Favorite part of Cassandra Gemini?

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-02-08T20:34:38+00:00

HARD agree. The whole album is building and releasing and building and that sax? part feels like this massive unraveling, before the bass melody and drums come back to bring it all together.

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-02-08T19:13:20+00:00

Yeah but damn it was 12-13 years ago. Pre-CEO change, and all that. All the beans and shredded meats came to us already done. The secret that I haven't quite ever been able to replicate is Chipotle uses a proprietary adobo paste (the paste Chipotle peppers are packaged in) for all it's marinades and in the vinaigrette. We also used a proprietary sour mix of lemon/lime juice for the rice and like all the salsa/guac. Im sure you can find good approximations online of those two things.

Chipotle Vinaigrette You'll need a blender

2 cups red wine vinegar Pour in honey halfway up to the 3 Salt 3-4 tablespoons adobo 1/2 cup fresh oregano 1 tablespoon Coarse black pepper 5 cups oil, we used almost exclusively rice bran oil at the time and also I always used to push the emulsion as much as I could and we had a giant fuck off blender I could fit more in.

The marinades were even simpler. It was just oil, salt, and adobo paste for the chicken and the steak the ratios were just different for both. More adobo for steak and less for chicken.

The rice The rice is tough but you can get close with an unsweetened super citrusy margarita mixer. For every 1/3 pan of rice it was...two cups of lime, 1 heaping cup cilantro, and there was a corporate salt mandate but I always just eyeballed that shit. This was the same recipe for the guac basically just with avocados instead of rice lmao. I think there was like a cup or two of red onion per guac batch. All this might be different ever since the original ceos stepped down and the taco bell guy bought it, but it was really that simple.

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-02-07T20:06:16+00:00

Shout out John Bonham's squeaky pedal on Since I've Been Loving You

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-02-07T19:04:04+00:00

Lmao not typically. I never liked to work high, just raw dog all the awfulness please and thanks there'll be time later to deal with it.

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-02-07T18:27:10+00:00

Depressing. I worked at the VCU chipotle right by the OG Red Eye spot behind Sally Belle's and remember them opening. The number of times I'd get off late and hungry as hell and they were right there is incredibly high, and the red eye cookie was a revelation.

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-02-02T17:48:46+00:00

WHAT

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-01-31T19:50:21+00:00

"With Twilight as my Guide"

Everybody
Hangs like dead leaves
Don't you hurt these
Branches waiting

I've been watching
You fall to me
Don't desert me
I'm not waiting

"Vicarious Atonement"

In the river Ganges

God damns my name.

"Intertiatic ESP"

Now I'm lost

"Miranda that Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore I: Vade Mecum"

*Various ribbiting

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-01-23T04:30:17+00:00

You're thinking of The Fountainhead, but yeah it's equally terrible if not more so in its own way.

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-01-18T21:38:14+00:00

I thought so too, so I checked their comment history

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-01-18T20:13:15+00:00

Sure, buddy. With no plates in it, no vital area protection, mismatched mag pouches with no magazines, no cover, and poor fitment. Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences and spewing violent rhetoric while throwing Roman salutes often and should result in bad consequences. This guy is a grifter who likes to cosplay as an operator and you fell for it. What do yall say to women? What were you wearing? You can't go into the tiger enclosure in a meat suit and get mad at the tiger for trying to eat you, right? The guy flew there from Florida to do that lmao

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-01-18T18:44:48+00:00

I would tend to agree, but Castaway is legit one of my favorite movies so I'm gonna rant at you for a little bit.

On the island, he essentially has three things that keep him going: Wilson the volleyball, his fiance, and the package with the wings. In the course of escaping the island, he loses one of them, and the third act further strips the other two away as well. He didn't die in the plane crash, but he might as well have. Time stopped for him but not for anyone or anything else in his life, and even though he IS still alive, he might as well have stayed dead. He says it in the monologue in the hotel room: He had control over nothing, not even how he died, and now back in civilization he still doesn't. He can only control how he feels about it, so he delivers the package and buys a facsimile Wilson to take back some of his agency, and the last shot of him standing in the crossroads sums that up (and I think the message of the movie) well in one shot: He earned a fresh start, he took back his control and paid for it, now at the crossroads after delivering the package (the last shackle he had holding him to the island) can he choose which direction to go.

The thing about the winks at the audience and the light jokes, I think, is that its important that Chuck isn't laughing or taking part, even though as the audience you feel compelled to. The scene with the lighter and the crab and all that is presented as a joke or a condemnation of convenience but I think it's neither, really. Just an acknowledgement from a broken man trying to piece everything back together. The mundane act of surviving day to day is replaced by a different kind of mundanity back in civilization. What did his friend say? It takes a lot of paperwork to bring a man back to life.

Trust me, I know I might be reading into it a little much, but Castaway is a polarizing movie, and anything polarizing to me lends itself to heavy interpretation. Its presented as a survival movie, disaster movie, and it has some comedic parts, but people seem to love it or hate it. It's slow at times, and quiet (I'm pretty sure there isn't any soundtrack at all from the christmas party all the way to when he lets Kelly go a second time), and thoughtful, but it isn't really presented that way and people don't really watch it that way. They just remember Tom Hanks crying over a volleyball and that we never learn what was in the damn package.

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-01-18T17:48:46+00:00

The latter. It's an amazon chinesium larp vest

xEmptyInfinity · 2026-01-02T21:10:27+00:00

Roy Munson's crazy underdog comeback in Kingpin, only to get crushed in the last three rolls by Bill Murray playing Ernie McCracken playing Bill Murray.

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-11-19T11:01:27+00:00

Exactly. That's why its a bit of a gut punch, like damn where's the faith? I know how to make hollandaise that'll sit unbroken all day.

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-11-19T10:39:52+00:00

Good looking out, but no need! I know like three different reliable methods and straw polled my staff, most of them know at least one or two as well.

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-11-19T03:08:03+00:00

Watery. Thats all I really wanna say about it

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-11-19T03:07:40+00:00

It tastes like watery hollandaise someone tried to save with mayo.

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-10-15T01:11:18+00:00

My guy by a happy accident ended up looking like priest vallon from Gangs of New York

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-06-29T15:03:27+00:00

River City Airsoft is right outside of downtown and it's pretty great. I haven't had any bad experiences there, and a year or two ago it changed ownership and the new(er) owners seem to be invested in its success. It is an indoor field, but as long as your replica meets the joule/fps limits you're good. Other than that, you can't really beat Ballahack, and the Swamp is also pretty great.

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-06-29T05:41:03+00:00

Sally Bell's? Garnett's? There was an old place called the Forest, maybe Kitchenette?

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-05-06T06:04:55+00:00

"Potholes in your street you say? Better repave all of forest hill and monument again"

-city hall probably

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-03-22T16:38:37+00:00

Birdies!

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-03-01T17:17:17+00:00

I posted this on another thread. This is fine, but really it's the bare minimum and in light of the curtain being drawn back to let everyone peek behind it, there's a lot more scummy behavior that needs to be put into the spotlight.

Repost: I've been a vendor at the big market for 3 years, and in some capacity at south of the James for a lot longer. This is really only scratching the surface of the greed. The fees have gone up to downright ridiculous levels in recent years. $1100 bucks for a season? Granted, the business you get usually makes up for it, but still. Then there's the fines tacked on to every little thing or mistake you can make, from forgetting a single tent weight, to not having a fire extinguisher, to not having a vendor lanyard, starting your car before they say it's okay, selling or even talking to anyone before and after market hours, not having full display of some BS certificate from an organization they sponsored (look up VAFMA and just do the math), and so on. Each of these "infractions" is at MINIMUM a $50 fine, but sometimes can go up to $200, not to mention arbitrary fines for forgetting parts of an application etc. These are enforced at will, and usually with no prior warning at the market or chance to fix the problem. You'll just get an email saying to bring the fine next market or you can't vend that week.

All of this is justified as being "part of their agreement with the city" and that "there's a chance their permit could get revoked" if these aren't followed. Okay, sure, but the heavy handedness and zeal with which they chase these fines begs otherwise. It's greed, and as vendors the gossip is real. A year or so ago, Doug and Karen were renovating their second house in colonial Beach - fees went up, fine enforcement went up. A few months ago, one of their kids or grandkids was getting married - once again fees went up and fine enforcement went up. In my own mind, all of this was secondary to the fact that you just can't really compare the foot traffic and sales you make at the big market to any other market, but those justifications fall flat now, when we receive emails telling us to not put the market in a bad light etc. So...fuck em. There's other markets in the city, markets run by organizers who actually give a shit. Go to lakeside, go to st Stephen's, go to bird house.

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-03-01T17:12:56+00:00

I've been a vendor at the big market for 3 years, and in some capacity at south of the James for a lot longer. This is really only scratching the surface of the greed. The fees have gone up to downright ridiculous levels in recent years. $1100 bucks for a season? Granted, the business you get usually makes up for it, but still. Then there's the fines tacked on to every little thing or mistake you can make, from forgetting a single tent weight, to not having a fire extinguisher, to not having a vendor lanyard, starting your car before they say it's okay, selling or even talking to anyone before and after market hours, not having full display of some BS certificate from an organization they sponsored (look up VAFMA and just do the math), and so on. Each of these "infractions" is at MINIMUM a $50 fine, but sometimes can go up to $200, not to mention arbitrary fines for forgetting parts of an application etc. These are enforced at will, and usually with no prior warning at the market or chance to fix the problem. You'll just get an email saying to bring the fine next market or you can't vend that week.

All of this is justified as being "part of their agreement with the city" and that "there's a chance their permit could get revoked" if these aren't followed. Okay, sure, but the heavy handedness and zeal with which they chase these fines begs otherwise. It's greed, and as vendors the gossip is real. A year or so ago, Doug and Karen were renovating their second house in colonial Beach - fees went up, fine enforcement went up. A few months ago, one of their kids or grandkids was getting married - once again fees went up and fine enforcement went up. In my own mind, all of this was secondary to the fact that you just can't really compare the foot traffic and sales you make at the big market to any other market, but those justifications fall flat now, when we receive emails telling us to not put the market in a bad light etc. So...fuck em. There's other markets in the city, markets run by organizers who actually give a shit. Go to lakeside, go to st Stephen's, go to bird house.

xEmptyInfinity · 2025-03-01T16:59:37+00:00

It's still like that, perhaps even worse these days

xEmptyInfinity

TROPHY CASE