#baby's got a neutron bomb

[thedepartmentofdiscoveries]

Watch "💣 Army of Lovers - Baby's Got A Neutron Bomb (1989) - HQ" on YouTube

[321spongebolt]

List of Nickelodeon Movies productions

Two weeks ago, "Good Burger 2" was released in theaters and on Paramount+ as Nickelodeon Movies' 61st theatrical film ever produced. So far, this movie is killing it at the box office and in digital rental sales. Critics even called it better than the first movie. Here’s how far Nickelodeon has come with their movie brand since the release of their first movie, "Harriet the Spy".

RELEASED

1.) "Harriet the Spy" [PG]

Theatrical Short - "Arnold" [G] (Not available on the home media releases)

Theatrical Release - July 10, 1996

Original Home Media Release - December 10, 1996 (VHS)

2.) "Good Burger" [PG]

Theatrical Short - "Action League Now!" episode, "Rock-a-Big Baby" (Not available on the home media releases)

Theatrical Release - July 25, 1997

Original Home Media Release - December 16, 1997 (VHS)

3.) "The Rugrats Movie" [PG]

Theatrical Short - "CatDog" episode, "Fetch!"

Theatrical Release - November 6, 1998

Original Home Media Release - March 23, 1999 (VHS/DVD)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first animated theatrical movie. When "The Rugrats Movie" was first released on VHS, DVD, and LaserDisc in March, the "CatDog" episode, "Winslow's Home Videos" replaces "Fetch!" as its opening short film that plays before the movie, even to this day on the Digital, Blu-Ray (2D and 3D), and Ultra HD Blu-Ray releases.)

4.) "Snow Day" [PG]

Theatrical Release - February 11, 2000

Original Home Media Release - August 15, 2000 (VHS/DVD)

(NOTE: Despite negative reviews, "Snow Day" was a huge box office hit. On December 16, 2022, the film got a musical remake that aired exclusively on Nickelodeon and Paramount+ as a Nickelodeon Original Movie.)

5.) "The Rugrats Movie 2: Rugrats in Paris" [PG]

Theatrical Short - "Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big" [G] (In select theaters, not available on the home media releases)

Theatrical Release - November 17, 2000

Original Home Media Release - March 27, 2001 (VHS/DVD)

6.) "The Little Bear Movie" [G]

Theatrical Release - August 10, 2001

Original Home Media Release - December 11, 2001

(NOTE: Nickelodeon and Paramount own the US distribution rights only. Nelvana has the rights overall. This would've technically counted as Nickelodeon Movies' first film to get a G rating.)

7.) "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" [PG]

Theatrical Release - December 21, 2001

Original Home Media Release - April 2, 2002 (VHS/DVD)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first computer animated theatrical film, and the first film to serve as the backdoor pilot for a TV show.)

8.) "Clockstoppers" [PG]

Theatrical Release - March 29, 2002

Original Home Media Release - September 10, 2002 (VHS/DVD)

9.) "Hey Arnold!: The Movie" [PG]

Theatrical Release - June 28, 2002

Original Home Media Release - December 31, 2002 (VHS/DVD)

10.) "The Wild Thornberrys Movie" [PG]

Theatrical Release - December 20, 2002

Original Home Media Release - April 1, 2003 (VHS/DVD)

11.) "Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure" [G]

Theatrical Release - March 21, 2003

Original Home Media Release - September 9, 2003 (VHS/DVD)

(NOTE: Co-production with Universal Pictures, who owns the international rights for this movie. Nickelodeon and Paramount own the US rights. This sequel bombed in the box office following negative reviews.)

12.) "The Rugrats Movie 3: Rugrats Go Wild" [PG]

Theatrical Release - June 13, 2003

Original Home Media Release - December 16, 2003 (VHS/DVD)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's only film to use Odor-Rama. The DVD and Blu-Ray versions of this film however retain this version as an optional bonus feature, despite not having Odor-Rama cards.)

13.) "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" [PG]

Theatrical Release - November 19, 2004

Original Home Media Release - March 1, 2005 (VHS/DVD)

(NOTE: This was supposed to be the series finale to "SpongeBob SquarePants", but thanks to positive critical and financial feedback, Nickelodeon gave the show more new episodes, and future movie sequels.)

14.) "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" [PG]

Theatrical Release - December 17, 2004

Original Home Media Release - April 26, 2005 (VHS/DVD)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first co-production with DreamWorks Pictures, who later had their films distributed by Paramount from 2006-2012.)

15.) "Mad Hot Ballroom" [PG]

Theatrical Release - May 13, 2005 (Limited Release)

Original Home Media Release - November 16, 2005 (DVD)

16.) "Yours, Mine & Ours" [PG]

Theatrical Release - November 23, 2005

Original Home Media Release - March 14, 2006 (DVD)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first co-production with Warner Bros. through MGM. Columbia Pictures has the international distribution rights for this movie. Paramount, Warner Bros., MGM, and Nickelodeon have the US distribution rights.)

17.) "Nacho Libre" [PG]

Theatrical Release - June 16, 2006

Original Home Media Release - October 24, 2006 (DVD)

18.) "Barnyard" (AKA, "Barnyard: The Original Party Animals") [PG]

Theatrical Release - August 4, 2006

Original Home Media Release - December 12, 2006 (DVD)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's second theatrical film to be computer animated and serve as the backdoor pilot for a TV show. It was even made under the same people who worked on "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius".)

19.) "Charlotte's Web (2006 Live Action Remake)" [G]

Theatrical Release - December 15, 2006

Original Home Media Release - April 3, 2007 (DVD)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first G-rated film since "The Little Bear Movie". It is also the first theatrical Nickelodeon movie to be a live action remake of a cartoon which was based on the book itself.)

20.) "The Spiderwick Chronicles" [PG-13]

Theatrical Release - February 14, 2008

Original Home Media Release - June 24, 2008 (DVD and Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first film to get a PG-13 rating.)

21.) "Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging" [PG-13]

Theatrical Release - July 25, 2008 (International), December 25, 2009 (US)

Original Home Media Release - April 6, 2010 (US)

22.) "Hotel for Dogs" [PG]

Theatrical Release - January 16, 2009

Original Home Media Release - May 11, 2009 (DVD and Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Co-production with DreamWorks Pictures.)

23.) "The Fairly Oddparents: Wishology!" [PG]

Theatrical Release - May 1, 2009

Theatrical Short - "SpongeBob SquarePants" episode, "Help Wanted"

Original Home Media Release - November 3, 2009 (DVD and Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: The very first episode of "SpongeBob SquarePants", "Help Wanted" was shown before the movie in theaters to promote the 10th anniversary of "SpongeBob SquarePants". This episode was later available on the "Wishology!" DVD and Blu-Ray releases before the movie starts, and later made its way onto "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie 2: Truth or Square" DVD and Blu-Ray (2D only) releases as an optional bonus feature.)

24.) "Imagine That" [PG]

Theatrical Release - June 12, 2009

Original Home Media Release - October 13, 2009 (DVD and Blu-Ray)

25.) "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie 2: Truth or Square" [PG]

Theatrical Release - November 6, 2009

Original Home Media Release - March 2, 2010 (Extended Edition DVD and Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: The very first traditionally animated theatrical movie presented in Real-D 3D.)

26.) "Avatar: The Last Airbender (2010 Live Action Remake)" [PG-13]

Theatrical Release - July 2, 2010

Original Home Media Release - November 16, 2010 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first live action film presented in Real-D 3D and IMAX 3D.)

27.) "Fred: The Movie" [PG]

Theatrical Release - September 17, 2010

Original Home Media Release - January 11, 2011 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

(NOTE: At the end of the movie, "Fred's Got Talent" is featured as an additional bonus short on the home media releases.)

28.) "The Boy Who Cried Werewolf" [PG]

Theatrical Release - October 22, 2010

Original Home Media Release - February 1, 2011 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

29.) "Rango" [PG]

Theatrical Release - March 4, 2011

Original Home Media Release - July 19, 2011 (Extended Edition DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first computer-animated film presented in Real-D 3D and IMAX 3D.)

30.) "A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!" [PG]

Theatrical Release - July 8, 2011

Original Home Media Release - November 8, 2011 (Extended Edition DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

31.) "Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred" [PG]

Theatrical Release - October 21, 2011

Original Home Media Release - February 7, 2012 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

32.) "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn" [PG]

Theatrical Release - December 21, 2011

Original Home Media Release - April 3, 2012 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's second co-production with Columbia Pictures. This is also the first Nickelodeon co-production with Sony Pictures Animation and Amblin Entertainment.)

33.) "Big Time Movie" [PG]

Theatrical Release - March 9, 2012

Original Home Media Release - September 11, 2012 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's second theatrical film to be based on a live action TV show.)

34.) "Fred 3: Camp Fred" [PG]

Theatrical Release - July 27, 2012

Original Home Media Release - November 6, 2012 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

35.) "Fun Size" [PG-13]

Theatrical Release - October 26, 2012

Original Home Media Release - February 19, 2013 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

36.) "A Fairly Odd Christmas" [PG]

Theatrical Release - November 28, 2012

Original Home Media Release - December 17, 2013 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

37.) "A Fairly Odd Summer" [PG]

Theatrical Release - August 1, 2014

Original Home Media Release - December 2, 2014 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

38.) "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014 Live Action Remake)" [PG-13]

Theatrical Release - August 8, 2014

Original Home Media Release - December 16, 2014 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

39.) "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie 3: Sponge Out of Water" [PG]

Theatrical Release - February 6, 2015

Original Home Media Release - June 2, 2015 (Sing-Along Extended Edition DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's second co-production with Warner Bros, this time as the first movie released under Warner Animation Group. This is also Nickelodeon's first traditionally animated movie released in IMAX 3D.)

40.) "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows" [PG-13]

Theatrical Release - June 3, 2016

Original Home Media Release - October 4, 2016 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

41.) "Legends of the Hidden Temple" [PG]

Theatrical Release - November 23, 2016

Original Home Media Release - March 14, 2017 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's third theatrical film to be based on a live action TV show, and the first film to be inspired from a game show.)

42.) "Monster Trucks" [PG]

Theatrical Release - January 13, 2017

Original Home Media Release - May 9, 2017 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Paramount Animation's first movie with Nickelodeon Movies.)

43.) "Saban's Power Rangers (2017 film)" [PG-13]

Theatrical Release - March 22, 2017

Original Home Media Release - July 4, 2017 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

44.) "Hey Arnold! 2: The Jungle Movie" [PG]

Theatrical Release - November 22, 2017

Original Home Media Release - March 13, 2018 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Co-production with Warner Animation Group. While this movie was a critical improvement over the first movie, the film still flopped at the box office (like the first movie did) in favor of Disney/Pixar's "Coco".)

45.) "Wonder Park" [PG]

Theatrical Release - March 15, 2019

Original Home Media Release - July 16, 2019 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Paramount Animation's first animated movie with Nickelodeon Movies, and Nickelodeon's second movie under Paramount Animation. The proposed TV series, "Adventures in Wonder Park" was planned to air on Nickelodeon, until it was quietly cancelled in the early 2020s.)

46.) "Dora the Explorer and the Lost City of Gold" [PG]

Theatrical Release - August 9, 2019

Original Home Media Release - December 10, 2019 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

47.) "Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus" [PG]

Theatrical Release - August 16, 2019

Original Home Media Release - December 10, 2019 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Was released on the same day as Sony Pictures Animation's "The Angry Birds Movie 2". "Invader Zim" outperformed "The Angry Birds Movie 2" at the box office to modest success.)

48.) "Playing with Fire" [PG-13]

Theatrical Release - November 8, 2019

Original Home Media Release - March 3, 2020 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

49.) "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie 4: Sponge on the Run" [PG] Theatrical and Digital Release - August 14, 2020 (Canada), November 5, 2020 (Europe), March 5, 2021 (USA)

Original Home Media Release - July 13, 2021 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Co-production with Warner Animation Group. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, this is Nickelodeon's first theatrical film released in theaters, on demand, Paramount+, HBO Max, and on other digital rental platforms. This film was released in the US on the same day CBS All-Access changed its name to Paramount+. The premiere episode of "Kamp Koral: SpongeBob's Undersea Years", "The Jellyfish Kid", and its promotional short film, "I'm Urchin You to Leave" were available on the 2D home media releases as optional bonus features. "I'm Urchin You to Leave" was also available as an optional bonus feature for the Blu-Ray 3D release.)

50.) "PAW Patrol: The Movie" [G]

Theatrical and Digital Release - August 20, 2021

Original Home Media Release - October 5, 2021 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Co-production with Warner Animation Group. This is also Nickelodeon's first theatrical movie under Spin Master Entertainment. This film was also released in theaters and on demand, Paramount+, and HBO Max on the same day as the teenage-oriented movie, "The Loud House Movie".)

51.) "The Loud House Movie" [PG-13]

Theatrical and Digital Release - August 20, 2021

Original Home Media Release - October 5, 2021 (Unrated DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first animated theatrical film to get a PG-13 rating. This is also the first theatrical Nickelodeon movie be released under Cartoon Network. As of 2022, this was also the last Nickelodeon Movie with co-production under Warner Animation Group. It was released in theaters and on demand, Paramount+, and HBO Max on the same day as the kid-oriented "PAW Patrol: The Movie".)

52.) "The J Team" [G]

Theatrical and Digital Release - September 3, 2021

Original Home Media Release - January 11, 2022 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

53.) "Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank" [PG]

Theatrical Short - “Big Nate” episode, “Bad Hamster”

Theatrical and Digital Release - July 15, 2022

Original Home Media Release - November 9, 2021 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Paramount Animation's second animated movie with Nickelodeon Movies, and Nickelodeon's third movie under Paramount Animation, at least in the United States marketing. In other regions, Paramount Animation is credited alone. On the 2D and 3D home media releases, the "Big Nate" episode, "Bad Hamster" plays before the movie like in the North American theatrical print.)

54.) "Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie" [PG]

Theatrical and Digital Release - August 5, 2022

Original Home Media Release - December 5, 2022 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Unlike all the other "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movies, which received mixed-to-negative reviews, this is the first theatrical "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie to receive positive reviews. It was also a financial success at the box office and in digital rental sales.)

55.) "Blue's Clues & You!: Blue's Big City Adventure" [G]

Theatrical and Digital Release - November 18, 2022

Original Home Media Release - March 28, 2023 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: The first live action theatrical Nick Jr. movie to receive a G-rating. This film also aired on television months after its home media release date. This was historically, the first theatrical kids movie to achieve this feat since Disney's "Frozen" in 2014.)

56.) "Fantasy Football" [PG]

Theatrical and Digital Release - November 25, 2022

Original Home Media Release - March 28, 2023 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

57.) "Zoey 102" [PG-13]

Theatrical and Digital Release - July 27, 2023

Original Home Media Release - November 14, 2023

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's third theatrical film to be based on a live action TV show. And the first one to receive a PG-13 rating.)

58.) "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" [PG]

Theatrical and Digital Release - August 2, 2023

Original Home Media Release - December 12, 2023 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's first co-production under Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, albeit name in-credit only.)

59.) "PAW Patrol 2: The Mighty Movie" [PG]

Theatrical Short - "Dora the Explorer and the Fantastical Creatures" [G]

Theatrical and Digital Release - September 29, 2023

Original Home Media Release - January 9, 2024 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's second co-production under Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, albeit name in-credit only. This is also the first theatrical film based on a preschool show since Universal and Big Idea's "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie" to get a PG rating for their second movie, when their first film had a G rating.)

60.) "Under the Boardwalk" [PG]

Theatrical and Digital Release - October 27, 2023

Original Home Media Release - December 19, 2023 (DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D/Ultra HD Blu-Ray)

(NOTE: Paramount Animation's third animated movie under Nickelodeon Movies, and Nickelodeon's fourth movie under Paramount Animation.)

61.) "Good Burger 2" [PG]

Theatrical and Digital Release - November 22, 2023

Original Home Media Release - (To be released either January or March 2024)

UPCOMING MOVIES

62.) "Baby Shark's Big Movie" [G]

Theatrical and Digital Release - December 8, 2023

Original Home Media Release - (To be released either February or April 2024)

63.) "The Garfield Movie" [PG]

Theatrical and Digital Release - May 24, 2024

Original Home Media Release - (To be released either July, September, or November 2024)

(NOTE: Nickelodeon's third co-production with Columbia Pictures, and the second Nickelodeon co-production with Sony Pictures Animation.)

OTHER PROPOSED UPCOMING MOVIES

"Saving Bikini Bottom: A SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" (TBA 2024)

Upcoming "Smurfs" musical movie from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation (February 14, 2025) (NOTE: Sony Pictures Animation's first animated "Smurfs" movie since the 2017 Blu-Ray 3D direct-to-video movie, "The Smurfs: The Lost Village". This will also be the first "Smurfs" movie to be co-produced by Nickelodeon Movies.)

Upcoming "Avatar: The Last Airbender" animated theatrical film (October 10, 2025)

"The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie 5: Search for SquarePants" (December 19, 2025) (NOTE: Co-production with Warner Bros. Pictures Animation.)

"The Casagrandes Movie" (TBA 2024)

"The Loud House Movie 2" (TBA)

[psychedelicpotato]

"No Thanks!: The 70s Punk Rebellion" Box Set Tracklist

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Disc I:

Blitzkrieg Bop - Ramones

White Riot - The Clash

Heart Of The City - Nick Lowe

Boredom - Buzzcocks (feat. Howard Devoto)

(I'm) Stranded - The Saints

Neat Neat Neat - The Damned

In The City - The Jam

Final Solution - Pere Ubu

Roadrunner - The Modern Lovers

Little Johnny Jewel - Television

One Chord Wonders - The Adverts

Born To Lose - The Heartbreakers

Search And Destroy - Iggy & The Stooges

Let Me Dream If I Want To (Amphetamine Dreams) - Mink DeVille

Oh Bondage Up Yours! - X-Ray Spex

1 2 X U - Wire

Blank Generation - Richard Hell & The Voidoids

(Get A) Grip (On Yourself) - The Stranglers

Cherry Bomb - The Runaways

Personality Crisis - New York Dolls

Teenage Depression - Eddie & The Hot Rods

Two Tub Man - The Dictators

Hey Joe (Version) - Patti Smith

Your Generation - Generation X

Disc II:

Lust For Life - Iggy Pop

Gary Gilmore's Eyes - The Adverts

Satday Night In The City Of The Dead - Ultravox!

What Do I Get? - Buzzcocks

X Offender - Blondie

Lookin' After No. 1 - The Boomtown Rats

Don't Dictate - Penetration

Bingo Master - The Fall

Free Money - Patti Smith

The Modern World - The Jam

Chinese Rocks - The Heartbreakers

New Rose - The Damned

Ambition - Subway Sect

See No Evil - Television

Suspect Device - Stiff Little Fingers

Mannequin - Wire

Baby Baby - The Vibrators

Love Comes In Spurts - Richard Hell & The Voidoids

First Time - The Boys

Sonic Reducer - Dead Boys

Shot By Both Sides - Magazine

Mystery Dance - Elvis Costello

Trash - New York Dolls

The Day The World Turned Day-Glo - X-Ray Spex

Do Anything You Wanna Do - Eddie & The Hot Rods

Disc III:

Ready Steady Go - Generation X

Teenage Kicks - The Undertones

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll - Ian Dury

Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?) - Buzzcocks

Rocket U.S.A. - Suicide

Mongoloid - Devo

Homicide - 999

Mr. Big - The Dils

Warsaw - Joy Division

Where Were You? - The Mekons

Lexicon Devil - The Germs

(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures - The Rezillos

The Wait - The Pretenders

We Got The Neutron Bomb - The Weirdos

Pablo Picasso - The Modern Lovers

Action Time Vision - Alternative TV

2-4-6-8 Motorway - Tom Robinson Band

We Are The One - The Avengers

Borstal Breakout - Sham 69

Wasted - Black Flag

Sheena Is A Punk Rocker - Ramones

I Love Livin In The City - Fear

She's So Modern - The Boomtown Rats

Ghosts Of Princes In Towers - Rich Kids

We're Desperate - X

You Drive Me Ape (You Big Gorilla) - The Dickies

Dancing The Night Away - The Motors

Disc IV:

Hong Kong Garden - Siouxsie and the Banshees

Hanging On The Telephone - Blondie

Top Of The Pops - The Rezillos

Adult Books - X

The Sound Of The Suburbs - The Members

California Über Allies - Dead Kennedys

Another Girl, Another Planet - The Only Ones

(I Want To Be An) Anglepoise Lamp - The Soft Boys

Radio, Radio - Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Typical Girls - The Slits

Human Fly - The Cramps

Psycho Killer - Talking Heads

Babylon's Burning - The Ruts

If The Kids Are United - Sham 69

Alternative Ulster - Stiff Little Fingers

Boys Don't Cry - The Cure

She Is Beyond Good And Evil - The Pop Group

Is She Really Going Out With Him? - Joe Jackson

Get Over You - The Undertones

Love Like Anthrax - Gang Of Four

Peaches - The Stranglers

Into The Valley - Skids

You Can't Put Your Arms Round A Memory - Johnny Thunders

Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division

[tsuki-sennin]

Our second day in Skyland!\

...idk how to start this, you know what Pretty Cure is, right? Yeah? Okay, cool, let's get into it~!

Spoilers, I guess...

-Straight into Ranborg attack, huh?

-Cure Sky strikes!

-Hot damn, she's living the dream.

-Everybody loves the Azure Guard~!

-Battamonda and the Underg have in fact not learned their lesson.

-Did you know that crimeis on the rise?

-MOOSE

-Damn, that moose fucked you up.

-"Captain Shalalaaaaaaaaaaaa! D:"

-Good job, Sora.

-"I am not in agony! ...I'm in unending agony!"

-Oh, Sora's parents

-Ooooooooh, a good luck charm, that's so sweet

-I wonder if Shalala's Chocobo has a name?

-I was coming in prepared for a "never meet your heroes" kinda vibe from Captain Shalala, but surprisingly this is super sweet. It kinda reminds me of Jet Fusion, the old Jimmy Neutron special where he meets his favorite movie hero and gets to be as cool as he is.

-Pretty refreshing, tbh

-Tsubasa's really living up to that "Royal Babysitter" title he's been slapped with.

-Oh fuck, Borb Fam!

-lhkjjklh WOW OKAY MOM

-"Mooooooom, let go! What if somebody sees me like this?"

-Mashiro Jumpscare.

-TAKE A LOVER, OKAY

-What on earth was Tsubasa doing up here to make you assume that instantly?

-...er uh, I suppose "what on thick enough patches of floating rock" is more appropriate.

-...I wonder if the Skylandians ever came into contact with the Zonai?

-Back on home with ye, eh?

-"You got this without me, right? :)"

-Dinner time?

-Oh golly gosh jeepers, I was really looking forward to seeing you again Batty.

-Ohhhhhhh, he made a ghost.

-DON'T FUCKIN MOAN AROUND ME, PAL

-Wing was flying real slowly there.

-B o m b

-Damn son, you got fucked up

-Alrighty then, Prism! Let's kick it!

-"Can we even defuse a bomb that big?"

-Beryberie believes in Sky :)

-HE'S A GRABBY BOY

-HE BROKE IT

-Captain Shalala?

-"They need... a Hero."

-Oh shit, she got the lightsaber out.

-"Washion! Let's rip them apart!"

-Oh and she's down!

-"It's hero time."

-Get Updrafted, idiot.

-Take a loss, man, get out.

-HE SMACKED MY BOY

-Well, he's certainly effective if nothing else.

-She's a baby, how she gonna run more than like two feet?

-Her next word~!

-"Don't fucking move!"

-I think this is the first time I ever thought Sora as intimidating.

-It's kinda rare I think that about a Cure (from my fairly limited experience at least), but... goddamn, she sounds ready to fry this grasshopper alive.

-Where did Captain Shalala vanish to?

-Her determination shines forth!

-Muteki da! Er, Muteki desu.

-Captain Shalala sure is cool.

-Goodbye, Beryberie, I hope we meet again soooooooooon!

-Lovely, hello! Happy Franchise Anniversary~! You'd know all about that, huh? ...varying opinions on HappinessCharge aside, you were so cool, I wish Form Changes made a comeback in some way.

...at this rate, we may see every cameo before we get to see Butterfly.

-Ooooooh, Battamonda's voiced by KENN? Damn, he did a great job.

-Breather time!

-...OH COME ON, MORE MOMOTARO? Toei, you're killin' me here.

-...I wonder if the Noto Layer could get Skyland signals?

-That was a neat episode. I liked Sora getting mad, the stuff with Tsubasa's parents and Captain Shalala was adorable, Beryberie sticking around was nice, and it had some really well-structured tension.

-I guess I'll see you next time? When we put on a Momotaro puppet show and I try to restrain myself from making constant Donbros references? Maybe? Idk we'll see

[americxn]

“What happened? What the hell happened. Why do you make it so hard to love you?”

Kai Anderson x GN!Reader

This is definitely not good enough to enter, but I used the prompt from @tatesimper anniversary writing competition so I guess this is my entry? (fig, I’m so sorry for butchering such a good prompt lmao)

also, I realised when writing it that this could serve as a prologue to this fic:

https://americxn.tumblr.com/post/652835852669648896/paranoia

wordcount: 2.5k

warnings: genocide/murder mention, swearing (this is based off episode 11 of season 7)

The night air was cool on your exposed face as you took the front steps to the door of Kai’s house, not bothering to knock as you pushed it open, the warmth and light from within spilling onto the smooth concrete of the front step and pooling around your feet; having been in a committed relationship with Kai from a year and a half now, this house was practically your own. Stepping past the front porch after abandoning your shoes and jacket, you entered the uncharacteristic quiet of the house, scanning the hallway for any signs of life, usually abundant within these walls in the form of Kai’s blue shirt-clad, blindly deferential followers. 

 “Okay. A little bad news to start,” your body instinctively angled towards the voice, distinctly Kai, that sounded through the empty hall from the back room. You set off down the hallway, his voice growing in volume as you approached, somewhat confused. He hadn’t notified you of a scheduled cult meeting that evening and yet his tone of voice was threaded with the assertive cadence that he utilised only when addressing his followers.  “It turns out finding a thousand pregnant women to murder is super hard. No one will ever accuse me of lacking ambition.” He continued as you reached the threshold to the large room at the back of the house that served as a secondary living room; breath catching in your throat, you halted, your hand reaching for the wood of the doorframe to steady yourself as the meaning of his words settled into you. To murder? “So, Night of a Thousand Tates is off.” A ripple of groans and dejected sighs rose from the small sea of men at Kai’s words, quickly falling silent to allow him to continue. “But, Night of One Hundred Tates is on.” His words sent a wave of prickly dread spider walking down your spine; he hadn’t told you about any of this. Killing a thousand pregnant women? You wanted to stride into the room with a bright laugh to wave away his abhorrent words and demand for the real reason that he had called a meeting. But you knew. A terrible, truth filled part of you was all too aware that he was deadly serious A chorus of thrilled cheers drifted up from the small crowd in twisted elation with the newly revealed knowledge that their hands would still be stained with blood by the end of the night. Your breath became too loud in your ears, your mouth turning utterly dry as you examined your suddenly empty mind for a solution to Kai’s monstrous plan that you could use to convince him to call it off. But you came up short, taking a small step back into the safety of the dimly lit hall, your back coming to press against the wall beside the open doorway to ensure that nobody would be able to see you eavesdropping from within. This was too far. Kai had done many questionable, twisted things over the past year but this... this was too far. You were full of self hatred for the amount of things that you had stood aside for and let Kai go ahead with, but not this. You refused to take so much of an ounce of accountability for this. Pulling your phone from the confines of your back pocket, you drew in a shuddering, grounding breath, your thumb working on the keypad. The digit shook as it pressed onto the screen, your teeth catching between your lower lip as your gaze flicked from the brightness of the device’s screen to the open doorway at your side. The sequence of 911 you had typed glared up at you, bathing the underside of your jaw in artificial light as you craned your neck, leaning forwards slightly to peer into the room. Kai stood by the far wall, his men arranged in a neat group before him, all sitting straight backed to attention on their chairs.  Just behind Kai, displayed on the low table pushed against the wall were two silicone models of a woman’s torso, ripe with the swell of a baby within; one was positioned to the side as a cross sectional diagram, the other facing straight on, the small model of a baby in the third trimester curled up within the artificial uterus. Your attention snapped back to Kai as he took a step forwards to address the group.  “Look under your chairs, I’ve handed each of you a unique list of targets, all ready to pop.” Your stomach twisted in horrified disbelief as the men all shifted in unison, pleasure curling the corners of their lips upwards as they read the names of the people they were soon to mercilessly slaughter. You watched with teary eyes as an impressively built, stocky man who you didn’t know the name of slowly lifted his hand to the ceiling, Kai’s eyes immediately flicking to him in agitation. “You raise your hand one more fucking time and I will cut it off.” The powerfully built man visibly shrunk down into his chair at Kai’s hissed statement of reproval but timidly uttered his question of “how do we know they’re all pregnant?” Kai’s eyes flashed in impatient annoyance as he tore his eyes off the man, flicking them briefly up to the ceiling before deigning to answer. “Because Gutterball pulled the rosters of four ob-gyns, two Lamaze classes and a Momtra Yoga over on Main. Great job, Gutterball.” The blond man who went by Gutterball, sat on the front row of chairs close to Kai, beamed in self-gratified delight at Kai’s gracious recognition, lifting a fist into the air in triumph. Kai smiled proudly down at him before turning to address the group as a whole once more. Your eyes flicked down to the bright screen of your phone, the numbers displayed there beckoning. Your thumb twitched, a conflicted frown creasing your forehead as Kai continued on, pulling your attention back to him. “Manson’s family - I admire them, but they did get a little sloppy.” You watched on in nauseating alarm as Kai pulled a large blade from the black sheath at his hip with a flourish, the metal glinting in the light of the room. “Their message got lost in their mess. What we are doing requires more precision. It is imperative that both mother and child are impaled. Don’t fuck this up.” He scanned the gathering before him, gaze as sharp as the knife clutched in his grip before turning to the models behind him.  “Aim for the belly button but stab in a downward motion. If you stab straight,” in one fluid motion, he had buried the curved tip of the blade in the portion of the fake uterus just above the baby’s head with a solid thunk, “you miss the baby - and our entire message is lost.” Withdrawing the knife, he turned back to address his cult, the weapon hanging loosely from his fingertips by his thigh. “Tomorrow night, when your blades tear open one hundred pregnant bellies, you will be releasing a power into the universe. Detonating a neutron bomb of truth, blood and amniotic fluid. You will be galvanising an army.” “With their sisters gutted, women everywhere will be forced to react. They can’t ignore an injustice this brutal. They’ll have to rise up, and in their collective rage, they will train it on Senator Jackson, on all incumbents, on any of the people in power who failed to keep us safe. As the most vulnerable are slaughtered, as the pregnant bodies pile up on Senator Jack-off’s watch, we will be surfing an electoral bloodbath straight to Capitol Hill. And then… the White House.”  The collection of cult members all voiced their assent in a chorus of whoops and ovated cheers, a nauseating sense of unease dragging it’s claws up the length of your spine. You turned away with hot tears blurring your vision, not wanting to hear more, your phone a heavy weight in your hand and the decision it presented even heavier.

Sat on the edge of Kai’s large bed, your knee couldn’t cease it’s anxious bouncing, your lower lip chewed raw by your teeth. The door swung open suddenly, sending your heart leaping into your throat. Kai stepped into the room, the small smile stretching across his lips broadening as he beheld you perched on the mattress’ edge. “Hey, when did you get here?” He questioned, reaching to tug you to your feet and wrap his arms tightly around you in a warm embrace. “I only got here like five minutes ago.” Your lie was muffled into the thin shirt at his shoulder, his hands splayed flat on your upper back as he held you close to him. Withdrawing yourself from his grasp, you frantically scanned his face, heart sinking at the pleasure dimly glowing in the depths of his dark eyes, pleasure fuelled not by your sudden appearance, but in anticipation of the merciless slaughter that he would be carrying out in mere hours time. “What?” He asked curiously, his head tilting slightly in concern as his smile faded, caught in the grave despondency of the stare you had him pinned under. His tape-wrapped hands settled on his shoulders; shaking him off, you stepped away, your chest bubbling with emotion that was dangerously close to spilling over. Dropping your gaze to the floor, you pressed the heels of your palms into your eyes, forcing the tears that threatened to flow to stay at bay. Groaning through clenched teeth, colourful sparks flashing through your blocked vision from the force with which you pressed your hands into your eyes, you blindly felt Kai’s warmth as he stepped forwards to comfort you. Dropping your hands, you retreated another step, Kai stilling at the look of stangled confliction latching onto your features. “What happened?” Voice breaking, you brought a hand up to press against your forehead, icy panic unfurling in your gut amongst the turmoil of roiling distress flooding through your insides. Kai looked utterly lost, his eyes boring into yours as he searched for an answer to the question that he couldn’t understand. “What the fuck happened to you, Kai?” His heart splintered at the raw anguish in your choked, lamenting tone, automatically taking a step towards you, wanting nothing more than to smother the emotions swarming your features. “I used to be so, so happy with you.” His lips parted in disbelief as you continued. “I would’ve done anything for you.” You couldn’t help the tears that spilled over, your voice pushing past the quivering of your lower lip and growing in strength, your breaths turning sharp and rasping as they were sucked in between your passionate words. “Y/n…” He didn’t know what to say as he watched you struggle to keep a grasp on coherency.  “I don’t know what happened to him. To the Kai that I fell in love with. But he’s gone now. He’s gone and I don’t know how to get him back.” Sorrow gave way to desolate fury as you plowed on, your jaw clenching as you stepped towards him to deliver a harsh shove to his hard shoulders. Kai fell utterly silent, stumbling back slightly under your touch, unnerved and unsure by the eruption of messily confessed words that spilled from you, seemingly out of nowhere. “Answer me.” You demanded gruffly, shoving at his solid frame once more. “I… y/n, I don’t know-” With a third shove, his eyes flashed in agitated warning, silently daring you to repeat the action a fourth time. You did, shoving at him with as much force as you could muster, breathing hard when he took ahold of your wrists, pulling you to him and pouring his branding stare onto you. “Stop.” Your face was flushed, plump tears cutting through your face and dripping from your chin as you plowed on. “What happened, Kai?” His nostrils flared, eyes wide in confusion as he battled to grasp onto your thoughts, to make coherence of the biting words falling from your lips. “What happened? What the hell happened. Why do you make it so hard to love you?” Your ragged breaths filled the sudden silence in the room, the roaring silence infiltrating Kai’s head drowning out all other sense as he stared down at you in cold disbelief, your eyes wild and face screwed with festering ardour, raw and demanding, your lashes damp with bitter tears. A symphony of surprised shouts echoed up the stairs from the ground floor of the house, Kai’s attention snapping to the door at his back and eyes flooding with sharp panic. He released his hold on you as the cries from below grew in volume, laced with alarm. A single gun shot rang out and it was your turn to take ahold of Kai, the tape wrapped tightly around his wrists warm under your fingers. His head whirled back to you, his eyes alight with uneasy confusion, his gaze frosting over. Bringing your face closer to his, you laid a single, lingering kiss to his lips, your own wet against him. “I’m sorry.” You said quietly, several heavy sets of footsteps sounding from behind the door as they thundered up the stairs. Kai’s eyes frantically searched yours as he pulled against your unrelenting grasp, his gaze briefly parting from yours to snap to the door as the sequence of footsteps and shouts grew louder. “But I can’t let you do this.” His throat bobbed, his eyes widening in terror as the reality of the situation settled over him. “I sentence you to rot.” Tugging at his wrists, you forced your face closer to his before muttering to him, your breath hot on his face and the recognition of your betrayal manifesting in the cold fire smoldering in his gaze: “Just like how my love for you has turned to rot.” His face contorted in rage as the bedroom door was forced open, the panel of wood swinging open and hitting the adjacent wall with a bang, several armed policemen flooding into the room. You loosened your grip on his wrists, stepping away as two of the men took ahold of Kai by the back of his shirt, twisting his arms behind his back. He shrieked in rage, straining to turn his head towards his assailants as they began to pull him from the room. Sinking down onto the edge of the bed, you locked eyes with Kai’s as he turned back to you, cool rage simmering in his dark gaze, his lip curled into an enraged snarl. He pinned you with his stare, not even bothering to fight against the men holding him as he was pulled from the room, a savage promise glittering in his unrelenting stare. A promise of vengeance. Of suffering. 

taglist: @kitwalker02 @three-eyed-snail @forevercountess @kitwalkerangel @milly-louise @thecountessesglove @undeadcortez @kitwalker64 @samsassinparvismagna @xmaximoffic @divineruler @liandav @tatesweaterweather @evanmybeloved @tatelangdonsupremacist @ikkleroniekins @ananad1 @shlutnutt @mossybank @tatesimper (dm to be added or removed <3)

[thecomicsnexus]

CAMELOT 3000 (PART 3 OF 3) DECEMBER 1982 - APRIL 1985 BY MIKE W. BARR, BRIAN BOLLAND, BRUCE D. PATTERSON, DICK GIORDANO, TERRY AUSTIN AND TATJANA WOOD

SYNOPSIS (CHAPTERS 9 TO 12)

King Arthur tells Tom the story of the Holy Grail. It is supposed to perform miracles, for it was twice associated with Jesus Christ. First the holy communion, and then, in the moment of his Crucifixion, someone used to to collect his blood. Percival prays to get a hint of where it is and he finds out it was in Glastonbury Tor after all. To prevent Morgan from learning this secret, all of them start wearing a cloaking charm.

Morgan reveals to Jordan his role. She makes him remember his old life, a baby, being drown by King Arthur (Arthur thought a son of his would pose a threat to his throne). Jordan remembers he was Modred.

In New Camelot, Arthur divides the group, one will search for the Holy Grail and the other one will search for Merlin.

Percival finds the guardian of the Holy Grail and discovers that he has holy blood. With the grail in his hands, he saves Tom’s life, but then transfigures, leaving Lancelot as the guardian of the Grail. In just a few panels he loses the Grail to the enemy. Jordan, in possession of the Grail, starts giving Morgan orders.

Jordan makes an armor with the Grail embedded in it. He is now immune to everything. He starts killing all the world leaders.

Arthur and some knights travel to the tenth planet in a spaceship. Lancelot, Guinevere and Tom got to the nuclear plant to ask the lady in the lake (Elaine) to send them to the tenth planet. Everyone is on the tenth planet now.

On Earth, King Arthur is considered a traitor. The propaganda machine is blaming him for the murder of the world leaders. Isolde finds out that Jordan is allied to Morgan La Fey and sens a message to the spaceship. When Tom sees the message, he sees that Isolde sends her love to Tristan. He burns that part of the message. Arthur and the knights, led by the women, are sent to meet the queen of the alien race. They make an alliance to free them in exchange of soldiers.

Tristan once again has to deal with McAllister, this time she learns that only Morgan Le Fay’s magic can kill him, she uses the talisman against him (the one that is supposed to make her go back to being a man). Now with it destroyed, she wants to end her life, but Tom tries to convince her that being a woman cannot be “that bad”.

The knights use the ship as a battering ram. In the middle of the fight, Galahad sacrifices, blowing up the ship, to make an entrance to the castle. Arthur faces Jordan and Lancelot tells him that the holy armor is incompatible with Merlin (son of the devil), he then pushes Jordan into Merlin and this ends his life.

Morgan Le Fay tries one more attack. Merlin transports the rest home, while he takes care of Morgan. He detonates a neutron bomb, sacrificing himself to put an end to Morgan.

Back on Earth. Tristan and Isolde try to rekindle their love. Tristan starts learning how to love her in this form (and she finally seems happy).

Guinevere is pregnant (they do not know if it’s Arthur’s or Lancelot, both of them hope it’s Arthur’s).

Some time later, we see an alien escaping bad guys, he finds a sword in the stone and the cycle begins anew.

CONTEXT (FROM WIKIPEDIA)

Barr came up with the concept of Camelot 3000 in approximately 1975, having been inspired by a college course he took in Arthurian literature. He submitted the proposal to DC Comics several years later, only to have it rejected. He then submitted it to Marvel Comics, where it was accepted for serialized publication in one of their black-and-white magazines, but for unknown reasons the project did not get off the ground at this point. The Camelot 3000 concept was resubmitted to DC the following year, and this time was accepted. DC decided to run it as a maxi-series. Barr enlisted Dr. Sally Slocum, the teacher of the course which first inspired Camelot 3000, as a creative consultant for the series.

Camelot 3000 was British artist Bolland's first major work in the USA. At the time the logistics of transatlantic collaborations were difficult, and the series was created using the full script method in part because it was the easiest way for Barr and Bolland to work together while an ocean separated them. This was also the first time that Bolland's work was inked regularly by someone other than himself. Bolland was not comfortable with this and made his pencils very heavily detailed in order to leave the inker as little room for creative reinterpretation as possible. This, combined with Bolland's personal goal to top himself with each new issue, made it difficult for him to keep up with the series's monthly schedule, and the last several issues were late. Barr recounted that Bolland spent nine months drawing the final issue.

Barr originally had the role of Tom Prentice filled by a girl, but editor Len Wein strongly felt that the character should be a boy. Though the series's exploration of gender identity themes (and presumed homosexuality) was published without opposition from DC's editorial staff, Barr recalled that Camelot 3000 received a number of letters from children who were confused and/or upset by this content.

The series also briefly experimented with reproducing art directly from the pencils (i.e. without inking). However, printing techniques at the time were still relatively primitive, and Bolland found that creating pencil art which could be reproduced by the printers was more work than actually inking it. As such, only two pages (specifically, the first two pages of issue #2) were produced in this manner.

REVIEW

As you may have imagined, this story doesn’t take place in the DCU (there is, however, an Arthur, Morgan and Merlin in the DCU). I would have to say that this maxi-series was ground-breaking. Not only because it was part of the “British invasion”, it was the first of its kind and proved it was possible, and it also explored themes like gender identity. Some people have problems with it, and I can understand it (as Tristan ends up accepting her forced gender). But you also have to see that Tristan wasn’t a good man before. I think in the context of this story it’s ok. Also have in mind two things, it was 1982, and this man, as well as all the knights, belonged to the Middle Ages.

As an extension of the Arthurian legend, you just have to accept this is a sci-fi comic-book. But it has very interesting points of view. I think the moment Arthur is flying over England and finally gets to see it from space is a very powerful scene.

I think it’s a great story and YOU SHOULD READ IT. I think it would also work well as a movie, but I don’t think the world is ready for something like this. It would probably flop.

Bolland’s art is obviously the best of this series. I cannot imagine it being so important without him. Of course, the last issues took years to complete, let’s say I am happy to have all issues at my disposal now, but at the time it was probably very annoying for readers (kind of like how we feel waiting for the last issues of Doomsday Clock).

There are some things that are barely touched in the story. Arthur at some point killed a lot of babies... that’s not how a savior acts. These characters are not perfect, it is implied that there was a lot of raping and adultery in their previous lives (it’s a bit like Game of Thrones).

Sure, there are some things that don’t make sense. Like the ship getting to the tenth panel very fast because it travels at the speed of light (even at the speed of light it would take years to get there).

But the story keeps twisting and surprising you. I read this story for the first time five years ago, and I forgot almost everything... but Tristan’s story. I think that is the conflict that you will remember for the rest of your life.

I give this series a score of 10

[lexicondcvil-blog]

hey guys, i hope you don’t mind a bunch of inspo recs. i’m another punk rock kid who grew up with all this stuff, except that i didn’t grow up in the city. the largest place i’ve ever lived has a current population of 180k lmao. but i digress, under the cut you can find my favorite 80′s punk books and movies. most of these are relevant to the time period, but there’s a few that aren’t and they’re categorized as such.

books ( truthfully, i read these all maybe ... 15 years ago ?? so i can’t go too in depth ).

we got the neutron bomb: the untold story of la punk la punk is honestly my heart. this is a cool interview based book from people at the time and an easy read with lots of photos of la punk faves. and i don’t want to live this life anymore: a mother’s story of her daughter’s murder this is a crazy, heart wrenching book about the life and death of nancy spungen as written by her mother. of course this book is written subjectively from her viewpoint. please kill me: an uncensored oral history of punk another oral history, but this one isn’t limited in location. rotten: no irish, no blacks, no dogs johnny rotten / john lydon’s autobiography. like with nancy spungen’s mother’s book, it’s a subjective story ( touted as fact, bc lydon doesn’t know what positionality is ). a drink with shane mcgowan ( a little later on the timeline, the pogues didn’t form until 1982, but it’s a great read from what i remember ). a series of interviews between mcgowan and his wife. 

movies ( i’m leaving off the movies already mentioned by the amazing neen, like sid and nancy, the blank generation and ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains -- both solidddd choices )

suburbia by penelope spheeris ( made in 1983, released in 1984 ) la punk scene film by the director of the decline of western civilization and wayne’s world. tw for an attack on a child early on in the film. this was like ... a pivotal film for me as a kid. careful, there’s some nineties movie of the same name that sucks and i accidentally rented it a bunch of times as a youth trying to find the real one. repo man another 1984 film, but c’mon, how can i NOT talk about repo man. this follows emilio estevez as a punk who becomes a repo man after a little grand theft auto and then shit gets weird. rock ‘n roll high school ( 1979 ) pj soles and the ramones?? this is such a cute, irreverent flick. please watch to learn how to write your own notes for absences. driller killer ( 1979 ) this dude loses his mind while dealing with the stress of life and starts killing folks with a drill. the great rock ‘n roll swindle ( 1980 ) what the fuck is this movie. well, it’s a mockumentary of the sex pistols and it’s wild. valley girl ( 1983 ) god, my mom LOVED this movie. this is when nick cage was hot instead of just a hot mess. it’s an eighties romcom about starcrossed lovers--a girl from the valley and a punk rocker from the city. the decline of western civilization ( 1981 ) directed by penelope spheeris--the ‘rock n roll anthropologist,’ if you will. summer of sam ( 1999 ) set during 1977, this follows the lives of several new yorkers during the .44 caliber killer murders. feat. punk rock adrien brody. the runaways ( 2010 ) a pretty good biopic about the runaways imho. no movie is 100% accurate, but i liked it. even despite my aversion to kstew. what we do is secret ( 2007 ) i honestly barely remember this movie, because this came out during a p booze heavy time in my youth. regardless, i remember it being okay and it’s about my all time favorite punk band, so there you go. i have the vaguest inkling of something about the film annoying me though, in terms of accuracy. also, we have to talk about fear’s appearance on snl, bc i fucking love fear and even if john belushi was an asshole who railroaded female members of snl, at least we have this.

movies that are after 1983, but still in the 80s and have punk themes / characters / cameos and i just want to mentions them because i can !!

return of the living dead ( 1985 ) a fantastic 80s horror comedy a la night of the living dead. some dummies release a gas that turns the dead into zombies. 45 grave performs the song ‘partytime,’ which is essentially the film’s theme. plus we get to hear ‘trash’ go on about how she wonders about what it feels like to get killed. v punk rock. night of the demons ( 1988 ) a party at the abandoned mortuary goes awry after a seance conjures a demon that possesses everyone. reform school girls ( 1986 ) wendy o from the plasmatics in this satyrical, vaguely softcore porn movie about women in prison. it’s terrible. like really terrible, but requisite if you like wendy o. williams--front woman of the plasmatics and queen of shock rock. what to do in case of fire? ( 2001 ) set in 1987, this is a cool movie feat. til schweiger ( of later inglourious basterds fame ) and some anarchist squatters living in berlin. fun fact? one of the first movies i watched with my now husband. thrashin’ ( 1986 ) “what do you thrash?” “what do you got?” jesus christ this movie is the best. baby josh brolin is a valley kid skater that falls in love with the younger sister of skateboarding gang leader of ‘the daggers.’ it’s fucking fantastic. nightmare on elm street 3: dream warriors ( 1987 ) the first movie didn’t come out til ‘84. this sequel, despite having a soundtrack completed by dokken, showcases a punk character named taryn. if you haven’t watched all these and the jason movies, halloween movies, and sleepaway camps ... i’m just upset.

i’m sure i’ll think of more as time goes on and i’ll try and update this list, but these are the few i had off the top of my head tonight.

[paulisded]

Live Ledge #327: More Songs From 1978

Last month I put together a show that featured nothing but music from my favorite year of rock and roll. 1978 was such an easy theme, and it just couldn't be contained in one episode. In fact, thanks to some further research over the last few weeks there are plans to have up to five shows of tracks celebrating their 40th anniversaries.

The most important record of this show is undoubtedly the second Clash album. "Give 'Em Enough Rope" came out in November 1978, and was the first "punk" record I bought when the week it was released. I've loved it ever since, and it was hard to pick three songs to represent it on tonight's show. As a bonus, I threw in "Clash City Rockers", one of their single releases from that year.

You can find this show at almost any podcast site, including iTunes and Stitcher. Or...

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD!!!

1. The Clash, Safe European Home

2. Blondie, Hanging On The Telephone

3. Patti Smith, Till Victory

4. Talking Heads, Thank You For Sending Me An Angel

5. Johnny Thunders, You Cant Put Your Arms Round A Memory

6. David Johansen, Girls

7. The Pagans, What's This Shit Called Love?

8. Rubber City Rebels, Rubber City Rebels

9. Cramps, Human Fly  

10. Siouxsie & The Banshees, Helter Skelter JPS 6.2.78

11. X-Ray Specs, I Am A Poseur

12. The Bags, Survive

13. X, Adult Books

14. The Kinks, A Rock 'N Roll Fantasy  

15. The Jam, David Watts (Single Mix)

16. The Soft Boys, I Want To Be A Anglepoise Lamp

17. The Records, Starry Eyes

18. Chris Bell, I Am The Cosmos  

19. The Clash, Clash City Rockers

20. The Clash, Stay Free

21. The Clash, All The Young Punks (New Boots And Contracts)

22. The Nervebreakers, My Girlfriend Is A Rock

23. Black Flag, Wasted

24. The Suburbs, You

25. The Suicide Commandos, Attacking the Beat

26. Police, So Lonely

27. The Drones, Be My Baby

28. Rich Kids, Ghosts Of Princes In Towers

29. The Rezillos, Top Of The Pops

30. The Zeros, Wild Weekend

31. The Hollywood Squares, Hillside Strangler

32. The Weirdos, We Got The Neutron Bomb

[thatcookingfat]

Dizzy, the Early Years

Born as the war was coming to a close, Dizzy is the middle of 3 daughters. Grandad, a proud Lancashire Lad, was away in The Signals, doing his part for the war effort & Nan, Motherwell Matriarch, was a stay at home mum. We joke that if the war had continued there would have been a much bigger family; Grandad returned from leave 3 times, leaving Nan with a ‘Bun in the Oven!’  

Like many veterans, he was reticent to talk about his experience; only choosing to tell us his job was to lay down the communication system before troops moved into an area. Nan didn’t have time to work! When she wasn’t cooking one in the oven and running a house single handed, she was next door, at my great grandparents, helping her parents! Both he and Nan came from large families. I had over 40 great-aunts and uncles, counting their spouses. I may not remember them all, but I do remember the feeling of family closeness and laughter, lots of laughter! On Nan’s side, it was like ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys' on turbo settings and on Granddad’s side, it was less raucous, but an amazing talent of being able to ‘spin a good yarn' with such a dry sense of humour!

Mum talks about her childhood with such warmth and affection, apart from resenting she always got the hand me downs, whilst her 2 sister's got everything new, “Middle Child Syndrome”! Sadly, mum grew up being told, by her teachers, that she was stupid and illiterate! Dyslexia didn’t exist back then! It made her disruptive in school and totally switched off to learning. Her favourite word, apparently, was, “Why?” Back in an era where children were seen and not heard, she and Granddad would regularly be at loggerheads. Mum always the loser, sometimes with a fat lip for her efforts! So it was hardly surprising when she married as soon as she could, in an effort to escape her strict upbringing.

Sadly, mum swapped her authoritative dad for a manipulative wife beater! Not to begin with of course, that controlling side took a short time to develop. In an age where wives stayed at home, mum would be out working full-time to pay his gambling debts. As an added bonus, she would be punished because there wasn’t a hot meal waiting for him, when he got in from work! They also had problems conceiving, another reason for a ‘quick slap'! But sadly, both their bodies were working against them. Mum’s bits produced too many chemicals that would destroy his little swimmers and he couldn’t produce enough little swimmers, and those he did produce needed a sat nav to find their destination! So, although I call him my ‘Sperm Donor’ he wasn’t! I will never know who was! I was conceived in a petri dish in Harley Street, London, at the cost of £2000 in 1970s prices. A secretive procedure back then, Artificial Insemination by a Donor, I am the result of a quick one of the wrist! All I do know is, as a controversial procedure, donors weren’t exactly queuing up, so it tended to be other medical professionals that donated their services. (Shame I didn’t inherit the clever gene!)  

As I’ve said, it was a secretive procedure and frowned upon as it was creating Frankenstein babies ... now I know why I’m so twisted!! They had to swear, on a bible, that my parentage would never be revealed, although by law I had to be registered with the ‘father unknown' label on my birth certificate ! Erm, hello ... do you not think that might raise suspicion?? And, as my exes would probably agree with, technically I was a Bastard, not a term discussed in polite society back then! So Mum was now baking her own bun and received 9 months of peace from his fists, not his verbal abuse though. He never let her forget it was HER failings that made them do what they did. That man, and I use that term in the biological sense only, was a master of manipulation.  Mum genuinely believed it was all her fault, she was stupid, she was inferior!  

Anyway, this has gotten far too serious, so let’s resume normal service! Mum couldn’t wait for her bump to show. Sadly, we think I’m made of plain, not self-raising flour; as mum was almost 8 months pregnant before it was evident! After almost a decade of trying to conceive, even her mummy tummy was letting her down! Her eldest sister, cooking baby number 7, and younger sister on baby number 2, were the size of buses ... so was mum, only hers was Corgi toy size! Finally, after many hours of labour (the number varies) I came into the world. I’m not saying I was ugly, but they had to slap the midwife! Simply put, I was over baked. I had layers of dead skin caked onto me! But mum thought I was beautiful, thank goodness at least someone did! Her friends would come to visit her in the hospital, sneak a peek and recoil, trying to hide their horror! Eventually, the dead skin came away, and I resembled human form! A thoughtful baby, apparently I always waited until Mum was pulling up the covers to sleep before opening my foghorn lungs! Unable to breast feed, mum would be sitting there bottle feeding me, being told what a failure she was, she couldn’t even feed her down child properly and that maybe it would be better if he just took me away to a better family! It’s a miracle she ever bonded with me!

Looking back through my rose tinted child glasses, they have much thinner lenses than the ones worn today, life seemed idyllic. It seemed to consist of school, where I was labelled a swot, playing out with my friends and Enid Blyton! Despite her fear of the written word, mum instilled a love of books into me. Apparently, when I was a baby I had cloth books for the pram and water proof books for the bath. She was determined I wasn’t going to grow up with her phobia. Unaware at the time, mum had rote learned a ladybird book, “Telling the Time” and would read it to me at bed time. She confidently sat there holding the book and turning the pages at all the right times, “At 7 o’clock we all rise, to stretch, and rub our sleepy eyes.” ...

... ... ... ...

Sorry, had to stop for a minute there, my eyes have started leaking! Wow! Didn’t realise that was such a powerful memory, anyone know a good plumber?  

She was so clever, if I had a different book, she would ask me to read it to her, and I would mimic what I had learned from her. I was totally oblivious to her fear, but more importantly her sheer strength and determination. Not to be outdone, he drummed the times tables into me. He thought because I knew what 12 x 12 was at the age of 4, that he was the victor. But he wasn’t, I LOVED books, and 12 x 12 was just like a poem that you recite over and over again. It had no meaning, whereas I could pick up a newspaper and tell him that Star Trek WAS on, even though he’d said it wasn’t, to get me to bed early! He said I was lying, until I read the blurb in the TV listings! It’s probably the only time I remember getting a ‘good hiding’ from him. Looking back with adult eyes, to him, it was probably the equivalent of mum telling him HE was in the wrong, and I had to be put in my place!

I’m not saying I thought mum was perfect back then, far from it! Mum was strict, NO meant NO and please & thank you came as standard, not an optional extra! We had a 1, 2, 3 rule ... if I didn’t do as I was told by the time she got to 3, my arse knew about it! And I’m not saying I wasn’t defiant either, I soon learned that I could get away with waiting until she got to, “Thhhhhhh,” so long as she didn’t get to the, “Reeeeeeee” part I was ok! And I also learned that if mum said no, a few tears to him, got me what I wanted. I didn’t know that by telling tales like that, mum was given a good hiding, once I was in bed! What a selfish, spoiled brat I was!

At the age of 7, the year of Grease, Olivia Neutron Bomb and John Travolting, we moved to Blackpool! I dreamt of sun, sand and an endless supply of rock! Who knew there were schools and even bad weather? Trust me, beaches soon get boring, you can sicken yourself on rock and Blackpool in the closed season is like the Antarctic! We went into partnership with Mum’s childhood friend and her husband. We ran a 9 bedroomed guest house, 109 Albert Road, aka Durham House. Life was far from the idyllic dream I had imagined!  The men worked a window cleaning round and Mum and her best friend seemed to be constantly in the kitchen cooking, or making beds! A far cry from the luxury bedrooms our guests had, we slept in the cellar! The only natural light came from the glass tiles in the roof, that was often punctuated with the feet of people walking by above, at street level.  

That’s also where I learned that kids could be so cruel. Poor mum saw this only child, spoiled brat being a prize bitch, she didn’t see the slaps, pinches and name calling that can be so devastating to a child’s confidence! The bullying was always at its peak during meal times, as all the grown-ups were busy looking after the guests. I developed, what today would be called a psychosomatic illness, basically I smelt the food cooking and I would throw up! Bring rushed off her feet, mum would make me sit on the back doorstep, throwing up into the outside drain. It sounds gross, but it was my haven, until bedtime! Obviously, being a kid, I saw mum as a graceful swan, cooking a million meals effortlessly, I didn’t see the frantic paddling her feet were doing below the water. The so called best friends were scamming the business and eventually it all went tits up! So he moved back to Coventry first, with the premise of getting a job and finding us a place to live. Mum and I moved in with a friend, so I could see the school year out in Blackpool. Bratty me could only see that I'd ‘lost' the nice parent and had to live in this hellhole with the strict one!  

I was totally unaware that, instead of getting everything ready for our return, he was living with Nan and Granddad, visiting prostitutes and gambling away the little money that was salvaged from the business. So my dream of returning to our privately owned 3 bed semi turned into the nightmare of a 4th floor council flat, no garden, no friends, yeah I was a selfish brat! That flat continued my awakening to how cruel life can be. That’s where I witnessed my mum slide down a wall after a swift punch, it's where I saw my mum finally snap and almost break his shoulder blade with a steak tenderiser and it's where I discovered I was a Bastard!  

Fearful of anything legal or official, mum had stuck to oath she had sworn 9 years ago. She had been mortified when instead of the, ‘Father Unknown’ that should have been on my birth certificate, he had registered my birth alone and naming himself as my legal father. I can still hear her pleas as she begged him ‘not to’ as he uttered the words, ‘I'm not your dad.’ He had an impeccable sense of timing too, it was the same night I discovered my dear great aunt had died! He failed to tell me the full facts, leaving me to assume mum had been unfaithful. I was at the age where sex had something to do with boys having pencils and girls had pencil sharpeners, so simply I thought mum had sharpened someone else’s pencil! Bless her, I bet she never thought she would be having ‘that’ conversation, whilst explaining the science behind it, whilst nursing a dislocated jaw!  

Expecting me to take his side, with his half truth, he was floored at my reaction! I remember feeling so angrily empowered and grown up, telling him, at the age of 8, that he couldn’t tell ME what to do, he wasn’t my Dad! I was then floored, literally at his response, my cheek stung for an age! Oh and by the way, this was Christmas Eve! I suppose my under reaction to Christmas today, has a lot to do with that time! I don’t remember much about that Christmas Day, other than a deathly silence and an atmosphere thicker than the Cabinet Room at No10, after the last election! I do remember Boxing Day though! Mum wasn't there when I woke up, and me and him went to visit my cousin! I thought nothing of it, when he and my cousins went to the pub. I thought it was exciting because Tina, my cousins wife, was teaching me to knit! Kids are so fickle! I was unaware that instead of the pub, they had in fact been at the flat, changing the locks! We returned home later to an empty flat and Mum STILL wasn't home the next day either! He told me she had phoned to say she wasn’t coming back! Like a prat, I believed him!  

I dreaded going back to school, because the first thing we would have to do was write our ‘news'. I remember staring at the blank page, trying to make up some magical story to compete with the other kids! I didn’t want my real news shared! I’m not sure what happened next, but I do remember a tear spreading out on my blank page and being quietly lead away to the Head Mistresses’ office. Waiting patiently in there was MUM!!!! In between my sobs, she explained how she had gone out Boxing Day morning to ask a friend, if mum and I could move in with her, until something better could be organised and on her return, the locks had been changed. Long  story short, the school would not let me leave before home time. I had to then ‘chose’ if I would cross the road to my aunts house and wait for him, or leave through the office and out to Mum, waiting in Grandad’s car! How thoughtful of the school to put such an immense responsibility on an 8 year old child! That day was a blur! I couldn’t wait to leave with mum! We were off on an adventure! Blow you Famous Five, The Terrific Two had their own stories to discover.  

[balogtas]

HOPE, OPENNESS, AND FAITH

by Awal, Bagtila, Edoc, Falawed, Murao & Tandoc

          It turns out that what drives people to instantaneous self-destruction is seeing a mysterious force - a real jolt for the survivors of the phenomena. One must avoid coming face to face with an entity that takes the form of their worst fears. Searching for hope and a new beginning, a woman and her children embark on a dangerous journey through the woods and down a river to find the one place that may offer sanctuary which required them to face hardships and challenges. To make it, they’ll have to cover their eyes from the evil that chases them and complete the trip blindfolded.

          Netflix’s, Bird Box with 45 million views online within the first week of its release could not resist us from diving in a little bit on this “post-apocalyptic” phenomenon. The movie was directed by Susanne Bier and is based on a novel by Josh Malerman. The movie’s script was written by Eric Heisserer and ranked at the top of the 2014 “Blood List” of best unproduced horror screenplays, and it’s a satisfyingly high-concept contrivance.

          Bird Box revolves around the story of, at first, a pregnant and emotionally unavailable woman, Malorie, who ultimately finds herself in the midst of an apocalyptic attack. This attack involves “beings” whom when you look at them in plain sight, force you to commit suicide. It ultimately caused a mass killing of the human race. It depicts the characters in their struggle to survive, and shows much of the world that surrounds them, but, since the survivors are the ones who never see the thing, the movie never shows it. It does, however, show just enough of the thing’s effect - a wind-like whipping-up of swirls of leaves - to deflate the potential existential terror of a completely traceless thing, a seeming neutron bomb of suicidal impulse.  From here, Malorie is brought into this house with a group of people, because being indoors with any view of the outside world blocked out, keeps you safe but not safe enough. Kindness at its highest level was in everyone’s heart at that moment. Up until, an insider with their worst fear was welcomed warmly.

          After all the struggle they had been, Malorie and her children survived. Malorie flee with her baby boy, the newborn child of another housemate who died which she named girl, and the one surviving member of the house that turned to be her lover to find a place where they could be safe together. They ultimately find themselves living in the middle of the woods, having trained themselves with blindfolds on how to survive, and in pursuit of discovering a community of which they could live with permanently. These dangerous schemes, whether with a larger group in city streets or with the trio of Malorie and the children in the wild, are filmed with illustrative approximations, in generic gestures and fragments. The melodramatic tone, and the increasingly menacing set of dangers that Malorie and the children face in their rustic flight - set throughout with looming closeups in which characters register and express a fear that the images don’t themselves convey. The story continues on with Malorie rafting down the river with the two children, having lost her lover right beforehand, with their blindfolds on, journeying forward against a battle with death in hope of finding a place where they can call home and live in peace.

          Bird Box is a toy-chest apocalypse in which the rules of the game are, to all appearances, never understood - yet that hostility with bewildering mystery never crops up as a theme of discussion among characters who have to confront it. The movie’s nuts-and-bolts protagonists never look past immediate needs to consider the societal or cosmic causes or implications of the catastrophe. Their hermetic self-reliance and self-“interestedness”, for all its ideological implications, are the dramatic reflection of a fictional world that’s thinly and lazily conceived.

          Bird Box uniquely differs compared to other post-apocalyptic films such as, The Quiet Place, It Comes at Night and I Am Legend. Within all of these films, the characters are introduced in a non-linear fashion, where the viewers meet them in the post-apocalyptic world. This forces the viewers to pay attention and pose the question, “How did they get there?” and the viewers keep watching to find out. Just as the rest of these films, Bird Box, shares with you the rules of the world, such as, you’ll see them if you look into the outside world, or like in A Quiet Place, if you make a loud noise, even while you’re inside, they’ll come after you. In addition, something is common in these films, besides in I Am Legend, is that there are other survivors with the lead character that could be either enemies or allies throughout the film. It differs in a way that you cannot see the monsters within this film, nor do you really know how they got there, or how the apocalypse even started.

          Bird Box is a story about learning to hope. It is as much a character study as it is a post-apocalyptic thriller, examining the different ways in which people cope with the apparent end of the world. It sensitively tackles the question of mental health in society. It probes into how it is perceived from those directly affected, to those who view it and how those attitudes are communicated. The movie suggests a split in society, an ‘us and them’ situation.

          Monsters within this film was not visible, nor there is any explanation about how the apocalypse even started. Relating this to us, humans - the monsters are our personal demons that only we, ourselves can see; such as comparing ourselves to strangers on the internet, hurting someone you loved so badly then fleet them away, looking at yourself and hating what you see, or really anything under the sun that could hurt someone. This is why we can’t see the monsters. It’s the personal demons and pain of the characters following them. This is related to our inability to connect as human beings. This is why we always feel lonely. We don’t take the time to ask people how they are doing and what’s going on in their heads. We don’t take the time to care enough or listen. We have become a selfish society, who thinks the world only revolves around ourselves, but if we got off our phones and truly see the world for what it was and the people in it, and gave reaching out a chance, then possibly we wouldn’t be so lonely anymore. This denotes to what Charlie, the shop owner in the film Bird Box was talking about that, “Demons come in all shapes and sizes, that once judged - will be the end of us as humans.”

          Did you know that by 2020, it’s predicted that worldwide, a suicide will be committed every 20 seconds? We put so much pressure on ourselves these days regarding work, love life, social-life, what we need to accomplish, and we never give ourselves enough time to understand that we are growing, along with time to practice self-love, take a walk in the park, eat a proper meal that is healthy and nutritious, and see the beauty of this world for what it simply is.

          Everyone is so afraid of being alone that they don’t open themselves up to be vulnerable, to actually live life  -  the most beautiful gift we’ve been given.

          What Bird Box, is saying is that the apocalypse comes from ourselves  -  from the human race. Suicide is spreading like wildfire across the globe, and if we have to have that plainly explained to us, there’s no wonder we can’t connect. We don’t look into the deeper meaning of things anymore. It’s been expressed to us that Bird Box, is an “Oh-kay.” movie, we looked at it and said, “Wow!,” the writer really had something important to say.

          Oh and btw, before you leave, watch our BIRD BOX CHALLENGE NOW @ www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZygGlYiX-g&t=18s ENJOY! :))

[theory-lord]

Star Vs Theory: The purpose of the Council (some gravity falls references)

So, needless to say, if you have not seen all of season 2, do not read this until you have because I will spoil much of the plot. OK. Here it goes.

The purpose of the council is simple: defend the Mewniverse from cosmic threats.

I define the Mewniverse as the portion of the overarching multiverse which the council exercises it’s power. It is not, in fact, separate from the rest of the multiverse. It shares it’s approximate region with the Rickverse (the section of the multiverse under the vague and neglectful influence of the Council of Ricks), and it consists of all of the dimensions Star has visited as well as a few (but not all) that appear in Journal 3 a la Gravity Falls. This theory posits that Star vs takes place slightly after the events of Gravity Falls in the same world and, oddly enough, on the same side of the united states. This is based off some evidence from the live chats and a few easter eggs in the show.

Now to determine the exact role of each council, we will look at their exact powers.

Hekapoo is the crafter of all dimensional scissors. Aside from various combat-centered abilities, she has the ability to create the devices which link the mewniverse together. This invention allows the council and any resources which it possesses to be relocated at a moment’s notice, and encourages extra-dimensional commerce on a vast scale. (she can outproduce any competing method of travel because her chosen dimension has such a fast frame rate, so to speak) However, Hekapoo has a series of other powers as well which give her a massive degree of control over the scissors. She has a limited ability to track where the scissors are gating too and from, and she is able to recognize who the scissors belong to by their magical signature. She is also able to alter the location to which the scissors gate to, keep portals open indefinitely, close them at will, and even once opened a portal between two different dimensions that she wasn’t even in. This allows her to regulate the use of the scissors so that unauthorized beings cannot use them. In this way, she can effectively wall off particularly dangerous dimensions, which includes all dimensions not part of the overarching Mewniverse, plus the Nightmare Realm. However, this does not keep other beings from opening up portals themselves, it would simply take more work to do so and could be very dangerous (for example, the Mystery Shack Portal could punch a hole to any dimension, but it risks tearing apart reality in the process, and Rick’s portal gun can open gates to any adjacent dimension, but cannot gate as far as the scissors can). Thus, Hekapoo controls an enormous asset to the council. If you take her appearance to indicate relation to Tom, her very existence and utility might be the reason why the council has not yet taken action to control the Hell dimension. More on the Hell dimension later.

Omnitraxus Prime’s powers have not been fully explored, but his main job is fairly apparent. He is able to view all dimensions in the mewniverse at once, and is capable of narrowing his focus to a single dimension in order to view all possible timelines of that dimension at once. He can also teleport to any dimension he views without scissors. The first part allows him to detect problems in the mewniverse, the second allows him to troubleshoot the problems by comparing that reality with all others for that dimension, and the third allows him to get to the location and fix things before anything got out of hand. You may be wondering “why didn’t he do something about Bill?” Well... I don’t think he actually could have. Omni was probably well aware of the enormous quantum shield surrounding Gravity Falls, and knew that if he went there to fix things he would get stuck, just like Bill did. I will write a theory on how Bill could have easily escaped the bubble later. Anyways, so Omni is like a big magical cosmic troubleshooter.

After this, things get a little more intertwined, because we are going into Lekmet and Butterfly territory.

Lekmet is the leader of the council by virtue of the fact that he probably founded it. A coalition of powerful spellcasters banding together for the common good of reality sounds like exactly the sort of thing he would start. Lekmet’s powers are fairly simple, but are extremely powerful nonetheless. He can bring people back to life, a feat of power Tom could only sort-of imitate, and he can do it repeatedly. I believe that not only did he found the council, but he also literally made Rhombulus. More about that later. In any case, this allows the council to keep coming back and responding to threats.

Rhombulus is a very interesting character, as he consists of three (possibly five counting his legs) separate entities working together. In any case, his job is three-fold: capture and contain cosmic threats, produce magic focus crystals, and translate for Lekmet. These three facets alone account for his place on the council. Rhombulus is gifted with the ability to freeze enemies in place, fire crystal shards from his hands, and detect the source of major threats to the cosmos, though he lacks the facility to tell what they might be or to see the nuances of the problem. His job is actually to shoot first and ask questions later, so as to better eliminate threats, and because his freezing skill is non-lethal and he can un-freeze his targets or parts of his targets, at any time this strategy is actually a valid one. However, this kind of power can be dangerous when in the wrong hands, which is why his hands are autonomous. If he ever starts misusing his powers, his hands will turn on him, forcing him to incapacitate them and thus make it more difficult for him to act. Rhombulus is a giant focus crystal and he can make more of them at will, and even by accident. We know that Glossaryk’s focus crystal was given to him by Rhombulus, and so we can probably say that the crystals on the Spellbook, Baby’s forehead, and even the Wand probably came from him as well, making him an enormous asset in that regard as well. Finally, Rhombulus is a capable translator and bodyguard for Lekmet. It is my theory that Lekmet may have originally crafted him for this purpose, but then gained an emotional attachment to him that grew into a grandfather-grandson relationship.

Glossaryk’s job is simple, yet it makes him EXTREMELY powerful. He is the teacher of all of the butterfly princesses. As such, he has magical abilities enough to effectively instruct and demonstrate magic to the most powerful being in the Mewniverse currently allied with the council. His memories consist both of his personal memory from his physical existence and rote knowledge of every single spell written in the spellbook, and his magical power emanates from the crystals on the cover of the book. His unique position makes him the single most powerful member of the council, and the most knowledgeable wielder of magic period, with the possible exception of Bill Cipher. He is magically bound to the purpose of the book, preventing him from abusing this power himself, though an unscrupulous owner of the book could take advantage of this. Glossaryk is included in the council because of his role as the teacher of it’s most powerful asset, the princess, and his vast knowledge of everything magical.

The final actual member of the Council is Moon Butterfly, the Queen of Mewni. It is my belief that she is the only fully mortal member of the council. The reason why she is included, aside from her extremely large degree of power, is threefold: to keep the Mewman royalty happy, to keep their most powerful asset on their side, and because as the leader of an extremely warlike people, the Queen is extremely useful in formulating battle plans and utilizing combat magic. The last is very evident in the finale, as she leads the council into battle. The middle refers simply to the Princess of the Butterfly family, who for lack of a better term is somewhat of a loose neutron bomb, as the wielder of the wand. The last has something to do with the very founding of the council as a thing. Here comes Eclipsa/Toffee territory!

The Butterfly family far predates the founding of the council, but I do believe it first came into power around the same time Rhombulus was created, as evidenced by the presence of the gem in Glossaryk’s head and the presence of the wand itself. I believe Lekmet knew Selina the Shy who, for lack of any other major figure, likely created both the wand and the spellbook. Shortly after her death, Solaria the Monster Carver took her place and invaded the land that would soon be called Mewni, gaining her title in the process of that brutal conflict. I theorize that Toffee was present at that battle. Not only that, I would like to propose that Toffee was her primary enemy. This is only based off his supposed immortality and the fact that he took Ludo to the “ancient Monster Temple”. I would propose that Toffee was, in fact, a kind of living god to the monsters, gifted with magic (which they notably lacked) and a healing factor that would make deadpool jealous. Toffee would see himself as the absolute master of his people, and the Mewmans not just as invaders but as heathens. He was willing to sacrifice the lives of his own people to drive them out. However, he lost and was driven back.

Several hundred years past, with Toffee constantly trying to bring down the Butterfly family, when the key to victory was suddenly dropped into his lap. The most powerful princess since Solaria recently began to show interest in a powerful monster of an unknown name, who possessed red skin, 4 eyes, and a pair of horns. Toffee took advantage of the situation and encouraged the monster to pursue the relationship, in hopes that he could win the princess over to his side and turn her on her people. It would have worked, if not for the efforts of Rhombulus and Lekmet, who arrived just in time to freeze Eclipsa before she killed all Mewmans. However, Eclipsa already had given birth to two children. One was with her actual husband, and she would become the new Queen of Mewni. The other, was Hekapoo, the half-mewman half-monster hybrid who inherited much of her mother’s power. Lekmet saw the potential devastation and decided that something had to be done. He founded the council to prevent anything like this from happening again. In a certain sense, Eclipsa and Toffee were the reason the council was founded in the first place.

Hekapoo then went off to Earth Prime, the land of the humans, and married a human man in the form of Isis, the godess of magic, life, and fertility. Her children became the first “demons”. She used her powers to given them a secret realm in a pocket dimension embedded in Earth Prime. While Hekapoo herself is not evil due to Lekmet’s influence, many of her children suffer the taint of Eclipsa’s dark magic and become wrathful, petty tyrants. There are actually very few demons in the Hell dimension. Most are simply dead people and animals reanimated by those with the strongest Mewman bloodline for fun.

The Queen and Hekapoo were incorporated into the council at about the same time, and Omnitraxus Prime joined later.

The council also has a number of other important figures under it.

Sean runs the council’s tower in their collective mindscape, and is indeed part of the tower. he is in charge of security and maintenance, but does not really take his job seriously. He and the tower were created by Lekmet and Rhombulus working in concert.

Baby is in charge of determining the progress of the princess, given Glossaryk’s unreliability. She was Selina’s chief adviser, a common mewman who went through mewberty and never came out. She is somewhat near the power and skill of Glossaryk, but her power is fueled by an enormous metabolism that makes long term deployment unfeasible.

King Butterfly is always chosen from a royal family of Mewni, usually the Queen’s own extended family. Prolonged inbreeding has reduced the potential of the royal family somewhat, but the current king’s new blood has resulted in a sudden boost in the power of the bloodline. The purpose of the King is to be a father to the princess and to handle the common affairs of the kingdom for the Queen so she can continue to handle cosmic threats, making him somewhat like a prime minister. His mewman nature means he does have some magical power, but not much.

Father Time is an asset that Omnitraxus brought to the council. His existence allows Omni to strengthen the barriers between the Mewniverse and the rest of the multiverse without freezing time for the Mewniverse. This makes it impossible for Rick’s portal gun to penetrate the Mewniverse, but something as powerful as the Shack Portal or the Wand could certainly do it.

The Time Baby is an asset, in it’s own way. It rules the future of humanity with an iron rattle, yet it’s existence in earth’s timeline helps smooth out temporal anomalies and eliminate major threats to it’s safety. Currently Omnitraxus is more powerful than the Time Baby, but when the baby matures into a Time Giant, Omnitraxus may have a contender for master of time and space. As it stands, his existence keeps the entire mewniverse safe for now, as his meddling keeps Earth Prime from being used as a jumping-off point for hostile forces.

The Axolotl is very interesting. It has no official place in the council hierarchy, or unofficial for that matter, but it’s very existence is a massive boon. It is unclear exactly how powerful it is, but it seems to be able to manipulate reality with practiced ease. It generally tries to help people, which is good because it doing the opposite would be catastrophic. If I had to make a guess I would say that Lekmet is at least aware of the Axolotl, and maybe even worked/works for/with it.

The henchmaniacs are just anyone who Rhombulus missed, taking refuge in the one place the council won’t fallow, the shattered remains of Bill’s dimension, the Nightmare Realm.

Finally, a bit of a side-note, but I want to expand on Toffee’s story a little in relation to the butterfly family. I think that in Moon’s time, he attempted to steal the wand in an effort to regain control of Mewni, but Ludo’s family lead a monster revolt and helped moon take back the wand, permanently wounding toffee in the process. Ludo’s family would become recognized royalty for a time, until Ludo was inspired to take the wand for himself and dethroned his parents. Toffee has since grown in hatred towards the wand, the council, the butterfly family, and Ludo’s family, and his scheme reflects this. We wants to reduce Ludo to a puppet, steal all of the Butterfly family’s possessions, turn the Mewmans against him, weaken the power of the council and the stability of the Mewniverse, brake the wand in two, recover his finger, and grant himself the power he needs to restore himself as the living god of mewni once more, all in one fell swoop.

As it stands, he’s doing a pretty good job.

[limey-boy]

Overwatch Thoughts: Orisa

I like how she plays, but dislike everything else about her.

Thats it in a nutshell.

Further explained below the break! May contain opinions, swears and nuts.

Orisa is the newest addition to the overwatch roster, an african Omnic created by a child genius from the bits and pieces left over from a deadly assault by the villain Doomfist. Rather than simply being a defense drone, Orisa was created to be a hero from the get-go by her creator. She defends Numbani from threats to man and omnic alike, helps old ladies cross the street, prevents littering, stay in milk and drink school. all that jazz.

(Its like Superman, Bastion and Chiron had a baby, and the baby was delivered by Jimmy Neutron) 

Lets first cover the good stuff, and arguably most important in a competitive multiplayer game; how she plays!

She plays like a middle-gameplay-ground Tank, she’s got a little deployable shield like Reinhart/Symmetra, a self-supporting utility ability like roadhog/D.va, with a gun halfway between 76′s rifle and bastions minigun, her ult is an AOE version of mercys alt-healing damage boost and a alt-attack of a mini graviton surge that's a scaled down version of Zaryas Ultimate. Her lack of mobility is her greatest weakness, as firing her main gun slows her down, and her support ability only reduces damage and prevents being knocked around.

I think she’s pretty well balanced at the moment, roughly. I think her gun needs fine tuning with a lack of headshots like the current bastion, and less ammo; alongside plenty of other tweaks that will inevitably happen. I’ve only played her a few times and I feel like the initial stats are okay at least. maybe a little too good for now. time will tell, playtesting is good. 

(“Beep boop, look both ways before crossing. you have ten seconds to comply”)

Now, lets cover the bad stuff, which is all just my own opinions here. feel free to disagree and discuss them with me.

Personally, I think centaurs are one of the goofiest looking fantasy creatures out there. half a man and a horse, requiring mind bending acts of hand-waving to make their biology not horrifying, incapable of entering most human sized houses and vehicles, and generally looking and acting quite silly. They just don’t look particularly good to me, and I feel like if they weren’t a part of popular greek mythology they’d of been laughed out of the fictional creature bestiary long ago. Heck, their personal lives aren’t much better. They’re either drunk frat boys trying to out-party the Satyr’s or downright terrifying creeps who aren’t above kidnapping to get their jollies.

(He’s got like, at least 8 sets of abs there. also does he have two sets of internal organs? science, get on this.)

But hey, that's just my personal bias there. I don’t like centaurs. they look silly and they act creepy.

Orisa, is a robot centaur. Strike 1 for me I’m afraid. I do however like the sheer brave weirdness of her design, I mean shit, she’s a robot! she can be any shape you want and they fucking went with it. nobody can claim the designers were being dull with female shapes in this case. I can respect that whole creative bag.

point 2, is that personality-wise, there’s not much at all, at least for now. You’ve got a nice policewoman centaur ED-209 here. thats it. the girl who made her would of been WAY more interesting a character, but having an 11 year old african child fighting physically in a global defense force would be a little too hardcore for blizzard.

(+100% personality, -100% combat ability. -2 ears.)

I like to think with Orisa being just released we’ll get more character out of her soon, but with the base concept, I can’t see much you can go with her that’s that interesting. 

I much prefer the original concept me and the husband came up with before we looked into the whole thing; that Efi here was using the Orisa robot as a kind of long-ranged proxy to fight for overwatch. Kind of like D.va with Wifi. It makes sense to me, genius level 11 year old wants to help make the world a better and safer place, but is smart enough to realise that a teenager with bright ideals and a sharp wit isn’t going to stop the bad guys alone. Cue the super-drone! heck, why not drones? the challenge of playing more than one character at once might be interesting to explore.

Of course you then have the unfortunate fact that an 11 year old is playing the most realistic game of CoD with robots ever, but she’s already made a robot that can straight up murder people, with a fusion machine gun and gravity bombs. the bloods already on her tiny hands.

...

So, what do you guys think? I like the way the hero plays, but much like mei I feel like its a undercooked character but with the pretty good excuse of literally just being released. everything about Orisa is subject to change, and I’m looking forward to what blizzard's next move with her is.

[alpineaquilegia]

Tell me about a science.

Once upon a time (i.e. in the late 1930s), there was a baby science, namely, nuclear science. It has figured out that this thing called the “atom” is made up of a positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons in discrete energy levels. Only a few years before, in 1932, it’d figured out that yo! There’s a big-ass neutral particle in the nucleus??? Called a neutron??? For a while the science thought that the “neutron” was just a proton and electron together (spoiler: not the case, for reasons).

Anyway, since people like Enrico Fermi and scientists of the time are cave men at heart just like the rest of us, they decided to bang things together and see what happened. Great technique, 10/10, it’s still the way we do particle physics. So Enrico Fermi chucked a bunch of neutrons at some uranium, and thought it just created a bigger element – nope, it split that dangded uranium into pieces, but Fermi didn’t figure that out. Instead, some German scientists started doing the same thing. There were two men and a woman named Lise Meitner – but you see, she was a woman with Jewish ancestry in fucking 1938, so she, like the smart woman she was, fled to Sweden. The two guys continued smashing uranium with neutrons, but couldn’t figure it out – the production of smaller elements didn’t make sense according to their understanding of the atom. “Bruh, you can’t break an atom like that, it doesn’t work with the whole quantum tunnelling theory that explains alpha particles and whatever.”

So around Christmas, they sent a letter to Lise Meitner. “Yo Lise, we can’t figure this out, help us pleaassee???” She went on a nice walk in the snow with her nephew, and proposed the mechanism of how the atom might break apart. Her nephew did pretty drawings of the liquid drop model. The plugged the numbers, and the amount of mass lost in the fission was about what was necessary to make the fission happen – the math checked out. So they published it in Nature, and made physics history. The dudes back in Germany published separately their weird findings, but the groundbreaking realization was made by Meitner.

So the dudes back in Germany got the fucking Nobel Prize, and didn’t give Meitner the credit she FUCKING DESERVED. So yeah, a WOMAN did the groundbreaking work that made the basis of the nuclear bomb seven years later (which Meitner was fucking pissed about, might I add).

So basically, Nazi Germany was fucking stupid for driving out such brilliant scientists go, and the rest of the world (i.e. the fucking Nobel Prize Committee) was fucking stupid for being so sexist as to not recognize Meitner for her contributions.

[bonniejstarks]

The Pink Jumpsuit: An essay about the bubbles we live in

‘It seems like someone else’s dream of my past.’ For Emma Neale, the painting ‘Wanderlust’ by Dunedin artist Sharon Singer stirs memories of her childhood, and new understandings of guilt and forgiveness.

There were gifts from my father when he came home from overseas trips. Love offerings; a bit like those a cat might bring home after night revels. Placations. Mixed messages. Guilt trips. Gilt traps. 

Top 40 albums and band memorabilia for my younger sister. Leather pants for me, the anxious girly swot he called ‘Stude’ to rhyme with ‘dude’, to make praising my studiousness — and maybe that studiousness itself — seem cool. 

After unwrapping the leather trousers, I went to a school social with my bottom half dressed like a biker chick; the top half in a turquoise T-shirt borrowed from my mother, which sported a black panther and swirls of gold glitter. The ensemble was a look I wasn’t sure how to carry, though I still drew a lot of attention from the senior boys. “Are you really a junior?” “Whoa, hot pants.” “Hey, Olivia Neutron-Bomb!”

My svelteness was wasted on me, at that age. I couldn’t see it: I just felt awkward, uncoordinated. Even if I had seen it, I was probably still too sensible and bookish to flaunt it, cash in on it, or let it give me confidence. The attention was just unsettling. I got the same feeling in my throat as when I’d seen an aggressive male pigeon treading a female — the flutter and scramble of it, the poor hen hard-scrabbling to get away. There had been no preamble dance of bobbing beak-link, glossy necks shimmering at each other, like panels of sequins. It was all panic, claw, shake, the female’s coos like bottled sobs.

Sharon Singer ‘Wanderlust’, acrylic on canvas, 2019

From the pod of my teenage awkwardness, however I could see that my mother absolutely knew how to cut a figure; elegance was, if not a weapon, a kind of armour. When Mum unwrapped her own gift from Dad that year, my sister and I thought it was hilarious — and dizzyingly bold. He had given her a slim-fit boiler-suit in a light denim fabric, its colour the pink of smoker’s candies. It had fake gold ventilation grommets, a long front zip; and I think it had stitching in a batwing bust. Usually Mum wore deep plums, aubergines, black, russet-red. They were the shades of polished piano wood, tooled leather hardback book covers, candlelight, the heavy, hushed velvet of theatres: colours with body and weight The colours of thought, and of night. The suit was racy, playful, youthful, almost saucy — and she looked stunning in it: dark and sultry like Anni-Frid Lyngstad, from ABBA, with a shiver of haughtiness.

We crowed at Mum when she tried on the new outfit. “You look great! It’s fabulous!”

Silence.

“Are you brave enough to go out in it? Don’t you like it?”

Her quiet reply: “I’m not sure about it yet.”

“Do you think it’s too tight-fitting?” 

We knew she and our father often worried about their weight. Weren’t the ‘80s a decade of extreme food weirdness? Hadn’t they tried the bread diet, the grapefruit diet, the cottage cheese diet, the Jane Fonda workout, skipped meals, taken up running, talked about the Lebanese Army Food Diet (which I think involved eating only eggs or chicken)? 

Dad sometimes made dark jabs at Mum about her figure. “If only your [x or y] was smaller, you’d be perfect.” His nickname for me was Lumpy. If he found me and my sister eating, he often said with acerbic, Basil Fawlty-esque disdain: “Having a little snack, are we?” 

I became anorexic when I was 17. As a schoolboy at Nelson College, Dad had been harassed for his own weight, so his attitude had a backwards logic, even for a man who could be deeply empathetic. He was a close listener, and loving enough that, if I think too hard about his sudden death at age 48 (from a heart attack while he was out jogging), it feels as if a trench is being excavated in my stomach. He repeated what he knew, I guess. He criticised us to pass on the urgent and venomous message he had received from that all-boys’ boarding school culture: fat means failure, slender is status, beauty is, yes, narrowly defined. 

‘Wanderlust’ by Sharon Singer, 2019 (detail)

Mum stood side-on to the mirror, hand swiping quickly over her stomach, as she pulled it in: as if women’s bellies should at least sit level with the hip-bones, the way lager should sit level with the rim of the glass, Mum’s swipe a bartender’s beer comb trimming the foam head. She turned this way, that way, a whether vane in the mirror: should she wear it, should she not?

“You look lovely, Mum!” We wanted her to be wedding-day glad at Dad’s return from his travels; we wanted the normal routine to have landed with him. We wanted that ordinary rhythm to mean we were safe: safe to be as selfish as kids need to be, to get on with the job of growing up and eventually, wanting to leave… which makes no sense, it makes no sense, but what does, when…

“I’m just not sure how your father really sees me,” Mum said.

I don’t know if I put two and two together then — the candy-pink overalls and the other time I’d seen her taken aback by a gift. I think it was about five years earlier, when we lived in America, but memory shuffles together events and settings from different packs to come up with a stacked deck. Dad’s not here to contest the dealer’s version.

One Christmas, he gave her some jade and silver jewellery. She loved nephrite; we kids were far too ‘70s-expat-Pākehā-Kiwi to know the word pounamu then. We were busy learning to hide our accents and swap ‘cookie’ for ‘biscuit’, ‘bug’ for ‘beetle’, say ‘jerk’ and ‘turkey’, ‘Get off the grass’, ‘No duh’, ‘Catch my drift’, ‘Mondo bizarro’… And maybe because my dad was a nephrologist, the word nephrite drew the family language to it. The words share a relationship: the root links them through the Spanish piedra de (la) ijada or yjada (1560s), where ijada means loins or kidneys. Jade was thought to have healing properties, for kidney and lumbar complaints. Even the thought of pressing a cool, polished jade amulet over an ache seems soothing.

I suppose if this scene did happen in America, the jade was unlikely to be from Te Wai Pounamu anyway, given jade is also found in California, where we lived at the time. Either way, when Mum opened the gift there was confusion and collapse in her face, which she fought against. 

There was something going on here that we hadn’t seen before. I only recall seeing her cry one other time, and that was when she was in pain, from a minute shard flicking into her eye as she clipped my baby sister’s toenails. I had never seen her look so stricken. American TV in the build-up to Christmas hadn’t revealed this kind of reaction in all the seductive ads for toys, toys, toys … Presents were meant to be opened in great communal teeth-baring, group hugs, a festival of cleanliness, perfect skin, efficiency, friendship-joy and great hair. We were all in our dressing-gowns, three of us no doubt with bed-hair, Mum probably the only one who’d brushed hers for the occasion. I can remember looking at the Christmas wrapping to try to figure out what had gone wrong. 

Something was very awry. The jewellery was already broken? The jewellery had something missing? It seemed elegant, queenly to me — but the sadness in Mum’s face made me think, are the necklace and bracelet really so ugly? How do I find the ugliness? How do I understand it? 

I thought the gifts would look enchanting on her. My mother has very green eyes: she really does. She tells me that green eyes are more common in fiction than in real life. I wonder if that might have subliminally helped to make her a writer? 

When she found her image in novels, saw her statistically exceptional eyes and her difference reflected, was that unconsciously affirming?

Mum hid her face in her chestnut brown hair. In the Californian sun, her hair bleached ginger on the tips, which she hated, though she loved candied ginger, and my sister had a giant teddy called Ginger Bill, and ‘gingerly’ was a beautiful word, but what was wrong with the present?

Perhaps I didn’t truly begin to understand until I was 16, when a boyfriend brought me gifts after he’d been away overseas: gold fan earrings, gold fan charm on a necklace, a tropical flower perfume: frangipani or hibiscus, the name lost, now along with its thin sugary fragrance. When I received them, I was confused about what to feel; the offerings weren’t at all to my personal taste, but the gesture seemed wildly generous, and it gave off a thin buzzing edge of a new experience, even though it was also conventionally, stiflingly romantic. Yet as soon as I’d unwrapped the gifts, the boyfriend went at me with a force and insistence that seemed to say I owed him something. He was extracting payment; pushing me down on the bed, so that I felt like the poor flustered female pigeons I’d seen, pecked and trampled and somehow, at the same time, bizarrely, completely ignored by the grinding bull of a bird. 

I must have understood it, then, as now it feels as if the two events are filed in the same memory compartment: terrible, terrible presents. 

Mum’s jewellery was a kind of hush money. Or an apology. Or a bribe? They weren’t a gift of  time. They weren’t companionship. They weren’t home when he said he would be; home at the weekend. 

The gift was also a celebration of her beauty, of course: which is fine, and human — don’t even babies spend longer looking at symmetrical features? But that isn’t enough to underpin and make-good the architecture of love. 

I also seem to remember that part of the shock was the expense; the gift can’t have really been within our means. The sense of disproportion was all part of the strange scene. If it had been books, or notebooks, pens, typewriter, foolscap, or even a cheap T-shirt with a favourite author’s portrait and some bad but forgivably literary pun printed on it, the gift would have said more about Dad listening to Mum, really knowing her. 

I think I remember my father’s devastated expression, too, from that day, and him hugging her as she cried. I’m in the child’s position of feeling for them both; a bad place to be when there are irreconcilable differences. He just wanted to show that he loved her. He thought she would be happy. He thought the receipts for the jewellery were like  … billets doux, a love letter. 

What can anyone outside a marriage really understand about what goes on inside it? When I said as much to my paternal grandfather once, when he was in his early 90s, he answered, ‘Sometimes even the people inside the marriage don’t have a clue what is happening, either,’ and he told me an extraordinary tale of a house call he had made once, as a GP in Wellington in the 1950s or 60s. When he arrived at the house, the woman patient reported severe abdominal pain. Gramps examined her and told her that she was quite far advanced in labour. She insisted — with real vehemence — that he must be wrong. The husband fully backed her up. He told my grandfather, privately, that it was impossible as there “hadn’t been marital relations for some considerable amount of time”. Gramps was confused; he doubted himself. As he prepared to re-enter the bedroom, to examine the woman again a ‘poor little frightened probationer nurse’, as he called her who had accompanied him that day, called out, “Doctor, I can see a tiny hand!” My grandfather helped the mother deliver a live, healthy baby. He said to me, “I’ve always wondered what on earth became of that poor couple. I’ve thought about them, all down the years.” And, shaking his head, “Not every child is a gift, though it should be.”

‘Wanderlust’ Sharon Singer (detail)

Every Christmas and birthday my own husband says the best gift I can give him is nothing. I think about that, too when I see Sharon Singer’s painting, ‘Wanderlust’, and its arid, red-planet setting. I feel dread at my own covetous impulse to have the painting, partly because I’m not sure I can explain the impact of the strange sideways slipping trail into memory it’s leading me along. 

The image itself touches on everything from a scorched earth, to climate refugees, perhaps even to the avoidance of infection. (Sharon Singer has other creepily premonitory paintings of people socialising with face masks in outdoor settings.) It also suggests space exploration; a sense of adventure; threat and fragility; the ludicrousness and the tenacity of so much human aspiration. Yet it also seems like someone else’s dream of my past.  

The child in the painting could be my dark-haired little sister, her sweetly rounded limbs when she was under five. She could be in a child’s androgynous, asexual version of the strange gift overalls from the 1980s: a little like a child dressing up as a superhero. The image brings back memories of our guinea pigs: we sometimes carried them in the kind of pet transport cage seen in the painting, and of course, they tried to escape us. It brings back the time well before them, when I tried to run away, with a small, brown, ginger-nut textured zip-up school-case. (I sat happily on a street corner, telling the adults in a car that stopped to ask if I was all right, that I had left home forever. I had a book, a warm jersey, a toy rabbit and maybe an apple so I was going to be fine.) 

The small child astronaut in the image, with her long, untied shoelace (such a loving, funny, apt detail) trails its own clouds of meaning: vulnerability, inattention, slap-dash, innocence, the tiny hazards that persist amidst the colossal breaks from the norm and the known.

Those shoes and the carry-case also make me think of my sons, their pet rabbits, my boys’ laces trailing like mouse-tails, the constant reminder, you’ll trip up! (I would still be saying it on the moon, on Mars, on the moons of Mars … ). 

None of this has anything to do with a husband in the 1980s imagining his wife in tight-fitting, distinctly non-utilitarian coveralls. My sister points out that the gift was telling Mum she was gorgeous. Was that so out of the norm by then that it unsettled her? It seemed to set off detonations of silence, anxiety, disapproval, contraction, retreat, mystery and the unspoken  — which, of course, is different from the silence. 

But what if our real life is lived in the silences? The thoughts, and the in-between-the-thoughts, not what we manage to put into words? What we intuit, intimate. (The visual arts and music can both exquisitely, expertly, seep into and explore these interstices, I think.) 

The people close to us can never truly know us, and we can never truly know them. Maybe real love is when you feel you do understand the silences — when it’s in what you don’t say that you agree to meet. What if the person you share that with isn’t someone you live with? Or, to complicate things, what if the main way you fight in a family is actually the silent treatment, when it seems as if you are all wearing opaque glass masks, air-locked in the head-gear of your own hurt and anger?

It doesn’t make sense that this dumpy little cosmonaut with her luggage, her pet travel crate, her heedlessly undone basketball boot, brings back memories of my tall, slender mother standing in front of a full-length mirror, looking intent and also a little crushed, trying to smooth her stomach and hips away as she strokes the fabric over the planes and curves of her body. 

But what does, what does, when your father buys your mother a parachute suit, a flight suit, a jumpsuit, and then reels with shock, when finally, she makes the leap, she bails, she decides to leave?

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