#and of the humans said that the dogs do so much by getting poachers arrested and dont even realize it and i almost cried

[dustyforeskin]

"the universe is cruel and uncaring" cool story bro, go watch a documentary about the resilience of humans and animals and watch your heart grow three times its size

[majorxmaggiexboy]

i recently remembered a film my brother and i watched several times as children, and that got me thinking about the other stuff we would watch. most of which seems kind of weird on reflection. we don’t actually have any of these anymore, so just for funsicles i’m trying to think of the films and see if i can remember any of the details before actually googling them.

     Live Action

Two Brothers - a couple of tiger cubs are captured by poachers or something and separated from each other. one is trained to perform in the circus and is also fed candy by some guy, the circusmaster is an absolute [censored]. the tiger learns to jump through fire which is important later. the other cub is given to a little boy (TERRIBLE IDEA) and is a pet for a while until he’s sold to someone else. the tigers are eventually reunited but then they’re chased by people with guns who try to trap them by setting things on fire BUT because the first tiger learned not to be scared of fire he shows his brother how to jump through it and they escape and are reunited with this other tiger that has a hole in her ear from a really close call with poachers. i think she’s their mom.

Gunther and the Paper Brigade - idk if it was knock-off Newsies or what but like there’s this kid named Gunther whose brother keeps an ant farm and said the line “did you know that all the ants in the world would weigh as much as all the people in the world?” and i think they’d just moved to a new house but Gunther joins some kind of newspaper group and at first he is AWFUL at delivering papers like he just slings em any ol’ place but then he gets into a sort of war with a bully and i think somebody orally siphoned some gasoline at one point and the brother’s ants definitely came into play and in the end Gunther was really good at delivering papers. He rode a bike. at one point he’s hanging out at the mall pretty often for some reason and his brother teases him about it.

Ben Wagner - Uhhh family moves to new town, kid has an older sister and a younger sister, there’s a freaky adult at the school who said the line “Wagner. Waaaagner. I’ve got it. The name is now set. in my. brain....,,..”  Benny’s miserable for some reason but he meets a kind of mysterious girl who takes him to visit her elderly relative but to get there they have to walk across a log that’s across a river/waterfall type of situation. the elderly relative says something to the effect that if they all stand on one side of the house it’ll tip over. Ben regularly visits these people. His dad gives him some chores but he half-arses all of them and the dad walks him around to each thing (like the car that was supposed to be washed, the garage that was supposed to be tidied, w/e) and goes “you did a lousy job”. The older sister wants money for something but hasn’t saved up her allowance so she demands money from Ben and says the line “I bet you have tons of money squirreled away”. He goes to visit the mysterious girl and her relative but his little sister follows him and falls off the log bridge so he jumps in the water to save her and he manages it but then they’re both in the hospital.

No More Baths - Guy runs a club for kids and has some rules in place specifically to keep the kids safe but one kid breaks the rules and winds up getting himself hurt so the guy who just wanted to do nice things for the community kids gets straight up ARRESTED and his dog is put in the pound and the whole thing was some racially-motivated bull and the kids aren’t having it so they protest by refusing to bathe and i think they get to testify at the guy’s hearing too and anyway he wins so then the kids go play in some water bc they haven’t washed in weeks.

Goosebumps: Night in Terror Tower: Some dude is a little too enthusiastic about explaining to two children how the Rack works “It stretched, annnd streeettched, unTIL HIS BOOOOOOOOONES, WERE PUUULLLLLLLLED...poP. Right Out Of Their Sockets. :) “ and then those kids get chased around by some dude who wants to kill them or something. they try to buy a bus pass but they have medieval currency and the girl’s like “Our parents wouldn’t give us play money” but then they wind up in like actual medieval England. I think the girl’s name was Sidney.

Bunch of Assorted Wildlife Documentaries: idk there was a thing about an elephant painting and a lot to do with dolphins idk i think there was a bit of Steve Irwin in there too

     Cartoons

The Gallivants - like Divergent but with very Orange ants who are assigned a career? or pick out a career? but when they reach adulthood they’re all supposed to develop something called a “kabump” which is like an extra segment for their creepy insect bodies. They wear shoes and their limbs can have either pink stripes or blue stripes. they might wear gloves? anyway the protagonist is named something like “Shando” and he doesn’t develop his “kabump” on time so it’s scandalous. His friends desert him or something.  I think he wanted to be a musician and so makes himself a fake kabump but he plays the saxophone a little too vigorously or something and makes it come off, at which point he’s shamed and rejected by literally everyone but at some point he also tries to work in construction but accidentally breaks stuff and is told “You’re not a Con-struct. You’re a DE-STRUCT.” then he wanders around in a labyrinthine cave fighting a two-headed creature called something like, The VanterViper that wants to kill all the baby ants or something at i think in the end he’s appointed like official Mom of all the babies or something of that nature

The Ugly Duckling - Standard retelling of the classic tale, this one was created almost exclusively to sell Crayola products i’m pretty sure. This version has a baby swan just trying to live his best life but then a bunch of [redacted] sing at his adoptive mom about how “one bad apple spoils the batch” and he either runs away or gets kicked out. then he runs into a mouse who wears boots and has red hair and she proceeds to call him “Ugly” as if that’s his name, for the entire rest of the movie. He winds up inside a house at one point and two freaky looking cats sing at him about the importance of having “a high IQ” i think a church burns down and he saves the mouse? over the course of the film he gets more and more swan-like in appearance and maybe works for a theater for a little while and then everyone loves him.

Scamper - a bunch of penguins are trying to hatch their eggs but then they’re attacked by...something....and one penguin feels bad about losing some eggs so he takes someone else’s but then admits what he did and returns the egg to its real parents and everyone mourns the loss of their children while being grateful for the survivors. when the eggs hatch there’s like a little pink penguin and a little bluish penguin and they’re friends, they’re learning to slide during Penguin School but then they get captured and wind up on a boat and there’s a dog. They eat really tasty-looking crackers out of bags and are terrorized by the ship’s crew until they manage to escape and find their way back home to their grieving parents.

Willy the Sparrow - a sick (literally and figuratively) young boy has fun bullying a cat and being a [redacted] to birds but then an elderly woman turns him into a sparrow to teach him a lesson. He meets other birds, all of whom have decidedly human heads of hair, including an old man sparrow who teaches him to fly. he winds up challenging the former child-leader-of-the-sparrows for power using his human smarts to amaze them all and eventually leads an attack on the cat who rightfully holds a massive grudge against him. idk he like helps them find food or something and then gets turned back into a human maybe

The Seventh Brother - a young child is moving to a new place and brings her puppy, but somehow his carrier is knocked out of the car??? or something?? and he winds up lost in the forest but is rescued by a large family of rabbits who teach him how to act like a rabbit. He saves one of them from being carried off by a bird but then begins to die of malnutrition as dogs can’t live on the same diet as rabbits for any length of time. also, he rescues a former tormentor from a creepy-as-hell predator and is badly wounded in the process, prompting the rabbits to band together to get him home to his owner. they succeed and he’s pretty much cured by one (1) bowl of puppy food.

Some Blue’s Clues Special: idk whatever’s the one with the treble-clef and the treasure hunt where the ‘treasure’ turned out to be Steve’s grandma’s cookies that you can tell the exact taste and smell of just by looking at them and also the grandma made an appearance too

That Weird Puppet Cat in the Hat Thing with the grouchy bird who had to be taught how to play pretend but then was pushed into a panic attack when the group was playing pirates and he imagined it too vividly so then they explained that he could change the story at any time and also at one point they played a game called “pass the yawn” and the bird just went OFF more than once

Some cartoon, i think it was Anastasia, where at one point someone’s taking some stuff away and the girl says what on reflection i think might have been “My luggage!” but at the time i thought was “my lungs!” and i spent the whole movie thinking they done straight up confiscated the girl’s lungs.

The Swan Princess - and i remember nothing except the way Odette would say “Darren!” and the fact that she spent a lot of time as a bird and there was a puffin. also Darren was one of my early crushes purely because i liked his name.

The Secrets of NIHM 2: main character’s name was Timothy and was one of the first characters i mentally fanfic’d about. there was some song that was like “Just! say! Yes!” where i think he was being pressured to do drugs or be experimented on or something but mostly i remember him singing “I am my father’s son” and me being so confused thinking “well yeah?? Who else’s son could you be???”

idk some Thumbalina thing all i remember is “Deary! Marry the Mole!”

Friggin’ Barbie Rapunzel there was a purple(?) dragon and Rapunzel liked to paint and that movie was where i learned the word “adequate” and i’m still mad at that woman for being so rude like lady. who raised you. where are your manners. i think the dad dragon wanted the purple dragon to hate humans or something idk

some other film where there was a very definitely purple dragon but i can’t remember any details so it’s just going to haunt me forever but it was like a small-ish purple dragon.

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #53: Art.

Written: 2/27/2017

Life isn’t as luxurious as it may seem to be an art thief, or at least in my experience it isn’t. When I got into this line of work, I figured that I’d spend a majority of my time schmoozing with the rich and cultured, drinking wine and talking about Picasso, and those other painters that aren’t Picasso, and maybe that’s what its like, maybe I’m just not meant for the high life. I mean, I am spending my day cramped and bent inside of this gaudy bronze sculpture, which has turned out to feel very much like a sauna. If I had any regrets about this, it would be that I wore way too many clothes. A turtleneck seemed like the perfect attire for a scoundrel such as myself, but it is not the best thing to wear when you’re sweating by the pint.

Two things make this whole experience bearable. Just knowing how much the painting I’m targeting is worth is enough for me to spend days in here, even weeks, because its probably my shot at the big leagues, the cultured parties where the rooms have old globes in them, and people have their faces painted in various ways. Also, I have a great perspective of everyone inside this museum, walking around, gawking at the canvases, pausing to say things like “Its so honest, so raw” or “It has a total lack of honesty”, sometimes within the same sentence, about the same painting. At least that’s what I’m assuming they’re saying. Unless they are right up on this big, bronze frog, well, I can’t really hear a word they say, but its fun to pretend.

“Yes dear, the lines are very well done. See, look at how this one curves over here, but the one below it is actually very straight, a nice justification to the preambles of modern associations. Very Picasso.”

“If you turn your head, and squint at it, you can actually see Napoleon. I think this one says a lot about how it can look like Napoleon, but it also doesn’t, so in the end its a very good painting.”

“This circle over here, see that? Its pissing me off, fuck this circle. Whoever painted this is a genius, a genius that I’m going to punch in the fucking face.”

You may be wondering how I’m supposed to get out of this frog if I can’t even move around enough to take off my shirt. Well, I have an answer for that: a little elbow grease, and a crate full of prayers.

You might wonder how I even stuffed myself in this sculpture in the first place. I was able to get in through a hole in the bottom of it, like the ones in piggy banks, and then a friend of mine put the cover back onto the sculpture. The museum placed me inside, and now their security is completely unaware. There’s even a very large security detail here, I can see plenty of uniformed and, what I assume to be, undercover officers, but none of them know that the thief is inside of the art! One of my associates probably tipped them off about the heist, but they’ll never catch me, its tamper proof.

“Hey, look at that guy, maybe that guy is the dumb thief. We should arrest that guy, take him downtown, and then clear out this place because everything will be safe then, because its not like somebody could be hiding inside of a statue.”

“Hey, look at this art, can we arrest it? This circle is really pissing me off, we should put a lot of fake charges on it, so it will never see the light of day.”

“Freeze! Oh, wait, that was a painting. It looked like it had a gun. I might shoot it just in case, I mean, who will be more believable in court? An officer of the law, or a painting?”

I’m just kidding, they’re all being really boring, just standing around mostly. Standing and watching. Some of these guys could be very intelligent, I don’t know. Its not very fun being cramped inside of this oven.

In order to make the situation more bearable, let me tell you about the painting I’m going to steal. On the surface, its just a bunch of colors put together, some blues and purples, maybe some others, I don’t know. However, under all of that paint is a canvas. Okay, I’m sorry for that one. I really can’t tell you much about the painting, because I don’t really know why people even care about it. All I know, is its worth about $560,000. How do they even come up with prices for this shit? “Oh, that makes me feel very good, $400,000. Oh, this one makes me feel very aroused, $1,000,000, I will put this in my library.” Psh, I may know nothing about the subject, but I can tell you I don’t need to know anything to know that its a load of bullshit. Take it from a master thief in a bronze frog: art is nothing but a racket, taking advantage of idiots.

Apparently, or so I’ve been informed by some of my more successful associates, a lot of the money is in painting counterfeits. If you can paint well, and can become a human copy machine, then apparently you’re going to be rolling in the big bucks. I always found that kind of silly, because doesn’t that mean that those people also fall prey to the illusion of art? Like, they gotta learn how to paint and know what they’re supposed to appreciate, so, in the end, they’re just trapped in the same system that they claim to be taking advantage of. Believing in art is the biggest mistake anyone can make, which is why all I do is steal. Point me to a painting with a hefty price tag, and I’ll walk out with it, no problem.

“Wow, this painting is very Kafkaesque, it might actually be an original Kafka. Look at the way they painted a field, its so rural, its like you’re as bored as you would be if you were standing in a real field.”

“Darling, don’t you know? This isn’t a painting by Kafka, this is a genuine Picasso.”

“How could I be so stupid?”

“Well, you know the saying: if you don’t sniff your wine, you don’t know art.”

Oh, hey, somethings happening. Looks like the police are scrambling around like the idiots they are, probably because they’re going after some shady looking guy who they think is supposed to be me, the real art thief. See, I was right actually, cops are pretty dumb. Art, law, dog shows, high society is the dumbest fucking thing on the planet, and its just a way for people on the top, the billionaires, the globalists, to make other people feel insecure. I bet they have secret meetings where they decide the new rules for art, which is good, which is bad. Actually, that would make a lot of sense. And then they probably hand out all of the new made up rules, and then go around in museums, gallery's, high society parties that I’m not invited to, and say repeat all of their memorized phrases, just to seem like they actually know what they’re talking about, when really they just do it to make other people feel ignorant, out of the loop, uncultured. Fuck em all.

Either I had a serious breakthrough, or I’m having a heat stroke. Either way, its fucking hot in here. Let me take a little nap real quick, I need to reserve my energy or I wont even be able to lift the painting when it comes to. ———————————————————————————————————

So, the plan was easy, even if it did seem a little extreme, or unnecessary, but we’re doing this more for notoriety than anything else. If you want to get a big name for yourself in the underworld, you gotta make a big name for yourself. Shit, that sounded better last night when I came up with the plan, but I must have been a little coked up when I said it. Anyways, the plan is easy, all we have to do is drive the truck into the wall of the museum, hop out of the back and lay down a suppressive fire, while the police aren’t aware of the two guys we have planted, looking like regular appreciators of art, are going to be walking out with the most expensive looking thing in there. When they have it, we just drive out, and then drive off of the bridge into the river. There, we’ll leave the truck and swim, aided with oxygen tanks, about a mile to the other bridge, which has a maintenance tunnel inside that can be used for escape.

If you’re wondering how we came up with this plan, it was after we realized we had an eight wheeler, and excessive fire power. You can get anything you want in the world if you’re strong enough, survival of the fittest. I have that tattooed on my right side, going downward, covered in barbed wire. On my hand I have a tattoo of a falcon, and when I move my hand around it looks like its flapping its wings, ready to swoop down on its prey. A panther is on the prowl on my back, and is making a swiping motion with its paw, which actually lines up with the scars I have on my back, from when I was attacked by an actual panther.

I used to be a poacher, since that was the easiest profession for people as fit as I am. You ride out into some beautiful country, get some big ass guns, and shoot down some of the most dangerous creatures on Earth. Its the ultimate take-what-you-want job, but some problems came up. Injuries were starting to become too abundant for us to be comfortable with the job, and lead us to take a break and do some research on the animals we were hunting, to fight them better. Then we started to understand why it was illegal to hunt, and I started to feel bad that if we kept it up, there would be less and less predators out there. There’s nothing bad ass about genocide, so we quit the poaching game, came over to Europe to get into a different market.

The thing that drew us into stealing art was mainly the fact that we had this truck, and all of the guns left over from our Darwinist massacre. Art is full of a bunch of scrawny nerds, a lot of high society jerk offs who are nothing than big heads on soft bodies, so what challenges would there be? We could just go in and take it from them, and then use a little thinking to make sure that the cops wouldn’t be able to get us. Police are nothing, because at the end of the day they’re just humans, who are really weak. If you’ve been in a boat with a pack of hippopotamuses coming after you, their monstrosities of jaws sinking into your ship, tearing it apart, and you’re still able to not only kill all of them, but also keep the boat in working condition, then you can handle some pudgy cop. If you’ve wrestled with a panther, and stabbed its throat out with a bowie knife, you can steal a painting.

Plus, after the initial heat wears off, who will come after us? Its just art, its not like that should be a high priority. Its not like the police are going to care about a handful of effeminate nerds, whining about how some bad dudes took their color squares. Art is a load of shit, the police know it, I know it, everyone knows it, so there wont be an investigation. All that we’ll spend for the job is several cases of bullets, and a truck, which is basically-

“Get your mask on, brace yourself, we’re plowing through in five, four, three, two-” ———————————————————————————————————

There’s nothing better than a trip to the museum on a rainy day. You can escape all of that gloom and ugliness with the beauty of a world of art. All sorts of vivid colors fill the room, they contort themselves into beautiful shapes, and it all has the aroma of masterwork. Artists always try to be like the old masters, they always think that’s the pinnacle of art, yet I think that today, in our modern society, there are all sorts of new masters around us, just waiting for time to grab us and become a new generation of “old masters” for the next group of artists to try to imitate.

Yes, when I talked about masters I did use the word “us”, because I see myself as one of them. You’ll never be able to look me up, see my name, or hear about any of my works, so in a way I’m an unsung hero, but my works are still marveled at, and even fill this museum. Out of all of the pieces in this room, which there are about 57, 22 of them are not mine, yet none are credited to me, and they never will be. If you haven’t been able to guess, I’m a master counterfeiter, and within an hour I could make you a painting worth millions, indistinguishable from the real thing. Okay, well, maybe an hour was an exaggeration, but most people eat that up when I tell them.

I’ve learned that being a master of forging paintings has lead me to become skilled at other means of forgery. For instance, knowing how to copy signatures of great artists has given me skill in copying checks, which I sometimes do if I am ever in need of quick cash. I have also become skilled at forging different personalities, which allow me to spin plenty of different lies about myself, and I must have no real personality. All I am is a social chameleon, always changing shape, saying and acting however I need to, just to make my next sale. If my customers could walk out happy because of their new painting, and I’m please to keep my pockets weighed down tot he point where I can hardly walk, then where’s the crime in that? What am I doing wrong? If they see it as a genuine work, then what makes it a fake?

Yes, I am very full of myself, but why wouldn’t I be? If nobody knows of me, and my great skill will never give me any fame, then why can’t I love myself? All I need is one fan, and I am pleased, so in a way I’m less self centered that other people in my group. Narcissists are people who need others to love them as much as they love themselves, but I need other people to love themselves, as much as I love myself. In a way I am like a saint of art, giving up fame and glory, a vow of social poverty, to make others happier and better off. And if I ever need to bask in my talents, all I have to do is come to a gallery containing my works, and listen to all of the people who speak about them, saying how beautiful, inspiring, fearful, breath taking, etc, it all is.

Yet, today there seems to be a large, law enforcement presence, and even though there is no chance that I could be caught, I’m still a little worried that this is all just a honey pot, and they know that I can’t resist to come back and marvel at my own work. Would they have a picture of me already, or would they go off of  a vague description of my appearance? I can’t be the only elderly woman in here, but its not like that’s the only thing they would go off of, and the more I think about it, the more I really do stand out. Maybe they’ll go after somebody else, maybe they’ll..

“Ma’am, I’d like to have a word with you.”

Is this happening? Was I right? They must have a picture of me, this man looks dead set on bringing me in, and I can tell he’s looking at somebody behind me, probably other officers who will make sure I can’t escape.

“I’d like to see a form of identification please.”

Just think of a plan while you dig through your purse, there has to be some way to-

And like that, a miracle came crashing through the walls to save me. Smoke and rubble surrounded the back of a semi-truck, and the door slid up to reveal several, large men wearing animal skulls on their heads, toting large guns, and they opened fire at the crowd. I dropped to the ground, and the man questioning me had a bullet tear right through his hand, which splattered maroon against the vivid green in the fields of my forgery of “A Frolic”. No time to be offended, I had to take the opportunity to crawl out of there, both so that I could escape arrest and not be shot down. All of the officers seemed to be focused on this immediate threat, and none stopped me as I moved past them.

Before I was out for good, I looked back to see the state of some of my fakes, to see if anymore were ruined. It was clear that it would be painful to see, but it would have been worse to never know. Many were riddled with holes, but I could see a man walking out with two of them, while the police were distracted with the gunmen. Not only that, it seemed like three men were slowly walking off with a gaudy, bronze frog.