#it’s not like the movie wasn’t but the capitalistic hell that is theatre as an institution

[milkteahoe]

I’m so tired of the general public perceiving les mis at this point I won’t care if it closed in London it’s not fucking doing its job anyway

[cromchychipdip]

Not All That Glitters Is Gold {Part 1}

Synopsis: There isn't much in common between a kooky, reclusive biology professor and a corrupt royal advisor save for one thing: money. Together, Preminger and Henry Hidgens grow closer and team up in order to get their hands on whatever might be in Fort Knox. If they can't find money, surely they can find information that they can sell, right? But will they overcome their differences to even make the trip to Kentucky? Read to find out!

Ship: Professor Hidgens x Preminger (Prehidgens)

Rating: T

(Mentions of smoking, mentions of drinking, and swearing because StarKid characters)

Word count: 914

Tags: @starkidding-around @purplemoon153 (thanks again for the prompt!) @awigglycultist @disaster-glyph (don't worry, it's going to stay PG-13!) @wellfuckmegentlywithachansaw @glazeddoughnutpancake @faery-market @someone-here-is-smart @trashcan-dwelling-theatre-nerd

Henry Hidgens didn't know where to begin with his plan.

The one thing he wanted was money. Being a biology professor at a community college certainly wasn't a bad gig, but it didn't pay enough for him to accomplish what he wanted. All of his savings went to maintenance for his bunker-like house. He had told his beloved Alexa to remind him not to spend money frivolously, but she would only respond with 'when do you want me to remind you?' and the conversation would end.

The only way to get his mind in gear was with a drink or a smoke, but he was saving his alcohol for the apocalypse, which he knew would happen in a few months. He would need it to think then. For now, he decided to take a walk outside for once, maybe to Beanie's. He did have a voucher for a free black coffee, after all.

Coat and bag in hand, he said goodbye to his Alexa and left his house. It was a dreary day, as it usually was in Michigan autumns. The leaves were bright and lively against the grey gloom of the sky. They danced as small droplets of rain hit them, bouncing off onto the heads of other passerby. It was just rainy enough to count as rain, but not rainy enough for people to bust out their umbrellas.

The walk to Beanie's was long and cold, but the thought of a warm drink was enough to make the professor keep going. Looking around at the leaves, he was lost in thought.

'How ironic that leaves are the most beautiful when they're dying.'

Eventually, he made it to Beanie's. To his delight, it was nearly empty. His favorite student, Emma Perkins, was behind the counter arguing with a customer. Hidgens was too far away to hear what it was about, but it ended with the customer stomping away in a huff and Emma flipping him off. She had obviously won this encounter.

As Hidgens stepped up to the counter, Emma smiled in recognition, as if she was relieved to see a familiar face.

"Good morning, professor. What can I get you?"

"Emma, I have a voucher for a black coffee. if you would be willing to make it, I would like a cup," he replied, holding said voucher out to Emma. She took it, looked it over, and placed it next to the cash register.

"You've got it. It'll be a bit, though, I need to brew another pot." Hidgens nodded,

"Of course."

As he waited for the coffee to finish brewing, his eyes wandered around the shop. There wasn't much out of the ordinary. The walls were still covered in posters for old musicals, the clientele looked sleepy as they gripped their cups, and the stack of newspapers looked as it always did: like it hadn't been replaced since the 1980's.

The one thing that seemed out of place was one of the customers across the room.

He was wearing a big powdered wig with a purple bow tying the braid together and a tacky outfit that looked like it was straight from a historical Barbie movie. Seriously, who in their right mind would wear a coat of that shade of purple? Hidgens thought that it was positively hideous and historically inaccurate.

The man was reading a newspaper, legs crossed, and holding his mug with his pinky finger out. The professor assumed that he would be drinking tea. He just had a feeling about that.

"Order up."

Emma placed the to-go cup on the counter in front of Hidgens, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Can I get you anything else?" Hidgens pointed to the strangely dressed customer.

"Do you have any idea who that man is?" Emma followed his gaze and sighed, as if recalling a terrible memory.

"No clue. He just showed up fifteen minutes before the buttface before you did. I think he said his name was... Preminder? Prejudizer? I don't fucking remember. Seemed pretentious as hell, though. I'm not even sure if he's from here." Emma started cleaning the counter with the rag on her shoulder.

"Curious. Positively curious."

The man put his tea down to flip the page of his newspaper, still not noticing Hidgens staring him down from across the shop.

"He ordered some lavender tea that we don't carry. I don't see why he couldn't have just gone to the Starbucks across the street if he wanted something that fancy."

"Supporting chain restaurants as opposed to local ones might be a sign that he's against the restraints of capitalism on small businesses. Perhaps he isn't a bad person from that point of view." Emma stared at the professor, not necessarily disagreeing, but also not wanting to encourage anti-capitalist tangents in a place where her boss could hear.

"Maybe. But if he wanted that fancy of a drink, why would he go to the hole in the wall? I don't know." Emma continued her work, not giving it another thought. Hidgens knew that it was time to go.

He reached into his wallet and tipped five dollars before walking out. His mind was off of money and onto the stranger from across the cafe. It was shocking how mysterious someone like him could be. Wouldn't all of Hatchetfield have been in raptures if that strange man was around? Small towns run on gossip, after all.

Perhaps he shouldn't be as shut in as he usually is.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

okay, y’all, i’ve gotta back on my tl;dr bullshit soapbox about something:

so, the other day, i was just mindlessly scrolling through my corporate & capitalist hellscape facebook™️ (i.e. LinkedIn) and came across this totally trite mostly bullshit meme that was shared by some corporate executive search man (whose name i decided to crop out bc eh):

so i obviously agree with the last three points on this list, bc god yes my life would’ve been a bit better if I didn’t get all my dialogue about mental health only from teen mags and horrible portrayals in teen tv shows (and also this hellsite). and hell yeah everyone, and I mean EVERYONE needs to learn that failure is okay many situations (like failing a class in uni or school) bc everyone fails at something sometimes. and dealing with failure is HARD. and time management is something that I’m pretty sure everyone lies to fuckin hell about on their resume, bc lots of people really suck at it, myself included. so yeah. that needs to be taught. and i also agree with the “how to manage your health” point. bc thats becoming ever more prevalent and important with career burn out etc.

but entrepreneurship? people management? conflict resolution? creativity? how to manage money? public speaking? like y’all. three of those ARE taught/learned in school, who the fuck wrote this meme? 

for anyone who actually paid attention in maths class, (which is probably very few people outside of the top performing classes), there WAS A WHOLE FUCKING UNIT that focuses on financial maths (in australia anyway). I ignored this unit as well as maths in general at school, bc I generally hated maths and was convinced that I was somehow never going to get a job. but i remember the gist of the overall topic and its subtopics. one subtopic teaches you how to calculate your wages in various contexts (overtime, double-time and a half, holiday payments, im pretty sure maternity leave pay was jammed in somewhere? idk if other countries would have double time & a 1/2 like australia though). another subtopic teaches you how to calculate interest on bank loans and credit rates on credit cards. a third subtopic teaches you how to calculate savings (obvs in terms of discounts in shops)....im sure there was a bit about budgeting in there somewhere? im pretty sure there were some questions were about tax payments somewhere as a subtopic enrichment exercise? but you get my gist. are these not money management skills? in some sense? like if i could find one of my old maths textbooks or old maths books i’d give an example of a question, to make my point stronger. but the problem, like i said before, is that a load of people (myself included) just zone out in maths in high school and stop trying with it. they forget what they’ve learnt, and just remember how much they hated algebra and how they’ll never use it again. maths was one hell of a fucking strong bitch, guys. but maybe i’m wrong.

creativity? excuse me? have people forgotten about art classes? drama classes? english classes? music classes? need i go on? okay don’t get me wrong, most of these classes did focus a lot on memorising quotes or facts about people (artists/writers/poets/composers/dramatists etc) or specific  periods/movements in art or theatre or literature for example.... but the amazing sculptures/paintings etc people created in art for their final projects in year 12, or even in year 10 were works of their imagination. the scripts people write in drama or maybe english (if you had a fun teacher who did a screenwriting unit, for example) are creative asf. especially in year 12 when they do their major projects, where they may produce a monologue or a short movie, and then there’s a group piece. drama students might even make their own costumes for these performances. LIKE AIN’T THAT A LOT OF CREATIVITY RIGHT THERE Y’ALL????? and english. lowly old english. THEY HAVE A WHOLE FUCKING TOPIC ON CREATIVE WRITING FOR FUCKS SAKE. the original music people might create for their final projects too in year 12? does that not count as creativity? like yes, i know a lot of these things do still have to meet bs assessment criteria (especially in catholic schools, where the main things are you don’t offend the catholic education office and jesus/god lmao) to be considered worthy of a mark for your year 12 exams. but FUCK. HOW THE FUCK AREN’T ANY OF THESE SUBJECTS COUNTED TOWARDS BEING CREATIVE???????? like fuck your corporate creative ideation or w/e bullshit, Callum. drama and english even lend themselves to improvisation in some instances, like public speaking, which is examined further, below.

next, we move on to public speaking. this shit is basically taught from the first goddamn day of “show & tell” in kindy/kindergarten, and this fucker has the gall to say that it’s not fucking taught in schools? someone call in miley cyrus/hannah montana to throw the fuck down in this motherfucking hoedown BC THIS STUPID-ASS MEME-FUCKER HAS NERVE. i hated public speaking. absolutely hated it. even though it was ironically one of the places i ended up excelling in in english classes. even when i fucked up in my english speeches with like “oh, fuck.... said nelson mandela,  i’ve seem to’ve lost my palm card. wait, shit! there it is... excuse me while i pull it out of my ass. whoops, sorry miss” *bats eyes and finger guns at my year 9 english teacher who has her head in her hands and is done with my shit, while the class laughs at my gaffe* i’d still end up with like 73% or like 26/30. it was baffling. but for people who weren’t the class clown/smart alec like i was from years 7-10 (and like i actually wasn’t once i moved schools).... public speaking is like the leading cause of anxiety, right? like by the time i got to doing speeches/presentations at uni i was having panic attacks... the thought of presenting to my classes made me fucking sick with fear and anxiety. nearly every subject i did at uni (even when i tried to avoid subs with public speaking assessments) and throughout school had some type of presentation/speech whatever you want to call it project/activity in it. even fucking SPORT/PDHPE at school and even philosophy at uni. and these fuckers are saying its not taught in schools. FUCK  OFF. like yeah, i get that they actually mean it in the professional sense.... where people can give the sappy bs motivational speeches or an insightful ted-talk worthy 20-minute presentation... or a great sales pitch. but like??? save that for mike “my dad phoned in to EY and i have a job waiting for me after uni” mcfuck in a business major or law degree? or for clubs like toastmasters? fuck. ok enough of the skills we learn in school. let’s move onto the businesslike-sounding ones of “people management”, “conflict management” and fucking “entrepreneurship”. like. what the fuck? okay in some sense people management and conflict management could potentially be used in managing friendships and relationships in your personal life. but like. i can feel the business underpinnings and i dont like it lmao. like why do you want fully functioning adults straight out of school, franklin? and there’s extra credit conflict management subjects at uni??? or at least my home uni had it... and i never did them bc they were intensive courses during summer break lol. but the one that pissed me off the most was entrepreneurship. LIKE ARE KIDS NOT FUCKING ALLOWED TO BE KIDS NOW????? well  apparently: “NO! YOU MUST ALWAYS THINK OF MONEY MAKING WAYS TO BE RICH! YOU MUST BE ENTREPRENEURIAL!!!!!! YOU MUST GENERATE BUSINESS IDEAS FROM THE TIME YOU CAN FUCKIN’ WALK!!!!! AND SPEAK!!! CHILDHOOD AND BEING A TEENAGER DON’T EXIST WORKER BEE!!!! CAPITALISM FOR ALL!!!! WORKER BEES!!! CAPITALISM IS YOUR FRIEND!!! OWN A BUSINESS BY THE TIME YOU’RE 8 YEARS OLD!” like it’s insidious asf. and it doesn’t acknowledge that most entrepreneurs are already privileged people anyway, who usually have some type of money to start off their venture (or that’s what it feels like anyway). and yeah throw all the “THIS BOY IS AN ENTREPRENEUR AT 18!!! 18!!!???? BY STARTING HIS OWN BUSINESS AT 12!!!! WHAT A CHAMP! 😁🙃” clickbait news stories at me, but i don’t fucking care. the concept and perceived over-importance and almost preaching mindset of entrepreneurship is slowly becoming insidious and toxic asf. call me paranoid. but that’s what it feels like.

but with those last three topics, i want to make a point that school curriculum’s (in australia at least, and probably worldwide) are so jam-packed already with sport (which is pointless and shitty), geography (ok how to read maps is important, but i never bothered to learned to do it properly), history, science, english etc etc etc..... that like.... where the actual fuck are the gonna jam the above bs (people management”, “conflict management” and entrepreneurship) into the curriculum???? and also teachers are already over-worked enough as it is, they don’t need another load of shitty subjects pushed onto them. and they sure asf don’t earn enough (especially in the states) to have this bs pushed into their subject schedules either. keep them at uni, where they should be. or just in the workplace/in the general public where they belong. and if people suggest that you could probably push these subjects into the year 11/12 business studies programs or elective commerce courses in years 9/10, save your goddamn breath. like i remember looking at business studies hsc papers in years 11/12 to see what they did.... and it was pretty chock-a-block anyway. and my experience of my year 9 commerce was horrible, to say the least. let kids be kids, for fucks sake. they shouldn’t have to be fully functioning adults in the workplace, by the end of high school, for fucks sake. AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS NOT AN ESSENTIAL SKILL????!!!! FUCK OFF WITH THAT SHIT, WILHELM. anyway. that’s my rant over about how i hate how corporate people are trying to be #relatablewiththeyouth🙃 with their shitty versions of “10 things i wish we learned in school” memes.... and failing.... without realising that this is why millennials are suspicious and cynical about meme usage by corporate people/corporations.

[alextravelstojapan]

Thursday, Nov 22nd, 2018

We woke up and got ready for our day trip to Universal Studios Japan. Then we went our in search of breakfast and were surprisingly unsuccessful until we saw a sign for Viede la France that was on the 11th floor of the station. We got some bread and some nice coffee and then caught the bus to Universal. It was a pretty short bus ride and we arrived right at the site. Well first was a long strip of all of the restaurants and souvenir shops that you can go into free of charge. And we were trying to meet Meda, Kevin, and Therese that were also staying in Oosaka for the weekend so we stood by a Lawson’s for a little while Carson connected to the WiFi and tried to contact them through FB messanger. They actually came to USJ very shortly after us so it didn’t take us long to see them also standing near to Lawson’s.

We walked all together to the studio entrance and when I saw the 7900¥ price my heart hurt a little bit and I was having second thoughts but I bought a ticket anyways. When we got into the park our first stop was the bathroom and then we did some loose planning about what we should do first. Well since we all wanted to go to the Harry Potter world we decided that should be our first adventure. I bought some butter beer for 600¥ which was yet another purchase that made my heart hurt a little. After I bought it, I set it on a ledge nearby while I got out my camera and Meda hit my cup with her elbow and almost knocked it over but luckily most of the drink remained in the cup. The butter beer was delicious which I already knew, having tried it at the Universal Studios in Florida three or four years ago. We walked around for a short while before stopping to take some pictures of the castle. The line for the castle ride was about 110 minutes so we were all like hell no but went into the line anyways. We opted for the castle walk instead of the ride which was no wait and really cool to me because I didn’t go into the castle at US Florida.

Dru, Kevin, and I decided to go check out the other parks while Meda, Therese, and Carson stayed behind to scope around for some souvenirs. Dru, Kevin, and I wandered into Jurassic Park which was kind of a let down because there were no dinosaurs. All three of us were checking out the food options as we walked because even though everything looked good, it was also all ridiculously priced. I was in a sour mood for pretty much the whole day because I didn’t feel the money I had spent was worth the experience. And even though I was trying hard to stay positive, it was difficult for me because I wanted to buy things but couldn’t rationalize spending that kind of money, nor could I rationalize standing in a line with over an hour’s wait just to be on a ride for 1 minute. So that’s why I don’t like theme parks and don’t plan on going back to one for at least another 5 years.

Because Jurassic Park didn’t have much to offer us besides long lines for rides and overpriced food, instead we waited for the rest of our friends for quite a while outside of Jurassic Park. In the meantime, I got crabby brooding over my quickly emptying wallet and my hungry stomach. So I ended up saying to hell with it and got in line to buy a 500¥ churro. While in line I started to doubt whether it was going to be a good purchase, and unfortunately it wasn’t, which made me even more frustrated. It was also at this point that my feet started hurting so I was just not having a very good day. Yeah I guess I should’ve warned you earlier on but this post is basically just full of complaints lol.

Anyways after we had all met up again, we walked over to the area designed for little kids which had Snoopy, Hello-Kitty, and Sesame Street themed parts. We accidentally got split up and then met up again while waiting in line for a Snoopy ride. The ride was one of those ones that has a cart for two people extending from a connection point in the middle. So all of the two-person carts are positioned in a circle but have different attachements to the center so that each cart can independently move up and down vertically as the center point spins clockwise. I think I took a picture of the ride so if my description is lacking that should help give a visual of what I’m talking about. Anyways, even though this ride was designed for kids it totally made my stomach drop a few times as we moved up and then down. It was fun and I was happy we got to finally go on a ride. Then we entered into this large building that was also Snoopy themed and got in line for another ride. This one was a regular rollercoaster and was only a 30 second ride so it was a short distance and really fast but a lot of fun.

Next we walked around and eventually made our way to the minion-themed area. I said I hated minions right before we entered the park but after walking around for a little while they started to grow on me lol. I’ve seen a lot of people dressed up in minion costumes too so they’re really popular and I never really got why until Dru said that she also came to like minions because they’re always happy and just wanna have fun. We then walked to this place where an original short-film about Shark was showing, mainly because Kevin really wanted to see it. We didn’t wait in line for that long but we were ushered inside this small room and had to stand for what seemed like forever while these two ladies just talked in Japanese to kill some time and I about screamed. That seems a little extreme but I just really wanted to sit down because my back and feet were hurting me. Then this weird short clip that I couldn’t understand played as we stood there. I was so happy when some doors opened and we were finally seated in a large theatre. The movie wasn’t very good but it was an interesting experience because the chairs would move along to when the characters were doing things like riding on a horse or jumping and landing on a something. And then water would be sprayed from these mist machines when Donkey spit or someone was splashed by water. And air was released from some openings near our heads and legs when a character was launched into the air. I felt a lot better after sitting down for a while but we left USJ shortly after that anyways.

We got dinner in the free-admission area outside USJ at Mos Burger which is just a fast food place and I was yet again disappointed with another purchase :/ But after that, Dru, Carson, Kevin, and I went into a souvenir shop and I bought a little octopus stuffed animal for 900¥ which was a great purchase in my opinion 😁 He looks exactly like the octopus emoji 🐙 Octopus in Japanese is tako and so I call him Tako-chan or Taquito.

Carson, Dru, and I then returned to our condo and I took a little nap, during which, Mike had left a note on our door telling us to stop by for a chat when we can. We had told Kevin, Meda, and Therese to meet us in Oosaka station at 6:30pm but our talk with Mike and Hitomi ended up making us not leave the apartments until about 6:45. We got to Oosaka station about 30 minutes late but I only Kevin was waiting in the agreed upon spot because navigating around Oosaka station proved to be much harder than expected. We eventually found Therese and Meda, and afterwards we decided to walk around the area and look for a place to get drinks. We went to the same area that Mike had shown Carson, Dru, and I the night before because the alley ways had been lined with bars and karaoke places. We wanted to do karaoke but knew that drinks there would be over priced so we searched for a long time before we could all decide which bar we should go into. We ended up choosing this strange place that had very eccentric employees and games like billiards, darts, Mario kart, one karaoke room, and that golf game where you hit the ball against a screen onto which the course is projected. I was disappointed when I discovered that we had to pay a cover but none of the games were free but why I should have learned by now that nothing in this capitalistic world is free -.- The drinks were also expensive and I was convinced that all of the mixed drinks would not be very strong so after we ordered a round of mystery shots, I ordered myself a glass of straight tequila. I ended up paying like 1700¥ for everything so it might have been better to just get drinks at the karaoke place.

We left the bar after a short while and then went to the convenience store next door to buy some more drinks before we went to the karaoke place. I got an Asahi beer and hid it in my backpack until we were safe in our karaoke room. We sang for an hour and it was a lot of fun! Karaoke should be more popular in the US. I would definitely love to go again but I don’t think I will have the chance to :c After that, Carson, Dru, and I returned to our apartment and Kevin tagged along to see our place. He left after a little bit to catch the last train and then we all had some much needed sleep.

[supercultshow]

Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz! I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Vacuums vs Aliens” with a minor in “Ronald McDonald Dance Parties”) and I’ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long-lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!

This week Supercult takes a wheelchair ride off a cliff after watching Mac and Me!

When a NASA spacecraft lands on an unknown planet four aliens accidentally hitch a ride back to earth. Now the youngest of these extra-terrestrial visitors has gotten loose…right into the back yard of a little boy named Eric! Now Eric and the alien are becoming fast friends, but with FBI agents hot on their trail it’s only a matter of time before things get out of control. It’s a story that’s out of this world and into your heart: Mac and Me!

“You know what I feel like?” “A Big Mac?” “The man’s a psychic!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-3GOo_nWoc

Okay, now cue the music and make the wheelchair fly over the moon!

The crew aimed to distinguish the film from E.T. by having Mac be a member of a family and having powers and skills…such as raising the dead and casting fireball.

Part of the film’s box-office intake was donated to the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

“How two boys worlds apart become the best of friends.”

Are we sure a bubblegum company didn’t endorse the film as well?

“Just keep him dancing and they’ll just think it’s a teddy.”

Jennifer Aniston appears in this movie as an uncredited extra. She is sitting on a curb, watching the dancers in the McDonald’s parking lot.

There’s a surprising amount of violence in this PG film. Maybe the cast were trying to kill the movie before it could make it to theatres?

Listed among The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson’s “The Official Razzie Movie Guide”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_HBmZuJlHs

Released in 1988, Mac and Me is quite literally the most expensive and disastrous McDonald’s cross-promotional endeavor ever. Producer R. J. Louis, who had previously worked on ad campaigns with the fast-food giant explained that at the time Ronald McDonald was even more well known than Santa Claus, but that E.T. the titular alien from the 1982 Steven Spielberg blockbuster, wasn’t far behind. Thus, this new Big Mac guzzling, Coke slurping “generation” needed an E.T. of their own. Never mind of course that the E.T. of their generation was, in fact, E.T., or that despite pitching the idea as a cross-promotion for both McDonald’s restaurants and the Ronald McDonald’s House Charities, ripping off the most popular family film in a decade less than 5 years from the original was probably going to tick some people off.

Though the film wasn’t directly financed by McDonald’s, Golden State Foods, a food service distributor closely associated with McDonald’s did help fund the project and the Ronald McDonald character appeared in both the film and in the theatrical trailer for the film, in spite of the company’s wishes. This combined with numerous blatant instances of product placement in the film cemented in audience’s minds that the film was one gigantic shill for the Golden Arches. Not only are there scenes that take place in McDonald’s restaurants and plenty of shots of characters eating McDonald’s, Coke, and Skittles, but the actual name of the alien “Mac” seems to be a clear reference to the Big Mac menu item at McDonald’s, never mind claims that it’s an acronym for Mysterious Alien Creature. To his credit however, Louis has said that he was “still the only person in the universe that ever had the exclusive motion picture rights to the McDonald’s trademark, their actors, their characters and the whole company,” a capitalistic feat that has never been repeated before or since. So, there’s that.

Mac and Me was directed by Stewart Raffill, who veteran supercultists may remember as the director of Supercult Classics The Ice Pirates (1984) and Tammy and the T-Rex (1994). Rafill later recalled: “I was hired out of the blue. And the producer asked me to come down to the office. So, I did and he had a whole crew there, a whole crew on the payroll. It was amazing. He had the transportation captain. The camera department head. The AD. The Production Manager. He had everybody already hired and I said, “Well, what’s the script?” And he said, “We don’t have a script. I don’t like the script. You have to write the script. You’re gonna have to write it quickly so prep the movie and write the script on the weekends.”

Say what you want about his track record, but Raffill was a pro on set. Not only did he get the job done, sharing writing credits with Steve Feke, he also did a few of Jade Calegory’s wheelchair stunts. Jade, who played the star, Eric Cruise, and who uses a wheelchair in real life, would have been in real danger if, say, he were to careen down a hill towards a cliff. Raffill was kind enough to make sure that even when the film is crap, his stars don’t have to go through hell to make it.

Mac and Me was almost universally reviled upon release. Audiences immediately recognized it not only as a pale imitation of E.T., but also as a thinly-veiled 90-minute commercial for junk food. Mac and Me has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and at the 1989 Golden Raspberry Awards was nominated for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay and won for Worst Director and Worst New Star, Ronald McDonald. From its $13 million budget, Mac and Me was barely able to scrape together $6 million at the domestic box office. The best part is that at the film ends with a freeze frame and the superimposed title “We’ll be back!” Optimistic till the very literal end.

Is Mac and Me the worst film ever made? Perhaps not. However it might be the worst (and longest) McDonald’s commercial ever made, which has helped it gain infamous cult status since its release. The film may have been so atrocious that the planned sequel evaporated like McDonald’s french fries in a room full of children, but it will forever live on as a Supercult film for the ages.

Eric’s new in the neighborhood, but Mac’s new on the planet!

Supercult is proud to present, Mac and Me!

  Mac and Me Howdy all you Supercultists out there on the interwebz! I’m Bad Movie Professor Cameron Coker (BS in “Vacuums vs Aliens” with a minor in “Ronald McDonald Dance Parties”) and I���ll be posting my hype-tacular speeches every week along with some long-lost speeches from past Supercult Shows!

[tout-est-normal-be]

The system cannot survive it we can  #outsidedoors

There are no precedents for what is happening to us now, there just aren’t. Of course, we’re looking back at the great calamities that happened during our recent history. We compare this pandemic to the Spanish Flu, causing more deaths in 1918 – 1919 than the four years of war that came just before, or we compare the worldwide mobilisation that is happening now to the mass mobilisations of World War II. Although some things might seem similar, none of these comparisons fully hold true. During the four years of Nazi-occupation in Paris the cafés, theatres, and cabarets stayed open to the public. The show did go on. Now the grand avenues are deserted, and chairs are piling up behind the windows, unused.

But when history cannot provide us with answers, there is always still fiction. We recognise what we are seeing now, before our very own eyes, from the dystopian disaster movies we were flooded with during the past decenniums. The hefty speeches of the world’s political leaders, the rows of military vehicles rolling into our urban landscape, theempty streets where every sounds gets amplified by echos, the panic-buying of groceries, and the leading role of toilet paper that no scifi author could’ve imagined.

We should realise how most of us don’t even have the possibility right now to reflect and think about our past, present, and future. Having the time and space for philosophy is a luxury when survival is at stake. We are more than busy enough. Worrying about our sudden loss of income. Trying to keep some structure in the disrupted upbringing of our children, dealing with the relentless barrage of emails sent by a supervisor now measuring his or her efficiency in transmitted megabytes. Being stuck between the walls of a way too small apartment. Or worse.

Having no roof above your head at all. Being forgotten by a government that doesn’t consider you worthy of humane attention. Being brutally evicted from your living space. Being moved from your cell in a closed center to the empty wilderness of a city you have never seen before.

“Es ist wahr: ich verdiene noch meinen Unterhalt Aber glaubt mir: das ist nur ein Zufall. Nichts Von dem, was ich tue, berechtigt mich dazu, mich satt zu essen. Zufällig bin ich verschont. (Wenn mein Glück aussetzt Bin ich verloren.) – Bertolt Brecht

During the first weeks of this crisis we keep our hearts and spirits up thanks to the solidarity that is here. From our balconies we applaud the heros risking their lives every day in the hallways of hospitals. We can’t imagine the scenes taking place there. We learn, once more, how taking care of each other forms a fundamental part of our nature. In each and every hell, bits of paradise are being built by people we don’t know. Every disaster provides proof for the defeat of social Darwinism, that nefarious theory that dares to claim that we, human beings, are always monsters to each other. Surely there are some monsters in this society, but those are still exactly the same as before this viral outbreak.

Force of habit

During times of shock we tend to try and maintain our habits, our routine, our habitual modes of thinking as best as possible. By giving us something to hold on to, habits help us deal with the fear of these uncertain times. But force of habit is a bad advisor when everything is changing.

This changes everything. Six years ago, these three words were on the cover of Naomi Klein’s book on the climate crisis. During these past weeks we’ve been repeating them as a mantra. Nothing will ever again be the way it was before. From now on even the same shit will be a thousand times worse. What was unimaginable to us just some weeks ago is happening now, before our own eyes.

Remember how we commented on the measurements China took, just a couple of weeks ago? In Februari, Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported on how drones were sent out in Wuhan, to warn people to stay inside their homes: a ‘disturbing’ precedent in a country where civil liberty and privacy is already under constant threat. One month later this very same newspaper is applauding similar usage of drones like this in the city of Brussels.

Of course, we are all hoping this will blow over soon. China and some other countries have proven the epidemic can be brought under (temporary) control. But scientists have warned us this crisis might last for 18 months too. Since that is the time it takes to develop a vaccine and bring it to market. This doesn’t necessarily mean those18 months will look like the of lockdown measures we’re experiencing at the moment, but it does mean, without any doubt, that our lives and societies will continue to be disrupted for the foreseeable future.

We can’t predict exactly how this will impact our lives. We only know for sure that there will be long-lasting shocks to the global capitalist system. According to us, three possible outcomes are likely. We base these scenarios on crises that have happened in the past, not because historical circumstances are comparable (as explained in the introduction), but because it can teach us something about how this world’s elite, the 1%, reacts to these kind of shocks.

The way governments and central banks around the globe are reacting to the economic effects caused by the corona-outbreak inevitably recalls their reaction to the financial crisis of 2008. Both the EU and the USA then spent billions of money to placate the stock markets and bail out the banks. Since whole branches of our economies are struggling now, because of disrupted supply lines and in some cases temporary closure, an economic recession is inescapable in most countries (recession occurs when the growth of the GDP is negative during two or more consecutive quarters). The risk of a depression, a long period of economic decline, is increasing by the day.

The crisis that never left us

The corona-pandemic isn’t hitting a stable, booming, and fair economy. The economical system that gave us the financial crash of 2008 has been patched up, but not reformed. Within this system a next crisis is always lurking behind the corner. We’re still recovering from one exploded bubble while a new one is already seducing speculators. The same recipe is being used now as in 2008. Bail out the companies. (A bail out is when a government uses tax-money to save private interests).

Money is being pumped into the economy in massive amounts. Shareholders are being handed billions directly by our governments. CEO’s line up for an appointed at the White House to get their cheque. Airlines are asking for 50 billion. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing alone wants 60 billion. Casino’s are hoping for a cheque of 18 billion. The hotel-sector – where Trump has a stake himself – would be entitled to 150 billion.

One of those companies, American Airlines, made billions of profit during recent years. That profit wasn’t invested to create a buffer for difficult times (‘I don’t think we’ll ever record financial losses again’, their lunatic CEO said in 2017). What the company did instead was use those billions to buy back a lot of their own shares, so stock prices would skyrocket, dividends would rise, and the remaining big shareholders could rake in the profit. In Belgium, Brussels Airlines, though they are owned by the German company Lufthansa, already asked the government for 200 million.

Austerity, austerity, austerity

Anyone depending on government benefits at some point during the past 10 years, anyone working for a government service, or working in the social or cultural sector knows what the price was we paid for those bailouts. 10 years of austerity, 10 years of deep cuts that made those sectors we need most right now ill-fully unprepared. One example says it all. For a long time, Belgium had a strategic supply of surgical face masks. In 2009, one year after the financial crisis, the government stopped replenishing this supply out of budgetary reasons. In 2019 whatever remained of the supply was destroyed because the expiry date had passed. This wasn’t reported in the media, it was just a tiny detail in the auterity-budgets, a way of hiding many small and larger dramas. Think of that next time you’re out on your balcony cheering and applauding.

The Dutch government announced that it will allow the budget deficit to go up to 65 billion in order to save companies in need. As a first measure… because this number is also based on the hope that everything will blow over soon. 65 billion euro, that is an amount as big as all the budget cuts of the past 10 years combined. The dramatic budget cut of 200 million the Dutch cultural sector had to suffer in 2011, nothing more than breadcrumbs that are swept clean off the table now. And when this health crisis is over, austerity will start all over again. Another ten years of severe cuts for those sectors that are already struggling to survive now?

Here in Belgium we are heading straight towards budget cuts so extreme we will soon become nostalgic for the retro-austerity of the 2010s. Whilst only some months ago Wouter Beke, our minister of welfare, public health, family, and poverty reduction, declared it was impossible to find the extra 5000 euro needed to keep operating our suicide prevention hotline, now billions are made available for private companies like it is nothing. Flemish prime minister Jambon and his colleagues are already rubbing their hands togethers, eager for the ax they’ll soon get to grab to further chop apart our welfare state. If we let them act unchecked, all that awaits us will be a social massacre.

This is the scenario they are hoping for. They expect the old recipes to continue to work and they expect that we, the people, to be still numbed and paralysed enough by the pandemic to submit to this peacefully. A return to business as usual, as quickly as possible. But a couple of things aren’t taken into account by this reasoning. First of, it is almost certain that the coming economical crisis will be much more severe than the one of 2008. More importantly, today’s world population isn’t the same as it was twelve years ago. A wave of protests has taken the world by storm, and across all continents mass movements are gathering.

In October the government of Chile was forced to declare a state of emergency, out of fear that a growing protest movement might topple those in power. One of the protestors held up a sign: ‘Neoliberalism was born in Chile, in Chile neoliberalism will die’. We saw the yellow vest movement in France. Algeria and Sudan saw the forced resignation of their so-thought presidents-for-life. On one specific day, up to 20% of the total population of Lebanon was out protesting in the streets, with revolutionairy DJ’s encouraging them with music pouring down from the balconies. In the USA we see the mass movement that is reinforcing itself around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, growing from roots planted in movements such as Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and the Women’s movement.

There is no alternative

Secondly, this is a fundamentally different crisis than the one of 2008. Governments are being forced to take much more radical measures than they did then. The newly elected Spanish government had to renationalise private hospitals. In Paris hotels are being seized by the local government to provide shelter and self-isolation to the homeless. Even Boris Johnson had to renationalise the railways, because the private companies that were operating them were about to collapse. Belgian minister of internal affairs Pieter De Crem sent the police to a company in Charleroi to confiscate the 180000 coronatests they had in storage. The company’s plan was to withhold the test-kits until they had found the highest bidder worldwide. Pieter De Crem, ex-minister of military, seizing private goods according to definitions written by Karl Marx on the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. This changes everything.

In the USA the discussion about paid-sick leave (unavailable to millions of USA workers) has exploded. Numerous countries have announce emergency measures to compensate loss of income. In Flanders, those who are temporarily unemployed get a 200 Euro bank transfer from the government to cover their water- and energy-bills. Christian-Democrat party CD&V already proposed the idea to give 1500 Euro as compensation to each family. In the USA Bernie Sanders is proposing a similar compensation of 2000 dollar.

A new society

There is another scenario to consider. When the horror of World War II ended in 1945, Europe and the USA didn’t simply return to the chaotic state of the 1930s. When business-owners and labour-unions formed a social pact in 1944, it became the basis of Belgium’s system of social security. Recipes used by the union’s local sick-leave and unemployments funds were now implemented nationwide. Afro-american soldiers returning home from the European front refused to ‘re-accept’ segregation and Jim Crow-laws (a story told by the movie Mudbound). Women who had spent four years working in factories while the men were fighting at the front, refused to re-accept their roles as stay-at-home mothers. It is in these immediate post-war years that the seeds for the civil rights and the women’s rights movement were sown.

In 1945 radical structural change was occurring throughout the societies of Europe and the USA. And this time as well, new recipes are ready, available, and waiting to be picked up. There is the Green New Deal proposed by Ocasio-Cortez. Europe too is teeming with already elaborated ideas of how to achieve ‘climate justice’ through a transition towards a more ecological, caring, and fair society. Why should the UK hand back the railways it is now nationalising to a new highest bidder or the same incompetent hands? If, in a few months, governments around the globe are the owners of airline companies they saved, why then not use this as the most efficient moment to radically restructure these services and facilities, and adapt them to a world where ecological impact is taken into account?

The share prices of the USA’s four biggest oil companies are right now at such a low that the government could buy them all for 300 million dollar. Instead of leaving the future of these companies and the 1,6 million people they employ in the hands of dividend-hungry shareholders that will continue to compete until every last drop of oil is squeezed out of each and every fracking bed, the government could ensure crisis-free transition both towards a more sustainable energy sector, and a professional future for those now employed in the oil-industry. If governments can find the means to guarantee a source of income for (certain parts of) the population during a time of crisis, then why shouldn’t it be possible to do this for the whole population during times of ‘peace’? If suddenly we can differentiate between essential jobs that we need to keep things going and the bullshit jobs that go on lockdown, then how could we possibly forget this once the crisis is over? In Vermont and Minnesota grocery store-workers are now recognised as ‘emergency workers’, and receiving added social benefits. Why on earth would they return to their old status in 18 months, a status that was underpaid and vastly under-appreciated within our society. Why on earth would we ever again allow a politician to propose budget cuts in our healthcare systems?

My sister, From one island to another I give to you these rocks as a reminder that our lives matter more than their power that life in all forms demands the same respect we all give to money that these issues affect each and everyone of us None of us is immune And that each and everyone of us has to decide if we will rise –Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna

Most of the measures governments are taking now, come straight out of the manuals of the political left. This should not surprise us as these measures are meant to prepare us for the much larger crisis heading our way. What we are experiencing now will be nothing compared to what awaits us if we don’t succeed in structurally reducing our CO2-emissions. This is the time to push forwards and demand the maximum of what is possible. Or as climate-journalist David Roberts puts it: “This crisis is a tragedy, but the bigger tragedy would be not to learn anything from it.” Naomi Klein has been warning us for years about the shock doctrine employed by the political right during times of crisis. The time is now for a shock doctrine of the left.

Fragile states

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. – William Butler Yeats

The danger of a third scenario looms. The existing system collapsed in several countries between 1917 and 1933. There is a risk that that might happen again. In a number of countries, authoritarian leaders are abusing the crisis to finally put an end to the last remnants of the rule of law. In Hungary, a law is on the table that would give Orban unlimited powers. Parliament would be set aside indefinitely. The new law also provides for prison terms of up to five years for anyone who publishes information that hinders or is considered ‘false’ by the government.

In many African or Latin-American countries there is almost no welfare system or social security at all. A prolonged lockdown in these countries would for most automatically lead to hunger, as all forms of income would disappear. A new debt-crisis would very likely push some countries into default and disaster. And as the European Union is bickering amongst each other, it’s Cuba and China that are sending out their medical teams to the world. The Czech Republic recently confiscated 100.000 face masks that were on their way from China to Italy. Within the EU, it’s each for their own, and all against the immigrants that are living under appalling conditions in the many camps on the continent’s border. The USA intensifies it’s economic sanctions against Iran, at a time when the country’s 81 million inhabitants are suffering under the same global pandemic. These shameless acts of inhuman cruelty are in stark contrast with the remarks made by Yanet Platero, coordinator of the organisation of Cuban Italians, when a medical team from her country of birth arrived at the airport of Milan. ‘Doesn’t Cuba need these doctors at home’, a journalist asked. ‘Our land does not offer what it has left over, our nation shares what it has’, Platero replied.

There are many beautiful things we can learn from this crisis, let Platero’s remark be one of them. Let it also sink in – here in the west – that living in fear of diseases and disruption is the ‘normal’ situation for half of the world’s population. The fact that we didn’t live with this awareness meant that the corona virus did not bother us as long as it stayed in China. So let’s make crystal clear the difference between what is good and what is bad for us now. Let’s give the monsters no chance this time. 2008 – bail out the system. 2020 – bail out the people.

Rachida Aziz and Christophe Callewaert

(translation Maarten VDB)