river. To be truthful, it’s a city twixt rivers. Or tributaries, or waterways. Whatever you want to call them. Jake’s house was everywhere. A Frenchman wandering through London could get mighty confused, wondering who this Jaques person was, that he had so many houses. Which only added to the use of the word, because that was a time in which the English were not overly fond of the French.
So if your name is Jake…I do apologize to you, but whenever I hear the name…All I can think to do is toss you a penny and shit in a bucket.
Example: “Give me a moment to visit with Jake, would you?” or “I need to knock on Jake’s door.”
Simon's Tumblr Dump 