There’s no big story here, just something I wanted to make. The original design is taken from a 1968 book titled I See the Earth!, which I originally learned about from Dreams of Space – Books and Ephemera. Highly recommended if you’re into vintage space stuff or retro futurism.
Yes, I know that’s not exactly what he said.
Second, for those who don’t know. I first posted this image back in January 2016…
…and it’s with that in mind that I just want to say to President Biden:
Seriously, it’s nice to have you aboard. Hopefully it’s not too late.
PS — Biden makes a distinction between “MAGA Republicans” and I guess “Regular Republicans.” There is no difference. A Regular Republican is just a MAGA Republican who has enough shame to keep their ignorant mouth shut at family get-togethers.
PPS — God bless the Dropkick Murphys
Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys goes on an epic rant against MAGA grifters with no lies detected and the Boston accent is the chefs kiss pic.twitter.com/jrFUFu3K67
— Wu-Tang Is For The Children (@WUTangKids) September 3, 2022
Inspired by a re-read of G. Willow Wilson’s (art by Adrian Alphona) Ms. Marvel run. I had completely forgotten about Loki showing up and leaving behind the Lightning Golems, let alone the random kids showing up in full hazmat gear for no apparent reason.
A process note, if anyone cares — I modeled and rendered the characters in Maya, but couldn’t come up with an environment I liked. So, I pulled a render into Procreate, redid the line work and then used RetroSupply Co’s ColorLab to create the distressed halftone look. Click the image for a larger version that shows the halftone better.
Back in Junior High, 9th grade to be specific, a handful of boys started making blow dart guns out of Bic pens. These were pretty much what you might think — pens with the guts taken out, and a pin with some kind of tail on it. I have a distinct memory of kids shooting each other in the back of the neck with these things in Mrs. Hester’s English class.
Now if you’re thinking, “That sounds stupid and dangerous,” you’re right! Welcome to the Land of Teenage Boys.
The good news is, the kids at school got busted before someone lost an eye. Once teachers clued in to what was going on, they acted quickly. First, they arranged for a set of pins to be distributed from Home Ec, and we all spent a class period stripping apart our pens and crafting darts. Second, they made a rule where everyone had to bring at least two textbooks for unrelated subjects to each class. We would then stand these up on our desks to create walls we could hide behind. Third, we were all required to purchase safety goggles, which we were expected to wear at all times. And finally, everyone was encouraged to wear turtlenecks or at least high-neck collars of some kind. Fortunately, this was the age of Polos with popped collars, so there was a nice confluence of safety and fash—
NO THEY DIDN’T THEY TOOK THE BLOW DARTS AWAY FROM ANYONE WHO HAD THEM AND GAVE THE KIDS DETENTION WHY IS THIS SO HARD
That ghoulish dance [censored] performed at the NRA makes a lot more sense when you put it in the context of the God they worship.
First, these people have lost their damn minds. And by “these people” I mean everyone associated with the GOP. Case in point:
Florida’s vicious attack on transgender children
Thank God for people like Ian and Mallory:
Rep. @IanMack03007724 spoke for our entire caucus last night:
— Missouri House Democratic Caucus (@MOLegDems) April 14, 2022
We are not afraid to stand for trans children and the families who love and support them. And we will ALWAYS stand against bigotry, no matter what form it takes. #moleg pic.twitter.com/wXywo5v4Xz
Senator Lana Theis accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an attempt to marginalize me for standing up against her marginalizing the LGBTQ community…in a fundraising email, for herself.
— Mallory McMorrow (@MalloryMcMorrow) April 19, 2022
Hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I won't. pic.twitter.com/jL5GU42bTv
This is why I’m posting, though:
really not seeing nearly enough outrage from cis people about FL banning social transition for trans minors
— Gabe (he/him) (@thegabecole) April 22, 2022
So…yeah. This is Yet Another Goddamn Moment in what seems to be a never ending series of Goddamn Moments lately where “conservatives” lose their mind over some made-up menace, let their bigot flag fly, and engage in hateful rhetoric and lawmaking that’s going to get people hurt. As Harry Vanderspiegle would say:
So repeat after me:
Trans women are women.
Trans men are men.
Trans people are people, goddamnit.
This is another piece of flash fiction from Writer’s Digest Feb Challenge— day 18: time. I scrawled it in a notebook while waiting for an eye appointment, and just now came across it again. It kind of stops abruptly, due to my being called away for the exam, but I think it still works as is.
“Go! Go! Go! Everybody move!” Captain Bofin waved his squad into the waiting shuttle, giving each soldier a gentle push, not that they needed one. As the last of his unit clambered aboard, he mashed the hatch button and raced to his own jump seat. Restraints fastened, he nodded to the pilot. “Punch it.”
The pilot turned to her controls, firing the shuttle’s thrusters and pulling back the yoke. Overloaded, the frame shuddered as the craft struggled to get off the ground. “Come on, baby, you can do it,” she cooed. As if it understood, the landing claw released and the ship began to rise.
A series of warning lights began flashing red. “Not now,” muttered the co-pilot. He reached under his console and yanked out a handful of wires. The warning lights went dark.
“What the hell did you just do?” barked Sandy.
“Bought us some time, I hope.” Tevya tossed the wires over his shoulder. “Thirty more seconds and safety protocols would have kicked in.”
Sandy gave a curt nod, understanding. The ship had taken a lot of punishment in the forty-seven minutes since landfall. No wonder they were getting systems warnings, but there would be time for diagnostics later. Right now they had maybe ninety seconds to clear atmosphere before that…thing caught up with them.
“Uh, commander?”
Make that sixty seconds. “Shit. How does something that big move so fast?” She began to flip a series of switches on the panel overhead.
Alarmed, Tevya demanded, “What are you doing?”
Sandy grinned. “Buying us some time.” She raised the cover on a big red button and jammed her thumb into it.
The ship lurched skyward, rapidly picking up speed. Behind and now underneath them, a large chunk of the ship fell away.
“You know you could get court-martialed for that, right? Hyperdrives are restricted technology, and you just left one where—“ Tevya stopped short as Sandy raised a finger indicating, just wait.
The beast that had been unleashed on them swallowed the fallen engine whole, and a heartbeat later it exploded in a technicolor spray of flesh, bone, and volatile fuel.
“There, see?” Sandy grinned from ear to ear. “What hyperdrive?”
“Yeah well, we’re still going to have to explain why we need pick up. Unless you have some other way to get to the fleet?”
Sandy dismissed his concerns with a casual wave. “It’s going to take a good thirty-six hours before anyone gets here. That’s plenty of time to come up with a good story.” Indicating the console Tevya had lobotomised, she continued, “In the meantime, you might want to put that back together. I’m pretty sure you disabled access to the head.”
Some time after I posted about movies we watched in 2021, I got a year-end recap from Letterboxd. Surprise! Their recap includes a bunch of different stats, including release year, directors, languages, etc. One of these stats is country, and USA was on top by…a lot. There’s nothing wrong with that, and given that I am ‘merican & all, not a real surprise.
Still.
Ever since I’ve been able to, I’ve enjoyed watching international films. Back in college and especially grad school, I was a regular at film screenings of all types. However, without really meaning to, I’ve more recently stopped going to art house and foreign films. Chalk it up to no longer living in a college town, I guess.
So seeing that bar chart with USA towering over every other country like Shaq in Munchkinland was kind of a wake-up call. This called for a resolution to make a conscious effort to watch more global cinema. We’re making up the rules as we go, but we’re trying to evenly distribute our viewing across the continents (excepting Antarctica, though we’re committed to at least watching The Thing), and within those trying to hit as many different countries as we can. So far, we’re doing pretty well. We’ve hit every continent twice, with only North America lagging behind, but only because we’re not counting films from the USA.
Even though we’re only in March, we’re already finding there’s a trick to finding what films to watch. Services don’t tend to list their offerings by country, even less by continent, so I’ve spent a lot of time browsing trying to track down eligible films. BUT! I hit upon a promising strategy this weekend. Rather than just blindly search by country or continent, if you search Letterboxd and set the results to show “Lists,” nearly every country you punch in has at least one curated list of films made in or about the country. Yes!
Of course, the next trick is going to be tracking some of these films down, since not everything is available on streaming services we subscribe to. My guess is at some point we’ll need to hit our local (or university) library, but that’s a problem for another day.
If you want to follow along, my Letterboxd diary should be public. Don’t look for reviews or ratings, though. I’m marking stuff I liked, but that’s about it for now. I’ll leave more detailed thoughts to others.