Mel Brooks tells David Bianculli about the late Madeline Kahn:
I’m in tears thinking about Madeline. And what an incredibly gifted gift from god, Madeline Kahn. The funniest and most talented comedienne I think, including people like Carol Burnett who are great, you know, and Gilda Radner who was magnificent, but nobody — listen to me, David Bianculli — nobody could approach the magnificence and wonder of Madeline Kahn. She was really a great gift to us all. … I saw art [in her], not just funny. But I saw a person who was gifted with art. She’s the only one who actually could have worked in opera as an opera singer, as a coloratura. She was that talented or I think she could have worked as a longshoreman in New Jersey. I don’t think there’s anything that Madeline Kahn couldn’t do.”
GIF of Madeline Kahn in Young Frankenstein (1974) via trixiedelight:
Marshall Ganz on Making Social Movements Matter
- BILL MOYERS: We need a new story?
- MARSHALL GANZ: We need a new story. But it's also a new way of describing our economic challenges and our political challenges that emphasizes not this idea of what each individual competes with, each other individual as the answer, but the ways in which we cooperate and collaborate with one another as the answer.
- You know, Albert Hirschman, the development economist wrote this book a number of years ago, I'm sure you know about it, “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.” And sort of the idea was, okay, so you got an institution. And it's screwing up. And so one way to fix it is to exercise voice. The other way is you can exit. The market solutions are all exit solutions.
- BILL MOYERS: Explain that to me.
- MARSHALL GANZ: Well, so you don't like the way the schools work, exit, make your own over here. And that way you exercise choice. You don't like the way public health works, exit, over here, make your own. Now the only problem is you can only exit and make your own if you got the money to do it. And so the result is that you create these parallel systems of elite systems that are, you know, that fragment the whole.
- The public gets poorer and poorer and poorer, and you create all these little isolated golden ghettos all around of privilege. And the focus is on how do we find market solutions, market solutions, market… when we should but saying, how do we find more effective ways to exercise voice? How can we have more, more effective public deliberation? How can we bring more people into the process? How can we create the venues where people can actually learn and deliberate with one another?
Dude, finals totally bring out the old lady in me. I have eaten frozen dinners and had so much sugar free red bull. Ugh I never want to drink that shit again (I do this every finals exam time).
nom nom nom
(Source: stuffimake, via health-heaven)
sarah jane smith <3
(Source: madam-rosier, via lilrongal)
npr:
Anthropologists have long documented the differences in the extent of sexual coercion — including rape — in different human societies. But is it a vestige of evolutionary history, indicative of cultural activity or governed by power dynamics between females and males?
— What Does ‘Sexual Coercion’ Say About A Society?
Photo: iStockphoto.com
“One analysis of 109 U.S. cities over three decades found that “the short-term effect of gender equality is an increased rape rate via increased threats to the status quo; whereas the long-term effect of gender equality is reduced rape via an improved climate toward women.”
(via political-cartoons)
There is literally nothing better than a sexy, badass lady.
CHING MOTHERFUCKING SHIH
This lady was such a badass, I can’t count the ways, but let’s try.
She got married to an already successful pirate, Zheng Yi, and took over when he died. She was crazy strict to keep an iron fist over her fleet of pirates, and the punishments for stepping out of line were brutal. If you stole or looted from a town that provided assistance or tribute to the pirate fleet, Ching would chop your fucking head off with a battle axe and dump your lifeless body in the ocean. If you stole from the pirate treasury, or she thought you were stealing from the pirate treasury, Ching would chop your fucking head off dump your lifeless body in the ocean. Raping any captured female prisoners was punishable by immediate death. Fuck, if you had consensual sex while on duty you got your head chopped off and the woman was chucked off the boat no matter where they were at. Ching wasn’t fucking around, and she wanted to make damn sure you weren’t fucking around when you should have been working.
Two years after she took over, she got so notorious for ransacking towns and taking taxes on them that she pissed off the entire Chinese government, and sent out a massive fleet to bring her in line. Most pirates probably would’ve said this was out of their pay grade and taken off to hide out or ransack some other country.
Ching Shih said fuck that.
She not only faced them head on, she wiped the floor with them, killing hundreds and capturing sixty-something ships from the Imperial Fleet. Prisoners were given the choice of joining up or being executed on the spot. The Admiral of the Chinese navy, Kwo Lang, was so afraid of being captured by her or going back to admit he’d been beaten by her that he committed suicide.
For the next two years, Ching Shih not only kept on pirating, she fought off Chinese forces as well as Dutch and British warships that the navy called in to help. Finally the government gave up and offered her amnesty as well as amnesty for her then SEVENTEEN THOUSAND crewman. Ching Shih got to keep all her plunder, so she retired to the countryside where she opened up a brothel and lived until she was 69.
tldr: I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’ll never be as terrifyingly badass as this woman was.
i will be as badass as she
You know, I heard of her, but I’d either forgotten or never heard that she grew old and retired having never been brought down or defeated ever.
She won being a pirate.
She got history’s high score.
(via wuling09)
Alright Japan, now you’re just toying with us. Your relentless onslaught of weirdness and cuteness has us glued to our monitors lest we miss the next awesome thing you create or do. We’re putty in your hands. Now you’ve gone and made a series of photographs of cats dressed up as creative interpretations of sushi toppings, resting comfortably atop giant mounds of sushi rice, secured by enormous strips of nori. This one has pretty much rendered us speechless.
These “Sushi Cats” or “Neko-Sushi” are the work of Japan-based company Tange & Nakimushi Peanuts. Who needs to shower or go to work when there is stuff like this to see?
“According to the History of Sushi Cats video, the cats are a magical and historical creature that have been influencing humans since the beginning of time. Tange & Nakimushi Peanuts has released a mobile game app for iPhone and Android phones featuring the Sushi Cats. They also have an online store that offers photo prints, postcards and more (only available in Japan).”
Neko-Sushi is an extremely unusual life-form consisting of a cat on top of a portion of sushi rice. Although several references have come down to us through history from various researchers and witnesses, their existence is still shrouded in mystery and actual sightings remain rare.
There are several academics who have devoted their lives to the study of these creatures. According to a number of these, Neko-Sushi make use of gaps in space to come to us from an alternate dimension. Beyond these “gaps” lies the world of the Neko-Sushi in which, it is recently understood, lies the true identity of the cats that dwell with us here in the human dimension.
We can’t look away. It’s just too cute… too strange… too awesome.
Visit Laughing Squid for even more Neko-Sushi goodness.
(via wuling09)
