“Jack of all trades, master of none” … “but ofttimes better than a master of one.”
“Blood is thicker than water.” “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the waters of the womb.”
“Money is the root of all evil.” “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
there’s also “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” which conservatives are oh so fond of saying
bootstraps are, well, straps on your boots. you cannot physically pull yourself up by them, and that’s what the original phrase meant. “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is meant to be an impossible task
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
The second part really matters.
There’s a time travel paradox called the bootstrap paradox. It creates an impossibility.
UNRWA: United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine. The Ghazzah schools have been bombed relentlessly. They also employ and build schools for Palestinians in refugee camps.
Palestinian Red Crescent: the medics on the ground helping people. In dire need of supplies as they’re running out. They’ve also been bombed relentlessly with over 80 paramedic vehicles destroyed. The website isn’t opening for me right now but hopefully the link works for others.
Is UNRWA safe to donate to? UN ain’t exactly famous for following the agreements when the game doesn’t fit US’ interests
The schools being bombed are built and maintained by the UNRWA. Employing Palestinians and educating Palestinians. If they were a benefit to the U.S or Israel they wouldn’t be getting bombed right now. My grandfather was also a teacher under the UNRWA as a refugee, the employment and salary kept a roof over my mother’s family’s head and food on the table. They have my personal stamp of approval.
I’m supposed to be taking a break from this today but I woke up to news of the 4th or 5th UNRWA school in Ghazzah being bombed by the zionist occupation. This time with white phosphorus. So again, I reiterate the importance of these UNRWA schools and donating to them especially because the rebuilding efforts will be astronomically costly and the U.S. had already decided to stop funding the UNRWA, and the UN was struggling to keep it afloat and provide schooling and work without the funding, which was devastating news to me.
The UNRWA and the Red Crescent are very important.
This is a problem the writers of the Simpsons have had to deal with - the Simpsons are late 80s, early 90s poor. They have two clunker cars, they live in a house that’s old-fashioned and has crappy furniture because they can’t afford to redecorate. Their TV is ancient. Their neighbors have visibly better stuff than they do, and when they shop they have to buy the bargain brands.
But their lifestyle now seems wildly out of reach to most modern kids! They have two cars! A big three bedroom house! Only one of the parents has to work! They have 3 whole children who they can afford to feed and clothe on a single income! It’s an impossible dream life for most people today.
some clowns really read all of Iron Widow and cheered on the girlbossery without picking up on how the demonization of racialized men was part of the callout
“My childhood was so awesome. Kids today don’t even know!”
Isn’t a flex.
It’s a lament.
More people should understand that.
Cereal boxes had toys inside.
Yes, it was a crass marketing for a sugar cereal made of chintzy plastic
Today you’re just expected to eat Capn Crunch because that’s what you do as a child, that’s what breakfast looks like. Which is… fine, I guess. Sugar still tastes good. That’s still a pleasure you’re otherwise asked to disavow by the protein shake nutribottles advertised on podcasts.
But it also means the idle minor joy of getting a random toy present, as a reward for nothing, just because you exist, is stripped. That random spark of joy is gone, replaced with nothing.
Where did the public pool go? the neighborhood park? the atrium food court public place to gather?
Same thing. All of them were just replaced with nothing.
Kids today have many good things. But it shouldn’t be a trade off. They should get to have instant messages with friends and go skating at the park. They should get to play amazing modern video games at home and go trick or treating for halloween. They should be able to have stickers and markers and macaroni art as well as youtube and streaming libraries and fortnite dances.
Fun should be allowed at every level.
Wait a minute - are those things - public pools, parks, food courts, gone? How did that happen? (I live in Europe. Kids are much less outgoing than they were in our days, but all the places are there and the pools are great in the summer.)
Well, on top of the general capitalistic enshittification of everything, there’s a simple force in the background.
We have no universal healthcare.
The “love of litigation” in the US exists because we don’t have socialized medicine and we have awful regulatory enforcement. If a kid gets hurt on the swings in Europe, you fix the swings and the kid gets patched up. That happens here, the parents have to sue the property owner to get the insurance company to pay out on the astronomical hospital bills.
Fun is a liability nightmare, so it gets pulled, fewer people engage with the space, budgets drop, more stuff gets pulled because you can’t maintain it, it’s a vicious cycle.
As time goes on, this stuff gets harder and harder to find, and that which is there is gated off to private access for profit and liability control.
Our 24-hour news media also works to make old people deeply paranoid and frightened, so everyone’s hyper-protective despite risks being substantially lower now than when I was a child. That paranoia isn’t helped by knowing that even an innocent fall from a bike might bankrupt the family.
And a lot of side joys were killed by the shift to the for-the-investor-only stage of capitalism we’ve hit. The whole McDonald’s kid experience was a long term investment strategy, farming future customers by cultivating nostalgia and family memories around birthday parties that the playplace. A next-quarter view of things can’t see the value in that. “That playplace is nothing but a liability nightmare, get rid of it.”
Brand consolidation means less competition and less need to stand out with free giveaways and prizes. Stuff that was largely aimed at kids because if the kids are happy it’s a pleasant experience you might want to repeat. Little gifts that meant little to rich kids but everything to kids like me and my friends.
Heck, they don’t even have robots at the Chuck-E-Cheese anymore. Some genius thought they could get along on their pizza and a couple of games. A friend of mine took his kid to a party there recently. They’ve painted the walls gray.
hes 19, with unlimited power, and he ain’t got a gf. the only time we see him interact with any women his own age is when he’s rejecting like 7 of them rapid fire. he pretends to date pacha in a gag that lasts like 10 solid minutes. listen to me god damnit
Okay, but just in case anyone is coming to tumblr dot com for my hot takes on 20+ year old kids’ movies: Kuzco super WAS gay (or at least coded as such) and of course, I didn’t get it until I watched it as a gay grownup.
He is played obviously camp and dramatic, for a start, and there is the aforementioned “hate your hair/not likely/yikes yikes yikes/let me guess you have a great personality” summary dismissal of all his potential brides. Then he spends dinner asking Yzma about Kronk (“so he seems nice? He’s what, in his late twenties?”) and otherwise being slightly obsessed with him.
Then there is the whole Adventure of Doom with Pacha, him being ever huffy about the Kiss of Life, and then the restaurant gag where Kuzco takes to playing Pacha’s fake wife and dressing up in ladies’ clothing with great gusto (reinforced by the waitress’ “bless you for coming out in public” remark when Pacha says they’re on their honeymoon). Then when he is finally de-llamafied, we don’t see him paired off with the obligatory girl from the lineup earlier, as might otherwise be expected in a Disney movie. Instead he is still single, but goes to found family it up with Pacha, Chica, Kronk, etc, which dare we remark is a very queer trope.
In short, I have no idea how a Disney movie with no white people (all the characters are Indigenous/people of color), a gay king, cross-dressing jokes, and the most offbeat plot of all time actually ever got made (can you imagine the Family Friendly Mouse doing that today? Let us also talk about Kronk because he is a brilliant deconstruction of both toxic masculinity and the musclebound henchman stereotype.) Other than that this was the Chaos Hour of animated movies in the late 90s/early 2000s, and yes.
So yes. There you have it. I will not be taking criticism at this time.
In response to the question “How did a movie like this get made at all much less by fucking Disney?” there was a recent Vulture article that outlines the whole shit show of a history behind this film according to everyone (writers, directors, VAs, Stings) involved. The gist of the story is that they fucked up making a whole, true-to-form Disney musical that never came to see the light of day SO BADLY that Disney switched directors, locked the writer’s room, and didn’t review a single script until weeks after the film was in theaters.
Please, read this article if you have some time. This story is wild, and involves directors being pitted against each other Bake-Off style and a shockingly intimate documentary created by the wife of Sting who, himself was heartbroken by the decimation of the songs he wrote for the film including cutting a fantastic Yzma villain song sung by Eartha Kitt that is SO DAMN GOOD but would not ever have fit the more nailed-down Yzma we would eventually come to know and love. It’s so catchy though, I’m doubling up on calls to action but please listen now:
holy shit read the article. it’s worth it and completely batshit
For anyone who wants to educate themselves about Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for freedom, as we all must, please check out Decolonize Palestine.
The link above has a script and a way to find the contact for your representatives as well as info on organized protests and events in local communities.
It takes no time at all. I’ve called and emailed my government-assigned-dickhead along with others and he’s already walking back pro-Israel comments. You might think it’s useless but if we put on the pressure there can be actual change. There’s no harm in doing it, and it sure beats being silent while innocent people suffer.
This is mostly my WIP account.
samurikura.deviantart.com
Things I'm considered.
Red mage. may secretly be a cat although I like dogs. Firm supporter of steam ships. (let one between main characters be canon already, bryke)
