Roots and Beginnings: the Crestwood House Monsters series

For a generation of children, happiness was an orange hardcover. The Crestwood House series of books on classic movie monsters was a near-constant presence in my life for years, perpetually borrowed and re-borrowed from my elementary-school and public libraries. Effectively book-length encyclopedia entries, each installment in the series was richly illustrated with stills from the movies, and alternated plot summaries with factual information about the creatures’ backgrounds and the films’ release and reception. They created a pantheon of monsters – from the post-expressionist/proto-noir Universal horror cycle of the ‘30s and early '40s, the creature features and giant monster movies of the '50s, and just a touch of the silent films of the '20s – that loomed every bit as large in my imagination as the Greek gods or the Super Friends. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, King Kong, Godzilla, the Blob – in page after informatively written, black-and-white photo-illustrated page, they came to life (or undeath) for me, without ever having to watch a single moment of their movies. (Godzilla excepted, of course.)

In a way, these served the same gateway-drug role for my lifelong interest in horror that the Marvel trading cards did for my later interest in comics – or, to use a contemporaneous comparison, the role that the filecards on the back of G.I. Joe packages served for the action figures themselves. I couldn’t go near an actual scary movie until I hit puberty – during sleepovers where my friends would watch, say, Poltergeist II or A Nightmare on Elm Street Part IV, I’d literally hide behind the nearest couch, pretending to be asleep, covering my ears. But my fascination with monsters was deep and abiding, and this was a way to indulge that fascination on an almost scientific basis, divorcing it from the movies themselves. The element of fear was no more in play than it was when I’d read about dinosaurs in hopes of becoming a paleontologist when I grew up. Instead, I got a concise burst of information about fascinating, fantastical characters and creatures, enough to fire the imagination without overwhelming it. That trick was these Halloween-colored hardcovers’ real treat.

(images via Paxton Holley)

What I wouldn't give for two sets of these; one for home and one for the nearest middle school!

Absolutely living for Laios’ English VA

Entrapdak positivity Month Day 9: Painting💅

I feel like black nails really fit his emo girl aesthetic! So I thought of Entrapta taking care of it in a late night glow up session:3

PS: yeah I let Hordak wear pantsxDD I don’t feel like he’d wear a night dress or …idk a skirt??? Seems uncomfortable to me tho

Anyways! Hope you enjoy!!!

I like the idea of him experimenting with pants the way a good little church boy who's left the cult forever experiments with forbidden media, clothing and accessories, and Mermista of all people realizes that yeah, of all his big rebellious gestures to Dead Horde Prime the one that sticks is a nice pair of the same brand of comfy sweatpants she likes herself.

This happens when they reach for the same black pair on a clearance rack while Entrapta and Sea Hawk are off exploding things.

They agree never to speak of it again, but there is an understanding and a cultural exchange of tasty ice cream desserts later.

You cant make this shit up

Okay, but now I want to do a BETTER channel that is just "[whiny thing fascisti whine about]: A Better Measured Response" and in those videos, I find the literal items being discussed and physically measure them.

that is fucking hilarious, the first time someone asks "is it okay if I inherited land as a child and now I want to charge the previous occupants rent?" and you actually think you know what, sure.

The tradition in my family is that upon graduation, you either enter higher education or employment, and if living at home, you do pay at least a token rent. BUT that rent goes into an escrow account, in your name and that of the homeowners, and it can only be borrowed from (seriously, borrowed from, NOT taken!) for legitimate repairs and updates to the home with your consent and collaboration.

The end result is things like a twentysomething kid arranging the labor for a DIY home repair among their friends to lower the total cost of 1/4th a job's materials coming out of their rentscrow, the parents cooking up a feast for their kid's friends who have come to help with the room renovation, the new deck, the roof replacement or what-have-you, and some kids who simply want improvements made suggest their rentscrow be used for them, their shout. Otherwise, the rentscrow sits, and when kid moves out, they have a decent down payment or first, last and deposit, or else when parents move to assisted living, it's an easy quit-claim deed to transfer the house to the kid and sometimes the kid's spouse with past rentscrow improvements to back up basis and justify the transfer, dodging the five-year lookback.

See, we believe everyone, parents, children, everyone, are people, and that property is to be managed in a way that suits all the people involved's interests, while meeting everyone's needs as people? Odd belief, I know. It's why all business meetings about money take place at restaurants, to ensure business stays business and personal stays personal.

Fuck that stepdad, though. Tried to bring personal ego into a business matter, got told.

If you struggle with being real-nice, you can be mercenary-nice. You can frame it to yourself as "Obeying social mores is an efficient way to get what I want" or whatever. We're known by our deeds, so as long as you're doing good stuff and not bad stuff nobody else will know the difference. Plus virtues are cultivated, not innate, and clearly we need the good practice.

There is a lovely song from the musical 'Pippin' called 'Spread a Little Sunshine' that explains this beautifully. In the context of the show, a deeply Machiavellian woman is scheming to manipulate her stepson and her husband into conflict for her own rather stupid son -and thus, her benefit, but she's doing it nicely, kindly, and so it's okay, y'see? She even has religion to back her choices up, plus the sexy Bob Fosse choreography to show that she's WELL aware of how we, the audience, are reading her utterly amoral behavior, she loves it and is easily having the most fun of anyone in the show. It's exquisite.

I have been known to teach this song, out of context, to students who are struggling to understand why they should show respect, kindness or empathy when they don't perceive others as having shown it to them first. They do not typically believe me on the first pass, but with a few examples, tactfully pointed out, both in class and from history, they start to see it and experiment with self-motivated politeness.

And then, right at the moment they are in whatever kid crisis would normally derail their newfound belief in manners, such as a betrayal from a friend, an unfair judgment from a different teacher, a parent misunderstanding, anything?

That's when I give them the context.

And I smile, kindly. Politely.

It's a smile that never quite reaches my eyes.

And my toughest kids, often young men from such circumstances and backgrounds you would NEVER expect them to be into musical theater?

They get it. They understand. When you keep the small rules, you can break the big ones -that's Orwell's Law. A polite person can get away with nearly anything. A rude person is always the first suspect. It shouldn't be this way; it's sexist, classist, ableist and racist that it is, but until we build a better world with better rules, isn't it better to learn the rules so you can hack 'em and break the game? Why not spread a little sunshine? Nothing more guaranteed to have your enemies confused, upset and tricked into acting a whole fool, while everyone can see you were acting right. Fake it 'til ya make it, and once you are natually polite, anyone who crosses you? Other people will shut their mess down FOR you, darling! Why do you think I have such an easy time running class?

You never saw such charming young gentlemen in all your born days. All done with a bit of empathy, a bit of Stephen Schwartz and some Fosse for elegance. Oh, and making sure the other teachers know to extend them grace while they're working on it and which other kid is being a PITA. Sometimes I'll have two of them etiquetting at cross-purposes and then I have to break out 'Les Miserables' or worse, Oscar Wilde and oh my God, this is why teachers drink...

all the “weird” content on tiktok feels so fabricated and performative. whereas on tumblr you’ll meet someone who will casually admit they eat paint

this sort of sums it up perfectly

Well, the Wilton brand from the craft store IS tasty, and a highly efficient alternative when you need to dye your mouth and teeth a different color for Cosplay Reasons.

It also comes in handy for making specialty foods look right. I have a good friend who's won prizes for her authentically edible sci-fi recipes. Outside of fandom, she's a baker.

"some reason" :^)

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima If you can GUARANTEE that nothing even APPROACHING those could EVER happen under ANY circumstances Then I will fold to Nuclear Power

NO ONE DIED

NO ONE DIED

essentially a human-made accident through gross mismanagement and neglect, that physically can't happen with other reactor types (in part because they all have containment buildings now). so yes we can guarantee that nothing even approaching chernobyl will ever happen with modern reactors.

even so chernobyl still killed fewer people than the German Atomausstieg has through increased air pollution because of additional coal being burnt

welcome to team uranium!

Love people using 3 mile island as an example. 3 mile island is an example of where things WORKED, that the failsafes kicked in so only a miniscule amount of radiation was released, which not only didnt kill anyone, but no one was injured, no adverse health effects were caused, and there was no damage to the surrounding environment. Despite the incident, the other reactor continued to run until 2019!

And again: the point isn't "do you prefer renewables or nuclear". The point is "everyone fighting againsy nuclear power has further entrenched coal and oil power and caused a LOT more damage to the environment"

Seriously, nuclear should absolutely be Part of This Complete Energy Strategy Breakfast. Coal has no good reason to still exist. It hasn't been profitable in the United Stated in almost twenty years since renewables, CNG and nuclear hit the scene and only exists at all because a cartel of coal company robber-barons and the gullible Appalachians they're financially exploiting have lobbied for literal government subsidies to keep the industry afloat.

Imagine if, in 1930, with the Model T Ford already obsolete, the buggy whip industry was demanding your tax dollars to keep their factories open because "West Virginia runs on buggywhips!" and "Pennsylvania needs to beat the dead horse for jobs!"

THAT is what's happening here.

Tell your Congressman to knock it off or you'll show up to the primaries for their opposition. Save the Earth in one phone call.

imo one of the funniest genres of dude is the ones who post shit on social media like "in 2024 I don't have time for fake friends" "so many people trying to betray you and stab you in the back, can't trust anyone but yourself" "I got a lot of enemies, a lot of people praying on my downfall" and then they work at like the mall or something like bro what kind of life are you leading there cannot be that many people out to get you

This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about

The opposite of this are the people who will hear about and handle three breakups, two fights, a normal bereavement (like, a relative who passed of old age,) a traumatic bereavement (like, a relative who passed horribly due to being unalived by External Factors that would make Law & Order throw up a trigger warning,) another breakup, two misunderstandings, five gossipy rumors, PLUS their actual listed job responsibilities, and their social media posts be like:

'Let's go 2024! Missed my students and excited to try out my new three-hole punch!'

Seriously thinking about just buying a van and becoming a professional vagabond/drifter but that would mean A) giving up my apartment which I rent far below market rate and can only just barely afford and B) my cats would have to go live with my erstwhile wife (I could maybe train my kitten to be a traveling cat but he's so close with the older two I would feel bad separating them). I'm also not sure what I'd do for money in this scenario.

Part of the drive to do this is that I just want to convert a van like it's a physical need. I'm obsessed with the design of small interior spaces and I have so many ideas that live rent free in my head that need to find physical form or I might actually die.

I solved this problem two ways.

1. I created a removable stealth camper conversion kit for a minivan and lived in it for six months when partner and I were Between Addresses. (We had jobs, we'd just had to move for partner's new job, rent in the new area was for nope, we couldn't sell our house that we'd put all our savings into buying, so we put everything we owned in storage, rented the house at break-even to tenants, got a gym membership to shower, a part-time retail job to justify parking and became homeless landlords. Bought another ex-foreclosed house 6mo. later with what we saved on rent, fixed it up, sold the first house to some tenants we liked at the fairest price possible, because landlords shouldn't exist.)

2. These days, I build little model vans and kit them out as tiny rolling homes with the kid I...um...got pregnant with during said patch of...okay, so, there really wasn't Internet in the van, we were under contract on the new house, we were a little bored and had planned for that anyway...

Thing is, we still have the original homeless-van, and the camping-kit I designed can still just pop right in, which comes in dead handy for camping trips. The Kid can hook up the plug-in AC mod all by herself and personally designed an upgraded system for the bed.

There's no fighting this. Rent a minivan for a weekend and camp in a state park. It's cheap and fun, and if that doesn't scare you out of it, a beat-up used one off a government surplus website is cheaper than some guitars.

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link to the original tweet.

translation in Irish by Macdara Ó Graham

translation in bengali

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translation in Filipino

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translation in nepali

translation in somali

link to the original tweet.

translation in Irish by Macdara Ó Graham

Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol 

a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:

NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.

Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.

YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.

DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.

SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.

YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.

As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.

(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)

bring the healthy fun back to fandom!

If ever a time comes when I don’t reblog this when it appears on my dash, assume I’m dead

If you’re an anti Zionist outside of Palestine, you should also be working to make your country safe for Jews so they don’t have a reason to move to israel. This includes being anti fascist, which includes working to deplatform fascists and their friends.

This also means not targeting synagogues and not shouting “free Palestine” at someone just because they’re visibly Jewish.

This makes a lot of sense.

I had a sixth grader (a demographic I sometimes think we should really consider including, a'la the Average Five-Year Old Child from the Evil Overlord List, in American foreign policy panels,) who asked if it wouldn't "save taxes to just buy a whole buncha land in Montana, put all the kids from Israel n' Pal'stine on airplanes to get 'em out, like the...you know, in the Holocaust-"

"The Kindertransport?"

"Yeah, that. Just send 'em to schools on base until they've got English n' Fortnite and that, then move their parents over, set up all kindsa apartments and shops n' roads, hire aaallll the homeless vets ta build it, have THEM be the cops once it's done-"

"Is that because-"

"Yeah! I read war vets don't like how cops here shoot first and go 'oooh, I was scared!' all 'thin blue line' like it's a war, while the vets are like 'bruh, I just did a war, that's not war, you a...you're a fool.'" (This second sixth-grader merely lives for racial justice and to end gun violence. White as cream cheese, but they've read the right books and a friend of color slugged a bully for calling them a homophobic slur when they were nine. Needless to say, I would die for these children.)

"The Uniform Code of Military Justice has been compared to the present policing conditions and yes, that opinion is a popular one," I agreed. "And I like that as both a source of domestic jobs and a way to ensure bipartisan funding."

"Bi-what-isan?"

"You need both parties in Congress to agree to a thing. Right now Republicans tend to be pro-Israel because some extremist Christians think the apocalypse can't happen and Jesus return unless there is a Jewish state in the Middle East, while some white nationalists want Jewish people out of America. And Democrats, who have never been noted for spine within my lifetime, don't like the idea of any religion not having something, plus there are many wealthy, liberal Jewish people who support both Democratic politicians and Israel simply because they feel it's expected of them."

"Well, who said it had to be the Middle East of there?" goes the first kid.

And we all got quiet.

"I mean...look," and kid picked up this inflatable globe ball I got at the Dollar Tree because...well...it's a Title I school in kind of a broke city and this is what we have to work with. "This is Jerusalem, right?" We nodded. "Middle...east? Of what? There's Jerusalems everywhere. Why not just, like...make another one? I loved having Jewish neighbors base before last. Mrs.-"

And then this sweet young man described being a shabbes goy for his old neighbors, whom he still writes to, how they wanted to see Israel someday, but oy, such fighting, and he knew Palestinian kids "who had seen some sh...some bad stuff, excuse me, ma'am, and y'know, my neighbor, her grandson Reuven played soccer with me and Ari and they didn't care. They did NOT even CARE. We were BROS, like..."

And a couple of kids patted his shoulders, including a little quiet chap who hasn't had field time since this kid moved here and joined the soccer team, which I call decent, and another soccer kid caused a momentary distraction so little bro could wipe his eyes.

He reckoned that if they evacuated the kids, just for safety, and let them play sports together after school on American base schools, then built a new place, maybe two, in the U.S. out where there's open land that's just used for big dumb corn farms now, and just offered folks the option, the kids would leave once they got old enough, and the wars would either end or the dumb fighty old people could have 'em until they died.

Then another kid asked but what about the American Indians whose land the big dumb corn farms had been stolen for, and they got to work sorting that out, also.

So long as they either A. keep comparing the real costs of grain to farm subsidies to war materiel, or B. never figure out Hot Cheetos and Takis are made of corn, I expect this particular batch I got this year could balance the budget and do world peace, at least at the Model UN level.

I’m always amazed by posts like this, because they get mad at the child for “deciding to cry” without once consider that the child has an internal mental state and is unhappy.  It just never occurs to make the child no longer unhappy, just to make the child shut up.

Don’t make me tap the sign *the sign says “To a baby, every mild discomfort is the worst thing they’ve ever experienced.”*

Further, don't set your kid up to fail.

Do not. Set your kid, as in, that tiny human who didn't ask to be here and for whose needs you and your co-parent, if you have one, are 100% responsible, up to fail. Arrange your plans and organize your resources so your kid is more likely to succeed, and they will succeed, more often than not. A failure to plan IS a plan to fail, when it comes to kids. They don't HAVE the executive functioning parts of their brains that adults do yet, so you might as well shriek at a wheelchair user for not winning the marathon as even be surprised that they're having a hard time when you're the one who dropped the ball laying a track for them. Jerkface.

I like Target better than Walmart for two very simple reasons. One, I wear a lot of blue at work because it's the school color, and though I have Resting Helpful Face and people are gonna assume I know where stuff is anyway, at Target at least they realize a half-second in that 'wait, you don't-' 'Oh, no worries! They keep those over next to the kitchen things, on the left, opposite the coffee makers.' 'Thanks!' and I feel useful.

That's Dr. Corvara. He's handled the capybara's physical therapy and acupuncture needs for a few years now. When Cap changed jobs and was between insurance companies, the Doc cut him a cash-rate deal because they're good pals. Their kids play on the same soccer team and their wives' book club meets at the berry bush near the little stream.