Eeyore's Pub

You don't even need to be a journalist, experts LOVE answering these kinds of questions. I, a regular-degular idiot, recently contacted the Smithsonian asking what kind of ink to use on mineral paper for maximum longevity, and I got a very detailed response in under 48 hours.

When I am king, we will valorize sanitation workers the way we currently valorize the military

So heroic posters showing trashmen battling allegorical monsters? I'm down.

Yeah but that's just the beginning. I also want Sanitation Worker Discounts at every business and blockbuster movie propaganda glorifying sanitation work. I want random people to salute garbage collectors and thank them for their service. I want drivers who get impatient with the recycling truck and honk at it and swerve around it to become social pariahs

fuhhckkkk... like yeah ok im carlos alcaraz i have the worlds most charming smile and a beautiful wolfcut mullet like a masc lesbian. when i laugh everyone divorces their wives. my pet photographer/straight boyfriend sacrificed his journalistic integrity so he could follow me around. mums love me. gay men love me. bees love me. novak djokovic loves me. jannik sinner wakes up thinking about me (?). my hair is thick and gorgeous. my butt. gerebito. im carlos alcaraz like fuhckkk brooooo

evoking bertholt brecht’s “the way people cast a play!” quote as a spell against prescriptive, stereotypical, fatalistic typecasting

My memory of The Birdcage (1996) is always that it's more dated and more difficult to watch than it actually is. You hear "drag-themed comedy from the 90s based on a musical from the 80s based on a play from the 70s" and you brace yourself just a little, right? But the film has a strong gay perspective, so the fruity fag jokes mostly come off as warmly affectionate. There is a surprising amount of poignancy in Robin Williams' portrayal of Armand, grudgingly agreeing to his beloved son's request that he go back into the closet for an evening ("do me a favor and don't talk to me for a while"). The drag club's staff attempting to redecorate the apartment with stuff straight people might like (a taxidermy moose head, an enormous crucifix, and Playboy magazine) is extremely funny. Albert's histrionics are a point of tension because he does often come off as a stereotypically pathetic/comic figure, but towards the end of the movie he makes it very clear that he's aware of how people see him, and asserts that trying to copy a stoic masculinity he doesn't possess for the sake of social approval would be more pathetic. In the 1983 musical adaptation, they give "Albert" (Albin) the only good song in the whole show, "I Am What I Am", which Gloria Gaynor covered to the delight of gays everywhere. Apparently Nathan Lane wasn't (publicly) out yet in 1996, which is amazing because it means that at one point in this movie you're watching a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man playing a straight man, in a movie about how it's important to be yourself, an absurdity that does seem to encapsulate the state of gay America in the 90s.

we don't actually need gender markers on our licenses and whatnot. we could just. do away with those entirely. i do not believe this would lead disaster.