Potatoes!, Friday, Second Period

[carbsliftthespirit]

The class had been asked to meet Raiden at Portalocity for this week's class. "Okay, guys," Raiden told them, "Today, we're going to visit where potatoes got their start: Peru. Potatoes have been farmed in Peru since the fifth millennium BCE, and have been cultivated in step terraces, or andens, designed to get maximum growing space on the steep slopes of the Andes, since the third millennium BCE. Some of the terraces in Peru that are still in use today were built over five hundred years ago, which is pretty impressive for human landscape architecture.

"The Inca civilization of Peru also developed incredible diversity in their potatoes, far more than we see in grocery stores today, even if you do sometimes get something fun like a purple potato, because they grew potatoes from seed, not from the eyes like most modern American farmers do. This resulted in all sorts of different flavors and textures that could be used in all sorts of different ways. When you don't have a lot of variety of ingredients to work with, increase the variety of what you have, right? And the potato's so versatile to start with! Those Inca were really smart," Raiden mused.

"Today, we're headed to the ruins of Machu Picchu. The citadel itself is worth a look, but be sure to pay attention to the terraces and think about what they'd be like full of potatoes. Let's go!"

So You're New To The Multiverse....; Friday, First Period [02/07].

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer was looking a little overly tired today, clinging to a cup of coffee as she had everyone meet her at portalocity this morning for class. She had firmly decided that she needed to include Thursdays as a black-out day for being on call for monster fighting in other dimensions, because yesterday's battle in REF-123 against basically a giant Hutt made out of pizza had gone on way longer than it should, and the only thing that eventually broke the guy down was her and a few other Summer getting high and...

....you know what? She did not want to talk about it. Or see another pizza again for as long as she lived.

(Lies, this anti-pizza rhetoric would last literally until the next time she was high, so, you know, probably tomorrow).

Thankfully, she already had a good copy-pasta easy class in her pocket for exactly this sort of situation. They were having a movie day, and a movie day in this class meant taking the class to what seemed like any average movie theater on a quaint little small city street with an ice cream shop just a few doors down that will become relevant in a few moments.

"Okay, guys," she said, once they were in the theater and could avail themselves to snacks before going inside to find a seat, "here's the thing. Sometimes, the real f'ed up thing is that there are some pretty awesome things in the multiverse that exist in other dimensions but not others, and some of the fun of other dimensions is discovering these things that are slightly different from your dimension, which we've talked about a little already, but much, much better. Take, for example, Ball Fondlers--not what it sounds like! In this dimension, as well as several others, Ball Fondlers is a TV show that has nothing to do with fondling balls and everything to do with action-packed adventure, explosions, and bad-ass protagonists. It's about a ragtag team of unique personalities who go on covert missions for the army, usually in tropical jungle settings, and they fight a lot of people and it's all action, no-holds barred fun, and Fulgora is kind of a personal hero of mine, you'll see what I mean. Anyway, Ball Fondlers only exists in some dimensions, and there's only a few of those where they actually expanded it out into a full movie franchise, a Ball Fondlers extended universe, so to speak, but lucky for you all, I've been to one of those dimensions so I know that this beautiful thing exists, and now I'm going to share it with you.

"Now," she added, "the interesting thing about this particular dimension is that, while we were here this one time, a complicated series of events that we will not go into lead to giant spiders invading the planet." She held out a hand as if to already placate Jon assuming he was there, feeling strangely like they'd done all this before despite knowing full well that they had. "Don't worry, they worked it out and came to a peace agreement and honestly they're very uninvolved in the daily life here, but, as part of the peace treaty, all ice cream in this dimension now also has flies in it. So after the movie, we're heading over to the ice cream parlor to see it for yourself. You don't have to try the fly ice cream, but if you're brave enough, I actually highly recommend it, you'd be surprised how well it works, and, of course, you can always eat around it, but it's always important to keep in mind how the little things can sometimes make all the difference, you know?"

Cupcake Wars (Yes, Again), Friday 2/7, 3rd period

[stykera]

“Stewart, your cupcake won again last week. In spite of everything. Now let's never speak of it again,” Stark said.

That cupcake had been a monstrosity worthy of Summer Smith.

“This week we'll be making…red cupcakes. In honor of the upcoming holiday.” And maybe somebody's awesome new ferret suit? Pink was too obvious, sorry.

“I've got red fruits, red sprinkles, red sanding sugar, red candies, some red juices…” There were beets, too. And so much food coloring.

“So…make something red and edible please?”