#but the footage i found is terrible quality

[khaopybara]

the evolution.

+ late addition because @philologique was kind enough to send me the video and the time stamps! thank you lovely.

[ayo-edebiri]

hello! this may be a dumb question, but you made a deadpool and wolverine gifset back in july that looks absolutely incredible - i was wondering if you could tell me where you found footage that high quality? it seems even the 1080p versions i've been downloading lately all look terrible.

it's not a dumb question at all!

If it was in july, i probably used a trailer, not the actual movie. Unfortunately, I think 1080p looks awful lately unless you use a huge file... I only gif with 4k when i'm able to find it, but your computer might not be able to handle it. I torrent things, but if you can't I recommend this, this, this or this

[simslegacy5083]

Not So Berry (Straud Descendants) Gen 9

Today's (8/16/2024) Episode: The Dynamic Duo

Following his press conference, Luigi appreciated the rehabilitation of his reputation but hated being sidelined until after his wedding.

It seemed his bosses planned to use his break from playing to put his leadership abilities to the test. He found himself mentoring the teams' junior members and combing over footage of previous match-ups to come up with new gameplay strategies.

He knew the break was necessary to sell the story they’d told the news outlets, and Doc Leonard was sure that the rest would help his carpel tunnel, but he’d expected to be bored silly. He was therefore surprised when he actually enjoyed the work. It was satisfying to help others improve, and the way the team jumped whole-heartedly into using his new game tactics made him feel great about his strategic and high-level planning skills.

Luigi’s usefulness as an advisor wasn’t limited to tactics. He also shared all the best tricks he’d found to combat his condition using keyboard shortcuts and his advanced mousing hardware. It took the others time to master, but spending less time clicking around sped the whole team up.

That sudden change to a faster play style led to a decisive victory against one of their biggest competitors and earned Luigi a promotion.

The same HR rep who processed that paperwork also dropped the news that he was cleared to hire more staff for his other project. The Sims Forever community was positively abuzz at the prospect of a new life simulation game, and they wanted to show progress as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Noemi continued to struggle at work, despite her win with Luigi’s project. She still just couldn’t seem to connect with her other clients.

After a particularly productive session with Dr. Valasquez, she began to understand that her lack of charisma might not be the only reason she was having problems at work. When she allowed herself to be honest and look past what was expected of her Noemi realized she was bored.

She didn’t want to spend all day hunting for and guiding new talent, she wanted to be hands on. DOING the work was the fun part for her!

When Luigi came home excited to share his good news, he found Noemi in their home office, struggling with both a headache and her latest side gig.

“How has Plumbook gone this long without a real employee password policy!?” she groused as he settled down beside her “No wonder they keep getting hacked! Getting everyone on board is a nightmare, and my head feels like I’ve been beating it against a real wall, not just lazy users.”

“You’ve been getting a lot of headaches lately,” Luigi observed carefully. “Is everything OK? Maybe you should see the doctor.”

“I’ve seen her!” she replied, “this is just a known side effect of the meds I need to function in the office, so I’m just going to have to deal with it.”

“Still struggling with your clients?” Luigi asked. At her affirmative nod he added, “You know you don’t have to stay at Rainy Day if you’re miserable.”

Noemi shook her head. “Freelance programming is more hands on but doing it full time would mean bigger projects and more client meetings. It would be the same if I switched to working at Kenzie’s robotics company. At least Rainy Day takes a lot of the meetings and paperwork off my hands.”

She flashed her fiancée a grin. “And I get to work with you, which is always the best part of my day! Oh, if only every customer was so cute!”

After a quick snack break to let the pain meds she’d taken kick in Noemi returned to her side job while Luigi went over the resumes of the artists, managers, and programmers Patricia was sending him to rush assemble a concept version of the new videogame they’d nicknamed “Project Daisy”.

He wasn’t terribly impressed with the quality of the sims they’d found so far. He turned to share a particularly sloppy cover letter with Noemi and paused. She had that driven look she got when she was in the “zone”: her fingers flying expertly as she typed and referenced a complex spec.

He sighed. Who would he have to sleep with at Rainy Day to get access to a great recruit like Noemi? He blinked. “Hey, wait a minute!”

Back at HQ the next morning the pair presented a unified front as they told Patricia that they wanted to transfer Noemi to Project Daisy full time.

“This is highly unusual,” she told them “and it isn’t a pathway to promotion for you, Noemi, even if you managed the team instead of programming.”

Noemi couldn’t care less about a promotion that would just mean more of the work she hated. “I’m OK with that” she said, suppressing a big smile.

They left the meeting with Noemi’s boss in great spirits. She was totally happy about her job prospects for the first time in a long time.

The best thing about working on Project Daisy was that she knew she wouldn’t need the pills that had been making her feel so awful, and she dragged Luigi out back to toss them out immediately. Eyeing the quite spacious and semi-private dumpster, she gave her fiancée a wicked look.

“Oh my grim! No. Porcupine!” he cried “Honey, I love you more than life itself, but I am never, EVER, getting intimate in a DUMPSTER!”

Noemi laughed, stepping away from the offensive bin to give him a suggestive kiss. “Fine, but let’s hurry home. Somebody owes me a signing bonus.”

I found out that Noemi’s Autism essentially prevents her from raising her charisma skill. Its barely at 2 and she would need 4 for her next promotion.

She’s already level 8 in the tech guru career. I don’t need her to advance further, and I hate the side effects from her meds, so I decided to go this direction with her story.

I also learned that squeamish sims won’t woohoo in a dumpster – totally makes sense but who knew!?

View The Full Story of My Not So Berry Challenge Here

[moonbiscuitsims]

Noodle appreciation on Sims 4 Gorillaz Project

2D's room pics Russel's room pics Murdoc's room pics ("mature") More Gorillaz themed posts

From the wiki: ヌードル (Nuudoru), better known as Noodle, is the official guitarist and former occasional backing vocalist of Gorillaz.

Born: Osaka, Kansai, Japan on 31st October 1990.

Instruments: Guitar, keyboard, synthesizer.

Occupation(s): Songwriter, Guitarist, Vocalist, Ex-Super Soldier

Nationality: Japanese

Religion: Buddhism and Shinto

Created by: Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn

Inspired by D.A.R.E. I used the video for extra reference especially for the front side of the room which i couldn't see well in the reference pics.

Theres a cute little scene in the MTV Cribs Gorillaz short where noodle kicks Murdoc out of her room. The cute ceiling lanterns are missing in this pic because I forgot to start the tab camera from a zoomed out position and they fade when you zoom in my bad.

In the Phase 1 room, that little blue chair was actually Noodle's bed but after she has the white one, so I made it into a chair. If you understand it, please ignore the sign probably meaning something extremely random I can (slightly) read hiragana/katakana but not kanjis sorry I hope it doesn't mean poop or something bad it was just for aesthetic.

I made her room quite messy, because I have an obsession with messy rooms and Gorillaz aesthetics did tend to be quite cluttered and messy.

I like to imagine Cyborg Noodle stole Noodles soldier clothes, so that's why she is wearing them. She is still a badass who loves to train just in case.

The literal description of Kids with Guns. Obviously guns are bad, this is fiction, don't use guns.

I used tons of Cyberpunk 2077 cc for this room and other parts of the building. So that giant head is a Beta version of Shaun Ryder before he could drunk-British karaoke sing D.A.R.E. with Noodle in her secret room. No one is going to convince me that Gorillaz is not slightly cyberpunk, they're a virtual band with holograms, with cyborgs, weird talking robot heads, dystopian and apocalyptic themes and beaches made of plastic.

The bathroom and many parts of the lot were made up but there was no way I was gonna make a poor innocent little teen girl share the disgusting toilets and bathrooms with three dirty grown men ( ×m×) Hers is also slightly dirty but nowhere near as bad I'll post them in future posts.

I created these sims a long time ago, they were so much fun to make, I even made my own (terrible) cc to make certain clothing items more accurate. The lot they live on is Kong Studios, I kind of mixed all the Phases, but my favourite was Phase 2. In the future I hope to do more Phase 3, after that everything is a bit unknown to me as Gorillaz were kind of on hiatus for many years after Plastic Beach and I fell out of touch with them, only to realise quite recently they have tons of new music 🧡

For the inspiration I used I'll leave reference photos I found, from all the old online flash games there use to be, I loved them it's a shame that part of the internet is over x), as well as using their music videos and Rise of the Ogre comic. They're all super bad quality because 240p videos and footage of the 2000's.

Overall I had a really fun time making them and taking these pics, I know they're old but it gives me a lot of nostalgia and I love their music and the entire project. Also I use tons of cc so I don't know if I'll be sharing a CC list, I started making it only to see I was taking 3 hours for barely any of it, so I may (possibly) share it in the future with the lot and sims files, but for now I'm just showing the project. I might also make some cosy lets play videos with them just chilling for my YouTube.

Any support for my posts is greatly appreciated 🧡

[captaincolossal]

Oh my god, guess who only has one large tub full of childhood stuffed toys to figure out a storage situation for? Me! This is an improvement over the...seven tubs that I started with.

I still have more childhood shit to go through, take that however you want I guess, but I'm talking about the literal stuff that's been in my literal attic this whole time.

(Ugh I still have a sinus headache from the less terrible air quality.)

Apollo 18 (2011)

Someone found some fucking footage. It's vintage, and Cold War flavored, my favorite!

[dankusner]

REVIEW ‘ELIZABETH TAYLOR: THE LOST TAPES’ HHH1/2 NEWLY DISCOVERED AUDIO FROM 1964 PAINTS RIVETING PICTURE

The new documentary “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” is based on interviews from the 1960s.

This black and white action shot features actress Elizabeth Taylor swinging a lasso on the set of “Giant” in 1955.

In 1964, Life magazine ran a 6,000-word story on Elizabeth Taylor culled from nearly 40 hours of audio interviews with the biographer and journalist Richard Meryman Jr.

The headline was “Our Eyes Have Fingers,” a phrase borrowed from Taylor, who was describing the electric connection between her and her fifth husband Richard Burton, who she would divorce and remarry before divorcing once again.

That speaks to the combustible magnetism between them.

Or as Taylor put it: “When we look at each other, it’s like our eyes have ?ngers and they grab ahold.”

Always vivid on screen, that quality also existed in her life and self-expression off-screen.

The Meryman interviews — long, winding conversations over drinks (a “scotch and sodie,” as Taylor playfully puts it) — have been unearthed and they form the basis of the absorbing HBO documentary, “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes.”

Director Nanette Burstein layers the audio over clips from Taylor’s films, press footage, home movies and personal photos.

“National Velvet” made her a child star in 1945, but she was playing women in their 20s by the time she was a teenager. Even so, “I was not prepared to be an adult,” she says. “I’d been sheltered and protected and the repercussions were that I made horrendous mistakes.” Success in Hollywood requires a certain amount of ego, but in these 1964 interviews, she comes across as introspective and eager to pull back the curtain. Celebrity image management is not on the menu.

“I’m just fascinated by the phenomenon of Elizabeth Taylor,” Meryman says at the outset. Ummhmm, she replies. I laughed! Then he asks: What do you think your public image is?

“My public image? Oooooh, I would think it was an untrustworthy lady, completely superficial, not too pretty.” Not too pretty? “I mean, inside — not too pretty a picture. Maybe because of my personal life, I suggest something illicit. But I am not illicit. And I am not immoral. I have made mistakes and I have paid for them. But still it doesn’t make up. I know that I will never be able to pay the bill. But that is not something you can put in the story.”

When asked about her children, her response is level-headed: “I absolutely can not talk about them. I feel terribly protective. They have a right to privacy.” And she is thoughtful about the crazy-making nature of celebrity. “What I have done is deliberately make a dividing line.

The person that my family knows is real. But the other Elizabeth Taylor, the famous one, really has no depth or meaning to me. It’s a commodity and it makes money. One is flesh-and-blood and one is cellophane.” Even today, we rarely hear Hollywood’s most famous drop the act and spell it out in terms as blunt as these. She laments that “all I have achieved is be a movie star that once or twice has managed to do a fairly capable job of acting. I’m not satisfied with what I am. I’m not satisfied with what I’ve done. I want to improve.” Presumably, Meryman’s interviews with Taylor took place over several years (the film states they were conducted for a book project) because she talks about “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which came out in 1966. The clips selected by documentary director Burstein are a reminder of the ways Taylor found small moments of comedy as Martha, the tragic whirling dervish and heavy-drinking chaos agent extraordinaire of Edward Albee’s play, on which the movie is based. Like the way she tells her husband to “shuddup” out of the side of her mouth, a cigarette balanced between her lips. “Martha is bawdy, sloppy, snarly, but there are moments when, all of a sudden the facade will crack and you will see the hurt, the infinite kind of pain of this woman,” she says. “Because it’s such a complete change from anything I’ve ever done, in a sense it’s one of the easiest things I’ve ever done,” she says. “I have Martha to hide behind, so I’ve lost Elizabeth Taylor. I feel much freer, much more experimental.” The interviews cover her various roles and marriages, and the drama therein (she admits to henpecking her husbands and always wanting them to push back; too often, they did it with violence). As the conversation winds down, Meryman says: “I think I’ve finished my list of questions.” Taylor is content. “Would you like a drink, dear? Should we turn the little machine off?” Drinking ran in the family and it would become a problem for Taylor, as well. The documentary ends with shorter excerpts from a 1985 taped interview with journalist Dominick Dunne after she had spent time in recovery at the Betty Ford Center. Her eight marriages behind her, she is finally focused on other things. “I don’t think I’ve ever tried to be alone,” she says. She would spend much of the decade focused on AIDS activism and we see a clip that speaks to this: “No one wanted to talk about it, no one wanted to become involved,” she says, standing at a podium giving a speech. “And it so angered me that I finally thought to myself: ‘Bitch, do something yourself.'” To Dunne, she explains her thought process more deeply. “I think there is a reason for having fame — a reason that can be turned into constructive uses because fame can be a very negative thing. And unless you turn it around and make it work for you, what is the point of having it?”

[jackdaw-and-hattrick]

Something was terribly wrong with the Justice League. Occasionally, they would go limp, only to stiffen, and then, as if pulled by puppet strings, they would move oddly, doing things they would never do, only to go limp again and then wake with no memories of what had transpired. Watching his coworkers, his friends, acting out some strange unwritten play, awkward and childish in their actions, one thing was clear; something was playing with them. There were moments where the plot would become recognizable, only to veer off suddenly into unknown lands. What struck Bruce more than anything was the types of stories sometimes mimicked by whatever foreghen being controlled them. For the most parts, they were classical in nature, though childish in execution. For instance, Bruce remembered a time watching the footage from the watchtower’s security cameras (and there where many) where he swore he watched as he and Superman, and lord if he didn’t want to forget that, played lead in Pride and Pred. (It reminded him of when Jason used to play Pretend, his beloved literature bleeding into the storylines). Not all of the storylines where like this. Once, it was discovered that they had fought against someone who identified themself, rather loudly, as Gargab, king of the mountain (what mountain was unclear) who looked suspiciously like stuffed animal and whom none of them could remember in the slightest. Occasionally, plot lines would abruptly end, and everyone would wake. Bruce had a horrible, nagging suspicion that this happened when whoever their puppeteer was was called to put away their toys.

There were other, less obvious things as well. When the stories began, the security footage would abruptly drop in quality. Rooms would become significantly colder and the average number of injuries sustained during the average fight (even those they could remember) had dropped drastically. Beyond that, there seemed to be no measurable effects that would indicate a cause for this behavior. Nor was there any way they could determine to wake those under the Puppeteer’s effect. The situation was truly desperate. As such, Bruce had found himself forced to do something which he swore he’d die before he ever did again; he called John Constantine.

“Well Shit,” Constantine said around a cigarette.

Bruce grabbed it and put it out in a swift motion, more on habit from time with Jason than anything truly intentional. Constantine grabbed another out of his jacket, lit it, and found it abruptly on the floor and crushed out with a black boot. They both knew that they could do this on loop indefinitely.

“Look, this ain’t good,” he gestured vaguely, indicating absolutely everything, “Whatever’s go’in on here is way out of my pay grade, ok? I’m not sure how the Hell someone is controlin’ anyone with fuckin death magic without killin’ the whole lot of you first.”

Constantine leaned in, poking Bruce in the chest. he restrained the urge to break the magician’s hand.

“You ain’t dead, right?”

“No”

“Well you can never be too sure. Here’s the thing, I can’t break this,”

Again he gestured at everything, Bruce couldn’t help but disagree with him on that point. Constantine was exceptional at breaking absolutely everything he touched.

“But I can take you to the source.”

“You want us to confront someone who can control us?”

“Look, you said that who’ere’s behind this is a kid, right?”

“Or acting like one”

“Well, just… I don’ know… tell ‘em ta stop or you’ll tell ‘ere Ma or somethin’.” Constantine dropped his voice down to a whisper, “That’s what ya do with kids, right?

“Listen, yer a Dad, right? You know what ta’ do ta’ get kids ta’ stop screwen ‘round with shit.”

No he absolutely didn’t.

Bruce nodded.

“That still doesn’t answer the question of how we interact with someone who can control us.”

“Huh…” Constantine scratched his chin and reached for another cigarette. This one didn’t even make it to his mouth.

“Well, who do yah know who hasn’t been controlled?”

Now there was an idea. Who did they know? The Young Justice was out, as were the majority of Justice League Dark and most of the Bats. This left Agent A, although the thought of disturbing Alfred for anything less than a life or death situation seemed inherently wrong, Oracle, Constantine, who could use the punishment but, if this did turn out to be a child, would likely just worsen the situation (or sell his soul again), and…. Red Hood.

Well, they were desperate.

………………………………………………………………………

Ask him thirty years down the line, Bruce would not be able to tell you how he managed to get Red Hood into the Watchtower. The helmet did a good job concealing his expression, but Bruce was sure Jason wasn’t happy to say the least. Constantine, for his part, looked absolutely put out. Good.

“What the Hell am I doing here?” Red Hood said.

“I’d like to know that too,” Constantine added.

“As you may know,” Superman was, thankfully, in charge of the brief, “there has been a number of… oddities over the past few months. We believe that someone is actively controlling members of the superhero community. So far, the only goal this individual seems to be to play ‘“games”’, using people as dolls. You are some of the only people we have been able to determine that seem unaffected.”

“So if I say I’ve been mindcontroled into playing dress up you’ll let me go?”

“Hn,” Bruce grunted, glaring at his son.

“Alright, alright,” Jason said, “Any idea who’s fault this is?”

“Unfortunately no, we’ve already determined that this isn’t any of the magic users we’ve faced so far. The standout feature, besides the childishness of the actions, is the fact that this seems to be death magic, something we haven’t seen before.”

Red Hood stilled. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Hold up, these spells, what exactly happens?”

“Usually, the individuals will start acting out a kind of play. They’ll usually start speaking like a child would, though there are three distinctive voices as identified by Batman, two of which seem more like an adult.”

“And what kind of stories do they act out?”

Now Bruce cut in.

“Action and/or similar to a classical book.”

“Ah Shit.”

Jason pulled out his phone, calling someone. Bruce noticed that, whoever this was, they where on speed dial.

“Hey Angel,” What? “We fucked up.”

Again, what? Bruce was glad to see he wasn’t the only one to look completely baffled.

“Where are you right now?… Ok, is Ell with you? Does she have her dolls?”

Bruce did not like where this was going.

“I need you to grab one of them… Any of the main three… Uhhh, try Supes, she’ll probably give up that one.”

Superman whispered, “Should I feel insulted?”

“Probably,” Wonderwoman responded

“Alright, so I need you to making the doll do something.”

Suddenly, Superman went limp, only to spring back up and do a complete backflip.

“Well, Sh… crap. Huston, we’ve got an issue… Well it looks like the JL’s hooked up to JLT. Any clue how that happened? Uh huh… ok… ummm…”

Jason looked up.

“So a while back Angel was tryin’ to figure out how to keep his daughter El busy, so he decided to make her some dolls. Well, marionettes really. She’s big on heroes, so he patterned ‘em off of the JL. He got really into it; ended up going a bit overboard, and to make sure they lasted, he charmed ‘em. Problem was, he wanted to make sure they had ‘“personality”’. Not sure exactly how, but somehow… he turned them into Voodoo dolls without noticing.”

Something in Bruce slumped. This was his life. That said, it was deeply concerning that some unknown magic user had managed to so thoroughly manipulate almost the entire hero community on accident.

“Well,” Constantine said, “that’s that, I guess. Guess I’ll head out then.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Jason grabbed his shoulder, “we still have to get the dolls back so that Angel can disenchant them, and I am NOT gonna try and take ‘em back from a self multiplying, invisible, and intangible six year old myself.

Though… I bet we could get a few of her least favorites pretty quickly. Send those in to get the others. Hope she doesn’t realize she can use the remaining dolls against you.”

“Do it.” Bruce said.

“Hey,” Jason said. He sounded far too thrilled about this, “you’re funeral.

…Angel, so here’s the plan…”

The Princess' Dolls

After Danny has ascended to the throne of the ghost king, something goes wrong with his clone Ellie. Her form destabilizes again, and when they stabilize her, she's physically only five or six years old.

Danny takes to watching her, but looking after a half ghost child is a lot harder than it looks, especially when Ellie learns duplication but can't seem to figure out how to undo it for hours on end, and each clone gets bored really fast. To counter this, Danny makes Ellie a set of dolls, all modeled after the Justice League and various related figures. He even uses a special enchantment he learned to make sure the dolls stay intact no matter what Ellie puts them through.

Ellie loves the dolls and she and her clones have a tendency to put together large productions using them, ranging from superhero fights to sitcom stories to fairy tales to a few 'things' Ellie remembered reading online before she was de aged.

Meanwhile, almost every single Justice League member has been noticing some oddities as of late. They can hear voices from no where, they feel like something is touching them when there is nothing, their muscles sometimes spasm without cause. And, on occasion, they find themselves sleepwalking as they dream of a giant telling a story.

No one brings this to the attention of the other members until several members get knocked out on a mission, only for their unconscious forms to start acting out a play.

(Or Danny accidentally makes several Justice League Voodoo dolls and a young Ellie keeps playing with them)

[lizzygrantarchives]

BBC News, January 27, 2012

Lana Del Rey has been praised, sued and vilified – all before her album hits the shelves. But the US star says she's more concerned by the global financial crisis than her critics.

Last year, with almost no fanfare, a song called Video Games popped up on YouTube.

An achingly beautiful piano ballad by an unknown singer, it had been rejected by almost every record company that heard it.

The song was too long, they said, too melancholy. And it needed drums if it was to get any radio play.

Lana Del Rey didn't believe any of them. She persuaded a tiny independent label to release the song, and created the promo clip at home on her MacBook.

Twenty-two million views later, she's got a major label deal, a contract with Next Model management, and is about to release one of the most-anticipated albums of 2012.

So who is Lana Del Rey?

"It was G, C, A," she recalls, absent-mindedly stretching her fingers into the chord formations. "It was D minor, A minor and some diminished chord as well. Some trick, some shortcut.

"I realised I could probably write a million songs with those six chords – so I moved to New York and I took a couple of years to just write whatever I wanted."

She had an early stab at recording an album – 2008's Lizzy Grant aka Lana Del Ray – which was made for $10,000 (£6,000) with Paul McCartney and Regina Spektor's producer David Kahne.

But it was never formally released, popping up on iTunes for two months in 2010 before quietly disappearing.

"I had signed to an independent label but they couldn't fund the release of it," says Del Rey.

"People act like it's so shrouded in mystery, the 'forgotten terrible album'.

"But if you look on YouTube, all 13 tracks are available with millions of views, so it's not like no-one's heard them.

"We were all proud of it. It's pretty good."

The singer recently bought back the rights to the record, and says: "I'm re-releasing it, maybe in late summer."

Cinematic

Her major label debut, Born To Die, refines the formula set out on that early material.

A sweeping epic of doomed love affairs and bruised glamour, it could be the lost soundtrack to a film noir.

Del Rey's vocals have a cinematic quality, too. One minute, she's a breathy femme fatale; the next, a languorous, sultry diva: Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich competing for control of the microphone.

In person, however, the singer is more down-to-earth.

Softly-spoken and doe-eyed, she comes from a close-knit family. Her left hand is tattooed with a capital letter "M" for her grandmother, Madeleine.

And while her lyrics revel in seedy romance ("he loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart") they were largely inspired by a single, happy relationship.

The affair was so all-consuming that Del Rey "let go of my musical ambitions" and "settled" into a life of domesticity.

In Video Games, she is completely smitten: "He holds me in his big arms. Drunk and I am seeing stars. This is all I think of."

"People talk about me being an anti-feminist because of that song," the singer says.

"They think it's coming from a place of submissiveness. But in reality it was more about coming together and doing your own things happily in the same living space."

The relationship eventually ended but Del Rey doesn't mind revisiting the memories.

"You should honour love, even when it's lost," she says.

"I've been separated from various things and people in my life that I wanted to stay close to. By staying calm and being strong, I was honouring the memory of those things and those people.

"I'm proud of that, and I continue to do that."

Legal troubles

After Video Games became a break-out hit last October, Del Rey was snapped up in a joint UK/US deal by Polydor Records and Interscope – the latter of which is home to Lady Gaga and Madonna.

"I got sued over the video for Video Games," Del Rey explains. "That was a bad day. A million views and it got wiped out."

The video had been cut together from faded, vintage footage the singer found on YouTube. She had assumed it was free. It turned out to be a legal headache.

"So now I have a specialist who reaches out to get permission when I make a video."

But there are also disadvantages to working with two of the world's biggest record companies.

Some of the people who championed Del Rey early in her career have turned their backs on the singer, accusing her of selling out.

To them, authenticity and pop are separate sides in an inexplicable and unwinnable musical cold war.

They have attacked her professionally, accusing her of not writing her own songs, and personally, claiming she's had plastic surgery.

"My publicists, in their long career, say they have never seen someone be more fictionalised," sighs Del Rey.

But the singer insists she's unfazed by the criticism.

"I know what people say about me and I'm not really that concerned, because those kind of problems I'm not really interested in.

"I'm concerned about the potential collapse of the euro, the state of the global economy. We have serious problems.

"Of course I hope the record does really well but, regardless of how things end up turning out, I'm not concerned about my future. I'll be OK."

Originally published on bbc.com with the headline Love, the law, and Lana Del Rey.

Interview transcript

So, last week I met up with Lana Del Rey, who was coughing and spluttering after cancelling her gig at London's Koko venue the night before. Demure and softly-spoken, she was absolutely charming. More homebody than homewrecker, despite whatever impression you may have received from her lyrics.

Our chat formed the basis for a BBC profile piece, which was published over the weekend. But I thought you might like to see a fuller transcript. So here it is...

Can you remember the first time you thought "I can write a song?"

I didn't really start writing until I was 18 and my uncle sort-of taught me six basic chords on the guitar. I realised I could probably write a million songs with those six chords – so I moved to New York and I took a couple of years to just write whatever I wanted.

That's quite a late start.

It's really late.

Had you been creative in other ways before that?

Yes, in some ways. I don't know if I'd say it was my focus. I never really thought about writing my own music but I did like to sing.

Do you remember the chords your uncle taught you?

It was G, C, A. It was D minor, A minor and some diminished chord as well. Some trick, some shortcut. When I learned F, which I assumed would be easy, I was like "fuck". F was just never going to happen. Four fingers? Never going to happen. It's too hard.

There isn't much guitar on the album. When did you switch to piano?

I didn't switch because I don't really play piano – unless it's a Wurlitzer and I'm sort of just holding sustained chords. On my first record, I played guitar throughout most of it. With this one, I started working with this guy Justin Parker who's never really done anything in pop music. I just started freestyling over his sustained, melancholic chords. And that was how, really, the second evolution of my style began.

You said you were always a singer... Where did that start? Do you remember singing with your family when you were young?

I remember singing with my mom and with my dad. There were musical children's movies, like Mr World and Raffi.

In my house, my sisters loved Grease.

We loved Grease, me and my sister. [Sings Summer Nights] They're really beautiful, those songs.

The movies that inspire you now come from a slightly darker place.

It's not my fault that my inspirations are dark. I'm not a very dark person, but I find that most great works of art verge towards darkness. My favourite movie is The Godfather II – the settings alone are just so epic. The same with film noir. It's not the darkness I'm attracted to, it's the fact that it's so beautiful. Visually stunning.

I'm interested in the montages you've made for your music videos. The clips you use don't really bear any narrative relation to the lyrics, so what makes you choose them?

I think they must share an aesthetic, or a mood. When I go to Germany and France, people always ask me about the Hollywood imagery – but when I started putting the movies together, I wasn't necessarily looking for clips of Hollywood. I was looking for vintage film from the 50s. I liked the texture and the colours of those films.

It's funny, when I was putting the montages together at first and showing them to people, nobody seemed to get it. They thought it was a very weird juxtaposition, verging on creepy. It's strange now that people think that it's a really cohesive package, because for a long time it seemed like a really disjointed project that I was alone in believing in.

Where do you find all those film clips?

YouTube. I steal them! But I have a copyright specialist that I work with, so she reaches out to get permission now. Ever since I got sued.

Really? Over which one?

Video Games. That was a bad day. A million views and it got wiped out.

You've got more than 25 million streams on YouTube now. You must get royalty payments?

I don't think so. Why aren't you on my team, honey? Where the fuck have you been?

Those viewing figures must translate into some kind of material value. I mean, there are adverts streaming before two of them.

What's the story behind Video Games?

I've been coming to London for a long time now, off and on. But I'd been coming for about 14 months before I wrote that song. I found one of my musical soulmates, Justin Parker. I just sat down with him and said "I'm tired of trying to be good and be noticed. I just want to write whatever I want to write." And he said, "then just write whatever you want to write". And he played out some sustained piano chords, and I leaned back and started thinking about one of my favourite times.

I usually draw inspiration back from the same few moments in my life, and so I started thinking back to when I was really happy in this one relationship and had just let go of my musical ambitions and... settled.

I was always a wanderer. I never stayed in one place for very long. I never thought I'd have the luxury of loving someone and being loved. I always hoped that that would happen and when it did, it really was what they talked about in the movies.

Geek question: What was the video game he was playing?

It was World Of Warcraft. It's actually an all-consuming game.

Did you play it, too?

He... Well, he wouldn't let me.

What was his character?

I think he played as a monster. You can't really see the character when you're in the game.

What I love about that lyric is that songs don't usually talk about the bits of relationships where you're just slobbing around the house doing your own thing.

People talk about me being an anti-feminist because of that song. They think it's coming from a place of submissiveness. But in reality it was more about coming together happily and doing your own things happily in the same living space.

What would you say the theme of the album is?

You should honour love, even when it's lost.

Is the relationship from Video Games over now?

In the end, we couldn't be together. When I've been separated from various things and people in my life that I wanted to stay close to, I felt pride in not sabotaging myself with fear. By staying calm and being strong, I was honouring the memory of those things and those people. I'm proud of that, and I continue to do that – try and live gracefully.

How difficult do you find that now that you're in the public eye?

I've lived a really quiet life for the last decade and I don't see that changing. I have a really big life outside of music. I have a really big family, I have friends, I have other work and I have my studies that I've continued to pursue.

What were you studying?

Philosophy.

Does the fact that this album is doing so well when the first one disappeared without trace make you suspicious of success?

Well, why would that make me suspicious? I guess I'm always wary that beautiful things that happen to me aren't for real. Really great things are rare. But maybe sometimes they're genuine.

What exactly happened with the first album?

People act like it's so shrouded in mystery – "the forgotten terrible album". But if you look on YouTube all 13 tracks are available with millions of views. So it's not like no-one's heard them. I was the only one signed to that independent label. They gave me $10,000 and I made a record but they couldn't fund the release of it. It's not like it was bad. We were all proud of it. It's pretty good.

Would you consider buying the rights back?

I already have the rights. I bought the rights upon my exit. I'm re-releasing it, maybe in late summer.

A lot of people have claimed you "re-invented" yourself after that record failed – but it's actually called Lizzy Grant aka Lana Del Ray [sic].

Exactly! It was never really a shift in persona, it was just the name of the music I was making. The name of the project. They're not even separate personas.

People don't spend a lot of time criticising Florence Welch because she doesn't have a machine.

[Almighty laugh] The way I've lived my life is so straightforward, it's ridiculous. I've been so clear and upfront about everything but most articles I see... My publicists, in their long career, say they have never seen someone be more fictionalised.

I know what people say about me and I'm not really that concerned, because those kind of problems I'm not really interested in. I'm concerned about the potential collapse of the euro, the state of the global economy. We have serious problems. Of course I hope the record does really well but, regardless of how things end up turning out, I'm not concerned about my future. I'll be OK.

Originally published on discopop.co.uk on January 31, 2012.

[quixoticalpostsager]

wow!! i’ve never known anyone else who conquered their nightmares through sensible in-dream clowning on the monsters.

when i was really young i had terrible nightmares just about every night until i realised in one of them when i was 5 that i was dreaming and confronted the ghosts chasing me, telling them they weren’t real. i’ve never had a nightmare since then either :)

I technically had a nightmare a couple hours ago when I woke up, but only reason it was scary was because it was formatted like me looking at the idea for a horror game

Which I will opt to call a TERROR game because it’s not HORRIFYING it’s TERRIFYING

Like it’s in the slender genre?

Basically it would be a low poly game told through the lens of a camera that, instead of talking low quality pictures when the monster gets close, it takes low POLY pictures when the monster gets close, or at least that was the gimmick for one specific monster that scared me because it got really close to the camera, so the lowest poly thing for the camera to do, was to create an image of it

There was also a segment where I had to run and there was intense music that got faster and more intense, presumably as the monster that was chasing me got closer

I believe the premise of the game is that you have to document the monsters you come across and your tapes are treated as found footage, meaning you’re gonna die no matter what, occasionally there’s extra footage since the camera is still rolling so the guy watching it (also technically you but it’s the you that’s in the office watching all the tapes which is how you play each level) gets some extra footage of the monster after it killed you, sometimes the film keeps rolling until the guy shows up and stops the camera

So I don’t know whether I should count it?

It was a scary dream but honestly it felt more like a pitch than an attempt to scare me

So I guess my nightmare entity is showing me it’s ideas for videogames now

[nitebloom]

so the library of congress just released holy-grail-status gram parsons footage (live at altamont!!!) that had been unseen for decades

if anyone needs me i’ll just be over here weeping w joy

[nctafraid]

He had managed to pull up the location, a few street cameras with terrible quality being in the location. "There's some street cameras, we'll be able to see if he was here." Odds were if he was here, he probably wasn't there anymore. That would be too easy, and Team Bartowski never got things that were easy.

He had been going through the footage from the past 24 hours, and finally he found something. Proof that at least 20 hours ago Winn was still alive and walking. Because that was Winn clearly walking into the building.

The problem came to be that a group of people left, and he couldn't tell if Winn was part of them. The quality was too bad, too far. "We know he went in, and if I were to guess, they took him out."

She should chase after Chuck. She should be right on his heels to be there looking over his shoulder as he tries to grace the coordinates. But she isn’t. She’s still in Winn’s room. She presses her hand to the doorframe as she takes one last look around.

She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to make of all of this. Let alone the picture. Because it tells a different story than what he’s been showing her. And she doesn’t know how to reconcile both sides. It’s all far too complicated. And she just needs a breather. Maybe, once this is all over, she’ll finally get one.

She pulls the door shut behind her before she’s making her way down the steps. Casey’s watching over Chuck on the laptop as she reaches the living room.

“Did it work?”

[freifraufischer]

Gymnastics History Mythbusting: East Bloc Gymnasts Don't Wear Grips... Except When They Do

On my trip through watching 1980s gymnastics on youtube in as much a chronological order as I could I spent a good day watching the 1981 European Championships.

Why you might ask if you know anything about 1980s competitions on youtube would I do that. Most video from that era is heavily edited down, 2 hour AAs in 30 minutes or an hour if you are lucky. Event finals are often edited down to just the winners. Not to mention that a lot of it is of terrible quality. But the 1981 European Championships are unique on youtube and actually kind of amazing.

Almost eight hours of uncut high quality film footage with no commentaries. You can see fine details and hear the general sound of the meet between floor music (to include the fact that every vault landing sounds like it's a crack of a falling tree it's a wonder any gymnast survived the 1980s).

But in particular I found myself watching the uneven bars event finals with with particular attention because I was watching a bars final with 2 Soviets, 2 Bulgarians, 2 Hungarians, a Romanian and an East German and the camera lingers on their hands as they are preparing the bars and chalking up. And they've all (or nearly all I didn't track every gymnast) got grips on.

Including the Romanian.

That ran counter to the received wisdom I had as a gym fan and from watching 1990s gymnastics that east bloc gymnasts didn't wear grips. I had remembered a comment given to NBC in the mid 2000s by a Ukrainian coach that they couldn't afford to train their younger gymnasts with grips and when given the choice the senior gymnasts often chose to continue not to use grips because they were simply not used to them.

So I started to track when and where I saw gymnasts from those countries I thought of as "no grips" countries wearing grips. I suspected that it was a financial consequence from the collapse of the communist system that carried through to eastern Europe as those countries' gymnastics programs were lacking in funds. My observations of the 1980s suggest this to be the case.

Romanian gymnasts are rarely seen with grips on and that film from 1981 is essentially the last time I saw it.

There were occasional 1980s Chinese bars workers wearing grips.

Soviet gymnasts were all wearing grips until 1987-88 and then it was the youngest gymnasts who weren't wearing them. Shushunova was a grip using bars worker.

To the extent I saw North Korean bars workers in the 1980s they wore grips, but I saw them so rarely I don't think I could say they did so categorically.

The East Germans used grips right through the end of the East German state. Which brings me to my second grips history mythbusting. I have seen it be said that round off bars mounts aren't possible to do with grips on and I took that as true. Until I watched Michelle Goodwin of the United States do a round off arabian bars mount with grips on at the 1982 World Cup and Gabriela Fahnrich do a round off back straddle over the low bar at the 1985 European Championships. I mentioned this discovery to a former MAG friend of mine who seemed surprised I'd been told that it wasn't possible because just as a goof he'd played around with round off arabians to the high bar and he described the sensation of doing so with grips on as not particularly strange or difficult. As far as I can see the two other East Germans who used a round off back tuck over the low bar mount, Martina Jentsch for whom it was named and Dorte Thummler both did so with grips on.

TLDR: In the very later stages of the collapse of communism many gymnasts were trained as juniors to work bars without grips and that persisted in those countries likely because of financial considerations. Grips were used by many Eastern Bloc gymnasts throughout the 1980s with only the very occasional examples of grips being worn by Romanian or Chinese gymnasts.

If you are curious about the 1981 European Championships footage: AA Sub 1, AA Sub 2, EF VT, EF UB, EF BB, EF FX

[shades4dogs]

i left a comment on the vid itself so i'll just paste it here haha. basically it's just got the most egregious provable example of terrible research i've ever seen in any of his vids

hi, been subscribed to the channel for a couple years, and genuine question: is he getting bored of making these or something? the research here even for things i know literally nothing about going in is so overtly bad. the meaning of 108 can be gotten by googling "significance of 108". the pronunciation of "shiranai" can be gotten via google translate, disregarding the fact that it's a pretty commonly-used japanese word. aside from the "bit" of mispronouncing foreign languages, to me it just comes off as poor research when people can't be arsed to look up how to pronounce a word or two. takes less than a minute. and it really takes absolute minimal research to know that garn47 is a shitpost game (i googled "what is garn47"). i hadn't even heard of it 'til i watched this video because i don't touch fnf with a 10 foot pole but literally, less than 2 minutes of research to understand the cat is called car and the voice is you calling to it (i googled "garn47 cat"), and the room with the pictures is a fanart room. he even calls the cat Car later in the vid, so why he misunderstood the voice line is weird to me and just indicates he really isn't putting much thought into this. the "evil shadow the hedgehog" (??? it's obviously not shadow?) is a modern creepypasta character called 2017 X or "X". (i googled "garn47 sonic"). from 10 seconds briefly skimming his wiki page, i now know he isn't even in the game anymore as of last month. so oddheader is also just including outdated info and footage without any clarification. granted, he could have created this video before that happened, but with everything else it just adds to the negative impression. i'm baffled how he even got some of this footage, e.g. the "soretro" song from fnf, without learning that the "some sort of glitchy mario" is called Soretro? the lack of information given and actively bad/false info almost comes off as intentional. not saying he had to list every single character's name out, just saying that he's obviously leaving out basic info about the contents of the game, like the fact that these characters are memes, or any information about their origins when there is plenty out there -- and it pretty crucially isn't remotely "unsolved" (or creepy, but whatever). EDIT: also just from googling garn47 i found its itch.io page, aka its official release, so literally the first thing he says about the game is misinfo! multiple fans of this media are in the comments correcting this video and commenting on how poor the info given is. when unearthing/exposing this info is the objective of your entire channel, i can see why some are complaining. with all that about something i CAN research very easily, it makes me wonder what flaws there are in information i can't research so well. such as non-english games, or ones i don't feel compelled to research myself. i understand part of these videos' purpose is to entice the audience to research further themselves, but when oddheader misconstrues basic information about the content he's trying to platform it just comes off as really lazy and uncaring tbh. and i barely count what i just did as research whatsoever. i like that you can get extra context for the games oddheader talks about in the comments, but when a majority of it is just clarifying basic information about the game... something's up with that man, idk. and i'm definitely not expecting any followup to clarify info he missed, as great as that'd be in general. i'm still subbed atm, but i'm genuinely considering unsubbing if the quality of his research keeps decreasing like this... if anyone read this, thanks xD just needed to put my thoughts out in text. btw, i focussed on garn47 here because it's the most egregious example of poor info i've seen from the channel in recent memory. just my opinion and perspective on all this! thanks again

oddheader's most recent vid is so bad dude

[katnissmellarkkk]

Alrightttt, I’m on a roll so we’re going onto chappy five 🥳🥳🥳😎😎

I know the movies made the Capitol — re: basically only Effie and maybe Caesar — have those ridiculous made up accents but .... I actually feel like the description of the Capitol accent in the book is supposed to be like the Kardashians or Paris Hilton’s voice. 🤷🏼‍♀️

“Why do these people speak in such a high pitch? Why do their jaws barely open when they talk? Why do the ends of their sentences go up as if they're asking a question? Odd vowels, clipped words, and always a hiss on the letter s. no wonder it's impossible not to mimic them.” Like this is a pretty good description of how Kim Kardashian and her sisters talk. And Suzzy C did say she was inspired by the juxtaposition between war news footage and ridiculous reality television shows so... I think my theory of the Capitol all talking like they’re on the Real Housewives of LA is pretty valid.

Just imagine Paris Hilton as Effie and Nicole Richie as one of her preps

Lolololol this whole section of waxing is reminding me to go get my legs waxed 😭😭😭 straight up calling me out here, Suzanne

I like how Katniss says her stylist “apparently has no interest in seeing her until the prep team has addressed obvious problems.” Like you can tell from her narration she was expecting to feel the same was about Cinna that she does about Effie and her prep team.

The “gritty loam that takes off dirt and three layers of skin” is probably just a strong exfoliator 😭😭😭 my girl knows nothing about quality skincare 🤧🤧 someone build a Panem Sephora

She mentioned them waxing her underarms.... girl, did you have hairy armpits before this? Idk why this revelation is new to me

“Grease her down!” Just sounds wrong 😅😅😅😅 I need to stop being annoying omg I’m like a twelve year old

Hmm it’s funny to me that Katniss refers to Octavia as plump. You’d think in a place like the Capitol body image and weight would be very important. Unless it’s like back in the old, old days when being overweight was a sign of wealth. Which would make more sense so this was an unnecessary thought process curtesy of Samantha

Katniss faking a smile and thanking her prep team shows she does know how to play the game and fake it better than she says.

So ... okay, hear me out, I’m not trying to get over the top or make this into something it’s not but ... the whole stylists / Cinna coming into the room and staring at her naked is a little weird. Especially considering Cinna isn’t Lenny Kravitz who’s like a bit older than her but actually like a twenty-something year old dude.

But okay, here’s the thing I was getting at ... Cinna’s one of the best people in this series and you can’t deny that. Even if you find him boring, he’s still one of Katniss’ closest people. Also he’s probably gay. But like ... what about the other stylists? I don’t wanna be that person who makes everything more than it is, but like, this scene just sounds like a perfect opportunity for some Capitol creep to assault a teenager idk I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill just ignore Samantha okay.

That’s nice that he complimented her mama though 🥰🥰🥰

So Katniss calls District Twelve the least desirable district but ... doesn’t District Eleven suck too? Like she also later says District Twelve is the smallest and the poorest but doesn’t she also say Rue is worse off than her and Prim? Make up your mind, Suz.

Cinna claims he asked for District Twelve but did he really get an option? 😅 If it’s his first year and Katniss claims the newbies get them anyway 🤷🏼‍♀️ Samantha is once again, reading too much into this.

Awww, Katniss is thinking about how long it would take for her to assemble this fancy meal at home 🤧🤧🤧 it would take her days and the Capitol just has the necessary resources at their disposal and they just takes it for granted. And yes, I’m aware this is supposed to be calling all us readers out who take so much for granted I know. We’re the Capitol.

“How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by?” It’s honestly so sad but so vital to her character that Katniss has zero hobbies or real free time. Her life is about surviving. She doesn’t get to live or enjoy very much of her time. She dedicates everything to keeping Prim — and her mother — alive, sacrificing everything a teenage girl should be doing. Sacrificing even the things the other girls in her world get to do. She mentions the merchant girls and the Seam girls who are more experienced romantically and sexually and socially than her. Because she doesn’t get to be a kid or innocent or even happy, in order to focus on her and her family’s survival. And the things she does enjoy, like spending time with Gale or dancing with Prim (mentioned in Mockingjay) she downplays in case they’re taken away, because nothing good is secure in her eyes. 🥺🥺🥺

Okay but what did Katniss’ facial expression give away that Cinna knew exactly what she was thinking? Or is she just less emotionless than she and Haymitch both claim? Ironically I think they’re the only people who call her emotionless which can easily be chalked up to their self-hate and terrible self-esteems.

Katniss is so afraid they’re gonna make her be naked for the parade 😭. Honestly though they’re children that’s so creepy that they’re even allowed to make 15/16/17 year olds be naked in a parade. I mean I know they kill kids every year but isn’t there like child pornography laws in Panem? 😭

“You’re not afraid of fire, are you, Katniss?” Is so foreshadowing 😭😂😅😎 Caesar Flickerman’s voice “Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire!”

Honestly though Cinna is smart to make Katniss recognizable in the arena by leaving her with simple makeup. I know and the sky is blue we all know this already beating the dead horses until the farmer comes home.

“It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.” It’s true though 😅😅😅😭😭 he was always a rebel. I actually think he may have asked for District Twelve after Katniss volunteered, because he saw the potential in her. Poor Peeta. Baby, I’m rooting you for even if no one else is.

Also I always found it a bit .... curious? That Peeta had a female stylist and Katniss had a male one? Not just because of the required nudity, you’d just think men would do better as a boy’s stylist and a woman would make a better girl’s stylist. So yes, my whole Cinna was interested in District Twelve because Katniss seemed like a good symbol for a rebellion idea seems very plausible.

I know I know I know I read wayyy too much into this stuff sometimes a cigarette 🚬 is just a cigarette 🚬

Katniss being relieved when Peeta shows up 😭😭😭 because even if she won’t admit it and even if she won’t let herself trust him, she still sees him unconsciously and completely against her will as a comfort because they’re in this thing together in a way, even if they’re supposed to try and kill each other

And honestly, it’s such a like... relatable feeling? To feel alone and nervous and uptight and then someone who you recognize — even if you maybe aren’t even friends with but you at least know — shows up and you just instantly feel less alone. I’m totally looking at this through shipper goggles and I’m not even ashamed you all knew who’s blogging you were reading ight? 😂🤣🤷🏼‍♀️

“He should know about fire, being a baker's son and all.” And he’s gonna learn a lot more about it when he falls in love — for real, falls in love, not a childhood infatuation — with the girl on fire. 🥰🥰🥰

But also, I love this particular line on a reread because it totally is an indicator towards their future. Like Peeta knows about fire, he’s experienced with how to handle it, and later on, he becomes the only person who truly comes to understand Katniss, who represents fire, in a way that no one else could ever imagine.

Hmmm, Katniss’ point of view here, talking about how Portia and Peeta’s team seem all giddy and air-headed and it’s only Cinna who seems reserved makes me rethink my previous imaginings of Peeta’s stylist. Maybe she’s just a Capitolite idiot and nothing like Cinna. And my baby got a raw deal here then too. Good thing Haymitch loves him more. Just kidding 😅😅😅

But also I wanna know why Cinna is hesitant to accept congratulations for his and Portia’s idea? Wasn’t he at least lowkey excited about it when he pitched it a page ago?

Their horses are coal black 🐴 😅. I like that they went the whole nine yards with the theme. Nothing but the best for the kids on Death Row.

Aww Katniss asking Peeta what he thinks about being set on fire is so sweet and pure for some reason. I just find their commodore here cute ok

“I'll rip off your cape if you'll rip off mine” this is literally their first friend type of interaction and it’s so pure y’all leave me be I’m emotional for them

🙃 Also lowkey reminds me of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Everyone look away ok I’m sorry

Peeta’s shady/annoyed Haymitch comment and Katniss’ joke at his expense 🤣🤣😂🤣😂😂🥲🥲☺️🥲🥲 they’re bonding it’s so presh

“And suddenly we're both laughing.” I hope they laugh a lot together post-canon 🥲🥲🥲. If they can make the other laugh during their terrible circumstances, then they can make the other laugh anywhere. 🤧 Except in Thirteen because he’s hijacked and she’s certifiable and they’re both so used and abused and 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Okay I have to say, Suzanne Collins really builds up a lot for certain events and then just like grazes over the actual action of said event? Like she builds towards the tribute parade but then kind of rushes through off the actual event itself? It’s a common theme in her writing. And I don’t like it at all ngl.

Oh wait she doesn’t actually rush the parade events the paragraph before just looked like she was about to I jumped the gun 🤣😂🤭 but what I said is still completely true for many events in these books sorry not sorry

I’m definitely reading too much into it but the fact that District One — the favorite of the Capitol — gets snow white horses and District Twelve gets coal black horsies kind of ... seems to imply something .... 🤭

Cinna just lets out a sigh of relief “it worked” like ... way to fill your tributes with hope, dude. “Yeah, you’re totally safe, don’t be scared-OH THANK GOD THAT WORKED I wasn’t actually sure you wouldn’t blow up.” But actually this answers my previous inquiry about why he seemed hesitant I guess he wasn’t even sure this wouldn’t burn them up that’s nice 🤭🙃

It’s a literal trial by fire *cue drum hit* 🥁 aww, I just cracked myself up 😭

“Then he gently tucks a hand under my chin. "Remember, heads high. Smiles. They're going to love you!" This is caught halfway between being very Capitol-y and very father-brotherly and idk which way to take it but it’s kind of cute 🤭

“For the first time, I look at him and realize that ablaze with the fake flames, he is dazzling.” This is such a significant line because Katniss isn’t saying Peeta is technically good looking (like when Haymitch said they were decently attractive) or someone else thinks he’s good looking (i.e Gale, her mother and lowkey Finnick) but she’s saying she herself thinks he’s attractive. Girl, your crush is showing.

"I think he said for us to hold hands," says Peeta.” I’m sure Cinna actually did say that but this just seems like a very good opportunity for Peeta to hold the hand of the girl he has a massive crush on. 😭😭😭

Okay Cinna gave a thumbs up so he actually was saying that but can you imagine Peeta’s excitement right now?

I mean, yeahhhh, there’s the certain death looming over him too but like live in the moment, babe. 🥰😘🤗👌🏻

I like that Katniss says the crowd is at first like 😳😳😳 before they start cheering like they’re thinking “what are these backwoods, hillbilly kids doing this year?”

“At first, I'm frozen, but then I catch sight of us on a large television screen and am floored by how breathtaking we look. In the deepening twilight, the firelight illuminates our faces” okay they both have to be pretty naturally attractive people objectively, because you illuminate my face without much makeup and no one is gonna be cheering.

“Remember, heads high. Smiles. They're going to love you! I hear Cinna's voice in my head. I lift my chin a bit higher, put on my most winning smile, and wave with my free hand.” I wonder what the true difference is for Katniss between Cinna and Effie saying this to her? Maybe it’s that Effie is just outright mean to her sometimes whereas Cinna shows her nothing but kindness from the start and expresses sympathy and understanding? It’s probably that he’s already earning her trust versus Effie who’s just cruel I’m not over her comments on the train ok

“I'm glad now I have Peeta to clutch for balance, he is so steady, solid as a rock.” Right from the start, Katniss refers to Peeta as solid and steady. Idk, I feel like this is something that the movies really misses along the way. Katniss wasn’t always strong or confident at all and Peeta, at least publicly, exuded those qualities pretty well. Samantha’s complaining again ™️ 💁🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

Also this is just outright foreshadowing how Peeta will eventually become her rock. Or that he will be soon painted a rock ... pick and choose which way you wanna go with this. 🤷🏼‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️😅🤣

“As I gain confidence, I actually blow a few kisses to the crowd.” Okay, see I feel like Peeta really gives Katniss confidence in herself. If he’d been there in District Thirteen and they’d done propos together, she probably would have been a thousand times better.

But also this makes me think Katniss actually has it in her to be a charismatic, confident, alluring celebrity. She just chooses not to. 🤗🤗🤗

But this also reminds me of “She has no idea the effect she can have” okay imma move on and stop focusing on every little detail

I say that every chapter 🤧😅

“The pounding music, the cheers, the admiration work their way into my blood, and I can't suppress my excitement.” Say whatever you want, Katniss is still such a girl underneath it all. She gets excited over people liking her and cheering her on. And I know it’s because it increases her chances of getting sponsors but still

Honestly Peeta trying to showcase Katniss and let her take the spotlight is so selfless and indicative of his ultimate plan to help her win but also ... I can see how Katniss would believe it’s too good to be true and he’s messing with her. That he’s just playing the game to earn her trust, get her guard down and manipulate her later.

See, Peeta is actually framed at the start like the typical, standard YA love interest turned villain. In majority of YA books, at this point the boy is kind and sweet and helpful to the girl until she trusts him completely and then he turns on her and uses everything she gave him to destroy her. But the difference is, Katniss refuses to truly trust him and she is guessing his game incorrectly at every step. And then it’s revealed that it was never a game and he truly isn’t messing with her and everything he’s done that’s seem too good to be true and not even remotely plausible has actually been genuine and heartfelt and that, my friends, is why Peeta is above all other YA love interests. Because Everlark is actually the foil to many of the cliches. That was a long speech over some incoherent thoughts I’m so sorry if you suffered through that.

“It's not until we enter the City Circle that I realize I must have completely stopped the circulation in Peeta's hand. That's how tightly I've been holding it.” Awww he is her rock 😭🤧🥺

"No, don't let go of me," he says. The firelight flickers off his blue eyes. "Please. I might fall out of this thing." Okay this part is so cute and so blatantly setting Peeta up as her main love interest omg 😅 this isn’t the least bit subtle or disguised. But first off, the fact that Katniss is also Peeta’s stability here too 😭😭😭 and second of all, she takes time to notice his blue eyes against the firelight? She was attracted to him from the very start, y’all. That’s indisputable. 👌🏻😎🤧

“It's not really fair to present us as a team and then lock us into the arena to kill each other.” I agree with you, baby, it’s not fair at all. But you two take care of that situation nicely. Or not. Y’all do start a dang war. 🤭🤭🙃🙃

It’s rather ... ironic that it’s District Twelve’s chariot of them all that is pulled up and stopped directly in front of President Snow’s mansion. I know it’s a book, certain details like this are definitively contrived, I know get over it. 🤦🏼‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️

So uh. Snow is a small thin man? Why do I suddenly imagine Danny Devito as Snow 😅😅😅😅🤣🤣🤣🤣 y’all know he’d kill the role

“The darker it becomes, the more difficult it is to take your eyes off our flickering.” Okay, this is such a great line and it’s so significant to the rest of the series? The fact that Katniss — and Peeta, let’s not forget our boy — became symbols of the revolution. Like this line is deep if you think about it. The worse things in Panem got, the more the civilians looked towards Katniss and Peeta for hope 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥰🥰🥰🥰

Omg now after Songbirds and Snakes, we know the national anthem. I’m sorry, babies, that you have to endure that I’ll get you out of there 🙉🙉🙉

I feel like in part, the Capitol camera crew — Cressida, Pollux .... Pollux’s brother... is that you here???? — put so much attention on District Twelve because it would create some resentment and competition between them and the careers 🤭🤗

“I notice a lot of the other tributes are shooting us dirty looks, which confirms what I've suspected, we've literally outshone them all.” Insert Gretchen Wieners “I can’t help that I’m popular!” 😅😅😅😅😅

“I realize I'm still glued to Peeta and force my stiff fingers to open. We both massage our hands.” — they were hanging on so tight 😭😭😭😭

“Thanks for keeping hold of me.” He’s so sweet ☺️☺️☺️ I love him even if he’s kind of an idiot sometimes but so is Katniss so let’s not point fingers

“I'm sure they didn't notice anything but you. [...] And then he gives me a smile that seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness” Omg I know Katniss views this as him trying to manipulate her but the fact that he’s actually just admitting the way he’s felt for years is so 😭😭😭😭 if only you’d spit it out sooner, Bready

“he gives me a smile that seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me.” She literally has a crush on her fellow tribute and her first line of defense is to decide he out to get her for making her feel this way 🤣😭🙃

“The more likable he is, the more deadly he is.” The more my crush grows, the more deadly he becomes. I know I’m reading this with shipper goggles but guess what? I’m unashamed. 🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️ who feels guilty for reading this book with an Everlark bias not this girl right here 🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏼‍♀️

“I stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. Right on his bruise.” Okay first off, she says cheek here but according to a chapter ago, she claimed the mark was on his jaw... so in other words, she’s incredibly short. If a medium height guy has a bruise on his jaw and she has to stand on her tip toe to reach it... well... hashtag LittleKatniss

And second off.... can you even imagine how Peeta must feel. He genuinely complimented her here, the girl he has had a crush on forever, and she responds by kissing his cheek. He was probably really happy at this moment. And also this probably played further into his buying into her false display in the arena. That here we have her clutching his hand, smiling and laughing with him and kissing his cheek. Idk what I was trying to say necessarily but I made myself sad wow way to go me 🥺🥺🥺🥺🤧🤧🤧

Anyways! Those are my very over the top and too detailed thoughts! Hope you enjoyed if you read this! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳😎😎😎😎😎😎😎🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

[dailybayonetta]

What do you use to edits gifs? I really wanna get into this kinda thing but I dunno what program or website people tend to use

I'm old fashioned, so I mostly use Adobe CC 2017 or Adobe CS6 (if i need to do an old effect / function which isn't avaliable in newer versions) There are some online editors, but I do not find them suitable from tumblr format. Like, i’m sure they are fine if you just want make gifs / use gifs for other sites  But for the most part all of the internet moved pasted GIF format cause it’s dated and it’s heavy - which is bad for mobiles and stuff. BUT ANYWAY Also - it's always morally correct to pirate adobe products, just saying

Then there's two options (taken from HERE):

I use the second option because it's easier, the newer version of photoshop always have this feature and because it's great for video games.

You can look at first option, but honestly, unless you're giffing animation / animes / some HD films from BLU-ray, I found the first method to be too much time consuming (in my opinion.)

Here are links to some tutorials that will help and teach u about gif sizes as well (some are with images!):

♥ // ♥ // ♥

I can't explain all of the stuff, but things you need to consider when it comes to quality of GIFs:

a) getting footage; while clips from youtube is an easy way of founding a needed stuff (or if, let's say, a console game you can't capture) - but there's the catch, youtube eats all the quality of video because of compression. even 1080p clips do look bad on BIG gifs - EXAMPLE OF MINE (made during time when bayo1 didn’t had PC port) - and most of the footage either has watermark or SUBTITLES (which are pain in the ass when you want to put subtitles yourself - you cut like 45% of the bottom and it’s not great)  ideally - you want to capture stuff yourself, even more ideally - capture stuff with OBS or bandicam which do not compress your footage and the output image is great, NVIDIA capture feature is an okay option, but it has a bit of compression - but honestly, not the worst option, it’s definetly a more safe option for your hard drive capacity i reached that point, when i started giffing specific scenes of bayo2 - i freaking emulated the game, terribly, but did so cause youtube just doesn’t provided what i wanted  like, you can use capture device, but i ain’t spending money on that unless i’ll be a streamer or idk content creator (but forget about that) 

b) coloring is your bread and butter; for the most part, even not that great of quality gif can be saved by coloring / adjusting brightness / levels and all of that. as an easy example, THIS SET, was taken from basic 1080p footage, but because i softed colors, almost all video compression is gone  cause when you loo at something LIKE THIS SET, man, this was not a great time for coloring it looks bad

or an example like THIS SET, that trailer is DO DATED that there’s just no HD version of it and you can see pixels, it’s bad in original game and looks even worse compressed that even coloring didn’t do much while starting, you can always use PSDs / colorings created by people - I suggest going into searching on tumblr in general or CHECKING THIS (it’s outdated, but some stuff is still avaliable) or even just do basic adjustement it’s fine. but eventually, you’ll just starting creating and doing it yourself, because it’s just simply easier.  c) tumblr compression / limiting; this site changed a lot, not only gifs automatically converts to gifvs (it’s like a video of your gif, again, done for mobile) and unless you have extension that gets rid of that, nothing u can do about it

but currently all you need to know is that: at the moment tumblr limit of giz size is 8MB, if you got past that - the gif is not gonna work. (and it loads badly, it was bad even before, but tumblr is a mess if saying it easy)

Honestly and that’s all I can say. it’s gonna be rough at the start, but eventually and quite quick you get the hand of it, you even might find a more suitable way for you to gif or color stuff or sharpen your gifs (that’s another whole story) If you look back at my old stuff from freaking 2013 from my main blog - enjoy the ride (82 pages!!) - it wasn’t looking great and it took some time for sure to start making progress and be better at that or even just for this blog in particular - half the less pages than on main - but i still chagned a lot in my “style” of editing and colorings

But most importantly - just have with it, it’s not the most enjoyable ride, considering this site history, but I still find it a enjoyable hobby :)

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I love that there is more than one person in the world who can say "Always been fascinated with Cowgate." Great stuff.

And what a revelation it is. I think you've pretty much cracked it.

Firstly, nice to have the question of what happened after the cow got lost answered almost as quickly as it was asked. Stolen in the night, abandoned in a school, returned for a reward. A quite expensive reward, that's $429 in Canadian money.

So much detail on Mootro backstory in this one that you helpfully found. I never thought I'd be so excited to get backstory on a model cow.

The hard-working marketing team at Associated's Metro newspaper had hatched a plan to take one of its life-size promo cows up to Edinburgh for its sponsorship of part of the fringe festival. Metro's marketers planned to put the cow on a float as part of its entry for the opening calvacade of the Edinburgh Festival. They went so far as to arrange for a concrete base to be put on the cow to deter any drunken light-fingery.

"One of its life-size promo cows". So there were more than one. Multiple Mootros. They didn't just take the sole mascot for a large corporation and tear it apart.

And I think you're right that this answers why the cow was important enough to have its theft reported - and to have them offer over $400 to get it back - but unimportant enough so that John Oliver was allowed to attack it with a pipe. This article does make it sound like it was brought up there specifically for the calvacade, so once that was over, it wasn't needed anymore. Could just be dropped in, for example, a venue they sponsor.

But all to no avail. The night before the cavalcade and, ironically, as the Metro team watched a Shakespearian theatrical version of The Italian Job, the thieves pounced. Next morning, Mootro the cow had disappeared and Metro's parade idea was in tatters. The offer of a £250 reward leading to information on the theft of the cow was to no avail and Metro had to press on udderless, despite suggestions that the managing director, Steve Auckland, team up with the Evening Standard's managing director, Mike Anderson, to form a pantomime version.

Love that Steve Auckland gets another mention. He's an unexpected character in this story.

I think we can declare one of the two biggest questions in the Cowgate mystery solved. Where did they get the cow? From the Metro company that sent it up there to be in a parade, it missed the parade due to a theft that's actually entirely unrelated to the Cowgate incident and they paid a lot of money to get it back, but once they had it, they didn't care about it anymore because the parade was over so they put it in the Gilded Balloon. What a fucking story. The cow actually does have a backstory.

And it has a name. A terrible name. A bad pun. That'll be why they destroyed it, you can let things go around being named Mootro. It does add a further layer to this gif:

John Oliver documented his hatred of puns throughout eight years of Bugle recordings, expressing approximately the above level of fury toward Andy Zaltzman's puns. And here, we see someone hand him a pipe in the presence of what is essentially a pun that's taken physical form, and he instantly unleashes hell on it. This is a gif of John Oliver destroying a pun. Whacky stick!

And finally, what a fun video. It looked like an amazingly high quality video because it so much clearer than the other footage of Late 'n' Live I've seen, though when I downloaded it I learned it's only 360p. And I did, of course, download it. Because my Chocolate Milk Gang folder doesn't already have enough files in it (it does, it has too many files, but now it has one more). And because I wanted to take some screenshots, which is much easier on my own video player than from YouTube.

A snapshot from the rap battle video in decent quality (in 360p, but that's so much better than the quality of the video itself that by comparison it looks like high definition). Finally, a reasonably clear image of Daniel Kitson and the fabled Metro cow with Jermine Clement playing guitar in the background looking bored. CMG history that wasn't filmed on a potato, but instead in sweet, sweet 360p.

Speaking of Daniel Kitson, I think he should make this screenshot the background on his website:

It would render the website's text unreadable, but his current background already does this, so he may as well use an image that makes him look like a Star Wars villain.

Was anyone going to tell me Demetri Martin can grow a beard, or was I just supposed to learn that from a 2008 Gilded Balloon promo video myself?

Also, according to the message of this video, congratulations to Jo Brand on being the only woman in comedy before 2008. Holding it down for everyone else.

And right in the middle of it all:

You're absolutely right, it has to be the same cow. You can see the horns are the same shape. And the bag on the side has the Metro logo. Unfortunately 360p isn't quite enough for me to be able to read any of the posters, even with zooming in. But I think it must be from 2003. Look how many places this cow has been!

Genuinely, thank you for sharing in my absolutely pointless hobby of uncovering every single bit of 00s Edinburgh Festival history, with a particular focus on one night in August 2003. By rights this has no business being a collaborative hobby, but my quest has turned into a team effort and that makes it so much better.

Fucking Mootro. What kind of name is that? No wonder they hit it with a stick.

In the last few days, I've made two long and rambling posts about Cowgate, a short incident from 2003 that haunts my nightmares. I think people should know that when I make posts like that - the ones that go way too long about something entirely niche - I am operating under the assumption that absolutely no one is reading this bullshit. Even the small handful of people who read this blog regularly, I assume you skip over those ones.

That's not just a hypothetical assumption, I make writing choices accordingly. I assume the only purpose of this post is to give me somewhere to put the hauntings besides my nightmares, and therefore, it doesn't matter if it's readable. I know that my whole blog is full of errors, but on posts like that, I get especially lax with things like editing. I go really deep on things where on a different post, I might think - okay, that's far enough. Because no one is reading this.

I have now been proven wrong several times about those couple of posts, which both mildly embarrasses and delights me. First of all, I got this great comment from @beastlyanachronism, which is now how I love to picture myself:

Then, the wonderful @lastweeksshirttonight proved that they'd read not only the posts but the comment, by immediately messaging me a corresponding picture. I replied that I love the image, I will definitely start my post with that image the next time a new Cowgate-based detail is found and I need to write about it. I didn't expect that to be soon, though. Breakthroughs are few and far between.

But then, I got another message, proving that at least three different people have read my post (actually four, if you count the very kind British man who read my post and then sent me a message to explain the nuances in the expression "bottle it"). And that last message is the reason for this post. Because, I can't believe I've been given cause to use this image so soon:

Further content behind the cut, because not everyone needs this content all over their feed.

This relates to the message I got last night, from the extremely helpful @linkeightvideo, who not only read my posts, but joined the cause and did his own research. And came up with this link:

The Metro cow is a thing!!! I knew the wording of that YouTube comment was weird (calling it "the Metro cow", rather than something like "a cow that said Metro on it"), suggesting that this was a specific and recognizable instillation. And I was right! But I cannot take credit for figuring that out, all credit goes to @linkeightvideo, who is the best.

The above link is to an archived version of an article from August 5, 2003, about three weeks before Cowgate occurred (which was August 26, 2003 - fun fact that has absolutely nothing to do with anything because to the best of my knowledge he wasn't there or anything, but that was also Nish Kumar's eighteenth birthday). The article is from the Edinburgh Fringe website. It's short enough so I'm just going to paste its text in full:

The Fringe was hit by a bunch of cotton-pickin', rootin-tootin' cattle ruslers in the early hours of Saturday night. The almost life-sized, bright blue and red Metro bull was stolen from outside the Metro Fringe Box Office. Metro newspapers are appealing for its safe return before the police are called and urge anyone with information to come forward. Metro Fringe Box Office Manager, Gillian O'Connor said: "We're distraught to have lost such a valuable member of the Box Office team! Please bring him back." The bull had just completed a secondment outside London's Victoria station, where he stood unmoved for a month. Yet after only a few days on duty with the Fringe he has gone missing leaving today's Festival Cavalcade a bull short of a procession.

That's it!!! That's the one! It was blue and red! I know it was blue and red, because Adam hills shouted "it's got red horns, it's all the rage". And it was almost life sized! And it said Metro on the side! Further research - also done by @linkeightvideo, he deserves all the credit in the world for this - finds that Metro sponsored the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that year, and also directly sponsored the Gilded Balloon venue.

So, the company called Metro had a large cow that was used in advertisements, and for one month in the summer of 2003, it was in London, outside Victoria Station. Then it was brought to Edinburgh, because they were sponsoring the festival and running a box office. They put it outside that box office, and it got stolen within "a few days" (which makes sense, as August 5th is a few days into the festival). It was meant to be part of the Festival Cavalcade, but couldn't be due to thieves.

Then, three weeks later, it spends all night on stage during a late-night comedy show in an Edinburgh venue that Metro sponsors, where it gets taken apart. How do we get from one state of affairs to the other? I don't know, but I'm a hell of a lot closer to understanding than I was yesterday. If the cow was somehow recovered, it would make sense from them to move it indoors, where it can be guarded better (again, credit for this idea goes to @linkeightvideo, and I think it makes sense). I mean, it can be guarded from drunk thieves in the middle of the night. Apparently the stage of the Gilded Balloon is not a good place to guard it from (shockingly) sober comedians in the middle of the night.

This made me try searching again for the specific words "Metro cow", and I found this article from December 12, 2003. It's a list of people who are involved with whatever organization this is, I'm not really clear on that. But it includes this one guy named Stephen Auckland. He's from the North of England, and as of when this was written, he was listened as the managing director of Metro. The bottom of his profile says:

An able sidekick to Associated Newspaper's Mike Anderson, even when it came to keeping up appearances following the disappearance of Mootro, Metro's cow mascot, from the Edinburgh festival. Auckland offered to dress up as a pantomime version. Luckily, they found the cow.

Guys! Guys! It has a fucking name! The Cowgate cow has a name! It's named Mootro! Now that I think about it, I actually can't believe I've never named the thing, given that I named the event (Cowgate), and giving the cow a name is the sort of thing I'd do. But I don't have to, because apparently it's named Mootro.

And the story has an update. It was stolen by August 5, and then it was found at some unknown point, and by August 26 it was in the Gilded Balloon. And then it got taken apart on stage.

I think this brings up one obvious question, which is: if this thing was important enough for its theft to be reported on the Edinburgh Fringe website, how come they were allowed to destroy it? The obvious answer would be that it was specifically made for just that one Edinburgh Festival, and was meant to be destroyed at the end of it anyway. But why did it spend a month in London right before that, then? And why would they do that anyway? Surely it's not efficient to make something like that for only a month, you'd think they'd plan to have it last a while and move it around based on where they're sponsoring things.

I can't believe this. This is the biggest revelation since I figured out who the fuck Karen Koren was, the woman referenced in Adam Hills' song, after after ages of Googling comedians named "Erin Coren" (finally worked out that she was the venue owner, which seems obvious now but it hadn't occurred to me at the time, when I was expecting it to be a reference to another performer). Actually, this is a much bigger revelation than that one, which just explained a couple of Adam Hills' lyrics. This is the biggest revelation in all the Cowgate research yet. The two main questions at the heart of the Cowgate mystery are: "Why did you do it?" and "Where did you get the cow?" And now one of those questions has been answered! It has a fucking name!

That second article referred to it specifically as the Metro "mascot". I guess a company is going to make more than one version of a mascot. But still, I don't think you're allowed to just destroy a sponsor's mascot. Maybe that mascot was at the end of its life anyway? Maybe Daniel Kitson just doesn't give a fuck? Maybe Daniel Kitson stole the cow in the first place. There's a whole new question. Who stole the cow? How did they get it back? How did it get from there to its whereabouts on August 26?

I know it wasn't on the Gilded Balloon stage every night of the 2003 Edinburgh Festival, because there's no sign of it in this montage, from Late 'n' Live on August 19, 2003 (also a fun video and great snippets of Chocolate Milk Gang history, if you can get past the second-hand embarrassment of Kitson trying his rap battle thing with an actual musician, and the presence of an actual musician makes the whole thing seem less ironic and therefore harder to watch - but you do get to see David O'Doherty beat up Jason Byrne and that's hilarious, also it's very funny to watch Daniel Kitson do something as out of character as brag about "nearly" winning a Barry Award and having a girlfriend from Australia, especially given how the latter turned out):

So it wasn't there on that night. Also, it just couldn't have been there every night. The Gilded Balloon is a proper venue that has proper shows during most of its time, it couldn't just have a large cow on stage for all of those. Also, in the beginning of that montage video from August 26, you see Kitson talking to the audience about the cow, and it sounds like he considers its presence as much of a novelty as they do. I mean, he's making fun of them for thinking it's a novelty, but he doesn't seem familiar with it, it seems like something he has to address:

This is the main reason for my theory that they didn't plan it beforehand, the montage shows the audience giving Kitson challenges for easy things to do with the cow, he asks them for more difficult challenges and then the video cuts, but I think the audience then asked him to tear it apart. It's a theory that makes sense based on some circumstantial evidence, but it does open up other questions. The main one being whether you can get permission to destroy a company's mascot between the beginning and the end of a comedy show, especially a comedy show that takes place entirely in the middle of the night. It doesn't seem likely. It also opens up some smaller questions, like what they were planning as the end of the show - the finale of the last night of Late 'n' Live, so you'd think they'd have something - that got bumped for this.

This reminds me that I had some further thoughts on the other mystery, of what actually went down on the night of August 26. I was thinking of the somewhat blue sky theory of there being two previous. Evidence for this: Adam Hills referred to "three chances", they were able to pick up chisels off the ground that seemed to just be lying around (possibly having been discarded after previous attempts), and Kitson in that video does have their air of someone who's already watched this go wrong and is really determined to make sure they get it fucking right this time. Evidence against: I'm not sure that works from a show planning perspective. What if it had worked on the first try, then what would the finale have been? If they'd watched it fail twice, would they really have made it the finale, knowing it may well fail a third time and that would be a shit ending? Though this could possibly be explained by the presence of the pipe that someone runs on stage, significantly increasing their chances compared to any attempt where that pipe was not in play.

I thought of something else today: the cow was already down when they started that video. Earlier in the night, we see comedians sitting on the cow, it's standing up. But at the end, when those guys run out to try to take it apart, they don't have to knock it down first. It's already lying on its side. They could have knock it down just before starting the song, but why would they do that? Surely knocking it down would be a fun dramatic moment, so if this were the first time they'd messed with the cow, they'd leave the knocking down to be part of the process. Unless this weren't the first time, and they had dramatically knocked it down before starting to try taking it apart, but this one done at some earlier point that the video didn't catch.

Anyway. That's the revelation. Along with some further thoughts on theories, but the main thing is the revelation. Massive breakthrough, and I need to thank @linkeightvideo one more time for research that he was under absolutely no obligation to do, but he came through anyway. What a legend. Am I using the British expressions right? What a solid gold legend.