When the last vampire is extinct, who will mourn our passing? Will she? Will anyone? Can anybody understand this pain, this loneliness?

VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST (2000) dir. Yoshiaki Kawajiri

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What the fuck

This is absolutely fascinating. I've now been looking at Alex Colville's paintings and trying to work out what it is about them that makes them look like CGI and how/why he did that in a world where CGI didn't exist yet. Here's what I've got so far:

- Total lack of atmospheric perspective (things don't fade into the distance)

- Very realistic shading but no or only very faint shadows cast by ambient light.

- Limited interaction between objects and environment (shadows, ripples etc)

- Flat textures and consistent lighting used for backgrounds that would usually show a lot of variation in lighting, colour and texture

- Bodies apparently modelled piece by piece rather than drawn from life, and in a very stiff way so that the bodies show the pose but don't communicate the body language that would usually go with it. They look like dolls.

- Odd composition that cuts off parts that would usually be considered important (like the person's head in the snowy driving scene)

- Very precise drawing of structures and perspective combined with all the simplistic elements I've already listed. In other words, details in the "wrong" places.

What's fascinating about this is that in early or bad CGI, these things come from the fact that the machine is modelling very precisely the shapes and perspectives and colours, but missing out on some parts that are difficult to render (shadows, atmospheric perspective) and being completely unable to pose bodies in such a way as to convey emotion or body language.

But Colville wasn't a computer, so he did these same things *on purpose*. For some reason he was *aiming* for that precise-but-all-wrong look. I mean, mission accomplished! The question in my mind is, did he do this because he was trying to make the pictures unsettling and alienating, or because in some way, this was how he actually saw the world?

omf i never thought i'd find posts about alex colville on tumblr, but! he's a local artist where i'm from & i work at a library/archives and have processed a lot of documents related to his art. just wanted to give my two cents!

my impression is that colville did see the world as an unsettling place and a lot of his work was fueled by this general ~malaise?? but in a lot of cases, he was trying to express particular fears or traumas. for instance, this painting (horse and train) was apparently inspired by a really tragic experience his wife had:

iirc she was in a horrible automobile crash, as the car she was in collided with a train. i find it genuinely horrifying to look at, knowing the context, but a lot of colville's work is like that? idk he just seems to capture the feeling you get in nightmares where everything is treacle-ish and slow and inevitable.

Jesus Christ.

Seeing people shoot raptors in other countries is fucking wild to me because we have a whole system of super strict laws governing how you can handle an individual FEATHER off of an eagle, and it doesn't have to even be a dead eagle. One can molt and you can find it on the ground and if you're caught with it the warden will fuck your entire life. What do you mean people are out there shooting them to protect a fucking pheasant. A pheasant??? That thing I have to avoid running over approximately 459 times any time I leave a major highway???

My good friend @prismaticate has asked a very good question here, and while I’m not entirely sure I’m qualified to explain it and would love some input from more qualified sources, my SUPER simplified understanding of why the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and its numerous modern revisions and addendums have clauses about this included is this:

-It’s basically impossible to tell a feather that’s been picked up off the ground from one that’s been taken from a poached bird

-This used to be a MAJOR problem when bird-feather hats and the like were in high demand back in the day, because several bird species on the edge of extinction kept getting poached in spite of the new laws protecting them since people would just say they “found” any feathers from protected species used in the stuff they were selling, and you couldn’t prove otherwise unless you literally caught them in the act of poaching

-This eventually got SO bad that they had to just make it illegal to have the feathers at all, with certain exceptions made for members of different indigenous groups, or authorized organizations that display them as part of efforts to educate the public about the species they belong to

@zooophagous is this a reasonable rundown? Was there anything I missed/any better sources you might recommend to learn more about this? I know it’s probably far more nuanced than that, but this was kind of the explanation I’d always seen floating around. 😅

That's pretty much the gist of it! Eagles and eagle feathers have more laws on top of that because of their sacred uses in certain indigenous practices, how they relate to legal falconry, and because eagles at one time were highly endangered while at the same time being a national symbol. Where a cop or a game warden may shrug and look the other way if you, say, illegally picked up a chickadee feather from your bird feeder, if they see a real eagle feather they will notice and will be VERY interested in where it came from.

Not long ago here someone was arrested and charged for violating these laws because they tried to sell a plains feather bonnet at a pawn shop, claiming they had "found it while exploring an abandoned house."

The clerk suspected it was real eagle, the warden confirmed it was, and because those feathers are so tightly tracked they were able to locate the family of the previous owners who said the item had been stolen some time ago.

If nobody knows you have it, obviously you can get away with it. But if they see it, or God forbid you try to SELL it, the hammer will fall.

Im surprised every time people think it's a crazy sounding law, it is genuinely one of the only things preventing a lot of native birds from extinction or any asshole could kill as many as they want and just say they found them on the ground

stop what you’re doing right now and watch a 33 year old bat get help with flying

Yeah, I’m going to always reblog Statler.

This might be the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen

It’s like flying a kite that runs on fruit.

Prev tags are great

An incomplete list of some of my favourite early Pokemon game glitches

hammerhead worm

the garden i tend at work is getting overrun with snails so i thought about a world where we acquired a domesticated a "working dog" breed of hammerhead worm (they eat snails and slugs and worms) that is also. a puppy. Bred to clear vegetation of common slimy garden pests. click under readmore if u wanna see the worm theyre based off of i think theyre really cute

Itch.io / Redbubble / INPRNT / Twitter / Patreon  

Thank u guys for all the wormdog love T_T i did more

The top one is if the wormdog from the og post (that me and my irl coworker have nicknamed Mug) if he ate all the damn snails terrorizing the garden and grew big and strong. the second one shows how wormdogs come in all sorts of shapes and colors :) bc i wanted to draw more. which one would u adopt

iirc one of the battle royale actors is now a lefty politician and like, assaulted someone in diet or something

good for him

Reiwa Shinsengumi (Yamamoto's party) also 100% backs every (gay and) trans right measures and champions disability rights. The lawmakers that necessitated adding even more mobility measures in the Japanese Diet Building all came from Reiwa Shinsengumi. Few of the only trans candidates running for elections in the last few years have almost all (if not outright all) campaigned with Reiwa Shinsengumi. It's an incredible party that has moved JCP towards a more progressive policy for LGBT+ and disability rights.

Also holy shit that's the dopest name for a political party I've ever heard.

Y’all in the American SW and west Mexico better check the national hurricane center and your weather for this weekend and next week.

Hurricane Hilary is about to make landfall and that whole desert area is supposed to get a years worth of rain or more. Death Valley is supposed to get twice the annual rainfall. Severe winds, massive flooding, and landslides are all strong possibilities.

This is gonna get ugly. Please spread the word. This is a majorly anomalous event and people may be unaware of the threat headed their way.

My stage career began when I was a little under two months old, when I took the spotlight as Baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant. I’m told that I did a wonderful job and slept calmly through the whole thing, which can only speak to my talents as an actress, because I was 1. the wrong gender 2. a colicky screaming demon of a baby and 3. about as far from divine as it’s possible for an allegedly-human child to be. 

I continued to be actively involved in theater as a kid (and frequently played roles of various small animals, because I was tiny for my age). Around the age of ten, I was cast as the lead character in a musical about cowboys that I no longer remember the name of. It was my first real lead role, and I took it very, very seriously. And because I am myself, that means I maaaaybe went…a little overboard.

My character’s introduction was early in the play, accompanied by the crack of a bullwhip. This was more-or-less pre internet (or, at least, our director was not tech-savvy enough to find sound effects online) and we didn’t have a sound effect track for that noise. There were plans to acquire the appropriate sound effect before opening night, but I rapidly tired of making my entrance during rehearsals to the sound of someone yelling “BULLWHIP NOISE!”

This, I thought to myself, is a problem I can solve.

I learned early in life that it’s good to be friends with people who have skills; they always come in handy eventually.  After rehearsals one day, I put on my cowboy boots and biked a couple miles over to my friend Grace’s house. I went down to their basement and knocked on her older brother’s door.

“Hello,” I said. “I need to learn how to use a bullwhip.”

“….Okay,” he said. It did not seem to occur to him that he might ask further questions about why I, a tiny horrible munchkin composed exclusively of rage and pointy elbows, needed to be weaponized any further. Clearly, I had come to the right person.

My friend’s older brother would have been an SCA nerd, if SCA was a thing where we were. Instead, he was one of those unsupervised 4H kids with weird hobbies, largely oriented around ancient forms of combat. He was somewhere in his late teens at this time, and he liked to make stuff. It was an urge I, even at age ten, could sympathize with. His name was Aron. 

Aron got out his bullwhip (which I had noticed hanging on his wall on a prior visit, and had filed away mentally under a for future use tab) and we went to the backyard. 

“Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron began, “Swinging the bullwhip.” 

We rapidly discovered that since I was god’s tiniest, angriest creation, a full-size bullwhip was way too long for me to use. Aron’s shins suffered for my attempt. 

“…Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron said, “Making a bullwhip.”

So we went back inside, found a tanned cowhide (that he just…had? I don’t remember if there was a reason for this.) and some razor blades, and I learned how to cut and braid a bullwhip. It took a few tries, and I wound up coming back for a while, because I kept getting frustrated with the bullwhip-braiding process and Aron kept distracting me with bait like: “Hey kid, wanna learn to make some chainmail?” and “Hey kid, wanna fletch some arrows?” and “Hey kid, wanna try doing horseback archery?”

Obviously the answer to these questions was “BOY, WOULD I EVER!” Some delays are necessary to the artistic process.

(At one point my mom asked me “Hellen, what are you doing over at Grace’s house all the time?” And I, perfectly innocent, said, “Making weapons!” and my mother, who never understood why I was like this, but accepted that a girl has needs and those needs occasionally involve stocking a personal armory, said “Okay! Have fun!”)

Soon, the bullwhip, size extra small, was finished. The lessons on actual bullwhip use commenced. 

It should be noted that Aron was self-taught, and really had no idea what to do, so this was mostly an exercise in the two of us standing twenty feet apart and flailing wildly with our respective whips until snapping noises happened. And then we figured out what we’d done to make the snapping noises. And then we kept doing that. Extremely vigorously. So vigorously that at one point one of the bullwhips launched into the air and caught on a tree branch and we hand to drag the trampoline over so Aron could bounce me high enough to grab it. But we persisted!

Eventually we reached a point where we could line up pop cans on a fence rail and hit them off three times out of five.

Feeling extremely accomplished and like I finally understood method acting, I packed my bullwhip into my backpack for the next play rehearsal. Soon enough, it was time for me to make my entrance. 

I leaped on stage in my cowboy boots and cracked the bullwhip as hard as I could, immediately launching into the song despite the fact that the sound of five feet of braided leather breaking sound barrier had startled the accompanist so badly she’d keysmashed on the piano.

The director shouted something she probably shouldn’t have shouted in a room full of small children, and then demanded, “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT!”

“I made it!” I declared proudly. “I’m a cowgirl! I can make my own bullwhip noise!”

“You…made it?” 

“Yes! Because we needed a bullwhip sound effect. And bullwhips are where bullwhip sound effects come from!”

This was, of course, impeccable logic.

It is apparently difficult to argue with a gleeful ten year old who happens to be armed with a bullwhip longer than she is tall. After some negotiation, the director agreed that I could use my bullwhip for my opening song, provided that I didn’t pop it while anyone was anywhere near me on stage and I didn’t let anyone else play with it. These terms were acceptable to me. 

Somehow, no one was injured and the play went off without a hitch. We can only chalk up these things to the magic of the theatre. 

Nearly a decade later, an unsuspecting college classmate asked me, “Hellen, wanna take a class on bullwhip combat with me?”

And obviously I answered, “BOY, WOULD I EVER!”

I will be 70 years old and I still will never have gotten over the time the Mythbusters used a rocket powered steel wall to - and I use this word as literally as possible - vaporize an entire car into red mist

https://youtu.be/Nl8xTqTUGCY

If you haven’t seen this episode of Mythbusters I feel so bad for you because “What car?” remains to this day as a defining moment of my adolescence and my entire life

That was a near-religious experience 

I made a gif of it for those of you who cant watch the video in your country. Or if you know you just want to stare at it mesmerized like me

Goncharov was special because not only did we establish canon, we created a whole fanon gay interpretation and proceded to ignore the (not even real) original in favour of it. And thats what tumblr is all about.

the beauty of it is that we *could* have made it gay in the original, being queerbaited was a choice because people of this hellsite are so used to it by this point.

This is a comedy

idk guys maybe we should try calling the amazon rain forest “sovereign indigenous lands” more often because i’m still seeing people talk about it like some sort of vast terra nullis where there are only animals–you know, like a colonialist

There are lots of indigenous people and tribes here, and their culture is shared a lot in my hometown — I’m from Manaus which is a city literally in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. So, yeah, people need to stop talking like that.

being a scavenger animal must be so fucking great. imagine if every time someone died a new restaurant opened up downtown.

THIS IS IT

MY MAGNUM OPUS

POOL NOODLE AXOLOTLS

(and yes, they are lovers)

Encounter: Axoloodles, native fauna to naturally-occurring chlorinated pools and lazy rivers

*and are on tumblr, this will not be an indication of age of fanfic writers overall, of course

I broke up the 20s as I, in my experience, feel there is a greater distinction between these age groups

please pick the age you are now, not what you will be

there is no “I want to see answers” option as I don’t want junk data

please reblog!

c'mon fandom olds, chime in

this is so upsetting, PLEASE rb to spread awareness

PLEASE, PLEASE REBLOG THIS, WHETHER YOURE JEWISH OR NOT.

THIS IS A SUPER IMPORTANT PART OF OUR HISTORY, DONT LET IT GET DESTROYED.

perhaps help take steps to stop them now from future attempts...

You can donate to the Jewish community in Tashkent here :)

Though the synagogue is no longer in danger I still think there should be a donation link

Compilation

Forgetting another good one

never not thinking about Poison Jr

scrolling horny tumblr when im not horny is like powerwalking around at an orgy, stepping over the writhing naked bodies, searching for any shiny objects that may be scattered round the area and may potentially be used to trade for higher level gear or potions of some kind