Wait, Leslie Bibb was in the opening credits, so is that…? Yes! It’s the other Christine of the MCU, Christine Everhart.
Who I always very much liked as a character, as it is her who refuses to take Tony’s bullshit and informs him about Gulmira in the first Iron Man film, thus indirectly saving a lot of lives. Not that you would know from the movie that she’s competent and important, since it defaults to immediately slutshaming her.
Haven’t done one of these in a while! Food growing is going surprisingly well.
We harvested some more potatoes, and though they have green and brown splodges on them they’re still edible! I mashed them up and ate them, as you do.
There’s also a pretty good blackberry crop this year!
And I also have an apple tree now! I suspect it will be many years before it bears fruit but still. My parents used to have apple trees and it was so fun picking them every year.
Its leaves turn brown every now and again but I’m told that’s normal.
A teacher is being investigated over a TikTok in which she jokingly described allowing her students to “pledge allegiance” to a Pride flag instead of the American flag. Kristin Pitzen of Newport Mesa School District in Orange County, California, posted the video to her since-deleted TikTok account @mrsgillingsworth. In the TikTok, she said: “Okay, so […]
Teacher investigated after allowing students to ‘pledge allegiance’ to Pride flag — PinkNews – Gay news, reviews and comment from the world’s most read lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans news service
Every so often I think, American culture isn’t that different to UK culture, right? We’re pretty similar countries. Similar awful histories, similar recent mistakes, similar aesthetics, you get the idea.
But the Pledge of Allegiance thing just boggles me every time.
Okay you gotta see this, even if you’re not a Spider-Man fan. Someone remade the No Way Home trailer using only footage from the 90s cartoon and it’s… I’m in awe of this person’s editing skills, okay? And the fact that they did it within DAYS of the actual trailer coming out!
#LeaveOurKidsAlone was trending in the UK this morning. All anti-vaxxers outraged, OUTRAGED at the prospect of kids aged 12 being given the Covid vaccine. And yet, funny this, kids aged 12 and under can still very much can die of Covid! Oh it’s rare, but it does happen. And YET.
Whenever I see a hashtag like this I think the operative word is always “OUR.” The important part isn’t even to do with vaccines but the fact that these parents see themselves as owning their child and thus there’s no possible way that the kid might, y’know, have an opinion regarding their own medical treatment. Not to mention, I note the hashtag is filled with nonsense memes about “rising up against tyranny” and art depicting brave heroic parents protecting faceless, wordless children.
I suspect the anti-vaxxer circle on Twitter and the TERF circle is one and the same. There’s just a grand lack of desire to see children as actual people rather than the property of their parents.
It’s here! I wonder if the leak forced Disney’s hand.
I’ve wondered ever since Molina was announced to be appearing, how the hell are they gonna pull off this multiverse stuff considering he’s meant to be dead in his own universe. That’s not even getting started on the Goblin laugh and pumpkin bomb in there. My kind-of hope is that all the multiverse characters (including TobeySpidey and AndrewSpidey if they do appear) are quick cameos, but that probably won’t be the case. I just don’t want Disney messing with my beloved Raimiverse. :/
Doctor Strange performing a dangerous spell and messing with the multiverse seems rather out of character for him (well, the sufficiently character-developed him) but I’ll wait to see that in context I guess.
I posted these photos of the infamous Millennium Dome back in June, but since then I’ve found more photographs of the place! Turns out my family visited it twice… I kinda suspect it was because the first visit turned out to be disappointing and my parents thought the second time would be better.
I….can’t remember if it was or not.
Here’s me being part of the “net generation.”
This pic here, where I look incredibly sulky and pissed off, gives a good idea of the scale of the Dome. (Absolutely no reblogging this photo please.)
Now I’m curious as to what that wall of screens was.
Turns out it was the Self-Portrait Zone:
And I actually remember those sculptures! My 12-year-old self found them VERY unsettling (especially The Couch Potato, which was a guy melting into his sofa) but sadly I guess we didn’t take any pics of them.
This globe and spaceship marked the entrance to Home Planet, a sort of educational dark ride.
Y’know what? The Dome sold Dome-branded merchandise! And while going through old boxes I found what I myself purchased from the gift shop!
That’s it! Just a notebook with a holographic sticker on it! I wonder how much it cost to produce.
This brochure I found is quite interesting. It says “For one year only” so… Was that always the plan, to only have it open for one year? Or had things deteriorated so quickly by October they’d already decided to close it? Either way, how incredibly wasteful.
I DO remember the Blackadder film! I think it was the first Blackadder I ever saw.
CUl8tr, Dome! Though before I sign off – I ran across this photo from the same era in my boxes and boxes of photos. It’s a little LEGO dome at Legoland in 2001!
…The real thing would’ve closed by then.
When I was at school one of the few decent things (in my mind) that they served for pudding was cornflake tart! It does pretty much what it says on the tin, it’s… a tart with cornflakes.
Nowhere ever seems to sell them! I’ve eaten them maybe once or twice, that’s it, since I left school over a decade ago. So finally I decided, maybe I oughta make one.
To my own surprise, it turned out really nice!
Here are some interesting facts about Paddington 2, one of the best-reviewed and most beloved films of the UK.
Paddington was created by British author Michael Bond, whose family took in Jewish refugees during World War II. In a 2010 letter (seen in the 2019 documentary The Man Behind The Bear) he wrote,
“We took in some Jewish children who often sat in front of a fire of an evening, quietly crying because they had no idea what had happened to their parents, and neither did we at the time. It’s the reason why Paddington arrived with the label around his neck.”
Paddington Bear is considered a British icon, and rightly so by this point, but he was born out the shame Michael Bond felt about his government. In his autobiography he wrote,
“…there was a small open ship moored a little way apart from all the others. It was packed to suffocation with Jewish refugees, men, women and children making their way to Palestine. And for the first time, as I gazed down at them, I felt ashamed to be British.”
The real villain of the movie isn’t Hugh Grant’s character but rather Mr Curry, the neighbour who wants to send Paddington “back where he came from” and raises the “neighbourhood panic alert” to “wild hysteria” because of Paddington. (A pop at “terror alert level” type charts, I always assumed.)
So if you enjoyed Paddington 2 and its prequel… Consider where it all came from and what Michael Bond was saying about Britain and immigration. He and the filmmakers were not being subtle. You’re not gonna sing the praises of the British film industry while ignoring the very message one of its most prized films is promoting… Are you? No? Maybe sit back and listen and empathize with Afghani refugees the same way you did with Paddington, then.
“They will not have forgotten how to treat strangers.”
