coming this fall………. a new YA novel series about one girl……… in a post-apocalyptic dystopian setting…………….. who is different. unique. and can use her specialness….. To Save Us All
jordan…… the cunning, cool, gruff rebel leader……………… born outside the Dystopia… a Freedom Fighter…… with a heart of gold……………
did i ever tell u guys that in fifth grade my class wrote a play bc we were studying ancient greece? it was called persephone and the (not so hot) heroes. i played demeter. basically, persephone got kidnapped by kronos and i strong armed hades into giving me 3 heroes from the underworld to get her back but they were actually terrible and i forget how she was actually saved but bottom line is that you wish you were my fifth grade class
this wasn’t little either, we used the town hall and we wore togas and shit
me as demeter
some lines (this was a joint effort of a bunch of greek-savvy 10/11 year olds):
athena: ‘im the goddess of wisdom but you don’t notice me telling everyone. i’m too smart for that’
–
aphrodite: is zeus chasing some mortal woman again?
athena: no this time he and hera have gone for marriage counselling
–
athena: we can ask hades to let them out of the underworld to help
aphrodite: he’ll never agree, he’s such a deadly bore (we made a fucking pun im so angry)
–
demeter: hades wont pick up. he’s too busy torturing the dead in tartarus
–
hades: i can’t undo the laws of death. just think of the paperwork.
–
aphrodite: the humidity is messing up my hair. it’s getting all frizzy
athena: is that all you care about?
aphrodite: no, it’s also messing up my dress
–
demeter: it’s so dark, and there aren’t any trees or flowers
hades: what do we need trees for, everybody’s dead
–
paris: yeah, and i can shoot straight! isn’t that right, achilles?
–
(hades enters)
paris: who are you? do we know you?
–
achilles: im mighty achilles
odysseus: im wily odysseus
paris: and im hungry paris
–
kronos: i really am awesome, aren’t i
–
aeton: one wrong move and you’re history
odysseus: fool! we already are history!
–
demeter: where are those mortals? i left them right there.
athena: are you sure? this isnt the first time you’ve lost someone.
I suddenly have the need for the entire screenplay, and to direct it at my college.
Concept: Some jackass shows Bucky how to make a blog and it becomes really popular. Not because it’s the blog of James Buchanan Barnes, American Legend, War Hero, Infamous Assassin, Alleged Terrorist. Nobody even knows it’s his blog. It gets really popular because people think it’s a really great shitpost generator or something. Because Bucky is just a Weird Fucking Person and everything he posts on his fucking personal blog comes off as somewhere between dril and Jaden Smith and people are like “this is some quality garbage right here” and thus Accidental Memelord Bucky is born.
Bucky posts things like
“What is wrong with bananas. I ate a banana today and it was Wrong. America why”
“Every time I put on my eye makeup it gets bigger. My whole face is eyeliner now.”
“Why does friendship feel so much like punching”
“When I wake up in the middle of the night I am either thinking ‘who am I? does my life have meaning?’ or “did I already eat all of the plums?’”
“Why are you so grumpy” they ask me. they do not realize this is just my Face.”
“I know i said i would give my left arm for a cup of coffee but i am more awake now and i would like my arm back please”
“I guess I must have done something horrible in a past life. I mean. I definitely did something horrible in this life, so. “
OMG I LOVEEEE
YEEESSSSSSS!
“Guy in front of me won’t move his car seat up. I think that might still be upset about all those times I tried to kill him.”
“Got lectured by a guy who had been complaining about how things were Back In The Day. I don’t understand why he got upset. I too lived through the Great Depression and was drafted for the War.”
“The economy in this century sucks. Who exactly though another Stock Market crash was a good idea?”
“Apparently, it was Rude™ of me to pitch in my two cents on a conversation I happened to overhear, despite agreeing with them. On an unrelated note, I am no longer allowed in the ceiling vents.”
“‘If you don’t behave we’ll send (mutual) after you.’ Jokes on them. I’m the one who trained them to be an assassin in the first place.”
“Tried to buy a Chicken Dinner candy bar at the supermarket today. Turns out they were discontinued 54 years ago. Super bummed.”
“Wait. People were on the moon?! We got into space? There is a way off of this rock?! Why am I only just hearing about this?!”
“’Have you been living under a rock the past 50 years?’ No I was cryogenically frozen for 70. I don’t appreciate your tone young man.”
“My friend likes convincing people that I’m the Reckless one in our friendship. As if he won’t find an alley behind a bar to pick a fight in if I take my eyes off him for two seconds.”
“Why would i want to get a haircut when instead I can look like i just returned from a 12 year jaunt in the wilderness every time i grow a beard”
“was having a hard time finding noodles in the grocery store & asked a clerk for help. she looked at me like a crazy person. lady, it’s not my fault you don’t speak russian”
“what kind of idiot thinks dancers are sissies? literally every ballerina i have ever met could kill an adult man with just her legs”
“today i discovered Conditioner. the future is a miracle and my hair like a cloud now”
“apparently just jumping on to a moving bus when you are running late is not a thing people do anymore. please stop yelling at me.”
“went to a club last night to see what the hip kids were into. apparently the latest thing is just having sex standing up with your clothes on in a room full of people.”
“on the one hand, people dressed much nicer in the 40s. on the other hand, yoga pants.”
“rode in a car with heated seats today. it is my house now. i live here.”
“i have acquired a small bear. i am putting a collar and leash on him. he is my dog. no one tell animal control”
“i am working on this whole Good Guy thing but anyone who cuts me in line at starbucks deserves to have their kneecaps shot out okay”
“why did they have to make escalators so terrifying to get on and off of? from now on I’m just jumping off the mall balconies. none of this awful moving teeth staircase”
“i don’t care if it’s a ‘priceless historical artifact,’ punk, i didn’t wanna do the dishes and it makes a pretty good spaghetti bowl”
“hoodie pockets are so great. i can fit like three sandwiches and a grenade in there and my hands are still warm”
“i really though we would have flying cars by now. the future is such a letdown.”
“changed sam’s ringtone to jesus take the wheel.”
“do you know that feeling when you go to lean on your short friend’s conveniently arm-rest-height shoulder but you forget they had a huge growth spurt and you just awkwardly lean your elbow into the middle of their bicep”
“i swear i didn’t know your girlfriend was coming over. i always ominously clean my assault weapons on the coffee table like that. it had nothing to do with you.”
2. you know, we have fun here, with the word “meme,” but according to meme theory, which is an actual thing pioneered by reptilian human impersonator Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, most of what we call memes are very unsuccessful memes. A meme, in the scientific sense – if one is generously disposed to consider memetics a science on any particular day – is an idea that acts like a gene. That is, it seeks to replicate itself, as many times as possible, and as faithfully as possible.
That second part is important. A gene which is not faithful in its replication mutates, sometimes rapidly, sometimes wildly. The result might be cancer or a virus or (very very very rarely) a viable evolutionary step forward, but whatever the case, it is no longer the original gene. That gene no longer exists. It could not successfully reproduce itself.
The memes we pass around on the internet are, in general, very short lived and rapidly mutating. It’s rare for any meme to survive for more than a year: in almost all cases, they appear, spread rapidly, spawn a thousand short-lived variations, and then are swiftly forgotten. They’re not funny anymore, or interesting anymore. They no longer serve any function, and so they’re left behind, a mental evolutionary dead end.
This rendition of Freddie Mercury’s immortal opera Bohemian Rhapsody is about the most goddamned amazing demonstration of a successful meme I’ve ever seen. This song is 42 years old, as of 2017. FORTY TWO YEARS OLD. And it has spread SO far, and replicated itself across the minds of millions of people SO faithfully, that a gathering of 65,000 more or less random people, with nothing in common except that they all really like it when Billie Joe Armstrong does the thing with the guitar, can reproduce it perfectly. IN PERFECT TIME. THEY KNOW THE EXACT LENGTH OF EVERY BRIDGE. THEY EVEN GET THE NONSENSE WORDS RIGHT. THEY DIVIDE THEMSELVES UP IN ORDER TO SING THE COUNTER-CHORUS.
“Yeah, Pyrrhic, lots of people know this song.”
Listen, you glassy-eyed ninny: our species’ ability to coherently pass along not just genetic information, but memetic information as well, is the reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Language is a meme. Civilization is a collection of memes. Lots of animals can learn, but we may be the only animal that latches onto ephemera – information that doesn’t reflect any concrete reality, information with little to no immediate practical application – and then joyfully, willfully, unrelentingly repeats it and teaches it to others. Look at how wild this crowd is, because they’re singing the same song! It doesn’t DO anything. It’s not even why they showed up here today! If you sent out a letter to those same 65,000 people that said, “Please show up in this field on this day in order to sing Bohemian Rhapsody,” very few of them would have showed up. But I would be surprised to meet a single person in that crowd who joined in the singing who doesn’t remember this moment as the most amazing part of a concert they paid hundreds of dollars to see.
And they’re just sharing an idea. It’s stunning and ridiculous. Something about how our brains work make us go, “Hey!! Hey everybody!! I found this idea! It’s good! I like it! I’m going to repeat it! Do you know it too?? Repeat it with me! Let’s get EVERYBODY to know it and repeat it and then we can all have it together at the same time! It’s a good idea! I’m so excited to repeat it exactly the way I heard it, as loudly as I can, as often as possible!!”
This is how culture happens! This is how countries happen! Sometimes a persistent, infectious idea – a meme – can be dangerous or dark. But our human delight at clutching up good memes like magpies and flapping back to our flock to yell about them to everyone we know is why we as a species bothered to start doing things like “telling stories” and “writing stuff down.”
“That’s a lot of spilled ink for a Queen song, Pyrrhic.”
OKAY I WORK IN A FABRIC STORE AND ONE TIME THIS LITTLE OLD LADY CAME UP TO ME AND SLAMMED THE INDEPENDENCE DAY ONE DOWN ON THE COUNTER AND SAID, “THIS. THIS IS WHAT OUR COUNTRY NEEDS.”
I had an older man come into the fabric store that I used to work in and dropped 3 bolts of the firefighter one on my counter and said, “I need this. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it, but I need it.” a man behind him then yelled, “Pyjamas!” and the first man said, “My husband recommends pyjamas.”
I have an apron made out of the construction worker print. My mother found the fabric and thought one of the men looked like my husband (and he does demolition, so it’s perfect). I wear it every time I cook.
This was recorded by the Portsmouth Sinfonia in an experiment where
all the members of the orchestra would swap instruments with each other
and attempt to play them to the best of their ability.
favorite things about this
literally all the brass starts to get the hang of it and then
the crescendos happen and everyone is like FUCK FUCK FUCK??? FUCK. JUST.
BLOW RLY HARD.
the strings are lazy but also the same. like u can tell a lot of the
ppl w/ the stringed instruments may already basically know how to play
stringed instruments. like there’s definitely a section at the beginning
where you hear a good portion going “oh yeah this is like. a
smaller/bigger version of what i do.”
all you hear of any woodwinds is just “pffffttt??? pFFFTTTT????
PFFFFFTTTT I SAID PFFFFTTTT!!!!!” bc woodwinds are fucking HARD and you
hear after like the first crescendo half of them just give up. they give
up. they’re done. fuck this it tastes weird and my lips hurt.
that trumpet. that person is fucking TRYING man they fucking GOT
this. they may not have figured out notes but they figured out LOUD and
they GOT this.
sparksoffandommagic 