The Mona Lisa of Dumpster Fires

Cis, bi, white, middle-aged woman. I blog things that I think are interesting. Lots of Benedict Cumberbatch, which I try to tag, so it can be avoided; Doctor Who, Sherlolly...

[deanspillowprincess]

For as much as they tell you about Stop Drop and Roll as a kid, I really expected to be on fire more times in my life.

[gay-jesus-probably]

All jokes aside, the real reason kids get drilled on ‘stop drop and roll’ so aggressively is because it needs to be a reflex. Sure, getting set on fire is unlikely, but if DOES happen, you will be terrified and in a lot of pain, and you’ll need to handle it FAST. The default response your brain will have to that is the standard monkey brain instinctive reaction to being terrified and in pain - get the fuck away from the danger. Which is the worst possible response to being on fire, because panicking and trying to run will just fan the flames and make it much worse. But if you’ve had ‘stop drop and roll’ beaten into your head a thousand times all your life, there’s a good chance that in that initial moment of ‘oh fuck I’m on fire’, instead of panicking, your brain will jump straight to the trained response of ‘hit the ground and smother the flames’.

And the fact that it’s NOT a common threat is why we need to drill it so hard in the first place - instictive reactions to pain/danger are usually the correct response! It’s survival instincts! Like, if you get a bad cut, your first reaction will be to slap a hand on it and keeo it there, because ‘apply pressure to bleeding wound’ is the correct response! But being set on fire just doesn’t happen enough to be a serious concern as a species, so the instinctive reaction to that happening will actually cause horrific burns and/or death, because we don’t really need a naturally programmed in response for such a rare problem.

But it does still happen sometimes, and the correct reaction is very simple, so basically programming kids to stop drop and roll if on fire is easy, harmless, and probably saves a fair amount of lives.

[deadgenerations]

I really hate that for some reason the narrative became that women fought to join the workforce rather than women fought to have the same jobs for the same pay as men instead of being relegated to labour considered to be lesser and explicitly disallowed from many roles and professions. fuck off and die.

[iconuk01]

It doesn't get much more 80's bubblegum pop than this, from the 1982 first season of the TV spin off of the movie "Fame", the adventures of a first year class of students at the New York High School for the Performing Arts, as singers, dancers, actors and musicians (and, importantly, no one was good at ALL of them, as this clip perhaps demonstrates) come together to find out who they are and what they will become.

Here composer and musician Bruno (Lee Curreri, an actual musician, and one of only two performers to actually play instruments on their albums, the other being Lori Singer (yes THE Lori Singer) who genuinely is a superb cellist) is buying his first synthesiser, and his classmates come along for moral support, and to have the chance to break into an improv pop number, of course.

Realistic? No. Plausible? No. A whole heap of fun for an early teenage Icon_UK? Hell yes!

The cast proved so popular they formed their own recourding group known as "The Kids from Fame" and released singles, (see the above as one of their first), albums and did performances in the UK, where the show was insanely popular (before the behind the scenes tensions became more widely known)

[thesweetiepienovels]

Some is better than none. Some is better than none. Some is better than none. Walking for three minutes, is better than nothing. Drinking a glass of water and eating a snack, is better than nothing. Wiping down the counter, is better than nothing. Small things are not nothing. Small things are not nothing. Small things are not nothing. You don’t have to achieve grand things if all you’re capable of right now is the smaller things. They are still achievements. Don’t do nothing just because you don’t think you’re capable of doing bigger things, just do something you’re capable of today. 

[lonely-night]

they didn't have to go that hard but they did

[what-even-is-thiss]

I think a lot of writers might benefit from giving themselves permission to get weird with format.

Use second person, drop classic rising action and climax format, write backwards, just sit in a moment, tell all you want and refuse to show, make an entire book that’s just one run on sentence, reject tropes, use all tropes, cliche yourself to death, produce something that’s completely gibberish. Break all the rules of marketability. Become ungovernable.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Write a story that just takes place inside one pathetic little person’s head. Do it. It’s enrichment in your enclosure.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Do the writer’s equivalent of playing with finger paints. Do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it

[what-even-is-thiss]

It’s the middle of the night and I should be sleeping but listen. Listen. Just get weird with it. Open your soul up a little bit. Like actually don’t worry about it being palatable. I’m serious. Get weirder. Get weirder right now. I’m demanding that you get weirder right now. It’s not your responsibility to make your reader feel good. It’s your job to make art, goddamnit. Make art. Make weird art. Open up your third eye and eat an entire cheesecake.

[universeleads]

I explained the concept of "blorbo from my shows" to my 71 year old immigrant grandfather because I referenced it in passing and I thought nothing of it, until today when he said "I think I'll watch peaky blinders tonight and see my blorbo from my shows" referring, of course, to Cillian Murphy playing Tommy Shelby

[universeleads]

English isn't his first language so he's not super in touch with modern slang, so I've been accidentally teaching him to talk like a tumblr user. His favorite thing to say lately is "me when I'm a little hater" when he's like talking shit about the neighbor's son

[overwhelmedfernfrond]

I explained the “x before gta6” meme to my immigrant father and he, in turn, explained to me how back in his day in Romania, they had the same type of joke, except instead of it being gta6, it was about the imminent death of a singer named Gică Petrescu, who everyone was continuously shocked by because he refused to die. Every time a momentous event happened people would say, in essence: “This happened and Gică Petrescu hasn’t even died yet?!?”

So. He understood the gta6 meme immediately because they apparently had the same thing in Romania when he was young, except way, way more morbid

[dilutedh2so4]

Sappho’s Helen chooses for herself a role that belongs properly to the male warrior. She sails to Troy and leaves behind a house untended. But at the same time, her choice—to pursue what she desires—and the manner in which this choice is expressed undermine the very meaning of the Homeric hero’s code of honor. The paradoxical quality of Helen’s actions comes through strongly in the language of memory, once again. Sappho’s description of Helen’s lack of memory closely mirrors lines of the Iliad that speak to the importance of the warrior’s memory on the battlefield. Nestor at one point urges the Achaeans to “be men” and “remember” (15.662) each his children, wife, property, and parents.

Helen confounds these neat distinctions between domestic and heroic memory by violating the norms of each gender. She makes a parody out of Iliadic forms of remembering kin—the kind of memory valorized by both Nestor and Agenor—because, as a woman, she has no business sailing to Troy and not minding her child and parents. The similarity of Sappho’s phrasing to the Iliadic imperatives serves only to remind us of how the male model of remembering during battle is being perverted for a woman’s (Sappho’s and Helen’s) poetic purposes. In a different way, Helen also violates the Penelopean model of memory by escaping from husband and house, removing herself both physically and mnemonically from her situation as the wife of Menelaus. Helen does not remember according to either the male or the female paradigm, but in the process of transgressing these norms, she illuminates some of the complex interconnections between the arts of memory and poetry.

Melissa Mueller, Penelope and the Poetics of Remembering.

[kamscorn]

no i dont want to ‘ask chatgpt’ i want to go to a wikipedia page and spend half an hour reading an article like a real person

[fastorslow]

Saam Gatsheni by Phiwo Ndlovu

[canismajors]

i fear people online are losing track of whyyy ai is being criticised in the first place & turning it into reasons to be hypercritical of artists & writer's work in comments sections online. its bad because corporations are using it to replace paying for people's skills & expertise. its bad because it's profiting off of other people's work without knowledge or consent. it's bad for the environmental damage & huge consumption of water & the exploitation of workers in the global south. not bcs an artist online draws a hand badly or uses an abstract metaphor you don't understand in their writing

[thememedaddy]

[lucylehane]

You do an eclectic celebration of dance!

The Birdcage (1996)

[probuccalfat]

dead serious normalize having an average boring ass life where you have enough to meet your needs we do not need to be remarkable we just need to be alive

[gallifreying-your-posts]

"we do not need to be remarkable we just need to be alive"

[the-haiku-bot]

“we do not need to

be remarkable we just

need to be alive”

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[rogers-carter]

#superhero strut mode: activated

[beardedmrbean]

[iconuk01]

Anthony Head: Buffy and Ted Lasso actor dies at 72

The British actor, who also appeared in Merlin and Little Britain, died of complications from pneumonia.

Well... shit.

RIP Anthony Head, thank you for some amazing television, and one very memorable performance as Frank in the Rocky Horror Show I saw in the Piccadilly Theatre in... 1990 I think.