Latest Posts by cleverlittlekobold - Page 3

And honestly, I like the idea of rewarding my things for helping me. It might help me to better appreciate the world around me.

And maybe my phone should be rewarded for connecting me to the greater world (email, text, Google, bus navigator) by getting to sleep more often... instead of having me hate it.

This is the pinnacle and absolute of theatre; why try to be film? Why make the proscenium your screen? Let the energy flow, let us truly, truly share in that gathering-place. For there is magic in the mingling of mensch...

love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded

"Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they're 15" this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit

U may be fooled by my constant melancholia and generally pathetic state of being but take heart in knowing that i am trying unfathomably hard to live

your honor, i maintain that the prosecution’s video is being played in reverse. in actuality i came upon a village that was already on fire and sucked up all the flames into my special magic wand. i then moonwalked in the wrong direction for some reason

I know that—objectively—this is bullshit, but I have chosen to believe that the reason the US hasn't formally changed to the metric system is for the poets. When the going gets tough you can still claw your way forward inch by inch, but centimeter by centimeter just doesn't quite carry you. You're in love/excited/nervous/scared and your heart is beating a hundred miles per hour, whoa that sounds fast and dangerous! But a hundred kph? I've been passed by people going faster than that coming out of downtown on capital boulevard. The pound of flesh they take from you is raw and bloody and full of pain, the kilogram of flesh is impersonal and excised in laboratory conditions under strict observation. Liters are okay tho, if only because they sound like meter and a meter is used to measure things, so the measure of a man can be siphoned (as a byproduct of the kilogram) into a bottle with a screw cap lid and stored in a dark cool room until he is found wanting. A gallon would be wasteful, a quart too unserious, and a cup not enough to keep him from withering in the desert sands under 100 degree faeghreignheit sun. ...Okay maybe celsius gets a pass too.

Just remembered that by completing the puzzles in portal you're actively having sex with glados. That was crazy

Another good set of triangleposts, courtesy of SteinMakesGames

People who talk about what population density is necessary to "justify" a rail system are wrong but they're wrong in the opposite way from how they think. Even in Japan which has more than twice the population density of China the rail system is not profitable. JR makes most of its profit by operating malls and collecting rent from vendors. If you blindly follow profit instead of considering the broader social benefits the result will always be putting your rail system into a death spiral of rationalization. Stop expecting public transport to turn a profit that's not what it exists for.

It’s crazy and fucked up that being yourself is actually the solution.

Reblog and put in the tags how you would die if your URL predicted your death

"here, life is beautiful." (Spoilers for Cabaret, on Broadway and the West End)

Leave your troubles outside! So - life is disappointing? Forget it! We have no troubles here! Here life is beautiful.

~ Emcee, Willkommen, from Cabaret

Let's unpack these lines, shall we?

leave your troubles outside!

Escapism; ignorance is bliss.

we have no troubles here!

So long as you are here, there are no problems to worry about!

So why not stay awhile? After all, what good is sitting alone in your room?

here, life is beautiful.

Life is beautiful here in our little cabaret.

Life outside the cabaret is ugly.

so why not stay awhile?

When those are all added together by the end of Cabaret, what do we get?

The Kit Kat Club is a place for people to engage in escapism. While you're in the Kit Kat Club, you have nothing to worry about, especially your worries outside. After all, in here, life is beautiful. Why bother worrying about the people who can't afford, can't find, or otherwise cannot access this beautiful little Club of ours? They aren't here, where life is beautiful, they are outside, where life must be ugly.

See where this leads?

It divides us just like the titular Kit-Kat; split in twain. There is no glory, no love of life in the line "life is beautiful" within Cabaret. It is the vessel by which we see one of many possible messages:

fascism is able to invade our lives by our proclivity for escapism.

and, simultaneously,

fascism can seduce us all into not noticing the damage that it does, by glorifying and beautifying itself.

To celebrate the show by reveling in the sexiness of it is to miss the point; you are using it as escapism. The London and now Broadway production literally showcases how everyone is slowly seduced by imagery: from the Emcee's swastika-inspired dance at the top of show, and his old war helmet in Money Money, to the very attractive and flashy dances we see performed by the beautiful Cabaret girls and boys (and "even the orchestra is beautiful!") This is the exact point. The sexiness and imagery is used to distract us from folks like Ernst Ludwig, who weaponize information and identity to divide and conquer. Neon.

I had to unfollow some old friends because they have seen this show twice and that was all they came away with. But any time I try to talk with them, they shove me off, like I'm taking things to seriously. I hope this is useful to someone. That is all. Yes, life is beautiful; but it is only as beautiful as we defend it. Life is beautiful in that it is lived, and lived deeply, by truly perceiving it.

"We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces."

~ Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest

But how much longer can we live in such an age? And how much longer do you want to? Do we want to live only as far as we can touch and see at first touch, first glance?

I also think about how there's the imperative of "if we don't try and try again, that wall will have no chance of it coming down. But if we keep at it, then there is always a possibility, no matter how slight."

Compare to:

We have to keep telling the story. If we don't, there's no chance for a different outcome... And I think humanity always wants to have a chance. This time, at least, our mutual striving is for continued survival... But so too did mutual striving give us this hellscape. In the grand story of humankind, we wrote the story we are now in.

Deus ex machina?

No. We haven't written ourselves into a corner, yet.

tbh I can't stop thinking about how i went into Hadestown being like "this is a tragic love story based on a greek myth I enjoy :)" and I came out the other side covered in blood being like "this is a thesis about how capitalism inevitably leads to both personal and global ruin, and so we are duty bound to resist it even as we lose, again and again and again. no matter how impossible it feels or how many times we fail and hit a wall and fall, we try again"

And in the naked light, I saw Ten thousand people, maybe more People talking without speaking People hearing without listening People writing songs that voices never shared

[...]

And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made The Sound of Silence, Simon & Garfunkel

The wall on which the prophets wrote Is cracking at the seams Upon the instruments of death The sunlight brightly gleams

[...]

Knowledge is a deadly friend If no one sets the rules The fate of all mankind I see Is in the hands of fools

Epitaph, King Crimson

In other AI adventures, there's Suno.com, which can take a simple prompt or set of lyrics and genre and turn it into a song in real time.

I highly recommend trying it, if for no reason than to know what all the low effort tiktok songs will sound like in a few months.

Lyrics (Prompt?) under readmore

Catchy Instrumental intro. Solo violin and piano with dark synth [dark bardcore viola electro swing]. sweet female vocal

[Verse] I'll kill you in the subtext I'll murder you between the lines There's not a scrap of context Your ending was left undefined There's not a scrap in the final draft Of what I’ve left behind But under the words When closely observed Your body unalived

[Chorus] It can’t be seen upon the stage You’re stuffed beneath the floorboards In the view of children of every age A puppet takes all the rewards The happy ending and ever after I kept it all from you, unalived

[Verse 2] The curtain falls on a charade so sweet Where masks hide deceit, laid bare but discreet In the silence between each whispered breath Lies the echo of a tragic untimely death No roses thrown upon the stage No mourning wails, no solace sought Just the hollow echo of a life unmade In shadows where the truth was caught

[Chorus] It can’t be seen upon the stage You’re stuffed beneath the floorboards In the view of children of every age A puppet takes all the rewards The happy ending and ever after I kept it all from you, unalived

[Bridge] You were the lead in this masquerade Yet your fate was sealed, a cruel escapade I penned your demise with careful grace In ink and rhyme, in every secret place

[Chorus] It can’t be seen upon the stage You’re stuffed beneath the floorboards In the view of children of every age A puppet takes all the rewards The happy ending and ever after I kept it all from you, unalived

[Outro] But beneath the surface, in the depths unseen Lies the truth of what could have been

[END] [END] [END]

man I wish Beguilers were in 5e...

What good is sitting Alone in your room? Come hear the music play Life is a cabaret, old chum Come to the cabaret

[...]

What goods permitting Some prophet of doom? To wipe every smile away Life is a cabaret, old chum So come to the cabaret

[...]

Start by admitting From cradle to tomb It isn't that long a stay

Life is a cabaret, old chum It's only a cabaret, old chum And I love a cabaret...

~Cabaret, from Cabaret

To anyone considering not voting because of the Palestinian genocide, I have this to ask:

How many Palestinian people do you think you're helping by laying back and inviting the GOP to crush you under foot? Self flagellation didn't cure The Plague, and it won't fix this situation either.

If you don't like the idea of voting for Harris, I doubt I'll be able to change your mind, but consider this: 468 congressional seats out of a total 535 are up for re-election THIS NOVEMBER. You want to make the government start actually representing the will of the people? Start there.

We're living in frightening times, and apathy is a very comfortable state of being, but you need to act. If you don't, who will?

Prometheus stole fire for us once.

And now he's dead on the mountain.

He won't can't do it again.

even if he wanted to.

we have our embers - stoke the flame.

Nobody is coming to save you.

Get up.

Smintheus, the mouse god of plagues, feels bad after making people sick in the Iliad

"my apollocheese"

Public transit be like your bus is due .....now! ........now! .....any second now.......okay now! Just kidding uhh..............now! Okay itll be 17 minutes ☺️ hope that helps. Aw shit we sent the invisible bus again

This definitely plays into theatre in similar ways - I would be very curious to delve into that and discuss that with folks sometime.

How high is your bleed threshold?

If you're into roleplaying, you've probably heard about bleed. But do you know what memetic bleed is, or emancipatory bleed? There is a whole network of concepts out there about what spills over between characters and players. And if you've ever wondered why not everyone experiences bleed the same way, you'll love to read about bleed thresholds.

buttondown.email

How high is your bleed threshold? And what are you bleeding anyway?

You know that clip of Brennan Lee Mulligan, the one where he’s talking about his character Evan Kelmp? Wait, I’ll just link to it. It’s a cl

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things

Watterson pulled no punches

actually not emotional over graduating university, just over losing my jstor access

One must simply be. Enjoy the weal and the woe as it comes.

How do you appreciate the praise and positivity from people while not letting the hate get to you?

You kind of have to not really let the praise get to you either.