Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

agavebadger asked: Could I ask about the drunk zombie geese story that only 35% happened?

vrabia:

Ah yes, the drunk zombie geese story.

This one only 35% happened because it happened to my grandparents’ neighbours like 50 years ago and I heard it from my dad. So since there are so many go-betweens that I can’t personally guarantee to you that this otherwise exceptionally hilarious story is true, I’m going to play it safe with modest percentages.

Also, it involves mentions of dead animals (spoilers: they’re not really dead, which is kind of the point as you’ll see) SO if this is something that upsets you, it’s probably best if you don’t read it.

Like pretty much all of my other rl stories, this one also involves Evil Commie Land and food shortages, except it takes place in a village. The thing with romantic countryside living in Evil Commie Land is that it was both worse and better than living in the city. It was worse because the State took your land and declared it Official State Land and then made you work on it and only gave you a fraction of what you produced, and that pissed people off (we’ll get to that in a bit); but also better because you could raise some chickens and maybe a pig or two for yourself, so you wouldn’t have to go around working the Official State Land while malnourished.

Once upon a time when my dad was a small, carefree and, judging by this story, a tad impressionable child, my grandparents’ neighbours had a bunch of lovely geese which they loved because these geese laid eggs on the regular and occasionally became soup. And the way they kept these geese fed was, like pretty much everyone else, they’d let them loose to graze on Official State Land while the administrators either looked the other way or were forced to confront a cheerful, intractable innocence of the ‘Why comrade, they’re just a bunch of dumb animals that wander off sometimes’ variety.

So these geese would go out in the morning, spend the whole day eating and then come back home in the evening the same way they’d gone, which they knew by heart because they’d been doing this every single day of their placid lives. These geese didn’t get lost because they weren’t smart enough. So one evening when they didn’t show up, my grandparents’ neighbours went looking for them, and about halfway they found the whole flock lying limp, motionless and apparently very dead in the dirt. Cue oh no, our beautiful birds, what shall we do come winter etc. etc.

What they didn’t know was that someone in the village had made moonshine that day and thrown away the leftovers - we’re talking fruit that’s been fermented to shit in a giant barrel for weeks, distilled twice in someone’s basement and then thrown out in a ditch with other leftovers. So any wandering, say, birds that were used to taking their lunch anywhere they could find it might be excused for helping themselves.

The geese weren’t dead. The geese were blackout drunk.

In the absence of this knowledge though, my grandparents’ neighbours thought their birds had been struck dead by some terrible insta-kill virus and decided that, food shortages be damned, they’re not about to eat things that had died in such mysterious circumstances. But this was also a time when people had learned to waste as little as possible. So my grandparents’ neighbours picked up every goose and, with minimal physical contact, plucked them. But like, not completely. They just took the little soft down feathers that are so nice and comfortable in pillows and left the patchy, half-plucked and still apparently super-dead geese in a ditch outside village limits.

And as the story goes, the geese woke up sometime the next day, decided that since they were in surroundings other than they familiar yard it meant that they probably had gone out to graze, so they ate for a while and then went home as usual. So now imagine a bunch of patchy, half-plucked, supposedly dead as fuck geese that the entire village had heard about because my grandparents’ neighbours were really upset. Imagine them waddling home all well-fed and chill and completely oblivious of people’s utter horror because zombie fucking geese

Hungover zombie geese.

So, that’s the story. Presumably.

It is literally the MOST HILARIOUS to me that all the marketing execs for The Force Awakens were like “KYLO, GUYS, KYLO WILL BE THE BIG HIT, EVERYONE PUMP OUT KYLO REN TOYS BECAUSE THEY WILL BE FLYING OFF THE SHELVES.  NO ONE WILL WANT REY TOYS, DON’T MAKE ANYTHING.”  And now it’s a few weeks into the release and it’s like….no, we don’t want the Emo Tantrum Child, let’s have us some Rey action figures, after all she’s the HERO OF THE MOVIE, and everyone is basically losing their shit about it.

I have this mental image of just piles and piles of boxed Kylo Ren toys being dumped on the execs’ desks while these poor oblivious bastards are slowly buried, weeping, in the unsold Emo Tantrum Child.

I’m probably going to hell for laughing so hard at this.

catstand:

merinnan:

myangelofthelord:

merinnan:

marimopet:

gotitforcheap:

if you’re american and coming to australia, I’m gonna go ahead and say that you should be 100 percent way more worried about being king hit by a dude named “dane” in a bintang singlet than any fucking spiders that exist here

what does this say in english

“Good sir, if you are a resident of the United States of America and coming to visit the sunny land of Australia, allow me to inform you that you should be rather more concerned about being sucker punched by a gentleman named ‘Dane’ who is likely to be seen wearing a wifebeater with a beer company logo on it than by any of the dangerous spiders that exist on this lovely continent”.

ok so what does it say in american

“You’re more likely to get sucker punched/cold-cocked by an asshole than you are to be bitten by a spider”.

And translated back into Bogan Australian: ‘Oi mate if you’re comin’ to Straya I reckon you’re better off watchin’ out for that cunt Dane in the Bintang singlet ‘cause he’ll king hit ya sooner than a fuckin’ red back bites ya in the ass.’

(via kinshula)

claidilady:

wizzard890:

dullaidan:

dullaidan:

dullaidan:

the image “george washington welcomes abraham lincoln into heaven” is so homosexual

everyones reblogging this as if its contemporary or asking who did it but i gotta inform you all it was made in the very same year lincoln was assassinated (1865) and we literally have NO GODDAMNED CLUE who made it and its like fuckin 150 years old

no but here’s where the story gets wild, because this was a thing. and I don’t just mean super gay-looking quasi-religious ascensions of Lincoln into Washington’s arms, we’re talking waaaay weirder than that. I don’t know why it’s not covered in American history classes, because it’s amazing, but Washington enthroned in heaven was such a common motif in American art (largely immediately after his death and again after Lincoln’s assassination) that it has a name: the Apotheosis of Washington. said motif is, simultaneously, incredibly American, incredibly French, incredibly lame, and actually kind of moving in terms of early national mythmaking. 

the imagery is largely lifted from paintings of the assumption of the Holy Virgin (as seen here, courtesy of Titian), and usually has Washington ascended into heaven, surrounded by embodied virtues, cherubs, or best of all, old army buddies

(both of whom I briefly mistook for Marie Antoinette)

or here’s a good one, Washington being lifted from his crypt by Father Time and an angel, wearing the expression of a man doing the world’s most unenthusiastic trust fall. note Lady Liberty weeping at his feet, and the Native American warrior playing the part of the grieving land itself. there’s a strong Napoleon vibe in this one, which probably isn’t an accident. that was a man who knew a little something about artistic self-deification.

but the prime example of this motif is in the United States Capitol, in a fresco of the same name, (too detailed to blow up here) where Washington sits enthroned, outfitted in military finery and flanked by Liberty and Victory. around him are six scenes displaying American virtues, or rather–with all due disrespect to Neil Gaiman–American gods: Freedom (depicted, tellingly, as War), Science, the riches and firepower of the Sea, Commerce, Mechanics, and Agriculture. Washington presides over all of them, as the man who created a nation with the strength of his will and the fire in his heart. the heavens are spread around him, and he gazes down at the American experiment sternly and benevolently. 

…in other words, monarchy is a really hard habit to kick, especially in art. but the Apotheosis of Washington comes at a real crossroads in the developing American psyche. yeah, there’s a lingering hunger for kingship, that old tendency to bend at the knees, ringed around–visually overpowered–by what would rise to fill that void: commerce, invention, war, and the uniquely American conception of Liberty.

the Lincoln thing is water from the same source: Washington forged the country, Lincoln preserved it, and paid the greatest price for his efforts. in fact, the Capitol painting was commissioned the same year Lincoln was shot, for obvious reasons. the almost-but-not-quite-kissing image of both men in the original post was actually a postcard, and was distributed in large quantities in the months following Lincoln’s death. I like to imagine that people had them pinned up in their houses, where they could unconsciously admit another president into the pantheon of gods

#it’s funny: when you think about it there’s actually a presidential Trinity#Washington#Lincoln#and JFK#one created the nation#one preserved it#and one–in the public imagination at least–was destroyed after holding the gates of Camelot against a monstrous aggressor#god Americans are in so deep#it’s fascinating and weirdly moving and I love it#the seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm#this is it this is my art tag#(sorry guys I’m ruining a funny post with facts again) (tags via wizzard890) 

 but please never be sorry i found your old art history movements LJ post years ago, got a museum studies degree (best known by my family as “don’t ask what her art history classes are like, she’s going to tell you she’s studying butts in England this week.”) and am now in grad school for art history and frankly weird facts about art like this is my literal favorite 

please enjoy these other hilariously great pseudo god-like Lincoln’s and/or Washington’s that are my favorites:

a personal fave where George Washington literally stands in for God with a halo of sun rays emanating from his face under which angels call up Lincoln to heaven done by Philadelphia’s Max Rosenthal and also apparently people argue about whether or not it was said “Now he [Lincoln] belongs to the ages.” or “Now he belongs to the angels.” 

If you study history for a living you get used to being less than certain about many important facts.  Take the famous comment attributed to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton as he stood weeping beside Abraham Lincoln’s deathbed on the rainy Saturday morning of April 15, 1865.  “Now he belongs to the ages,” Stanton is supposed to have said, soon after his friend stopped breathing. 

also this Pemberton print for Washington where a woman in blue weeps over his death in front of a giant obelisk in a completely unsubtle cribbing of the Virgin mourning christ 

(via bronzedragon)

phantastic-destiel:

dragon-in-a-fez:

faeriviera:

caiju:

elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey:

tffnyblws:

theyoungveinsvevo:

*does laundry but like in a punk way*

*does laundry but in a musical theatre way*

*does musical theatre but in a punk way*

*does punk but in a musical theatre way*

*does musical theater but in a laundry way*

this is my favorite post

(via yea-lets-do-this-shit)