The New Toaster Era

All Hail Bagel Mode

Welcome to the Belville Baguette

Hello and welcome to the latest iteration of my newsletter. I tried this once before and then I got Discouraged and deleted it. I deleted a lot of things that I considered the “hanging chads” of my internet life, like my Soundcloud, for instance, before realizing that I actually like having these things around, and that the actual issue is that sometimes I get depressed and feel like none of this is worth it. Then later on I feel better and I look back and think, “Why did I delete my Soundcloud?! Silly man.”

Anyway, welcome. I hope you stick around. This newsletter is to update you about my life, offer any insights I happen to have on, say, toasters (more on this later), talk about Dungeons & Dragons, or movies, or my cat Jowers. I hope at least one thing will be of interest to you. Think of it like a zine, but attached to a large corporate entity known as Substack! Hooray!

My plan is to update whenever I feel like. Hopefully once a month, maybe more, maybe less? But I promise I won’t delete the whole damn thing Substack has a podcast option now too, so maybe I’ll do that? Question mark?

Oh and in case you aren’t familiar with my style: this newsletter is NSFW. I promise not to post any dongs or anything, but … well you’ll read on and see what I mean.

It’s Halloween, Dudes

Before we really begin, let’s reflect on the fact that it’s Halloween. It’s Halloween! The ghosts and ghouls have risen from their graves and are dancing and twirling about. Dracula pops a fang into a blood-flavored Capri-Sun. A mummy leaves the restroom with a square of toilet paper stuck in their wrappings, but no one notices. A werewolf is … just a person because it’s not a full moon, god, it’s never a full moon! Whennnn will it be a full moon again I just wanna be a werewooolfff come on mannn.

I dressed up for my Twitch stream last night: I was a Beholder? I don’t even remember what the original name of the costume was; I think it literally just said “Monster.” I bought it for $10 at Target. It’s clearly made for a woman. It said “One size fits most” on top, which for me immediately means it won’t fit me. But it fit well enough. They also had a “lion mask” option which was a whole like cowl situation but I didn’t buy it because I assumed it wouldn’t fit my head.

Tonight the plan is to watch the first two Halloween movies. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been watching scary movie franchises. First was Friday the 13th, and then I just wrapped up Nightmare on Elm Street on Friday. Both were … not great, but Elm Street is objectively better. Well next up is the Halloween series. It just feels like it will be much better. The first of these movies generally is the best anyway, so we’ll see.

I enjoy Halloween, mostly for the decorations. I love how, as a holiday, it can be either very scary, or very silly, or sometimes a mix of both. I love Halloween decorations, I love how for a few weeks a year people are just like, “Here’s a goddamn skeleton in my yard, I don’t know.” It’s great. I don’t really like dressing up myself, but I like seeing people’s costumes. It’s a fun holiday. I hope you have had or are going to have a great Halloween!

New Years Resolutions

It’s October, which is the perfect time to think up some New Years Resolutions, right? I wasn’t going to do any resolutions until I read on Twitter about how someone is going to give up buying new stuff in 2022 and I thought, “Hey, that’s a great idea, I think I can do that.”

I’ve narrowed it down to five reasonable resolutions that I think I could do over the course of a year. The first two I’m going to be focused the most on, but here they all are in no particular order:

1. Buy Nothing New. With the exception of groceries and absolute necessities (like medication and stuff). I really don’t think this one will be that difficult. The most troublesome part of it is that it’s easy to get stuff quickly from Amazon, or just head over to Target or whatever. Now if I need a new pair of pants I’ll have to wade through the used pants section of Goodwill, which is a pain in the ass. Oh well. Looks like I’ll be hitting up Goodwill a lot in 2022.

2. Use Less Plastic. I haven’t started this yet but I did weigh all of the plastic I threw away or recycled last week, just to get a sense of how much I used. Total, I used 483 grams, which is about 17 ounces or 1 pound. However, for four of the seven days I used roughly 40g, so I’m hoping 30-50g will be my average per day. This means I will have to clean out my tupperware when it gets gross and moldy inside, instead of just throwing it away.

3. Move Every Day. Five minutes, an hour. Moving is important! Humans weren’t meant to be stationary.

4. Eat Less. Honestly I just eat too much food. I’m going to try to keep to portion sizes and not concern myself too much with calorie counts and such. I know what’s good for me and what’s not. Let’s just keep it simple. Fist size of meat, thumb size of chocolate or whatever. Don’t think about it too much.

5. Watch More Movies. I just gotta watch more movies, in the theater if possible! I’m gonna shoot for at least one movie a week.

The New Toaster Era

I bought a new toaster. My old toaster oven kept catching on fire, which, when you think about it, is kind of bad. Definitely wasn’t on the list of features.

This new toaster is an upright one, meaning I can no longer reheat frozen burritos in it, unless I want to . It does have a “reheat” feature, which I am taking to mean for toaster strudels and not, say, a slab of ham.

It is a good toaster. It is a fine toaster. All Hail the New Toaster. I just need you all to know that I got a new toaster. I know it’s a very mundane thing but it’s important. It’s important that I tell you. Because what is my life if you don’t know what things I own? A shell, a masquerade, a falsehood—that’s what. I have a new toaster.

I have a new toaster.

Floor Stuff

You ever drop something on the floor and then when you go to pick it up, you drop it again?

Isn’t that second drop just infuriating? The first drop’s just an accident, but the second time you’re like “What in the actual fuck, am I having a stroke or something, these are perfectly good fingers meant to dexterously pick up items from the ground—hell, this is all my ape ancestors did one million years ago and they hung from branches and never wiped their asses. And yet I can’t get my goddamn keys off the linoleum floor the first time? Give me a break, what is the point of being the most intelligent creature on the entire Earth if I can’t get my fucking keys off the fucking floor.”

Drop something a third time trying to pick it up the second time? It’s too late now, might as well just leave it on the ground. It’s not your car anymore, whoever finds those keys and is able to pick them up is the King Arthur of your 2002 Ford Focus.

Etymology of the Verb “To Nut”

I’m fascinated by the term “to nut,” particularly that it seems to be a continual contraction of a larger phrase, “to bust a nut.” Why did we drop the “bust” part? Read on, dear … readers, fuck, note to self: edit this part to make it sound better before you send this.

First off, testicles look like nuts. Apparently this connection came about in the early 20th century; probably some humor columnist in the New York Times made the connection, and erudite readers passed this profound knowledge down to their butlers and stableboys, who laughed with glee.

Specifically, testicles kind of look like walnut shells. (Source: my opinion.)

Then, ejaculating was termed “to bust a nut” somewhere around the 1930s. What the hell people were doing in the 1930s that put this phrase into existence we’ll never know. But it meant then what it means now. It gained popularity through Black culture, namely Blaxploitation porn films as well as hip hop music.¹

At some point after the rise of the term in general, the idea of “busting” the nut faded away, an elision that created the verb “to nut,” which refers to ejaculating. The earliest entry on Urban Dictionary for this particular turn of phrase is from 2002, but the Online Slang Dictionary (which I just discovered) has someone submit the term in 1998.² So it’s been around for awhile, and a great post on Reddit seems to have tracked down early 90s references as well. Again, it is a phrase coined in the Black community, which white people then co-opted for their own use, much like … everything else.

Anyway, that’s how a noun turned into a verb. Thank you.

I Made A D&D Monster

Mad that there aren’t enough elemental creatures in the D&D 5th edition Monster Manual(s)? Here’s a thing I made up, along with a terrible drawring!

The Kilcoaln

A beautiful artists rendition of the kilcoaln.

Kilcoaln (pron. KILL-kolln)
large beast/elemental, unaligned
Armor Class 20 (natural armor)
Hit Points 75 (10d10 + 20)
Speed 30ft
STR +5 | DEX +2 | CON +5 | INT -2 | WIS +0 | CHA -3

Damage Resistances bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks Damage Immunities fire
Senses darkvision 120ft, passive Perception 16
Languages —
Challenge 4 (1,100 XP)
Proficiency Bonus +2

Heat Aura. Creatures who start their turn within 5ft of the kilcoaln take 3 (2d6) fire damage.

Actions

Multiattack. The kilcoaln can make two slam attacks.

Slam. Melee attack, +7, 5ft, one target. 10 (2d10+5) bludgeoning damage. Can sacrifice second attack to push target back 10ft.

Bite. Melee attack, +7, 5ft, one target. 9 (2d8+5) piercing, 14 (4d6) fire.

Fire Breath (recharge 5-6). 15ft cone. Creatures within the cone must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or take 21 (6d6) fire damage.

Information

Kilcoaln, also known as ashbreeders, are fire elemental beasts native to the Plane of Fire. At first glance they appear to be large, pseudo-quadripedal creatures, anywhere from 5-8ft tall and about 15-20ft long. They walk not unlike a gorilla, usually on four legs but sometimes on two. Their forelimbs are longer than their hindlimbs, giving them a sloped look. Their forelimbs bend slightly at the elbow (but not enough for significant mobility) and end in stumps with a rocky-esque texture. Their hindlimbs also bend, moreso than the forelimbs, but inward, like a bird’s legs, and end with similar rocky-textured stumps. Their exterior skin resembles petrified wood or bark, often gray to pitch black in color.

What makes a kilcoaln unique is its enormous mouth in its torso, and its two large bulbous white eyes perched in front of it, sitting in slight basins in the skin. Its eyes are always wide open, giving them a strange, constant surprised look. Instead of blinking, their eyes sink into the upper torso of the creature, which they do maybe once an hour or so. They can also swivel in nearly any direction.

Kilcoaln eat by breathing fire out of their torso mouths onto organic objects, until those objects become nothing but blackened carbon. They then eat this carbon by licking it up with their broad, spiny tongues, which often creates a “polished” look to wherever they have foraged. Later, the waste is excreted all over their exterior as an ashy substance which hardens and becomes their skin. Over time, kilcoaln develop incredibly dense, thick skin, and dying of old age for them means being unable to move, eventually "solidifying" in one spot and starving to death.

Because of their eating habits, kilcoaln are omnivores, and more often scavengers, as natural flora on the Plane of Fire is rare. In fact, they were primarily known as carnivores until they were taken to other planes, where it was discovered that they'll just eat anything that's been turned into carbon. Kilcoaln ranchers usually have a trough of charcoal for feeding their flock. They don't need to eat a lot to survive, and can even enter dormant states if they haven't had food for more than a couple of weeks. After that, hungry kilcoaln can attempt to kill a creature for sustenance, and their large, oaken-like forelimbs are perfect for crushing their prey. They are very strong and hardy and surprisingly fast.

Kilcoaln are social creatures, tending to meander in herds of a couple dozen, leaving a wake of blackened, charred and polished earth behind them. "Ashbreeder stones" are sites where numerous kilcoaln have died, leaving their corpses behind—kilcoaln will often return to sites where their ancestors died to die themselves. They are slow moving when feeding and spend a lot of their time breathing fire on objects so they can eat them. Because of this, kilcoaln can sometimes become infested with fungi, which attach to their skin and grow outside them. In fact, the kilcoaln has no real predators, but they frequently succumb to fungi which have burrowed into their bodies like parasites. Kilcoaln who have died this way are used as smoking charcoal for meats and fish; the particular combination of fungus and smoke is considered a delicacy in certain areas.

Kilcoaln are also domesticated for use in forges in the Plane of Fire, as they are easy to train and can temper the heat of their fire to a surprising degree.

NaNoWriMo 2021

I’m doing NaNoWriMo yet again, starting tomorrow. Here is my profile if you’d like to be writing buddies. I don’t have a plan or an outline or anything, so this year should be fun! I think I’m going to try and write something “young adulty,” but we’ll see how long I can keep that up before I start cursing like a sailor.

Come Find Me

I’m on some social medias. Rather than relist them all here, just go to my Linktree!

https://linktr.ee/jcbelville

That’s All

Thanks for reading! If you have questions or comments or what have you, feel free to reply to this email or find me on Twitter or whatever! See you in November!

1. Please note that I am not a scholar on Black culture, I am literally reading this via dictionary.com, so if I’m wrong, it’s the dictionary’s fault.

2. This makes sense as Urban Dictionary started in 1999 and Online Slang Dictionary started in 1996.