My Tumblr; Director's Commentary Edition

The SS Warrimoo, a passenger steamship traveling from Vancouver to Australia, was silently knifing its way across the mid-Pacific waters. The navigator had just finished calculating a star fix and handed the results to Captain John DS. Phillips.

The Warrimoo's coordinates were LAT 0º 31' N, LONG 179 30' W. The date was December 31, 1899. "Know what this means?" First Mate Payton announced, "We're only a few miles from the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line."

Captain Phillips was prankish enough to seize the opportunity to do the nautical feat of a lifetime. He summoned his navigators to the bridge to double-check the ship's position. He altered his course slightly to focus directly on his target. He then altered the engine's speed.

The calm weather and clear night worked to his advantage. At midnight, the SS Warrimoo rested on the Equator, exactly where it had crossed the International Date Line. The ramifications of this odd arrangement were numerous.

These 'scripture teacher' roles generally do not require any formal education training, and can be filled by just about any random off the street, which means that for one class a week Australian students are subjected to some of the most unhinged people on earth teaching them all kinds of made up stuff with zero supervision.

Also shoutout to this gold in the tags:

And we forgot, "having to sit in silence on your own for an hour" was up until recently the most common alternative if your parents opted you out of the dumpster fire:

Pretty sure this one is a legit hate crime:

And the absolute pinacle:

So my parents were in no way religious so my first proper introduction to the Bible was in like 3rd grade when a Chaplain (RE) “teacher” took over class.

This Chaplain was very Devil-focused. Like, we learned EVERYTHING there was to know about Satan and his position in hell.

So here’s my 8-9yo autistic, logic-first ass trying to make sense of the whole situation and the best I could come up with was, “Well, it sounds like the Devil just has a job to do. Like, the good people go to heaven and God manages them, and the bad people go to hell and the Devil manages them. He and God probably have knock-off beers on a Friday and bitch about their work week.”

So what do I do with this revelation? I write what can only be construed as a targeted letter/essay to my class’s Chaplain explaining their mistake. The Devil isn’t bad, obviously, they just have a job to do. This would be like calling the mailman evil.

Here’s where shit gets particularly funny. My mum comes across me writing this essay at home and asks what I’m doing. I explain. Turns out mum never consented to my being in any sort of religious class in the first place. She’d left the “religion” box on my school entrance paperwork blank but, back then (not sure if it’s still a thing now), if you did that, you’d just get auto-opted into RE without your parents knowing about it.

Mum wasn’t particularly happy about this. So what does she do? She helps me edit my essay decrying the character assassination of Satan and sends me back to school (seriously, I still have the spell-checked, handwritten masterpiece). She then times her visit to the principal’s office to get up them for enrolling me into a religious class she didn’t approve of to coincide with my next RE class.

RE hour starts, I politely ask to read my essay aloud and the Chaplain is THRILLED to see a student engaging with the material. This sentiment doesn’t last long.

I got about halfway through my essay before the Chaplain started screaming… just as my mother and the principal walked into the room.

Never saw that particular Chaplain again. From memory, the school got another one but I was allowed to spend that hour in the library from then on.

When you're new at work

“if impossible things are happening every day, then why shouldn’t i have impossible hopes and dreams? even something as impossible as going to the ball?”