Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

I survive Barry, I survive a multistate Greyhound, I survive a week of the flu, I spend all day on delayed flights... only to die at the hands of a deranged (and really sweet) old Italian lady with a new air fryer.

The sauerkraut balls are actually real good, though. It's an Ohio thing.

@LexYeen@snouts.online @Goronic@snouts.online "You're a spooky bunny, Max." "Tee-hee!"

I can not FUCKING WAIT until an American sitcom makes a joke about the "raiding Area 51" meme, therefore bringing it to its official and merciful end.

@Phorm @JulieSqveakaroo *Fry "take my money" meme*

@hummingrain Teach the little scamp to breathe fire maybe while we await the revolution? (And pet 'em for me.) It's been working pretty well with Peggy. <3

@Phorm @JulieSqveakaroo

┏┓
┃┃╱╲ in
┃╱╱╲╲ this
╱╱╭╮╲╲house
▔▏┗┛▕▔ we
╱▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔╲
welcome all homestar references
╱╱┏┳┓╭╮┏┳┓ ╲╲
▔▏┗┻┛┃┃┗┻┛▕▔

#NoLoafing

@packbat You too, huh? I just saw an entire café damn near jump to their feet at once at a thunder strike...

@kelseyhusky *scribbles notes furiously* "Don't... use... lasers... Messy." Thank you. We'll get back to you on that. For our friend.

*dashes off*

@kelseyhusky How would huskybots open a can of food?

Asking for a friend. Martians totally know how to do that already because we are very advanced. >_>;;

@JulieSqveakaroo Dammit, Julie, I thought my optimism today was unassailable...

...but now you've made me realize how bleak and empty my life is without a Stereolab cover of "Feed The Childrens." ;___;

Anyhow, for now, the Empress is [OUT]. Y'all Terrans try not to fuck up anything else too bad for Earth tigers while I'm gone, K? We're gonna need those guys here in the future to, like, exist and stuff. Everything else is just academic for me honestly.

Her Majesty is wearied by this talk of your primitive planet's affairs, and shall take her rest now. Be good, Earthlings.

@Balinares (ideologically, OTOH... sigh... yeah, I'll admit sometimes it does feel like somebody stuffed the whole Know-Nothing Party into a glacier in 1860, and some idiot released them into the 21st century like a gang of angry thawed cavemen >___<

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing )

@Balinares Also, on further reflection—and focusing on USpol here, because it's the closest at hand... we still have the ACA and gay marriage last I checked. So, hun, with all due respect? Never mind the 19th century. In terms of the law, they haven't even particularly succeeded in rolling us back before TWENTY-FOURTEEN. :p

@Leucrotta @wolfteeth oh god, i'm begging you, PLEASE don't let my girlfriend see this thread ;D

It reminds me of one of my favorite sketches from the Canadian comedy troupe, The Frantics.

It's a stereotypically Canadian parody of the classic American musical: small-town girl decides she's gonna make it big in Hollywood, so she tells all her friends and neighbors, they're gonna decorate her family barn, and build a stage, and put on a big show, and people will come from all around and see how much they have to offer.

And her male friend just responds to, "I doubt it. S'just a BARN." He responds to EVERYTHING she says— her hopes, her dreams, her surprisingly practical plans—with "I doubt it. S'just a BARN."

And nobody supports her. Everybody's determined it'll never work. So she puts on that whole show by herself. And it's a huge hit. It becomes the talk of Canada, then America. Hollywood agents scout out their little town and whisk her away to stardom.

And the sketch ends with three old men reading headlines about how she's due to star in a blockbuster movie. And one of them clicks his tongue and says, "That's typical. Once they make it big, they forget all about the people who supported them."

So, yeah, I hear you. The queer leftist movement is just a goddamn barn. None of this will ever, ever work. We've never changed the world one iota, we never will, things are worse now than they've ever been, and the bad guys have already won.

Now shut the fuck up, you adorable magical overeducated creatures, and help me put up some fucking tinsel. >_<

And before any of you nitpicks the lines about "the world will give you anything, as long as you will want to," Ms. Sadier is NOT singing about some kind of simplistic wishful thinking or being pollyanna-ish here.

Like I said earlier this week, I've been reading a book on Trump and Dark Magick—how his strategy relies on simply refashioning reality to his desires. I feel that's what this song is addressing, the true root of the only real kind of Magick, the ability to mold consensus reality to your own desires by making those desires firm and unyielding.

No, the world won't just dump victory and justice on us if we want it really hard. But if all we do is vaguely want it, and yet paradoxically NEVER act like it's something we can—or preferably, WILL, regardless of what material reality or our enemies' gaslighting say—actually achieve... the world will give us approximately jack and shit.

In the immortal words of Mr. and Mrs. Flanders, "We tried nothin', man, and we're all outta ideas!" Stop goddamn talking down every opportunity we have and forfeiting matches we haven't even played yet.

(Actually, come to think of it, the full Stereolab discography and my personal political beliefs still only differ in aggregate by... maybe a percent? Two percent? I totally dig their approach to exuberant human-centric Marxism, though I do have some issues with their doctrines about "ba da ba dee doo be doo.")

If I'm subtooting anybody here, it's the left at large. But the lyrics are just too perfect, and I can't pretend some of these don't apply to some of you some of the time.

It's really OK. They apply to me some of the time too. I'm trying my damnedest to reduce that proportion. But the alt--right didn't get where they are by throwing up their hands and saying "Those vile dashing clever leftists have bested us, let's just capitulate" (not even in the face of poll numbers that STILL show broad US support for liberal social policies *ahem*) so how the fuck is it gonna help us?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Zsyt_UvzA

I hate to see your broken face
This world would give you anything
As long as you will want to
As long as you will want to

I hate your state of hopelessness
And that vain articulateness
Your loser type wreck want to be
Not a pretty sight really
In another world it'd be funny

I hate to see your broken face
A lazy life of fatal waste
Of fashionable cynicism
The poison they want you to drink

Oh no man that's too easy
Oh no man that's too easy

We weren't talking bout happiness
Apply your leading potential
To be useful to this planet
The world would give you anything

As long as you will want to
As long as you will want to
Ba da ba

@Balinares Nope, but it's also not a recipe for Utter Doom, which is the line I feel like my rivals on the Mastodon Left are holding at the moment. Did our Boomer progenitors not essentially end military conscription in America?

We too will get through this with a mix of wins and losses; I don't think we're going to be crushed under anyone's heel, especially not if we put up the same fuss the 60s counterculture did, nor are we at Orwell's "boot on a human face forever" endgame.

Queer Jeff Winger's point will not, for a long time, be that everything is fine. It is that things are the winnable, defeatable kind of bad as long as we don't curl up and take refuge in cozy inert pessimism.

MUSICAL SELECTION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Zsyt_UvzA

Pliocene Epoch: 5,300,000 to 2,600,000 BP*
* early hominids, diversification of grazing mammals

Pleistocene Epoch: 2,600,000 to 11,700 BP
* mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers thrive until mass extinctions from possible impact event/human intervention

Holocene Epoch: 11,700 BP to 240 BP
* rise of human agricultural society, major shifts in animal distribution, mass domestication

Anthropocene Epoch: 240 BP to 50 AP*
* industrial revolution, mass extinctions, general dimfuckery

Misanthropocene Epoch: 50 AP to 350 AP
* genetic uplift, dashing and heroic space tigers, solar colonization/diversification, development of really _good_ marinades for humans, who's got saberteeth now motherfuckers

*(years Before/After Present)