With the whole "Markiplier making his own DVD copies of Iron Lung to sell" thing, it's been fascinating and slightly concerning how many people seem to genuinely believe that if a physical release isn't coming from a giant corporation, it must automatically be a bootleg.
Look at me.
Look me directly in the eyes while I say this.
You can just make things.
You can simply create something and put it into the world.
That's allowed.
People have been doing it for centuries.
They sell blank VHS tapes. They sell blank DVDs. Blank CDs. You can buy flash drives by the bucketful if you really want to. If you create a movie, an album, a game, a documentary, or a four-hour video essay about the mating habits of fictional space goblins, you are entirely permitted to put that thing on physical media and sell it.
That is not piracy.
Piracy is taking something that belongs to someone else and reproducing or distributing it without permission.
If I buy a DVD of a movie, I own that copy of the movie. I do not own the movie itself. I didn't acquire the rights to duplicate it, press a thousand copies, and start selling them out of my garage like I've become the regional distributor for Warner Bros.
The copyright, distribution rights, and intellectual property still belong to whoever created it or whoever legally acquired those rights.
If I start burning copies of Iron Lung and selling them myself without Markiplier's permission, that's piracy.
If Markiplier, who made and owns the rights to Iron Lung, burns copies and sells them himself, that's just distribution.
He's the rights holder.
He's distributing his own work.
If you made it, if it came from your own mind, your own work, your own time, your own resources, then congratulations. You own the thing. You don't need a corporation to bless it with legitimacy.
The corporation is not what makes it real.
The fact that it exists is what makes it real.
I think we've accidentally spent so many years living inside a world dominated by mass-produced media that some people have developed the strange assumption that all media emerges from a factory somewhere. As if films naturally occur in shrink-wrapped plastic cases and descend from the heavens aboard a pallet truck.
But independent artists have been burning discs, dubbing tapes, printing books, pressing records, and mailing things directly to people for longer than many of us have been alive.
[looking at people younger than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at people older than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at myself] its over
Look, it’s a weird hill to die on, especially when I don’t really explain, but children deserve to experience fear, disgust, and discomfort in safe scenarios where they can process those sensations.
Media for children used to be scary and that’s important.
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
― C.S. Lewis
sometimes i get home from an event with my family and i just have to sit in my car for a second & read that one sarah schulman quote on familial homophobia
Muppet Movies ☆Cover-Art☆ Showcase: VHS vs. DVD (pt. 1)
I have always been fascinated by varients. Today, I'd like to show off some Muppet movie cover-art!
This is not a comphrensive list/post. Only some items I have in my personal collection.
Muppet Treasure Island
The first thing we see here is the absence of Tim Curry (a tragedy) and Jim Hawkins (that's fine). I wish more art stuck with the "illustration" look, but I don't hate this.
The Muppet Movie
See what I mean? The cover on the left is gorgeous, full of color, character, and charm. Both characters looking directly into the camera. It has a little pizazz.
The cover on the right? Isolated character screen grabs. Amateur photoshop. Practically lifeless. Gonzo would never sign off on this.
Need I say more?
The Muppets Take Manhattan
Once I got over the beauty of this illustration, what actually struck me the most is how not a single one of the guest stars shown prominently on the VHS cover is on the DVD cover. Times really did change, didn't they...?
i also like the muppets :D whats your favourite piece of memorabilia you have.
That's a hard one!
Maybe Jim Henson's autograph or my sealed copy of Christmas Carol on VHS (includes coupon!)
I'm also quite pleased with my in-package Baby Piggy from the first run of Muppet Babies McDonald's toys- you could get her or Baby Kermit for the "Under 3" toy, but I haven't seen him in the wild yet.
SNES/N64/PS2 is my biggest wheelhouse. I'm currently challenging myself to beat Adventure Two on Diddy Kong Racing after never having succeeded as a kid. Earthbound also really needs a replay. A cart actually came up at the game place near me last year, but I didn't have $300 to blow on it 😭
The very first direct-to-video feature film in the franchise, released September 27th, 1994. It was never released on DVD except in certain European territories, and split across "The Very Best of The Muppets" DVDs volumes 2 and 3 as a bonus feature! Allegedly, Volume 2 contains the first half of the film unedited, but Volume 3 splits the second half into three episodes with their own opening and closing cards leading to continuity errors! Man I'd love to get my hands on those babies!
Fun fact: The most underrated joke in the history of Muppets may be "A-HA! Got you now, Mr. RALPH LAUREN !"
I feel like the modern generation is simply not familiar with how *weird* The Super Mario Brothers Super Show was
Sure, most people are basically familiar with the cartoon segments. They called Bowser King Koopa, Peach had red hair, yadda yadda. But the live action sections really deserve more attention from people who didn't grow up with them.
Some highlights:
Mario and Luigi live in a Full House/Drake and Josh style soundstage made to look like a shitty Brooklyn apartment. Here are some shots of it. Santa Claus is not relevant.
Chess-playing Sewer Critters live beneath the floor, and that's Obi-Wan Cannoli.
Speaking of which, sometimes we can afford guest stars:
Sometimes we get whatever is going on here:
And may I remind you this is NOT the same cartoon that had to cut Milli-Vanilli and once referred to Bowser's castle as his "coney-island disco palace". That would be Super Mario World, which was its own beast. It also has no relation to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which reveals the full names of both brothers are Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. Lore was the wild west back in the day.
The Wildwood Jimsonweed: Was a "classic country song" really about a surprisingly common and deadly hallucinogenic plant?
"The name of this song is the Wildwood Flower
Now the Wildwood Flower is an old country classic
It's gained a whole new popularity
The song isn't any more popular
But the flower's doin' real good"
Hear me out-
In 1974, country-western singer Jim Stafford recorded and released his version of the song “The Wildwood Weed”, written by Don Bowman, which is the version most people are familiar with. An otherwise forgettable tune, the song tells the story of two brothers living on a farm together, who discover the titular plant. Hallucinogenic hillbilly hijinks and puritanical panic quickly ensue as they find the plant to have some potent recreational properties.
For obvious reasons, many assumed the song to be about marijuana, to the point that some radio stations declined to play it. However, did you know that not only is there a real plant capable of producing the effects the song describes, it's also incredibly dangerous, sometimes causing fatal poisoning, and it may very well be in your yard?
Dangerous Plants for 500, Alex - What is “Jimsonweed”?
Datura stramonium, colloquially known as jimsonweed, is a flower and/or weed (I never gave it much thought) and one of eight known species of datura. The other seven varieties are different in both looks and levels of lethality, but this isn't about them.
D. Stramonium is native to North America and grows in all warm and temperate climates. You can find it anywhere from Texas to California. It can be eaten or smoked to achieve hallucinogenic effects- as well as fever, blurred vision, psychosis, arrhythmia, delirium, trouble urinating, respiratory depression, and moderate-to-severe death.
What's that? Blurred vision? Let's take a closer look at the lyrics of the song.
One day I was out there talkin' to my brother
And I reached down for a weed to chew on
Things got fuzzy and things got blurry
And then everything was gone
… So Says Mr. Stafford. Coincidence? We think not. Let's go a bit deeper. Here's an example from the beginning of the song:
The wildwood flower grew out on the farm
And we never knowed what it was called
Some said it was a flower and some said it was a weed
I didn't give it much thought
Jimsonweed and it's more than likely inbred cousins are, on the outside, a pleasant and innocuous-looking plant that could easily be described as a flower or a weed by the average Glass Joe who is not well-versed in planteology, such as ourselves, which is why we are going to miss The Planty Raid. It's a leafy plant that produces trumpet-shaped flowers that are creamy white to violet in color, and at night-time they open up and emit a pleasant fragrance, sometimes being fed upon by nocturnal moths, who we can only assume are high as balls.
[...]
I come to, and my brother was there and he said,
"What's wrong with your eyes?"
We've already mentioned that use of the plant causes blurred vision, and can be both smoked or ingested straight, versus good old Mary Jane which has to be heated or cooked in some fashion before it does anyone any good.
We continue:
“I don't know, I was chewin' on a weed"
He said, "Let me give it a try"
We spent the rest of that day and most of that night
Tryin' to find my brother Bill
Caught up with him about six o'clock the next mornin'
Naked, singing on the windmill
He said he flew up there
I had to fly up and get him down
He was about half crazy
Use of jimsonweed is known to cause bizarre behavior. Despite what Reefer Madness may tell you, MJ does not typically cause people to do things like this.
Big 'ole puff of that wildwood weed
And the next thing you know
You're just wand'ring 'round behind the little animals
While the overall tone of the song is a pleasant one, and the singer states that they begin to smoke the plant on a daily basis, seeing no apparent harm regardless of naked windmill shenanigans and regarding the plant as harmless, it appears some feel differently.
One day this feller from Washington come by
And spied 'em and turned white as a sheet
And he dug and he burned
And he burned and he dug
And he killed all our cute little weeds
Datura has a distinctive appearance that could easily be spied by one not otherwise looking for it. One assumes by the severity of his reaction that this gentleman is familiar with the flower's reputation re: sickness and death. While the singer and his brother don't appear to suffer the worst of it, it could be assumed they weren't ingesting enough to cause negative effects. Or they had Redneck Vitality.
Indeed, abuse or use of jimsonweed seems to be far more associated with negative side-effects than positive ones, even if it does beat the hell out of sniffin’ burlap (someone who has done both, get back to us on this). In 1993 for instance, multiple youths suffered serious symptoms including seizures and coma from drinking tea they brewed from the leaves of the plant.
Even accidental ingestion can be harmful. In 2022, some 200 people in Australia became ill after eating spinach that had been accidentally contaminated with baby datura leaves.
And while it's true the flower can be found basically anywhere, songwriter Don Bowman was born in Texas and enjoyed work and radio play in Branson, Missouri. Why is this relevant? Sadly in lieu of a source, we can only draw on my own experience and ask for your support: If you, like me, hail from the southern United States or have southern family members, you were warned TO NEVER TOUCH THE JIMSONWEED. It's a flower that makes you go BLIND, man! It happened to ma's cousin Dale! Seriously, did you guys know it was a real plant? I thought it was an old wife's tale- discovery that it isn't prompted the birth of this essay.
For all of these reasons, I posit that The Wildwood Weed, was in fact inspired by not Marijuana, as many assumed to this day, but in fact by infamous redneck legend of old: Datura stramonium, or jimsonweed.
There's no source, paper, or interview I could find to lend more credit to this, but information on the song is pretty scarce. However, in my research I also find, or didn't find, another thing: Despite what your gram may tell you, there is also no record of the writer or singer saying what the song is or is not about. They didn't say it was a made-up plant (as some claim), they didn't say it was about marijuana (as others claim), and they didn't say it -wasn't- about marijauna (as most claim). In fact, they don't appear to have said much about it all.
And why would they? It's just a song, and everyone knows not to touch jimsonweed, if they even know it's real.
The Link to the Past Tie-In Comic is a Mess I Cannot Wait to Re-read: (Mild Spoilers)
For those not in the know, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past had a tie-in comic first published in Nintendo Power, written by one Shotaro Ishinomori.
And I gotta tell you, it has -everything-.
Charming yet inconsistent art:
Items and characters that never appear anywhere else in the game or series but are still of major plot importance:
Who the heck is this guy? Well that's Roam, the spotlight-stealing tragic warrior.
And who could forget the classic Zelda item, the Comfork:
[Transcript: *silly voice* "Thank you, Link! Because of you I can escape this crystal prison! Now here is something that will help you- The Comfork!
*pause* The Comfork!
*angry* COMFOOOOOOORK-!!!"]
It sure seems to like tying people up with tentacles and vines:
Fun fact: I forgot to take pictures of the tentacles and vines when I borrowed the book from the library back in 2022, so I had to search : "link to the past comic tentacles".
For god's sake, the nasty things almost got Epheremelda!
You guys remember Epheremelda, right?
Now despite everything you're seeing, I don't actually remember this as being -bad-, per se. It definitely has that nostalgic, hokey charm of the bygone era where cartoons and comics were still learning what to do with adapting these new-fangled video games. Why, it almost makes me want to say: Well excuuuuuuuuuuse me, princess!
I'd really love to buy a copy at some point, both to do a longer form post comparing differences from the game, and to see if I'm right that it still has some entertainment value.
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