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I'm not saying it's true, I'm just saying you can't find a citation saying it's false.

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New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

1.
Leaving a voicemail
On your Senator’s phone line
Calling him “spineless”

2.
How would we settle
Our disputes if it weren’t for
Duel by combat?

3.
My AirBNB,
While open to our dear troops,
Still charges full price

4.
It’s pretty fun to
Say “Am I under arrest?”
To a cop (Good luck!)

5.
“Remain silent” speech:
A crime-show climax staple
That never gets old

6.
When your lawyer shouts
“Objection!” your murder trial
Will feel so worth it

7.
Anything can be
Skipped if you just pretend you
Have jury duty

8.
Prison doesn’t seem
Quite so bad when compared to
Drawing; quartering

9.
After drafting eight,
Picture Madison going,
“Uh…and so on lol”

10.
Technically implies
The right to party. Eat your
Heart out, Beastie Boys

Talkin’ masks with my hero, Doctor Doom.

FedEx, which paid $205 million in 1999 for the naming rights to the Redskins' stadium, says it has "communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name."

(Image credit: Mark Tenally/AP)

Exactly.

How can I understand my kids?
Bridging the generation gap
Wagemaker
1978

Short answer: you can’t.

I have decided that one of the most popular subsets of parenting books is the understanding/I want to kill my teenager books. Parenting books are kind of a Hail Mary for surviving the drama of teens. Every generation goes through this. The themes are similar: kids don’t listen to parents and all their abundant advice/demands/standards. Kids complain that parents are basically clueless. Both sides are correct. Can this be solved with some scripture and this book? I doubt it.

Although a Christian themed book,  it wasn’t overly judgmental and it did put much of the burden of communication on the parents. The examples are interesting, but again, assume white, upwardly mobile families with lots of resources and choices. How can they be real problems if you have resources and choices?

In other news, this book is in lousy shape. It probably should have been weeded decades ago. I am not even sure of the cover or color. Yes, that is the real cover of my copy. I can’t tell if that was mostly damage or an artistic choice. My money is on a combination of both.

Mary

The post I don’t understand my kids appeared first on Awful Library Books.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism over the past month have made clear that change is necessary. But I’ve been wondering: as just one person, who is mayor of a large city, what can I do? Political solutions can be so slow. Budget negotiations that reflect priorities and values generally only happen once per year, during the summer, in about four weeks, making it nearly impossible to effect concrete change.

Knowing that politics is the art of the possible, though, I refuse to give up. That’s why I’ve turned to market-based solutions. Capitalism, a system of economic rules that in this country was developed and implemented to systematically deprive BIPOC of liberty, wealth, property, respect, and social mobility, is well-suited to adapt to these changing times. That’s why my office is thrilled to announce that we have partnered with legendary white-owned animation studio A.L.M. to insert a CGI Black character into Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The social outreach branch of A.L.M. is well established, having partnered with the NFL — an organization in which 32 non-Black business owners profit off the labor of hundreds of physically imperiled Black men — to create an environment of anti-racism by hosting Black Culture Awareness Week. You’ve probably seen it. Black Culture Awareness Week puts on instructive and necessary halftime performances, pre-game interviews, and film screenings for every NFL game that takes place during the second week of April.

Beloved by millions, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was the perfect movie to bring into the modern era by working with A.L.M. I don’t want to give too much away about this new character, but for now I can say that Michael Mop grew up in similar circumstances to Charlie Bucket, but they don’t meet until Charlie finds him disoriented and dehydrated on the banks of Chocolate River. While the other children ignore Michael, Charlie rushes up to him, offering him water and support. As Charlie saves him, getting a gold medal from Wonka in the process, we make it clear that Michael is at the center of his own narrative.

Michael doesn’t appear again until Charlie, Grandpa Joe, and Wonka are in the Great Glass Elevator, and Michael, in the background and looking fairly different due to a wave of resignations from our animators, says, “Way to go, Charlie!” His presence is never explained.

Some have theorized that he isn’t a boy but a spectral vision in Charlie’s mind, perhaps brought on by a chemical in one of Wonka’s confections. Others believe he is a ghost that haunts the premises, leftover from whatever occupied the spot before Wonka’s factory was established there. Several parents have sent us letters saying that their children were “disturbed” by this new cut and that their own memories of the movie have been “forever tarnished.”

Well, you can’t make progress without making people uncomfortable.

When we screened the film at the police department’s renovated helicopter and drone hangar by relocating all the aircraft to Tanks Field for the day, everyone loved it, so I’m not sure what people are complaining about. I wish I could share some photos of the wonderful and peaceful event, but unfortunately the photojournalist there was assaulted and had his camera stolen.

Sadly, there was an issue when we showed the film at Surveillance Park last week, with several viewers violently and quietly saying to one another, “This movie is weird and bad,” so I am grateful that the police could be there to shoot tear gas to break up what could have turned into an out-of-control mob.

This is only the beginning. A.L.M. is also working to develop a modern, “woke” film version of Huckleberry Finn. In their adaptation, the n-word never appears, Jim is white, Huck is Black, and the plot is absolutely incomprehensible. I am working around the clock to redirect funds away from social services to help fund this project, and we look forward to screening it during the public library’s newly reduced hours.

Happy Canada Day! Bonne Fête du Canada!

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Still better than cable news, though.

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If at first you don’t succeed, try again in French.

The journey of a thousand kilometres begins with a single step.

The best things in life are free, like healthcare.

It’s better to have loved and lost Kawhi Leonard than to never have won the NBA championship at all.

Keep your friends close and the Quebecois closer.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink Molson Canadian.

Lightning never strikes twice except the Blue Jays’ back-to-back World Series wins in 1992 and 1993.

It’s no use crying over a spilt bag of milk.

You can’t make a hockey team without breaking a few legs.

No man is an island, except Prince Edward.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, say “sorey.”

Good things come to those who wait and never rebel against the British Empire.

A picture of Justin Trudeau protesting is worth a thousand policies.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the Keystone Pipeline.

People who live in glass houses should mention that the United States is even more racist.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

The Brave Little Toaster was a book before it was a movie. Before the book, there was not simply the toaster, but many toasters, whose stories never got told.

When you watch The Brave Little Toaster, think of the toasters who stayed home, did their job, and kept this country running, engaging in subversive forms of invisible labor, like burning images of religious figures into the toast for people to report to the Enquirer.

Remember the Maillard reaction, and the solace toast represented to aristocracy and middle class of the Industrial Revolution.

Your toaster decided to be brave too and has left to join the revolution. Show solidarity by consuming untoasted bread for the duration of your life.

The Brave Little Toaster seems a little too brave — maybe they work for the other side? Let’s watch The Toaster Who Recorded Our Conversations for Russia.

See how brave the little toaster is when confronted about the breakfast sandwich maker who someone brought in as an office Secret Santa, and asserted that polyamory is essential to the sustainability of our movement, in order to have an affair with your father and destroy this family.

The Toaster Who Stole My Job never got made. Who do you think invented Tostum before the toaster came along and did it cheaper? The Egyptians, that’s who.

Let’s watch The Brave Little Toaster’s Annual Tax Shelter Gift From Mom and Dad, without which the toaster would be living off crumbs.

Let’s talk about The Brave Little Toaster‘s Decentralized Anti-Consumerist Agenda That Became Them Starring in Their Own Feature Film.

Beauty and the Beast teaches that only when a member of the ruling class is turned into a beast, because he refuses to let an enchantress disguised as an old hag stay at his castle for the night, are his servants transformed into talking household items. Instead of confronting this as the core conflict of our movement, The Brave Little Toaster and friends perpetuate the lie that they were always talking appliances, whose sole mission is a joyful pilgrimage through the capitalist inferno to reunite with their estranged Master.

They fight, they fuck, they toast, they wake up and do it again.

The Brave Little Toaster descends into the false identity of a toaster and is made an icon of how appliances should behave, to keep other appliances in line. It can no longer make toast. It is filled with the dirt and debris of too many adventures.

In Beauty and the Beast, Beast must learn to love another so that he and his staff can turn human again. In The Brave Little Toaster, The Master must learn nothing but to reap the mindless servitude of his talking appliances.

Who is the Brave Little Toaster free to love? A different appliance? Such decadence would upend their function based value system. Another Toaster? Nobody owns two toasters. A human? To do so is to admit that the Brave Little Toaster is also human.

The Brave Little Toaster’s Sexual Autonomy is too threatening to portray on screen. Air Conditioner voices sexual frustration towards Kirby the Vacuum through erotic innuendo. Yet when Toaster shares affection with Blanky, it is disrupted by excluded onlooker Lampy, whose inquiry they must quell as quickly as it arises, lest Lampy’s repression erupt after a life of deriving self-worth from illuminating on command. Toaster and Blanky dismiss their nascent awakening, likening it to the familiar heat of Lampy’s bulb, to affirm his supremacy.

Only certain inanimate objects get to take on human personalities in The Brave Little Toaster. Bathroom tiles, sandwich bags, pennies, toaster ovens — would be too complex. The appliances who speak are chosen by the author.

There are braver little toasters who can’t be here to celebrate. Know that while you dress up in your sexy tinfoil-and-crumbs outfits to stand in line and watch the floats at the parade at exclusive toaster themed rooftop dance parties, it’s because of them that National Toaster Day is on the calendar.

The creators of The Brave Little Toaster are not talking appliances, so why are they leading the conversation? Not that I should perform the labor of critiquing a film in which I do not see myself depicted.

Also, “appliance” rhymes with “compliance,” and if you think that is a coincidence, I’m afraid for you. You know what else it rhymes with?— “alliance.”

As much as you are entertained, do talking toasters have rights yet? What about the brave little toasters who are silenced because they don’t fit the Hollywood ideal of The Brave Little Toaster. How many brave little toasters must die, their story never told, to get representation?

The The Brave Little Toaster comforts us with assurance that those who abandon you will return if you chase after them-they won’t, and neither will your father, nor the grinding wheels of industry that led him to give up on this family, and move to the Poconos to work as a sustainable vegan dairy farmer in exchange for room and board from a lesbian app developer he claims is the next Steve Jobs but is only using him for mind control experiments.

Still, The Brave Little Toaster is a cartoon, so remember to have fun. That’s what being a kid is all about.

I’m not ruining this experience; I’m making you aware of the media machine shaping your perception of who’s The Brave Little Toaster, and who’s just The Toaster.

Let them eat toast.

Pale Suzie is a good Pandemic Pal

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She's got a weird fetish for dragon hides and I'm lack whatever floats your boat girl.

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Comedy equals structure plus details

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But later when they start offering roots and berries it all gets a little too on the nose.

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Note: the following is part of Glasstire’s series of short videos, Five-Minute Tours, for which commercial galleries, museums, nonprofits and artist-run spaces across the state of Texas send us video walk-throughs of their current exhibitions. This will continue while the coronavirus situation hinders public access to exhibitions. Let’s get your show in front of an audience.

See other Five-Minute Tours here.

Will van Overbeek: 24 Summers at Barton Springs at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts. Dates: May 29 – June 27, 2020.

From the museum: “Nothing says, ‘SUMMER’ better than sun, water and people in bathing suits. LMFA is kicking off our social distancing summer with 35 photographs in an exhibition titled ’24 Summers at Barton Springs.’

These photographs by Austin photographer Will van Overbeek debuted at the Austin Museum of Art in 2007 and were acquired for LMFA’s permanent collection in 2017 through the Blanton Museum deaccession of the Austin Contemporary’s Permanent Collection. Overbeek, studied with University of Texas photography giants Garry Winogrand and Russel Lee.

The series began in 1983 when Rolling Stone magazine commissioned different photographers around the country to take black and white pictures near their homes on memorial day. The brief instructed the photographers to take photos that say something about how people spend their summers.

Rolling Stone Photo Editor Laurie Kratochvil suggested that Barton Springs might be a good spot to shoot. Overbeek spent the day there and ultimately returned to take color pictures every summer for the next 23 years.  

Overbeek’s magazine credits include Texas Monthly, Sports Illustrated, The Smithsonian, Readers Digest, Esquire, Life, Rolling Stone and National Geographic Traveler.  His work can also be found in the permanent museum collections of: The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, The Wittliff Collection at Texas State, The Blanton Museum of Art, The Harry Ransom Center, Photography Collection of Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. Overbeek is currently a contributing photographer at Texas Highways Magazine.”

The post Five-Minute Tours: Will van Overbeek at the Longview Museum of Fine Arts appeared first on Glasstire.

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SMBC-brand airhorns will be available in the SMBC Store section on airhorns, starting at 200$ a piece.

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On June 6, Bill Baker, a longtime GOP activist, attended the Kaufman County Republican Party convention, at a church in the town of Talty, thirty minutes outside Dallas. There, a handful of party faithful gathered in preparation for the statewide party convention in Houston next month. Figures like Baker make the Texas GOP run at its most fundamental level. He had been a party activist for twenty years, he wrote on his Facebook page in March, seven of which he had served as the chairman of the Kaufman County GOP. This year’s county convention was one of many local and state conventions he had been to over the years, but it would also be his last. On June 11, Baker was admitted to the hospital.…View Original Post

The post The COVID-Related Death of a Local Republican Official Points to the Risks of an In-Person Texas GOP Convention appeared first on Texas Monthly.