cooking show but the judge is just a random kid with autism related food issues. no one can figure out what criteria they use to judge "good food" from "bad food" least of all the judge themself.
starts off as a cooking show and devolves into a heartfelt comedy of errors as all these professional top chefs use their decades of training & skill to try to help this one kid eat a balanced diet
by the end of the season the chefs have combined their knowledge to more-or-less figure out how to consistently make food that the judge is willing to eat. at which point we start over with a whole new season and a new judge with all new food issues!
spin-off series where there is an entire panel of judges consisting specifically of one large family whose members have multiple dietary restrictions. the contestants must planning a week's worth of dinners that account for everyone's needs, using commonly available ingredients on a normal household budget. they are not allowed to repeat meals
I think one thing I really didn't get when I was like 20 is that "small talk" is often a way for people to hint at the bigger deeper things that are going on with them without overloading someone. like it can be an invitation and a chance to test the waters before launching into things that it may or may not be the appropriate time/place/person to talk about those things with.
like when someone asks "how are you," you don't have to respond with "good," but it also isn't necessarily a good context to go straight to "I keep flipping my shit at people I love because I can't regulate my emotions and I'm afraid of them dying or abandoning me," plus if someone isn't used to broaching that kind of topic at the beginning of an interaction it gives them a chance to develop the kind of comfortability to be able to talk about that stuff. some people will reach that point sooner than others, whether it's over 10 minutes or multiple years.
also, I've realized that it's a shame to dismiss talking about things besides our deepest troubles as being meaningless. human connection is meaningful even if it is just about the weather or how our family or our favorite sports team is doing, and knowing how someone feels about these supposedly surface topics tells us a lot about eachother that can be applied to topics you may consider more personal or impactful, and forming that foundation with someone is absolutely not something to be pushed aside as trivial.
Small talk is social calibration. You calibrate a system before you use it for intense or precise work.
whenever anyone smugly says “I hate small talk. Tell me Deep Things about yourself when I first meet you” I am instantly suspicious of them. What gives you the right to demand that of me? And assume I want to hear your deep thoughts on things?
No. You get small talk. I don’t know you.
And honestly there is nothing wrong with small talk. It’s a connection you both share. The weather? You both experienced last week’s storm, wasn’t that a doozy. How are you? Tired, my baby is teething. Oh yeah, I’ve been there. A small connection in a divided world isn’t a bad thing my dudes
my ex gf showed me for the first time that a woman can choose not to shave and it can be totally fine and normal. she encouraged me to stop shaving. and then when MY hair grew in dark and coarse unlike her baby fine blonde hair she started in with "well, it's different when it's THAT visible". so here's a reminder, that it doesn't matter if your body hair is blonde and fine or coarse and dark or anything in between, whatever you feel most comfortable doing with YOUR body hair is extremely valid and extremely sexy!
I will trust a thousand out-of-touch left-leaning southerners who don't know every piece of correct terminology before I trust one weird "feminist/LGBTQ+ ally" dude who couches his bigotry in pseudo-progressive language
60-year-old former hippie I met in Arkansas: I don't really know much about the whole deal, but I get it. I mean, you like ladies, and I like ladies, and some people like dudes. People should just leave fags and dykes alone, it's common sense.
Me: Hell yeah brother
Closet-reactionary liberal college student I met last year: Of course I love and respect the queer and trans community! However, one can argue that the early gay community's... casual attitude toward sex was a disastrous political and social mist--
Me: I'm going to throw you into traffic
i looked at queeringthemap today and had a good cry but these especially touched me
yeah.
