The Wishfulist

My wishfull list or how I want to be a wishfulist again.

[vital-information]

I told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.

“We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

“I don’t think it’s like the pillow word.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”

Which helps explain why Miyazaki’s films are more absorbing and involving than the frantic cheerful action in a lot of American animation. I asked him to explain that a little more.

“The people who make the movies are scared of silence, so they want to paper and plaster it over,” he said. “They’re worried that the audience will get bored. They might go up and get some popcorn.

But just because it’s 80 percent intense all the time doesn’t mean the kids are going to bless you with their concentration. What really matters is the underlying emotions–that you never let go of those.

— Roger Ebert in conversation with Hayao Miyazaki

[escapekit]

Puzzle Art

Vancouver-based artist Tim Klein makes puzzle montages from different puzzles using the same die cut pattern.

[some-stars]

@aureovitta THERE’S MORE :D

[kaaonashi]

safe return / avatar the last airbender

another summer comes and goes ☽ ☾

[mymodernmet]

Mesmerizing Aerial Photos of Tulip Fields in Full Bloom

[diaryofanangryasianguy]

07/28/17

JESSICA CHOU Has A YouTube Channel Teaching Women About Basic Vehicle Maintenance

This is quite an interesting YouTube channel concept, and it shows that … Asian chicks kick ass! JESSICA CHOU is a young Asian American woman who has a YouTube channel which basically teaches other girls and women about how to fix their car.

“I think we don’t see as many female mechanics because the industry is still so heavily dominated by men. When we think of a mechanic, we think of men. When we see ads or posters of mechanics, we see men. When we see shows about cars, we see men. It will take a long time to change all of this, but in the 10 short months that I’ve been on this journey, I’ve met so many incredible people who are out to change the game.”

[chai-bean]

vines that i haven’t seen in any compilations yet

part 2 | part 3 | animal vines

[ringator]

This is what I come to Tumblr for!

[idiopathicsmile]

regional differences

“oh hey,” she said, “it’s a really touristy area, but since you’re gonna be passing through anyway, you might as well stop by pier 29, see the dragons. also, there’s a—”

“hold on,” i said. “i knew your city had mountains, but. dragons? uh, actual living dragons?”

“dude, it’s not a big deal. they’re there all the time. of course they’re majestic and everything, but they’re loud and cranky and mostly they lie around eating garbage. now and then the city council will talk about trying to make them roost somewhere else, but—”

“dragons,” i repeated. i knew it was making me sound like a rube, but it was a lot to take in. “you live in a city that has dragons.”

“no, it’s cool, we used to go see them when i was a little kid. it’s worth doing. but that whole area is mostly dragon-themed gift shops, and the commercialization is kind of a bummer. also, sometimes a dragon will melt somebody’s car and it’s a whole problem.”

“fairytale-style, giant scaly fire-breathing dragons.”

“honestly, i forget other cities don’t have them?” she said. “there’s a few other sites on the west coast where they gather. portland calls them wyverns, but that’s a portland thing.”

“chicago’s got, like, bunnies and songbirds,” i told her, “but otherwise it’s just your typical vermin. pigeons, rats, sphinxes—”

“sphinxes? what the hell.”

“oh, yeah, they nest in the el tunnels. sometimes a fucking sphinx will flap down out of nowhere, bring the whole train to a halt until the front car answers a riddle.”

“that sounds exciting,” she said.

“it’s the worst. your train winds up being twenty minutes late, and you just have to hang out hoping somebody up there read their mythology. there’s supposed to be a program where the conductors get trained in riddling, but i don’t know. rahm emmanuel keeps saying it’s not a budget priority.”

“huh,” she said. “guess the grass is always greener and all that. but on some level, it’s nice to remember that even with all these big box stores, the country still has some variety left in it.”

“yeah, did you know that in rhode island they call water fountains ‘bubblers’?” i said.

“whoa, seriously?”

“i read it somewhere. crazy, right?”

“crazy.”

[adramofpoison]

i am here for urbanized mythological creatures

Switzerland has a lot of dragons, but dragons have long since moved on from collecting gold. There’s a purply-scaley one that roosts behind the Mad Mex that refuses to stop hoarding signposts. The city uses banners for the main roads and sells a lot of maps.

Golems love cities–with their stone buildings and sidewalks. There are strict laws about what one is allowed to say to them, because golems tend to be rather literal and very obedient. There’s always one kid who thinks he knows better. He doesn’t. 

[vulgarweed]

OH MY GOD THE CHICAGO SPHINXES, DON’T GET ME STARTED. Here’s the thing. When you buy your Ventra card at the machine - which is another one of Rahm’s scams, leasing that out to a private company, wtf was he thinking - it’s supposed to have the answer to the riddle on it, right? The sphinx is supposed to scan the bar code and let the train through.

that never fucking happens. Especially on the Blue Line which is down for maintenance all the time and constantly switching tracks and running shuttles, which means half the time you’ve got a sphinx that came over from the fucking Orange Line or some shit and is full of riddles that only the Irish mooks from Bridgeport understand. Or it’s in Polish only. Or it’s got a glitch that makes it stutter and if you interrupt it, it’ll get snippy and bite your head off. LITERALLY. They hush it up but it happens. Businesses lose millions from sphinx-related tardiness every year.

And then there’s a case back in ‘96 when it was proven after the fact that the “wrong” answer the Red Line Sphinx got was actually A PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE REGIONAL VARIATION but by then, the Sphinx had already eaten half a car full of drunken Cubs fans. I know, not much of value was lost there, BUT STILL.

[pfdiva]

You think SPHINXES are bad?  Detroit has imps, thousands of them, and you know what they love?  Buses.  You know the major form of public transit in Detroit is?  BUSES.  So the drivers have to literally shoo away imps at every fucking stop, making them 30 minutes late, an HOUR late, and it’s not like there’s anything you can DO, because they’re all leftover from when the car companies were big, and ALL OF THOSE FUCKERS CLOSED.

So of course there were hundreds of orphaned imps, and they kept SAYING they were going to reopen the factories, or at least get some good junkyards, but nooooooooo, they never did, so the imps just bred and bred, and now they’re all over every bus and it’s not like you can ever count on getting anywhere on time and long story short, I’d take a sphinx over imps ANY day.

[idiopathicsmile]

yeah as someone who did high school and college in michigan and now lives in chicago, i have to say that as far as the age-old sphinxes vs imps debate goes, they’re both terrible in different ways. the imps are way more common and they probably have a wider total reach, and oh my god nothing like trying to board a bus already covered in those little suckers when said bus is already forty minutes late—

(sidenote: ugh people from bloomfield hills saying stuff like “well if i lived in detroit, i’d have the sense to carry around a nice heavy club or walking stick—” yeah dude good luck with your walking stick against two dozen imps)

but the sphinxes. let’s not, uh, sugar coat this: the sphinxes don’t just slow commuters, they kill people. and yes, if you know the riddle, you’re fine. but what if someone else offers their answer first? what if you get some overly cocky freshman philosophy major who takes it upon himself to answer for the whole car?

i think in the back of our minds, all chicagoans know that rahm emmanuel’s administration isn’t gonna lift a finger until one of the sphinxes goes after a wealthy tourist and it makes national news. and even then, we’ll get, like, flashy riddle-solving software installed in all the red line trains, and maybe the brown line, but no way is it gonna cover the whole infrastructure.

basically if you ever need to take the green line or the pink line, you wanna start studying your classical mythology and folklore fucking yesterday.

[hyvetyrant]

@copperbadge do puns work on Sphinxes as well as riddles?

[copperbadge]

You bet your sphinxter they do. 

(Sphinxes hate that one but they’re obliged to honor it.)

[cluegrrl]

I heard they sometimes get bad Selkie problems in Monterey Bay…

[bemusedlybespectacled]

It was so weird moving to the South and then to the Midwest after growing up in New England because apparently everywhere else unicorns are a big joke to people? I get it, New Hampshire has the lowest teenage pregnancy rate because we’re all a bunch of virgins, ha ha like I’ve never heard THAT one before, but seriously, you try growing perennials when every year the goddamn unicorn herd comes through and eats all your bulbs. MY BACK YARD IS NOT YOUR PERSONAL TULIP BUFFET, LIGHTFOOT.

[tielan]

The Bunyips have a fondness for the sewers. Which is really something when you’re down at Bondi for an early-morning dip and find that the damn beach is closed because another Bunyip has gone for a swim in the sewerage outlet and then waded back in to shore. Oh, sure, the outlets are supposed to be distant enough that the effluent doesn’t come back to shore, but the damned council who proposed it didn’t think about what was going to happen to all those Bunyips who were missing the swamps that got drained when they built Kingsford Smith Airport in Botany Bay. Sure, a population of nearly 10,000 bunyips is going to make do with a couple of waterways that mostly reek of industrial waste. Not. BRILLIANT TOWN PLANNING, Sydney Council. FUCKING BRILLIANT.

On the other hand, for something really spine-crawling, I suggest you look up “Rio Tinto Mining vs. The Quinkins (Imjim). Cape York, 1985.” That was a clusterfuck and a half - the extra half-clusterfuck got added when they tried to bring the military in to ‘solve the problem’. Fourteen of the children have never been recovered, the roads up into the property are impassable, and the closest you can get is within five klicks by air, land, or sea before all the instrumentation goes haywire. The last chopper to try a landing got a mayday out before readings said it plummeted like a stone.

Also, have you seen the sheer idiocy of a government trying to prosecute local spirits who aren’t going to turn up in court for one and wouldn’t recognise your white man’s law even if they did? Not one of the better periods of Australian government.

[seekingwillow]

I suppose Baltimore has it easy, somewhat? Maybe? Cause the people who get in trouble the most with the mermaids are well, tourists. And there’s SIGNS up. All over. Heck, there’s signs in BRAILLE!

But of course you’ll get the drunk, handsy college boys going down to the Inner Harbour cause some older one wants to initiate a freshman, and some freshman thinks it’ll be cheaper than a strip club to see ‘free’ bare boobs.

It’s like none of them read anything to know that above those boobs, behind those lips are a whole bunch of sharp pointed teeth the better to eat them with.

But mostly it’s the tourists who do read the signs, and don’t go hanging over into the water, or trailing fingers from the water-taxi into the water; But who refuse to wear proper sanctioned ear plugs. Some of them just bring their own which aren’t strong enough to block out the sirens. But others just…. don’t believe for some reason?

I don’t know. But it’s in the news a lot when it happens and some tourists will inevitably say they didn’t think the earplugs were important, cause mermaids are beautiful and nice.

Disney has a lot to make up for - not that it’ll ever do it. But. A lot.

And then there’s the other thing. All the jokes about how they ‘thought the city with mermaids would be Seattle’, nudgenudge, wink wink.

And someone has to smack them down with; how many lost women tossed overboard by the slave trade did Seattle get drifting into their harbours in the under-currents? If there’s no proper bodies for mermaids to lay their eggs, there’s no mermaids.

I used to live in Canton, and there’s lovely apartments there. It’s just a touch expensive for the soundproof glass, y'know? But still, early Saturday morning, watching the mermaids float and sun themselves can actually be pretty, if you’re three stories up, a hundred or more yards from the water and with good soundproofing; all the brown and bronze  and I saw a red tail once. She was gorgeous, dark skin, red tail, upper body all muscled like a dancer.

[aprilwitching-deactivated201808]

so having grown up in pennsylvania and north carolina, i thought i was prepared when i moved to florida for school last year. “after all,” i thought, “how different can a skunk ape really be from a bigfoot?”

well, i still don’t know the answer to that question, because it turns out florida is a really big state, and the particular area i moved to hasn’t seen a skunk ape in over twenty years (though, thanks to breeding programs and conservation efforts, i hear they’re thriving elsewhere). 

what i have encountered is basilisks.

they are everywhere in central florida, apparently, and nobody even thought to mention them to me before i moved.

“i’m sorry,” my floridian roommate apologized a few weeks into our cohabitation. “they’re just such a standard part of the background for me. they don’t seem worth freaking out over, to be honest.”

now, i was freaking out, but it turns out the greater basilisks we all know and fear from legends, campfire stories, and the occasional sensationalistic news report only live deep in the swamps. they rarely bother humans. the slithery little guys i’d been seeing out of the corner of my eye on my morning walks– vivid red or gold scales, about the size of a pigeon– are comparatively harmless. yes, if you make direct eye contact with one, it causes an unpleasant pins-and-needles sensation in your arms and legs that can last all day, plus a transient feeling of dizziness and nausea. but it’s not going to paralyze you, let alone turn you to stone. and it’s pretty hard to accidentally make eye contact with a lesser basilisk, anyway. they aren’t confrontational animals; they’ll only try to meet your gaze and stare if they think you’re attacking them or something. (i do worry a little about my second roommate’s dog– she’s been zapped a couple times trying to chase and catch the poor things and, well, she’s a dog, they don’t learn from that kind of experience.)

anyway, turns out most people around here kinda like the lesser basilisks. unlike their large and lethal cousins, they’re mainly insectivores, and they love to eat mosquitoes and roaches. good for pest control!

[asokkalypsenow]

Ah yeah I’ve heard y'all have problems with basilisk on your side of the state! Hope your roommate’s dog can be kept away from them.

I know the skunk ape population has been on the rise again especially in the national forest in the middle of the state. Who knows, they might migrate back into your area soon!

But as for my area we’ve been having real trouble with the sea serpents lately. They hang around the waterways and rivers during breeding season.

Not that they themselves are the problem I think it’s more people not respecting their habitat. It’s at least once a year some jackass is speeding with a boat in a no wake zone and they’ll cut up their backs pretty bad, even with all the scales. It’s a real shame, especially the juveniles. There’s programs to rescue and rehabilitate them here but it’s hard to get every one, and that’s just the ones that get spotted.

Though I gotta say I’m proud of the legislation we have protecting their nests. People get arrested if they disturb them and we gotta cover the lights on the beach during the hatching season so they can wriggle down to the ocean okay.

All the tourists around here are scared of them and I gotta admit we do have a high attack frequency. My sister’s friend has a friend who got bit by one last year. But I still think it’s cause there’s more tourists in the oceans and the poor things mistaking them for fish or a shark or something. They’re predators and they’re hungry but they’re not man eaters or anything. And they sure are pretty if you catch a glimpse of them, their scales are mostly blues and greens but they’re also always a little iridescent! All those documentaries pretending they’re stone cold killers make me sad

[aprilwitching-deactivated201808]

oh, i know! it’s like that shark week baloney– even the discovery channel likes to pretend they’re these vicious, unstoppably bloodthirsty things, like the Terminators of the natural world or something. sure, i guess that makes some people more interested in them, but it also makes a lot of people way more scared of sea monsters than they need to be. most attacks on humans aren’t even fatal, if i’m remembering the statistics right.

 mermaids are actually way more dangerous than sea monsters– as someone mentioned upthread– but are there 6-volume cult classic horror movie franchises about killer mermaids with a taste for human flesh? pretty sure there aren’t! (i’m talking about those Behemoth From Butcher’s Bay flicks from the 80s and 90s, of course. i mean, they’re pretty entertaining! but they’re also not what you would call scientifically accurate. at all.)

yeah, i get worked up about this stuff, sorry. where i’m from, bigfoots get a similar bad rap– and they aren’t even predators! there have been all of four confirmed bigfoot attack deaths in the state of pennsylvania, ever, out of like nine attacks total, and all of them involved someone hunting or otherwise antagonizing the bigfoot. well, except for one that might have had rabies, back like a hundred years ago. i think people are just creeped out because, well, they are big– and they kinda look human? like, they’re too close to the uncanny valley to be charismatic megafauna. or whatever.

[ellidfics]

Oh, come now.  None of this can possibly be as annoying as the herd of pegasi that nest in and near Mount Tom, in western Massachusetts.  They fly over the one road up the mountain from Easthampton to Holyoke all the time and shit on the passing cars, which plays hell on your clearcoat finish.  Worse, the Sparkle Carwash on Route 10 charges TWICE the going rate for a wash & wax to get pegasus poop off your car before it hardens and you need a putty knife to get it off.

Also?  Don’t ask about the time I was driving to a friend’s house with my moon roof open and one of those pretty pretty sparkle ponies had explosive diarrhea ten feet overhead.  Just don’t.

[enrique262]

The disastrous Australian Emu War.

[shadowmaat]

Someone turned it into a comic. YES.

[dat-soldier]

never forget the emu war

[corvus-onca-sapien-deactivated2]

@sin-cordura

[alv529]

My favourite part of this entire post is the final pic listing the human casualties and losses in the Emu war as “10 000 rounds of ammo.” and “Dignity.”

[ringator]

Gotta love Aussie land!

[volcainist]

Goalkeepers’ balls get photoshopped into cats.

[mymodernmet]

Mesmerizing “Time Slice” Photos Show Single Locations at Different Times of Day

[ringator]

Omg

[dxactivatxdusxr]

A group of rough looking boys walked past me today and all I heard of their conversation was “he’s got that anxiety disorder bro so I went with him so he’d be more comfortable” and it made me realise the world isn’t all that bad

[fitzefitcher]

#this is team skull

[its-just-a-phage]

The pet store I worked at had a pen with rabbits near the front door. On every side of the pen were huge signs saying “You can pet me, but don’t pick me up!” One day two absolutely huge guys came in and one immediately reaches into the pen to grab a rabbit. Before i could say anything his friend grabbed his arm and asked him “did you see the sign?” He said “yeah! it says that you can pick them up but don’t pet them!” Then he went quiet for a moment and softly said “I didn’t read it right did I?” And his friend just puts his arm on his shoulder and said “its ok, i know you’ve got that thing where words get mixed up. Let just pet these cute lil shits” And I still haven’t gotten over that interaction.

[yallmightt]

I was walking my dog through Boston bc he likes the likes car rides. He’s a little thing tbh we call him short and long. So this huge scary man with a full beard approaches me like “hey can my buddy and I pet your dog? He gets nervous around dogs but your’s is so small I think it’s a good place to start.” Ofc I was like “yes he’s very friendly!” So this guy brings his equally big friend over and they sit on the floor while this man looks terrified of my tiny dog so big man number one asks “can I pick him up?” And i say yes so he picks him up and puts him on man number two’s lap and man number two is abt to freak out and his friend straight up just goes “hey man, it’s okay just relax I’d never let anything hurt you. He’s a good boy.” I’ll never forget it ever bc I know that man looked at me (5'3 , glasses, probably wearing a sweater vest) and my dog (kinda goofy looking little thing) and was like ‘ah yes the two least intimidating living things I’ve seen in Boston all day he’ll feel relaxed around them’ and went out of his way to help his friend. It makes me so happy

[mintycoolnessisrelevant]

A good post, pure.

[quick-nip]

(via Saturday Morning Cartoons: Baopu #15) by Yao Xiao

words to remember

[ringator]

This might be the most helpful thing I ever saw on Tumblr, thank you whoever drew this.

[vintar]

i used to get self-conscious over the smallest things but friends let me tell you that today i had to smuggle a furious 8ft python onto the bus during the school rush and not a single person noticed. not one. if people don’t care enough to notice a shopping bag writhing and seething with barely-contained reptilian hatred then i promise you that no-one will pay any attention to that blemish you’re fretting about or how you’ve done your hair

[thegoodfightingdoctor]

Question, why are you bringing a 8 ft python into a public bus? You know that this reptile can kill anyone inside there?

[vintar]

buddy she’s a snake not a flying death tentacle

snakes are not evil killers out for blood, and length doesn’t mean lethality! my biggest guy is 11 ft– if i have him around my neck, both his face and his tail touch the floor– and even his species struggles to take down anything bigger than a small-to-medium dog

the worst damage that my 8fter is capable of is when she decides to do an impression of a blood-pressure cuff and makes my arm go a bit purple, and even that’s just when i humour her dreams of being big and scary and let her squeeze her hardest before i unwind her like a bratty garden hose

as long as you’re not some sort of magical tumblring rat, you’re fine

[katschy]

Okay, I gotta ask…

1. Why was she angry?

2. Where were you taking her on the bus? Is there a leash-free snake park where you live?

I need to know.

[vintar]

1. she’s a cranky ass in general, but her mood was absolutely not improved by eating a bit of a snake hook, getting stuffed in a sack, experiencing an hour of adelaide’s finest public transport, and having a vet jam a tube into her stomach

2. i think all of australia is technically a leash-free snake park tbh

[thassalia]

I am so glad there was follow up on this post explaining why the snake was on the bus!!!

[mathylibrarian]

“bratty garden hose” I’m dying

[anais-ninja-bitch]

All of Australia is a leash-free snake park.

[ringator]

what people think coding is: type some stuff, the stuff does other stuff, you go to the next thing

what it actually is: i was trying to make a box expand and collapse for nearly and hour and it turns out i'd forgotten to type 1 (one) symbol and now im crying at midnight clicking a box over and over again because it finally works

[hilarioushumorfromouterspace]

[ringator]

At this moment, I am truly happy.

[richardrider]

harry potter au where dumbledore is replaced by ron swanson

[instant-oatmeal]

“Son, did you or did you not place your name in this stupid fire cup?”

[marinermo]

“Welcome back to school, children. This year, your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher will be this woman from the Ministry of Magic. Why the government is interfering in the affairs of a private institution is beyond me. If you have any complaints, please do not bring them to me. End of speech.”

[nealashitposts]

“Sir, why did Voldemort want to kill me?” “There was some stupid prophecy made that you would defeat him. I do not believe in prophecies. He did and now he’s dead. Learn something from that.”