so in the continuing saga of me trying to get an internship, they said they’d be in touch yesterday and they weren’t???? should i email them??? i should email them. what should the email say??????? help!!!!!!!
I’m usually pretty particular about the sorts of traits that get assigned as humanity’s “special thing” in sci-fi settings, but I have to admit that I have a weakness for settings where the thing humanity is known for is something tiny and seemingly inconsequential that it wouldn’t normally occur to you to think of as a distinctive trait.
Like, maybe we have a reputation as a bunch of freaky nihilists because we’re the only species that naturally has the capacity to be amused by our own misfortune.
Alien: Why are you happy? You’ve been seriously injured!
Human: *struggling to control laughter* Yeah, but I can imagine what that must have looked like from the outside, and it’s pretty hilarious.
Alien: …
Captain XXlr’y: First Officer Jane The Human, your olifactory protuberance is severely damaged! Why is this a matter for mirthful celebration???
First Officer Jane The Human: A SPARKLY LITTLE POMERANIAN THING WITH A GODDAMN UNICORN HORN CHASED ME STRAIGHT INTO A WALL! OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT? I RAN STRAIGHT INTO THE WALL.
Captain XXlr’y: Yes I just observed this sequence of events! It was terrible!
First Officer Jane The Human: OKAY WHO GOT THAT ON CAMERA, I WANNA SEE.
Captain XXlr’y: So you more fully understand that this is a situation you should never get into again?
First Officer Jane The Human: SO I CAN SEND THE VIDEO TO MY MOM!
Captain XXlr’y: For… for the solicitation of maternal concern…?
First Officer Jane The Human: NO, BECAUSE SHE’LL THINK IT’S HILARIOUS TOO.
Sidetrack but: I am of the opinion that we will be known as the Throwers. The biomechanics of our shoulder joints, which allow us to hurl things farther, faster, and more accurately than any other animal, set us apart almost as much as our intelligence. And indeed our dominance as a species on Earth has a lot to do with applying that intelligence to throwing more better.
When the aliens come visit via seventh dimensional space fold like sensible people, I can only imagine their reaction when we ask them to point out where they come from so we can fling our ambassadors at them.
That would be fascinating. Imagine if, for whatever reason, they were simply very badly adapted to throwing, and never picked up the habit. And the first time they saw someone toss a thing to someone else, they’d just be like “why did you … drop that thing sideways?”
oh my god that’s fascinating. imagine a bunch of alien species that never evolved a socket joint. like, tentacles or hinges, that’s it. maybe some pivoting paired bones like our radius and ulna. then we show up and we’re like ‘haha watch this’ and windmill our arms and the Zygosian ambassador gets really grossed out.
later some aliens are like ‘so, as remarkably throwy guys, what’s your opinion on this mathematical acceleration experimentation tensile device one of our philosopher kings recently invented?’ and show humans a little desk-sized catapult.
humans: it’s cute. try this tho. *gives alien a paintball gun*
“The Devil Went Down To Georgia” White Trash Washing Machine Cover
That’s just. Amazing.
AWESOMENESS
this is awesome
This is literally the futuristic version of washboard music. Is that not just fucking amazing? We had dudes playing washboards to accompany music since the early days of blues and zydeco and today we’re sitting here watching someone using a washing machine in the exact same way. Imagine being some old fella playing a washboard with thimbles in a little jug-and-tea-chest outfit back in the 20s, imagine if someone told you that in about 100 years time, some kid would be using a machine that will replace the washboard to serve the exact same purpose.
moral of the story is i talk faster than online word-count-to-minute converters can reasonably estimate because i am a full minute short on a speech that should be the correct length, fml
I am 100% convinced that “exit, pursued by a bear” is a reference to some popular 1590s meme that we’ll never be able to understand because that one play is the only surviving example of it.
Seriously, we’ll never figure it out. I’ll wager trying to understand “exit, pursued by a bear” with the text of The Winter’s Tale as our primary source is like trying to understand loss.jpg when all you have access to is a single overcompressed JPEG of a third-generation memetic mutation that mashes it up with YMCA and “gun” – there’s this whole twitching Frankensteinian mass of cultural context we just don’t have any way of getting at.
no, but this is why people do the boring archival work! because we think we do know why “exit, pursued by a bear” exists, now, and we figured it out by looking at ships manifests of the era –
it’s also why there was a revival of the unattributed and at the time probably rather out of fashion mucedorus at the globe in 1610 (the same year as the winter’s tale), and why ben jonson wrote a chariot pulled by bears into his court masque oberon, performed on new year’s day of 1611.
we think the answer is polar bears.
no, seriously! in late 1609 the explorer jonas poole captured two polar bear cubs in greenland and brought them home to england, where they were purchased by the beargarden, the go-to place in elizabethan london for bear-baiting and other ‘animal sports.’ it was at the time run by edward alleyn (yes, the actor) and his father-in-law philip henslowe (him of the admiral’s men and that diary we are all so very grateful for), and would have been very close, if not next to, the globe theatre.
of course, polar bear cubs are too little and adorable for baiting, even to the bloodthirsty tudor audience, aren’t they? so, what to do with the little bundles of fur until they’re too big to be harmless? well, if there’s anything we know about the playwrights and theatre professionals of the time, it’s that they knew how to make money and draw in audiences. and the spectacle of a too-small-to-be-dangerous-yet-but-still-real-live-and-totally-WHITE-bear? what good entertainment businessman is going to turn down that opportunity?
and, voila, we have a death-by-bear for the unfortunate antigonus, thereby freeing up paulina to be coupled off with camillo in the final scene, just as the comedic conventions of the time would expect.
you’re telling me it was an ACTUAL BEAR
every time I think to myself “history can’t possibly get any more bananas” I realize or am made to realize that I am badly mistaken
What TV writers think is good LGBT representation: *protagonist teary eyed* My attraction to the same gender is so painful I wish I did not feel this way…but alas it’s my burden to bear. Also I have dated both men and women but I don’t like labels. *dies* What is actually good LGBT representation: *protagonist wearing sunglasses playing the saxophone in front of a giant bisexual flag* How am I doing? Well I’m just getting BI!!! Haha get it?? Because I like both men and women so I’m bisexual.
That picture doesn’t do this scene justice, it’s a musical number:
