Aries: Force yourself to do the things you know you need to do.
Taurus: Life gets easier once you realize you dont have to be involved in everything. Let sleeping armed militants lie.
Gemini: Its meaningless if you cant remember it. Boring genius is just as worthless as boring trash.
Cancer: Ideas are refined like ore. You gotta do the work to dig it out of the ground though.
Leo: It never comes when you’re prepared. Nothing ever does.
Virgo: You are made of a thousand thousand little things. For every cell of you there are eight cells of something else. Keep them happy they are your guests.
Libra: Dont just seek more difficult challenges, seek different challenges. Look for things that show you the world in a slightly different way.
Scorpio: Oftentimes, just picking yourself up off the floor over and over again is exercise enough. Gravity is the best trainer.
Ophiuchus: Dont expect courtesy of the world. Just dont.
Sagittarius: You’ve lost a lot of time haven’t you? Don’t worry. Nobody ever has 100% of their time with them when they’re done.
Capricorn: Fat is chemically burned. Every time you gasp for breath you are billowing with the smoke of weakness.
Aquarius: Your only option is beef stew.
Pisces: You have to say words you cant just make noises and expect people to understand.
“I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles – and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.””
probably my fave thing about norse mythology is that nobody in scandinavia knew what mistletoe was so you end up with descriptions of it everywhere from some kind of tree to straight up a fucking magic sword
like mistletoe irl is this dweeb-ass parasitic motherfucker not entirely unlike somebody kicked a soccer ball into a tree, but it didnt grow in iceland or denmark and only grew in a few places in norway or sweden, but word on the street 1300 years ago was that misteltān down in england was pretty fucking magical n next thing you know it’s getting calqued to mistelteinn, and –teinn is only really used in sword names so it’s gotta be pretty badass right?
in denmark it becomes, understandably, a magic sword, and in iceland an oddly sword- or spear-shaped tree: “stóð um vaxinn, | vollom hæri, / miór oc mioc fagr | mistelteinn”, per voluspá.
anyway there’s no moral here i just think the idea of throwing mistletoe at somebody and them just……dropping dead for some gd reason is fucking hilarious, so @snorri i hate you with a passion but thanks for this
i just realized neither of those sources are english nor in fact in living languages, sorry im like this. here’s gesta danorum iii in english, it describes höðr using a magic sword that allows him to strike down the demigod baldr. and the old norse reads “stood full-grown, | high above the plain, / slender and very beautiful | was the mistletoe”, which… in no way, shape, or form is an accurate description of mistletoe. höðr proceeds to throw the whole fucking plant at baldr’s head and that just….kills him…….apparently………
Are…are you telling me…the legendary sword Mysteltainn…is just “the mistletoe sword (whatever the hell mistletoe is)”???
pervasive doubt 