Pomegranate Seeds

day 5: scarlet macaw!

Back with another gorgeous cover by Ondrej Hrdina, the Czech illustrator for the DCC books! This one is for Book 2, Carl's Doomsday Scenario. Just LOOK at the details!! Carl's sparkly feet, the Shield dome, the Molotov cocktail... *chef's kiss*

In my continued goal of mining as much data as I can, consensually, from my fellow tumblr users for my own human-data-nerd-euphoria, this time I'm curious which of these represents the BIGGEST NUMBER for you: followers, following, posts, likes, or drafts! Self define whatever is the "main" blog for you (just please don't combine numbers across multiple blogs.)

saw this on Insta and the idea that people who are anti-AI are just using it anyway like... willing to give it up? I ACTIVELY AVOID THAT SHIT BUD! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?

ALSO

It’s difficult to fully articulate the hold that Patrick Stewart had on audiences when TNG was airing. Between the hundreds of magazine covers, the talk show circuits, and the paparazzi nonsense, the amount of baldness puns editors were compelled to create was astounding.

It was like the media fixated on this man because he had catastrophic levels of charisma and audiences were losing their minds over him (TNG was regularly beating network shows in ratings), yet he was so far removed from the narrow Hollywood standards of beauty that it vexed and haunted these people for years.

Baldness was a joke in Hollywood. 75% of George Costanza's identity revolved around bald jokes. If you were a bald actor, you were cast as a villain or a buffoon, never the hero. And if you were losing your hair, you had to slap a wig on or risk losing your career. Yul Brynner was somewhat of an exception but he was from a much different generation of Hollywood and even Bruce Willis didn't fully shave his head until 1994 (post TNG success incidentally).

In Patrick Stewart's case, there was often an undercurrent of snide putdowns with many interviewers, drawing focus to his baldness over and over and over again with low hanging jokes. It was like you could see their vanity-based paradigms cracking in real time and it was strange to witness. Imagine how bizarre it would be if talk show hosts today could only ask The Rock, Vin Diesel, or Jason Statham about their bald heads.

But karma swooped in to the rescue. In 1992 Stewart was voted TV Guide's "Sexiest Man on Television" with a whopping 54% of votes. He beat out the likes of Luke Perry, John Corbett, A. Martinez, and even Burt Reynolds (with a total of 20 contenders).

The middle-aged bald guy in the syndicated sci-fi show beat out the hottest of the Hot Guys™️ and it wasn't even remotely close.

^ Bald joke

Now, I don't actually know which wig it was that he auditioned with... he apparently got The Wig Mandate last-minute, so his wife had to pick one out from one of the plays he had recently acted in. Rumor has it that it was the wig he wore in "I, Claudius".

...But this is the image usually associated with the story:

I've heard people claim that they decided to let him go without a wig because they just couldn't arrive at anything that looked natural, or that they didn't want to deal with having to put the main character in a wig every day. These people are obviously just making stuff up without actually thinking very deeply about it; for every single scene featuring Worf, who appears in all but four episodes of TNG, Michael Dorn had to be fitted with a latex forehead and makeup, a wig, and fake facial hair.

Some reporter: But by the 24th century, won't we have found a cure for male pattern baldness?

Spin the wheel to find out what!

beedle:

it should be an explosive device, so they widen that part of the cave at the same time and no other spelunkers will get stuck there

One day we realized "Oh, damn, you are HOW OLD??" because I'm 10 years older than her. We both thought we were roughly the same age, but oops looks like there is a decade between us. Like we didn't even realize there was any kind of age gap at all.

I went from barely knowing this gal, to becoming fast friends such that I'll be going to her wedding this fall.

My spouse is six years older than me and we've always been super similar.

And honestly, six years when you are in your late 20s and early 30s is fucking noooothing babes. Like, when you are a child six years feels like forever, you are in a very different life stage when you are 7 as opposed to when you are 1. Or even when you are 7 and comparing to when you are 13. Or when you are 14 comparing to when you are 20. But when you are 26? You'll likely be in very similar life stages as someone who is 32...

The big difference between life stages at this point are mostly based in socio-economic status than like... human physical development status.... Like a 26 year old nepo-baby will have a very different life than a 32 year old fast food worker, the power imbalance does not come from age...