NANIIEBIM- HERE BE DEMONS

"Daemons of the Shadow Realm (Yomi no Tsugai)" ongoing TV anime episode 13 will air in two weeks (July 4). Next week episode (June 27) will be a episode 1 rebroadcast with audio comentary

Like I said, the museum was a pretty snotty institution. It’s got a LOT of objects it’s way famous for possessing, but nobody knew about the absolutely massive collection of Moche erotic pottery it had because the curators were totally embarrassed by this stuff.

Some examples:

Pretty hot shit, right? They never, ever put any of this stuff on public view or published it in any catalogues but - we legit had like several hundred pieces of Moche ceramics in the “dirty pots” category. Anyway, I was left alone to just do my job with regard to the database for several years, ok? And I figured, well, these’re accessioned objects in the museum’s collection - better get down to bidness. 

I catalogued every goddamn bestiality, necrophiliac, cocksucking, buttfucking, detached penis, and giant vulva drinking cup in that collection. I’d be like, 

A drinking vessel in form of a standing man wearing a tunic and cap. He holds an oversized erection in his hands and stares into the distance (note I did not say “like he’s hella-constipated”). The vessel has a hole at both the tip of the penis as well as around the rim of the figure’s head, thus forcing the drinker to drink only from the penis or risk spilling wine all over themselves from the top of the vessel. Red and orange slip covers the surface of the piece.

Pretty straightforward, right? Apparently the deep seated fear of these objects that the curators exhibited was meant to spread to me as well, but - no one ever gave me that memo, because I guess Midwesterners reproduce asexually. When the curators understood that I had catalogued all of these objects in addition to the other, non-sexy pieces in the collection, they were apparently livid, but knew they had no legs to stand on in terms of getting pissed at me for it. 

I visited the museum’s online public access database a few years back and - every single description I wrote of these pieces has been totally neutered to say something like Male figural vase. 

“Thwarted.”

The “Ngk” is broken.

the picture below is the site of a mass grave. captive partisans were brought here by nazis, forced to dig, and then executed on the spot.

our tour guide, who was delighted by our group because tourists never ask about fascism, walked us forty minutes to this vineyard in the middle of nowhere. there were no signs on the road. us americans were worried about trespassing, since no one on the property was around.

he took us to this grove and explained that the partisans were young communists from the nearby town of arezzo. local land & business owners, even their parents and friends, had eagerly ratted them out because they saw nazi occupation as bringing order back to the region.

we learned that many in central italy still to this day see nazis as heroes and americans as villains, because the nazis got rid of those troublesome punks while the americans brought bombs and tanks.

then our tour guide informed us that his own grandfather was one of the partisans executed here.

he told us that the nazis lined them up one by one and shot each in the head, and more times in the chest. but human beings are hard to kill, and it was known that even this kind of brutality was survivable.

so they threw grenades into the grave, just to be sure.

this was standard practice.

nestled in the bushes nearby with zero fanfare stands a single solitary monument. there are monuments just like it all across italy.

what stuck with me was not just the cruelty of the nazis. it was the callousness of the turncoats, who never stopped believing that they had done the right thing.

whether by nature or nurture, there is a class of people who will always prefer death and destruction over a reduction in profits. they cannot be reasoned with. they cannot be taught empathy. they will watch young people shot, dismembered, and buried alive, and they will say that god is good.

there is no reform. there is no compromise.

believe what your eyes see. listen to what your heart tells you. we are surrounded by systems that exist to launder guilt and naturalize structures of oppression, so that we side against our senses.

but you know exactly what is happening. you do.

we are waking up from a dream of peace in the interregnum of a war that never went away. the fruits of our nation's conduct, a largely bipartisan project from the start, have arrived by the truck-full. it did not come out of nowhere. it's not new, or unprecedented, or even particularly surprising.

what it IS, however, is the present. it's not a history book. it's not a mass grave. it is happening right now.

and right now, this moment and each moment after, is the *only* moment you will ever own.

stories will be told about this era for years to come. but only we are its authors.

only you.

The reason WHY Team Beast wants to "create fandom" is because they have an awareness that fandom is something that makes Number Go Up, and they want to have access that sort of loyalty and attention. But fandom isn't really something you create intentionally, it's more of a natural side effect of caring about something a lot, and going about the business of expressing how much you care, and finding community that cares in a similar way. But Mr Beast and his team do not actually care about anything at all, except Number Go Up. Everything Team Beast does is just a random exercise in throwing money at different ideas to see which makes Number Increase More.

Team Beast made chocolate bars because they know their audience of kids likes and buys candy, not because they liked candy or were interested in the process of making good candy. This is how they ended up making a chocolate bar that lacked the pre-sectioned bar shape that any other reputable candy maker has known and utilized for decades.

Team Beast made a reality show, because they know that reality shows are popular, and that Squid Game was a massive cross-cultural phenomenon, not because they care about reality shows, or are interested in telling stories about the limits of human cooperation and integrity in high stress, high rewards situations. This is how they ended up making a reality show with too many people to focus on any sort of interesting individual narratives, filled with elimination challenges that didn't work.

my partner was a TA for an intro-to-subject course in grad school. finals week rolls around and the students are required to submit this big module assignment they've had like a month to do for a decent chunk of their grade. if you've submitted everything, you'll see a summary screen with a star beside each module name showing it's been completed.

an hour before the assignment deadline, he receives an email from a student claiming they completed the assignment, but the system is not allowing them to submit. there's an image attached to the email. partner goes to open what he assumes is a screenshot of that summary page.

instead, he sees that the student has taken a photo of their laptop from about 2 feet away, with that page open. strange, but it wouldn't be the first time a college freshman has lacked the tech literacy to take a screenshot. he almost doesn't look twice at it, but he realizes something about it just feels a little bit...off. so he zooms in.

the student had CUT STARS OUT OF CONSTRUCTION PAPER and TAPED THEM TO THEIR LAPTOP SCREEN BESIDE EACH MODULE NAME. you could see where they actually had completed the first couple of modules, but the stars for all the subsequent ones were like, double the size of the first two and exactly as uneven/irregular as you'd expect if you were freehanding them with scissors.

I think I might have missed Book Omens Week but I’ve been meaning to draw them anyway.

(to be fair I watched the show before reading the book so my picturing the characters was slightly influenced, mostly Az’s fluffy hair) 

In my head book!Crowley is more slick than flashy with a black tie-black shirt situation and a dark stone colored suit. Still only a vague understanding of a bipedal skeleton’s appropriate limitations.

I pictured Aziraphale much taller than Crowley, with a grand angelic stature but definitely still soft :) I can never quite picture his face in detail I think because of his celestial association, perhaps by nature it doesn’t quite hold in memory if you meet him in person.

@pandersonstudio, creators of the title sequence and  @colleendoran, illustrator of the Good Omens graphic novel are back with us (🎉) and we'll be showing the Good Omens musical all the way from Australia, with thanks to Vicki Larnach, Jim Hare and Jay James-Moody!

Online tickets are available from £5 and panels are viewable on demand to accommodate different time zones:

https://www.theineffablecon.org.uk/tic7/

How did Dogma, a relatively low-budget film, manage to have the only good-looking angel wings? Like, even movies with tons of FX dollars tend to fuck them up and they look bad. These are very stylized, and you can tell they’re not real feathers, but they actually look… better than real feathers? They have a balance of curvature and sharp angles that just make for a great silhouette and they move wonderfully. I cannot figure this out!!

e: I looked on The Internet

Kiss

awkward to work out, but fun when u do.

Raja and vic (office yautja)

Yautja vocab has the word for kiss, (ok, it's used threateningly, but.) Probably not the same thing.