goatgodschild | Entries tagged with marginalia

Richard Chamberlain passed away on Saturday night in Hawaii. He is survived by his husband.

www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/richard-chamberlain-tv-actor-who-starred-in-dr-kildare-dies-at-90/ar-AA1BWxkn

I was inspired by the "Moment of Silence" series done by Ysabetwordsmith ( ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/ )

ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/tag/moment+of+silence

My persona for the Galactic Journey, George Pritchard, has a crush on his portrayal of Dr. Kildare, and owns his EP.

(I plan to add more onto this later.)

From Ryan McBeth's video on the destroyed IHH Monument:

"And also note; that if you are a leader of soldiers, and if you let your soldiers perform acts of spite or vengeance -- congratulations! You just set a new standard! And then it just gets a little bit easier to commit more acts of vengeance, and easier, and easier. And that's a road that Lt. William Calley went down...and I don't know if you want to go down that road! There is a price to pay for being the good guy."

I think this is a valuable piece of advice for anyone in a leadership position, and one that I want to take to heart even in my entry position.

Roger Corman has passed away, according to the Washington Post. He was 98 years old.

His output as a director was incredibly wide, and I first became acquainted with him through Mystery Science Theater 3000, where some of his less popular films showed up. It Conquered the World, Teenage Caveman, The Undead, Gunslinger, The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent, and (my personal favorite) Attack of the Giant Leeches.

More popular films of his include the original Little Shop of Horrors, Death Race 2000, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Masque of the Red Death. I've seen all the ones I listed just now. except for Pendulum, and my favorite was Masque of the Red Death.

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

We have an active construction site at work, and a series of particularly loud, expletive-laced conversations inspired me to write this. There were other verses, but I forgot them.

CHORUS:
Because Omar isn't here, my lads
(and Omar isn't here)--
-------
The creatives say he's with his wife
Or drinking on the quay
But the fact above all else is that
Omar's not here today.

We've all needed to take off
(Or wanted to, it's fine)
But it's a very different matter
When it's your paycheck on the line.

Nobody's got his phone number
(Like Omar'd be that thick!)
So nobody can even say
They checked up on this shit.

So Omar isn't here, my lads
(And Omar isn't here)
And Omar is the only one
Who's got the license clear.

* Rust jumps at the NCAP stance because it's an excuse to stay home, play his music, and look at cold cases. And NO GLITTER. The cough syrup bottles are arranged into the Bi Flag colors, tho.

* Pins Rust would wear to Pride:
- God Makes No Mistakes (because he doesn't exist)
- We are the people our parents warned us against
- I am a member of an immoral subculture
- Morally Repugnant
- ACAB
- No Cops At Pride
- No Hugs

A pathetic fact about me is that I cannot sign ASL.

I actually can't do gestures very well to begin with, but it seems that ASL is, for the present, impossible for me. I can make some sense of the signs when others sign at me, that's not the issue.

I interpret movements backwards, which means that any signing I do becomes functionally glossolalia -- something similar to language, but very clearly disconnected from it.

There’s this thing in writing that I’ve started calling “creepy masculinity”, as distinct from “toxic masculinity”.

To my mind, toxic masculinity is what you call it when trying to perform/extract a standard of masculinity from yourself and others becomes dangerous, and harms both you and the people around you. My go-to example of this is Marty Hart from True Detective: The Long Bright Dark, TD for short.

Marty, by the time we meet him, both in the present day and in flashbacks, is a mess. He’s violent to the people he doesn’t care about, whiny to the ones he does, damages every relationship he comes in contact with for not providing the proof (to him) that he’s a “real man”. He refuses to call his daughters by their names, only referring to them by pet names or insults, and has no pictures of them in his house (although there are his fishing trophies and several blown-up pictures of him in his college football outfit). He sleeps around because he thinks that it will prove to himself and to everyone else that he’s still young (he’s 32-ish at the time). Every man he meets, he first describes in terms of whether or not they could beat him up, or if he could beat them up.

By the end of TD, he’s learned to be a marginally better person, but it took being completely single and friendless for years, plus getting an axe to the chest. The narrative does not shy away from the fact that it was probably sheer laziness that kept Marty from being a serial killer, that Marty is bad and should feel bad.

Creepy masculinity is when the story shows that, objectively speaking, this man is terrible, but the story assures us that his actions are ultimately correct and “normal”. I’m not sure what a good TV/film example would be that a lot of people I know have seen, but Garth Ennis writes it in spades.

My all-time favorite Christmas movie is actually Santa Claus (1959). It works in this wonderfully magical, straight-faced way, where you don't feel talked down to at all. It is a world that works on its own logic, where Santa and Merlin and Hephaestus all work together for the good of mankind. I also appreciate that the Devil appears not in temptations of vague power, but in the small, painful moments that wear you away inside.

The first time I saw a WiiU, I was at a friend's grandparents' house for Day of the Doctors party, and it was somewhere in between getting in a sugar-fueled fistfight with one of the guests, and actually watching the broadcast. At the time, I thought that it was some kind of fancy floor art object, since the grandparents were quite wealthy. Everything I've learned about the WiiU since, however, has suggested that "floor art object" is what it's best at.

I wrote this to Mal, a really long time ago. It is still an important part of my own history, and I think it is a decent piece of my own writing.

-----------------
My parents go to bed really early. Like, 8:30-9pm. When was little, my parents turned the lights out and went to bed and everyone else was asleep but me. I wasn't allowed to get up except for the bathroom and wasn't allowed to read and I was just supposed to wait and try to sleep and this went from when I was 2.5-3 till I was 11 or so.
There were glowing stars on the ceiling and I realized, God is insane.
This is just my mind, he's got every mind, all the time, he's up in space just floating in the dark with nobody to talk to
He must have gone stark staring mad centuries ago.
That's why I got into religion and folklore -- I hung a crucifix over my bed from when I was 6 to when I was...13?
I would usually pass out around 2am, and then the nightmares would start in. Still do.
I used to throw tantrums like you've never seen around going to bed.
Loneliness is a trigger for me. The idea of it. The existence of it. Hate it. Hate it.

lonely/lonesome/loneliness means stuck in my room can't move can't talk can't read can't do anything just waiting waiting waiting because nobody understands i am alone everyone else is normal and asleep and i am alone and must arm myself because there are monsters that know i am alone and nobody will miss me.
lonely/lonesome/loneliness means can't say the things i'm supposed to can't understand cues and i understand i miss them just as they miss mine and i hate them for it because they watch me alone and know what they have sentenced me to, exile, with only my mind for company again

I read an interesting article about under-18 people trying to transition, how difficult it is, and how painful the experience generally is for both the parents and the children. An especial note was made of how trans youth often fear to transition because they fear the reaction of their parents or community, and when it is brought up, the parents tend to react especially poorly.

My experience, luckily, was not like that. My parents had some trouble at first, but they did not turn me out, they started using my name and pronouns very quickly, and overall it has gone very well. But despite my longtime suspicions of being trans (though I had no word for it at the time), one of the main reasons I avoided transitioning was because of a documentary I had seen in preschool.

When I was in preschool -- pretty much until middle school, in fact -- I primarily watched nature documentaries, specifically PBS Nature. Around 2002, being extremely ambitious, they decided to do several documentary series, and one of them was the Deep Jungle trilogy. It has a lot of very excited entomologists and arachnologists, as well as about 38 minutes of ground-penetrating radar!

Among all the flora and fauna are bullet ants. Now, ants are scary enough to me on their own (I appreciate what they do, but when they crawl on me it is a very unpleasant sensation), but bullet ants seemed particularly unsettling. Because, you see, in the documentary we get to see the men's initiation rite of the Mawé people. Because it's 1am when I'm writing this, I'm going to copy it from Wikipedia.

The ants are first rendered unconscious by submerging them in a natural sedative and then hundreds of them are woven into a glove made out of leaves, [...]stinger facing inward. When the ants regain consciousness, the boy slips the glove onto his hand. The goal of this initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full five minutes. When finished, the boy's hand and part of his arm are temporarily paralyzed due to the ant venom. In addition to suffering intense pain, he will [...] shake uncontrollably for days.

When I saw that, I was certain that I would always want to stay a woman, because I would probably end up going to these jungles and meeting these people. And obviously I would have to go through their initiation rites to be accepted, so if I became a man, then I would have to wear the bullet-ant glove when I went to the Brazilian jungle, in the future, to visit the Mawé.

Here is my current list of all the celebrities I can pull up full-on opinions on. I don’t know if they count as “parasocial relationships”, but here they are.

Don’t see a celebrity here? Either I don’t know them, I don’t care enough about them to have an opinion, or I have forgotten what opinions I have on them. Or they’re not online. Or they’re dead. Or I forgot their names. Look, this list was hard enough in thinking of how many celebrities I actually have an opinion on beyond “Eh, they were good in [X], hope they did alright for themselves”.

( Read more... )

Content Warning: Writing by an 18-year old kid, Christianity, autism, panic attacks, tests.

( Read more... )

Rick, you dumbass.

He's family, but he's always had a will of his own, with logic that is often working on "someone told me not to, so I'm going to do it now and more." He's also caught COVID at least once. We've joked in our house that the Grim Reaper refuses to take Rick, because it'd be too much trouble.

He's in New Mexico and is pretty much a walking Agatha Christie setup. "An old man who's a complete tool, but is in a wheelchair and has a bevy of health problems, also the person he cares about most is his equally ancient dog. He lives in the middle of nowhere, and his house (filled with small, valuable objects) is surrounded by his handmade traps."

Anyhow, so, he stopped eating/drinking for 6 days, and we don't know why. It seems he was still taking his medication during that time. He's now in the ICU, and we don't know what's going to happen next. My aunt has power of attorney now, and we don't know if he has a will made out or not, or any kind of death plan at all.

Papa was already stressed, this isn't going to help a jot.

My computer is behaving very oddly indeed, and I'm not sure what it's all about. When I open Firefox, it won't stop wheezing and shutting down, although it is fully charged and does not feel like it's overheating. I guess I should just let it calm down? I have restarted it twice and also turned the computer off and on. The screen has been all the way down to minimum brightness all day, as per usual. I tried to clear my history this afternoon -- all cookies, all search history -- and that's when this started.

This is certainly something to worry about, if it continues. Even with how carefully I've cared for my computer, I got it in December 2019. Does that count as this being a 2-year-old computer, or longer? I feel the same way about my phone. Now that, I know I've had it for 3 years this month.

Firefox might be acting up, but Chrome is working, so I guess I will be using that for a while. I'm not exactly happy about that, as one might imagine!

UPDATE: I rebooted Firefox and it all came together again, and I did that all on my own! I am very proud of that, and VERY happy that I don't have to get a new com pu tar!

Malcolm's birthday is tomorrow. I know he doesn't want to be around me until I can prove to be a better person, and I don't want to push his boundaries, so I am not going to send any wishes to him. I hope that he has a really good birthday, and that this next year is amazing for him. I hope there are many things that will make him smile.

The omens look good for me to reach out again, but I don't want to rush things. So, I am going to write down something funny and wonderful that happened to me today.

I tend to tell people that it was Tenchi Muyo 2: Daughter of Darkness that turned me off anime for a decade. And, strictly speaking, that's not wrong. The DVD box set my dad got from the library did include Tenchi Muyo 2: Daughter of Darkness, but there was another DVD in the box. However, as I could never find its name, or remember more than a few key images, I did not mention it.

A man watches (or creates) monsters in a bamboo forest. The creatures start off by looking round and pink, then explode into horrible zombie things. They are clearly not enjoying the process.
...
Two girls, both lonely, agree to meet up at a playground the next day. One of them turns into a monster (dark red, snake hair, slug/snake hindparts -- a lamia?) and tries to get to the playground. The monster circles the playground, trying to play, and cries, for she can no longer speak.
...
A party of adventurers go into the forest. When monsters attack, [big-boobed lady with very small armor] shoots a single arrow into the air and yells "ARROW SHOWER". This makes a bunch of glowing arrows fall from the sky.

Thanks to some Escapade friends, I was able to find it at last, today. It's called Ragnarok: The Animation, and somehow I only saw episode 19. It is everything bad about Tenchi Muyo 2, plus the worst excesses of anime body horror.

I am of the opinion it is Bad Anime We've got five-plus minutes of padding on a 24 minute ep, we've got voice acting that could shatter glass, we've got heaving bosoms and pointless upskirt shots, we've got horrifying monsters and every cost-saving measure you've ever seen short of EVA. Horny, skeevy, a main character with no discernible characteristics but multiple women are fighting over him, and don't forget voices that can and will break glass. There's also an annoyingly "cute" little girl character and and equally annoyingly cute animal sidekick.

There's an evil skeleton wizard who turns cute animals into globby monsters, who turn into trees, who turn into zombie pirates. I am making none of this up.