#who is literally the nicest person who just wanted to make music and spread positivity

[starksvinyls]

i can’t believe i have to fucking see brendon hate on tumblr. take that shit back to your little twitter group chats.

[geniuslab]

5 mutuals and say something nice about them too much negativity! Let's spread some positive vibes!

only 5? :( 

but yes, i love this!! this makes my heart so warm :’) 

i have to post this under a read more because it’s kind of long

@mylovejhs rachel, my soul sister, where do i begin?? rachel means the world to me, she is always so sweet and caring. i can talk to her about anything and there’s no judgment. she’s definitely listened to me rant a few times and has always been so patient and so levelheaded. she’s also hilarious, and i love talking to her because she can always make me laugh. we don’t always make the best decisions (*cough* amazon shopping sprees *cough*) but we have plenty of laughs about it. and even though i joke that we’re bad influences on each other, we’re still really responsible irl and know how to talk each other down if we have to lmao. i call her my soul sister for a reason, and that’s because we are so similar and i honestly feel like she understands me better than most. plus she finally admitted to being an ot7 stan, welcome to the family!! haha. i really, genuinely hope i can meet rachel some day. i wish we lived close to each other because without a doubt rachel would be my best friend. we would just hang out, watch bts videos, and sit on our laptops while listening to music together. best friendship ever imo. ilysm rachel

@velvethoseok kate!! i don’t think i’ve ever said this but i honestly think of kate as a little sister. and i mean that in the nicest way possible, like i love kate so much and i want to look out for her. we bicker sometimes but it’s all out of love :) kate can put me in my place tho lmao. we don’t talk quite as much as we used to and i highkey miss kate a lot. @ kate message me more i want to talk to you. even if it’s just about hobi. speaking of which, i’ve said it before and i will say it one more time: i sort of blame kate for making me fall in love with hobi. i was already stanning him when i became friends with kate but she posts so much about hobi and loves him so much that i think it spread to me and now look at me, he’s my ult fnhkfdnhkfdh. kate was one of my first friends in the fandom, we started talking because i messaged her about all of the gushy posts she’d tagged hobi in one night and from the very beginning she was super sweet and friendly! and it’s so genuine, too. kate really does care about her friends and that’s such a wonderful quality. thank you for making this fandom a kind place for me, kate. and thank you for being my friend, even if i’m a grandma :’)

@jinandtonics steph and i have been mutuals for probably...4 years? 5 years?! we didn’t start really talking until several months ago, and i somewhat blame steph for getting me into this bts mess because she was posting about them and was part of the reason why i looked up bts in the first place. steph: oh haha sorry about all the kpop i’ve been posting latelyme: it’s okay, i don’t mind seeing cute boys on my dash!!flashforward to 2 weeks later, me: yes that’s yoongi’s ear and i can tell because--anyway, steph has been there for me a lot and sometimes i feel really guilty because she’s helped me through so much and i don’t know how i could ever return the favor. i’ve been going through a rough time these past couple years but steph met me during a particularly bad rough patch and she supported me the entire time. if you’re looking for a loyal friend who will genuinely care about you, steph is it. plus she’s hilarious and writes really great tags haha@pansugah nkhnfdhkfdh i love sara with my whole heart. i am so glad we became friends. we met in one of our nets and i think i eventually private messaged her because i was like “i want to be friends with sara let’s make this happen” and she somehow is still putting up with me after all this time. we haven’t even known each other for that long, but i feel like i’ve known sara forever. she’s so sweet, i think in one of our first convos i overshared a little bit lmaoooo but i didn’t scare her away and she was so kind the entire time and even shared her own stories which helped. i really appreciated that, like so much. also sara is literally the only thing that kept me sane during that stupid bias game, our chats about how much we “love guk so so so much” made me laugh and also kept me sane. sara is so incredibly talented too, like everyone needs to check out her art. it honestly blows my mind how crazy talented she is. ily sara!!

@taepott of course i couldn’t leave out dijah, my heart :’) i think i’ve gushed about dijah so much on this blog that everyone is probably tired of hearing it but i really love her. i still cannot believe she asked me how to make gifs as an excuse to talk to me when someone had already taught her like 2 weeks prior. what is this, a 90s romcom?? nkfnsfknkn dijah and i fake fight a lot and she’s the best person to fake fight with ever. there is no such thing as tmi between us oh my gOD the convos we’ve had. it’s really nice to have a friend that i can literally share anything with and that (from what i can tell lmao) feels the same way too. i like to keep things positive, but i know that if i need to vent or be petty i can go to dijah and she will listen with open ears and open arms haha. i’m not trying to be one of those people who’s like “wow i hate myself how could anyone love me” but i legit don’t know why dijah likes me so much?? idgi but i’ll take her word on it. dijah and i are really similar sometimes and SUPER different at others (*cough* one of us has too many emotions and the other...) but i think it works because our similarities are what make us bond and our differences help us balance each other out. at least that’s my best guess. anyway this is getting long but im love dijah and i’m so happy she made me waste an hour teaching her something she already fucking knew so that we could talk.

[junker-town]

9 thoughts I had watching ‘Little Giants’ for the first time

Little Giants takes place in the fictional town of Urbania, Ohio, where everyone has strange food traditions. | Warner Brothers production / SB Nation illustration

This movie is great.

I just finished watching Little Giants for the first time, and I’ve got to say it’s an absolute delight. It spreads the message of teamwork and determination, but also the problem with boomers and rampant corn wastage.

If you haven’t seen the movie, lemme give you the elevator pitch: A team of “losers,” coached by a “loser,” band together to beat a team of “winners” in a game of pee-wee football. In the end, everyone learns that friendship and family is the real prize.

Watching as an adult for the first time, here are my thoughts!

Kevin is a sad, sad dude.

Kevin O’Shea (Ed O’Neill) is unquestionably the tragic figure in this film. A star football player, we’re never told what caused Kevin to flame out of the NFL. Everyone talks about his high school career and the fact he won the Heisman, but he obviously didn’t make an impact in the pros. Instead, he moved back to Urbania, Ohio, started a Chevrolet dealership, and exists in a local diner to keep reminding old dudes that he was a legend. Even they’re growing tired of his shtick.

Kevin is a joke to his family, annoys almost everyone around him, and he’s only regarded highly by his brother, Danny (Rick Moranis), and assistant pee-wee coach Harold Butz (Joe Bays). The movie positions him as this winner, which I’m sure resonated with kids watching the movie — but to me, I couldn’t reconcile the inescapable sadness of this dude. He literally has nothing to live for but coaching this pee-wee team to try and cling to his fading glory. I struggle to find anything in this world sadder than people who are in their 30s and 40s excitedly recalling high school stories because they have achieved so little of note in the 20 years since.

It’s OK to dislike Kevin, though, because he’s a sexist asshole. He decides not to pick Becky “Icebox” O’Shea (Shawna Waldron) to be a member of his team, only because she’s a girl. This is his own niece, and Icebox friggin’ owns. She’s better than every kid in town, but she doesn’t make the team because of gender.

“Danny, I hate to break it to you, but Icebox is a girl. Now, maybe if you’d start treating her like a girl, she’d start acting like one.”

Kevin’s wife, Karen, even confronts him at dinner about not picking Icebox and he doubles down on the decision. He’s aptly called a chauvinist, and then we get to the most disturbing moment of the movie.

WHY DOES THE O’SHEA FAMILY NEED SO MUCH CORN?!

At the 13:11 mark of the movie, we’re introduced to an ordinary, run-of-the-mill dinner scene. I’ll admit I’ve never had this kind of nuclear family, serving-dish dinner thing — but this is a mess nonetheless. Four people are at the table: Kevin, Karen, and their daughters, Debbie and Priscilla. Nobody else is expected, and there is no mention of this being a special occasion or gathering.

I stopped multiple times while watching to ensure the veracity of the corn count. The count is solid, the count is good. So why the hell did the O’Shea family prepare 11 ears of corn for dinner? It’s such an oddly specific number. Who goes to the store and is like “11 ears of corn, please”?

This entire dinner scene is a mess. They’re eating ham, turkey, corn, broccoli, salad, rolls, mashed potatoes — there are TWO gravy boats on the table. This is a Thanksgiving spread on a weeknight. No wonder boomers robbed this earth of all its natural resources and put humanity on the brink of extinction.

The unexpected monologue about infertility and miscarriage, in a children’s movie.

At 24:32, Cheryl Berman brings her son, Jake, to the garage for football practice. Jake, a hacking and wheezing nerd, is the son of a hypochondriac who spends A FULL 2 MINUTES explaining to Danny about how Jake was almost a miscarriage.

“You can’t be too cautious. After all, we never thought we’d have children. Not after trying for 13 years. It was me. When I finally did get pregnant, the doctor ordered me off to bed. I spent nine miserable months on my back. If I’d rolled over I could have lost him. And the birth ... God only knows the pain. He weighed only 1 pound, 11 ounces — he spent the first six weeks of his life in an incubator — and I think football is just the medicine for him.”

Hey Little Giants, YOU’RE A KIDS MOVIE. Was this supposed to pull adults in? You know there are so many ways you can establish Jake being a germ kid without his mom giving a damn monologue on how he almost died in the womb. Jesus.

The weirdest grocery store in the world.

In dire need of a quarterbacks, some kids find Junior (Devon Sawa) at a grocery store throwing rolls of toilet paper into a grocery cart. Certified dreamboat Junior is the focus of this scene, but I couldn’t concentrate because of this stores shelves.

How many egg noodles are the people of Urbania consuming? Now, if we’re to assume that Urbania is basically Urbana, Ohio, then the population is somewhere around 12,000. There are 456 visible units of egg noodles on the shelf as Icebox walks past.

I went to my local store in Greenville, NC — population 93,000. There were 30 packages of egg noodles on the shelf split across brands. This means that expected egg noodle consumption in Urbania is 119 times greater than Greenville.

They also need boatloads of vegetable oil and applesauce too, apparently.

The only inference I can make from this is that Oily Apple Noodles is the town dish.

The secret weapon is a roided up child monster.

We’re basically at the midpoint of the movie, and Kevin’s Cowboys are starting to get a little concerned with Danny’s Giants. After a “hilarious” scheme where Danny calls the cops and infers that his own brother is a child molester spying on the kids, both are trying to find an edge.

And yes, there’s a surprise waiting for both of them: Spike, an adult-sized running back who just arrived in town with a flat-top sporting dad who’s bred him into being a football machine through the time-honored tradition of being a horrible parent.

The first time we see Spike on screen, he’s carrying a refrigerator out of the back of a U-Haul and scowling the entire time. This is not a happy child, and yet Danny can’t wait to get him on the team — even lying to ensure it’s a possibility.

Naturally, this all unravels. Spike is too aggressive, can only speak in the third person, and threatens everyone. He is a demonstrably horrible human — and it’s not his fault.

Urbania, home of giant ice.

We’ve already established that this town has some weird food traditions, but it turns out this extends to ice too.

Look at the size of those cubes in Becky’s soda. What is up with this diner that you order a drink and get two whiskey cubes?

Everything in this town is strange.

Enter John Madden and friends.

The Little Giants are at a crossroads. Torn apart by Spike’s attitude, they decide football isn’t fun anymore and walk away from the game. Thankfully, in a stunning case of deus ex Maddena, John Madden and a group of football stars are taking the bus to Canton for a Hall of Fame banquet. Lost, and in dire need of directions, Madden and Co. decide helping a pee-wee football team is more important than their prior commitment and meet with the team.

It’s unclear exactly what the NFL players add to the Little Giants. We’ll get to this later.

Someone PLEASE help these kids understand human sexuality.

So we’ve established that Becky is head-over-heels for Junior. The two meet at the side of the lake and talk about kissing, in a scene designed to tease a potential love angle in the film. Then we get this, utterly baffling exchange.

Junior: You want to learn how to kiss!? Becky: Hey, we’re going to have to learn how to do it sooner or later. I mean, you know, if you want to have kids and get a job and stuff. Junior: You can have kids without kissing. Becky: Yeah, but you can’t get a job.

Oh God, there’s a lot to unpack here. No matter which way you slice it, these kids are woefully confused about what it takes to start a career. Maybe the job market in Urbania circa 1994 was different, but the idea that you can’t get a job without kids is some backwards-ass thinking if even I’ve seen it.

The Battle for Urbania.

With 37 minutes remaining, we finally get to the big game between the Cowboys and the Little Giants, taking place on the world’s nicest pee-wee football field. The Giants are without Icebox, because Becky has decided to be a cheerleader instead of a player in an effort to make Junior think of her more like a girl.

Icebox, if he doesn’t like you for playing football, he doesn’t deserve you.

There is literally nothing else to do in Urbania, because the almost entire town has shown up — and those who can’t be there can listen to it on the radio because there’s an actual radio announcer FOR A CHILD’S FOOTBALL GAME.

This announcer (Harry Shearer of The Simpsons fame) is super inappropriate too. After one of the Giants is kicked in the groin he says:

“Someone’s holding about a pound of Aunt Betty’s nut butter right now.”

SIR, YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT A CHILD!

The Giants get utterly demolished in the first half, and they want to quit. Danny delivers a motivational speech, telling his team that while they might not be better overall, you never know what can happen in a game. Maybe, just maybe they can beat the Cowboys — once. That’s all it takes.

Amped up and ready to go, we hit the second half and the Giants look like a different team. It’s at this point the Giants call the cruelest play in the history of football at any level. Johnny has been established as a fairly somber kid. All he wants is his dad to notice him, but his dad is always leaving on business. Sad woodwind music accompanies all his scenes, and it’s a tragic B plot in the movie.

Johnny gets the handoff and lo and behold, his dad is back and waiting in the end zone. It’s here where Becky yells: “Just run to him!” Yes, the Giants are leveraging Johnny’s feelings of inadequacy and loneliness to win. It’s tragic.

Johnny, Johnny? Yes, papa? Scoring touchdowns? Yes, papa Telling lies? No, papa I love you now. WAA WAA WAA

Finally, after its presence being teased all movie long, we finally get to see “The Annexation of Puerto Rico,” the trick play devised by Nubie (Matthew McCurley) that he discussed with Madden. It’s a hidden ball play with swelling music, and against the odds it works.

The Giants win, Danny is elated. Kevin is utterly devastated because not only did he lose the game and therefore his entire reason for existence, but he also bet his entire car dealership on the game because he’s an idiot.

Think about this for a second: All Kevin has in this life is football and his business. He just lost both. Payback for his sexism and corn wastage, in my opinion.

Danny, merciful as he is, says he doesn’t plan to take the business and asks if they want to coach together. The movie closes with the town water tower being repainted from honoring Kevin O’Shea to “The O’Shea Brothers,” because in Urbania winning a single pee-wee game is the equivalent to a Heisman career.

Final thoughts.

This is a good-ass kids sports movie that I’m angry I didn’t see before now. I 100 percent would have had a major crush on Icebox if I watched this as a kid, because she’s one of the greatest characters in any kid’s sport movie.

The best sports movies have characters you can identify with and make you feel like you’re in the movie. Shoutout to farting lineman Rudy Zolteck (Michael Zwiener) for making me feel like one of the gang.

I give Little Giants nine ears of corn out of 10 plates of Urbania Oily Apple Noodles.

[uz-ma3]

observation #6

There are some big problems with 21st century revolution One of them is the lack of real meaningful coordinated action By this I don't mean nothing is being done, or the things being done are wrong or bad But more that the way they are done not really achieving the objectives that need to be achieved Giving specific examples defeats the point I'm trying to make which is that, despite all the talk and all the acknowledgment of the problems we have, we rarely ever see any real and significant change It's just a cycle of 'raise awareness', 'give people knowledge', 'raise more awareness', 'give people more knowledge' Everyone wants the same thing, we know what the finish line looks like, but we talk about getting to it, without actually making any big strides towards it, or putting ourselves in a position to make those strides Linked to this is social media: one of the best and worst things we've ever invented We have a pretty amazing way to talk and connect with people, and access to more knowledge than we can read even in 3 lifetimes But amazing as it is, at the end of the day it is just an artificial reality, with superficial connections (I mean that in the nicest way possible) Better yet, it is a hyper reality And the problem with hyperrealities is twofold: one that, as beautiful as it can be, it is not the real world, and two, this escapist beauty is what not only makes it dangerous but also leads people to, consciously and subconsciously, mistake it for the real world It's a world where recognition, in the form of posting and getting likes or retweets, equates in some people's minds to action And while it has some big ripple effect in that world, and even to an extent, in the minds of people who read it, in the real world it is much less likely to have as huge an impact on the external situations And it is in this emphasis on a reality that, even though it is linked to the real one, has a limited impact (sometimes but not always) on what actually happens in this world Social media also, which has such a big part to play in our lives, has also distorted, on a narrow level, many people's sense of self, and on a wider level, how different actors in the context of a revolution would react to certain events On a narrow level, you, as a person, may be introverted and prefer to not speak at all, or only when you have to But now, when you are in an environment where 'silence' doesn't exist and conversations are always happening, you feel the pressure to go against that core nature and join the conversation (like I said, there are two sides to the coin: it has helped people who suffer in silence have the courage to share too) However, although this distortion on the small scale, is bad, on that wider scale I mentioned it is even worse In the past, as I found out in true believer, revolutions had three main actors: men of words, 'fanatics' and men of action The men of words would point out to the population the injustices of society, then from the population would rise the fanatics who would, in their own way, attack the system through both their own words and actions and finally were the men of action who would put structure to the chaos caused by the fanatics There were not strict archetypes and someone could play multiple parts However, now those distinctions, which were so important in producing change, no longer exist, (or exist in a very diluted form) People who would have been fanatics or men of action have been transformed into men of words in part by social media They live out their archetypes in the hyper reality Fanatics are now 'militant men of words', who talk about dramatic action from behind their computer screens And men of action either don't know that they have a role to play, have no way to play their role in a meaningful way or know they role but have very little to gain from playing it The result being a situation where, even though every now and then there is change from their words, that can also inspire some kind of action, there is very little order behind it the frustration that the words generate is aimless and undirected and any disorder can be 'carefully managed and easily suppressed' In other words, no matter how many words are said, and how many promises for change are made, because they are just words, written on sand, the mindset and the literal+metaphorical frameworks behind the undesirable situation never really changes In the past, it's these three actors working in sync, whether knowingly and unknowingly, that brought change But because of the day and age we live in, the two other keys to evolution and revolution have been diluted to the max The English revolution, just one of many examples of real revolution, where the king, who was acting unreasonably, ended up losing his head, shows this synergistic relationship with fanatics, men of words and men of action all playing their equally important parts However, the modern day equivalent of that, with rogue politicians having their own agendas which are dangerously misguided, has not led to revolution like that in the past There's now an uneasy calm behind the discontent In the past, people who were unhappy with the situation would look for ways to have an impact on it, in the real world, in the best way they knew how a way that they were subconsciously aware to be suited to whatever 'talent' they had, whether that was being a leader, books, poetry and art or simply being part of the mob Now, people who are frustrated with the current situations sit on their desk, (sorry for the generalisations, it's to make a point) or even just open up apps on their phones, and say how they feel, voicing their anger or sadness It's a sort of appeasing power to be given/have, or content powerlessness, that allow people to impact the hyperreality but does almost nothing in the real world Again just to make it clear, this is no disrespect to people who do that, I do it too And I am not saying that we need to return to the times where for a change to happen blood had to be spilled Violence, in the 21st century, isn't the way But neither is social media venting (which is ironic because that's just what I'm doing😂) We need to find new ways to shift the paradigm The roles I mentioned are still relevant, but they need to be relevant to the max and not watered down The way they operate needs to adapt and evolve to this new world we live in In the past, they operated in the spheres of religion and rhetoric But maybe now, they should operate (in the best way possible) in the spheres of power and money A lot of us want the same thing without being consciously aware that we do We all tend to subconsciously operate in our own space, forgetting or ignoring that we exist in a network where every action has an impact on things and people around you When you follow your Good, what I define as what's meant to be done by you, in/for the bigger picture at that point in time, you create a ripple effect, that spreads to all those around you Like a conductor in a circuit, you being yourself sets off a spark that allows energy to go through you and spreads around you-keeping the light of the world going/glowing But that spark needs to be set off and made use of in the real world You (we)(I) need to ask, how can I, in my own way, make a visible or deep (through e.g. art, music etc etc) change on the situation my society is in, that will have a practical impact in the real world and follows my core, uninfluenced beliefs and nature (I could probably have phrased this better, but I hope you get me) The goal being to find that balance between the 'light' of society not being too dark or too bright, with the first being purposeless 'destruction' and the last being excessive 'creation' And to find this balance you have to find that spark, that only you have, and use it to synergise with those people around you and make an impact in your own way Social media is one way of doing this, but should not and cannot be the only way It's a useful tool, but no substitute for real world actions For the web we all operate in to work to the best of its abilities, we have to all find and fulfil our roles, whatever they are It'll be important now, and even more so in the future Not being caught up in hyperrealities But also having a very clear conception of self Knowing your-self deeply, and how that links with what you (know you) should be doing, in your heart of hearts Smashing the mirrors society holds up in front of you, that shows a distorted image of who you really are There I'm done Rant over