this is the first image i tried to draw for this blog and its so fucking dark sided that i cant capture it properly at all NOTHING ive tried can portray the deep seated panic & discomfort i feel when i see it
name this cartoon idea
realy really good
This may have already been added, but in Brazil there was an urban legend that Fofao dolls contained a secret murder knife and it’s based on a half-truth about their components:
Oh, that doesn’t even scratch the surface! Fofão (you pronounce it like foh-fah-oom) is… a cultural icon. You probably won’t find a single Brazilian person who doesn’t know who he is, though he hasn’t been on television for decades, and this is because his whole existence is cursed. Cursed, cursed, cursed. I’ll explain:
Back in the early 80s, there was an educational children’s show called A Turma do Balão Mágico (lit. The Magic Balloon Gang. So eighties.) that was pretty much a Sesame Street knockoff and starred children interacting with puppets and people in costumes and learning wholesome lessons and singing songs. Fofão was one of the nonhuman characters, and he looked like the unholy offspring of Chucky from Child’s Play and a Troll Doll after getting stung by bees:
As you can see, the costume was pretty much just some kind of disturbing prosthetics stuck to some guys face and a wig. Those are real human eyes. Did I mention Fofão means “very fluffy”? I reckon it’s because of the jowls.
Anyway, Fofão became the most popular character of the show for some reason, getting himself a spin-off where he was the protagonist and… merchandise, one of these being those cursed dolls. It was then that a urban legend about it began to surface, and it said (get this) that whoever created Fofão had made a pact with the devil to achieve success and that the devil had instructed him to put a black dagger inside each doll that made whoever touched it become a murderer, or at least so went the version I know of. As it turns out, the dolls did have a weird structure to keep the head upright that was kind of shaped like a knife? You can imagine how prevalent this legend was. I was born a whole decade after Fofão’s show used to air and I was still scared I’d come across one of these dolls as a child.
After that, Fofão faded into obscurity, just to be brought back in the year of our lord 2015 after the existence of some… peculiar children’s birthday party entertainers came to light and rose to meme levels. They’re called Carreta Furacão (Hurricane Truck) and they’re basically people dressed up as mascots who take the birthday kids for a ride around town on a modified truck while they dance and do parkour, except they’re unusually prone to accidents, and for some reason they almost all happen with one of the dancers… who dresses up as Fofão, AKA the guy on OP’s picture. There are hundreds of videos dedicated to the Carreta Furacão Curse. Here’s one of them:
So… you draw your own conclusions. I, myself, am of the opinion that Fofão isn’t so much of a guy in a costume as he is a real life goblin that emerges from the darkness every 30-odd years to feed on the fear of children.
Wow, a true Bad Cartoon Idea for the ages
Going even further about this truly cursed character: these modified trucks with lights, sound boxes and mascots doing acrobatics have been common in Brazil, specially in small towns, where traffic isn’t an issue, and mostly from the late 90s to 2005 or so, but the mascots were usually from american media, and adapted through the years. At first you’d always see Mickey, Popeye, Donald Duck and such, and later with new movies and cartoons we started getting more Marvel superhero costumes and even Ben 10 – but for whatever reason Fofão has always been present.
What is even weirder about that is that most young kids are scared shitless of the Fofão costume (hell, I know I was), and most people, even the ones born in the early 90s, no longer remember Balão Mágico or TV Fofão, so they have no idea who this ugly clown is or where he came from – they just know people always dress like him for these truck rides and do sick wallrunning acrobatics.
Michael Frank ran his finger down his medical bill, studying the charges and pausing in disbelief. The numbers didn’t make sense.
His recovery from a partial hip replacement had been difficult.
He’d iced and elevated his leg for weeks. He’d pushed his 49-year-old body, limping and wincing, through more than a dozen physical therapy sessions.
The last thing he needed was a botched bill.
His December 2015 surgery to replace the ball in his left hip joint at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City had been routine. One night in the hospital and no complications.
He was even supposed to get a deal on the cost. His insurance company, Aetna, had negotiated an in-network “member rate” for him. That’s the discounted price insured patients get in return for paying their premiums every month.
But Frank was startled to see that Aetna had agreed to pay NYU Langone $70,000. That’s more than three times the Medicare rate for the surgery and more than double the estimate of what other insurance companies would pay for such a procedure, according to a nonprofit that tracks prices.
The Department of Health and Human Services placed more than a dozen immigrant children in the custody of human traffickers after it failed to conduct background checks of caregivers, according to a Senate report released on Thursday.
Examining how the federal agency processes minors who arrive at the border without a guardian, lawmakers said they found that it had not followed basic practices of child welfare agencies, like making home visits.
The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened its inquiry after law enforcement officials uncovered a human trafficking ring in Marion, Ohio, last year. At least six children were lured to the United States from Guatemala with the promise of a better life, then were made to work on egg farms. The children, as young as 14, had been in federal custody before being entrusted to the traffickers.
“It is intolerable that human trafficking — modern-day slavery — could occur in our own backyard,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the subcommittee. “But what makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a U.S. government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers.”
In addition to the Marion cases, the investigation found evidence that 13 other children had been trafficked after officials handed them over to adults who were supposed to care for them during their immigration proceedings. An additional 15 cases exhibited some signs of trafficking.
The report also said that it was unclear how many of the approximately 90,000 children the agency had placed in the past two years fell prey to traffickers, including sex traffickers, because it does not keep track of such cases.
“Whatever your views on immigration policy, everyone can agree that the administration has a responsibility to ensure the safety of the migrant kids that have entered government custody until their immigration court date,” Mr. Portman said.
In the fall of 2013, thousands of unaccompanied children began showing up at the southern border. Most risked abuse by traffickers and detention by law enforcement to escape dire problems like gang violence and poverty in Central America.
As detention centers struggled to keep up with the influx, the Department of Health and Human Services began placing children in the custody of sponsors who could help them while their immigration cases were reviewed. Many children who did not have relatives in the United States were placed in a system resembling foster care.
But officials at times did not examine whether an adult who claimed to be a relative actually was, relying on the word of parents, who, in some cases, went along with the traffickers to pay off smuggling debts.
Responding to the report, the Department of Health and Human Services said it had taken measures to strengthen its system, collecting information to subject potential sponsors and additional caregivers in a household to criminal background checks.
Mark Greenberg, the agency’s acting assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Families, said it had bolstered other screening procedures and increased resources for minors.
“We are mindful of our responsibilities to these children and are continually looking for ways to strengthen our safeguards,” he said.
“If you have a problem with something, explain it rationally, calmly, articulately, and with patience so that other people will understand and take you seriously.”
[does so]
“Hmm. If you actually felt strongly about this, you wouldn’t be so soft-spoken, composed, and emotionally detached. You don’t look the least bit upset! Someone truly in distrsss would be screaming right now.”
[screams and cries]
“Oof, wow, melodramatic much? You’re clearly acting out because you want attention. Use your words next time if you want people to believe you.”
the trick is to calmly explain while being backed up by a Greek chorus standing behind you howling and wailing
A cello heavy orchestra can also work if you haven’t a Greek chorus on hand.
I coined the term “genderqueer” back in the 1990s in an effort to glue together two nouns that seemed to me described an excluded and overlooked middle: those of us who were not only queer but were so because we were the kind of gender trash society couldn’t digest.
A prominent gay columnist immediately attacked me in print for “ruining a perfectly good word like ‘queer.’” (Harrumph!)
Joan Nestle, Claire Howell, and I then used the word for the title of our anthology of emerging young writers. But I don’t think anyone expected the term or the concept to really catch on.
Then one year I was attending the Creating Change conference and using the (wonderfully gender-neutral) bathrooms, and saw someone had posted a sticker on the wall that read, “A Genderqueer Was Here!” I thought, Hmm … that’s really interesting. Someone is using that not as a descriptor, but as the basis for their identity. So it begins.
Fast-forward about 20 years and I was just reading Matt Bernstein’s anthology Nobody Passes, and in it writer Rocko Bulldagger bemoans the term’s very existence, declaring, “I am sick to death of hearing it “
Such is the arc of a new idea.
But if you opened your eyes at all, you could see all this coming a long way off.
At Camp Trans, outside the now-defunct Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, I’d meet one young person after another simply known as “boychik,” “demigirl,” “transmasculine,” “tryke,” and any number of exuberant genders few of us had contemplated.
Camp Trans itself was always overrun by one set of teens and 20-somethings explaining patiently, if exasperatedly, to their lesbian mothers — who’d brought them in tow to experience the beauty of womanhood — that they needed to move beyond their transphobia and accept trans people as women and not men. And a totally different set of teens and 20-somethings were joyously destroying by example the categories of men, women, lesbian, and transgender.
We’ve spent almost 40 years fighting for a bunch of identity categories that are based entirely on the implicit acceptance that there are two and only two basic sexes, with the associated possible gender identities and sexual orientations that come from them.
And now young people are about to blow all that up.
I was reminded of this while watching Showtime’s hit TV show Billions, which introduced a new character, Taylor, whose gender I was having fun trying to puzzle out.
Taylor is an intense, brilliant intern, who wears a shirt, tie, and buzzed crew cut, but otherwise has no identifiable landmarks by which the viewer might navigate the gender terrain.
Finally, they are introduced to Bobby Axelrod, the head of multibillion-dollar hedge fund Axe Capital.
As played by Asia Kate Dillon, they reply: “Hello, sir, my name is Taylor. My pronouns are ‘they, theirs, and them.’”
Cutting-edge stuff. And a signpost for where the gender dialogue is going. Just like when student Maria Munir, 20, came out to a nonplussed President Obama as “nonbinary.”
In a recent article at Refinery29, Dillon explained that they didn’t just read for the part. As they read the part, “I did some research into non-binary, and I just thought, Oh my gosh, that’s me… When I read the script for episode two and I saw the ‘they, theirs and them,’ that’s when the tears started to well up in my eyes. Then when I read Axe’s response, which is, ‘Okay,’ and then the scene just continues, that’s what ultimately moved me to full-fledged tears.”
This is powerful stuff. And it’s only the start. The trans movement is going to have to accommodate and open the boundaries perhaps more than it would like.
But if it’s the job of young people to expose and explode their elders’ paradigm, these young people are off to a wonderful start.
“Hello. My name is Riki. My pronouns are ‘they, theirs, and them.’“
Riki Wilchins, “Get to Know the New Pronouns: They, Theirs, and Them
Women in short skirts prowling the streets at the command of pimps
leering hawkishly from the gloom. That’s the popular stereotype of the
prostitute. It’s 20 years out of date.
The
internet transformed the sex industry in every way, paving the road for
vast new enterprises such as video camming, pornographic clip sales,
and online roleplay. It also made the business much safer.
Many
sex workers were no longer obligated to patrol the streets, removing
the need for pimps as protection. Initial encounters could be conducted
through computers, allowing for the negotiation of rates and boundaries
before meeting in person. Potential customers could be vetted through
peers, letting women avoid johns with histories of violence or refusal
to pay.
For the first time in centuries, prostitutes took control of their industry, their safety, and their earnings.
By killing the sites sex workers used to advertise, Congress is pushing
them from the safety of their own homes back to the street. Most
practicing today have never known a time before the internet. Now
they’re fumbling to adapt to a resurrected dark age.
There are a number of sites starting up or trying to expand, to make up for the loss of BP and others. Probably the most significant is Switter.at, run by the new company Assembly Four, co-founded by Lola Hunt who is a tech person as well as a sex worker herself.
It is based outside the US and runs on the Open Source server Mastodon, and works with the larger federated Mastodon network (federated meaning it is a bit like email, there are many servers run by different people/orgs but they can all talk to each other).
throwback to that time in my existentialism class where the professor asked ‘who thinks hell is other people’ and half the class slowly and meekly put their hand up
then the prof was like ‘…i mean who originally said it’
there are some posts that sound utterly made up for the joke or for the notes, but this one I whole heartedly believe
Sounds right to me…
That quote is amazing to me in that it’s quoted completely accurately and yet in a way that means something completely different from what it meant in context.
(Sartre was claiming that Hell was other people. He was not claiming that other people were hell.)
…I can’t actually tell what distinction you’re drawing there. Can you expand?
The line comes from No Exit, which is set in Hell. Spoilers for No Exit follow
In particular, three people who have been condemned to hell are trapped eternally in a room together. And at first they think they got off easy without any pitchforks or fiery lakes or anything. But over the course of the play they discover that they have been chosen very specifically to have neuroses and character flaws that interact with and torment each other.
Each one needs the approval of a second in an unstable RPS cycle so that any time one of them might be satisfied by a second, the third swoops in and ruins it.
And when they figure this out, one of the characters expresses his understanding, that hell isn’t physical torture. “Hell is just—other people.”
So the point isn’t that other people, generically, are hellish; it’s rather that you can build a hell out of other people.
But when I hear people quote it, it’s usually sort of an introvert-pride thing. “Other people are hell; you should spend time alone.” And that’s not the point at all. It’s a statement about how bad unhealthy relationships can be, not a statement about how all relationships are unhealthy!
“hell is other people” has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell.
Reblogging for the original post which was hilarious and also for that explanation which is beautiful
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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