David Vienna's Blog, page 85

Tricks Of The Light Marketplace on OpenSea: Buy, sell, and explore digital assets

Tricks Of The Light Marketplace on OpenSea: Buy, sell, and explore digital assets:

Guys…

I created an NFT.

Not just one, but a few of them, actually.

Now, I’m gonna just sit back and watch the cryptocurrency roll on in. That’s how this works, right? You just make some shit, then you’re rich?

Because, if not, I have been horribly misinformed.

insufficiently-advanced:cyberglans:whats ur role in the...

insufficiently-advanced:

cyberglans:

whats ur role in the tumblr community how do you contribute

Here’s one for the GenXers still creeping around here:Whe...

Here’s one for the GenXers still creeping around here:

When I was in college, I lived with a bunch a friends, one of whom worked at a radio station. One night, he brought home a bunch of reel-to-reel tapes of old VO actors. (The station was clearing out a closet and told him to throw them out, he kept ‘em instead.)

After an evening of drinking as college kids do, he decided it’d be fun to go through them, play them for us on a beat-up old reel-to-reel player he also salvaged. Most of them were pretty standard: Actor said their name, did some samples—not too exciting.

Anyway, we’re into our cups and now we’re suddenly experts, critiquing people who’ve been doing this job for decades. We were assholes.

Then, my friend puts on a reel. The actor says his name and starts rattling off what he can do, then he goes, “But, you might know me as…” then, in character, he screams, “COBRA COMMANDER!”

And my fucking god, all of us fell the fuck out.

It was Chris Latta (aka Chris Collins). And he didn’t stop. He launched into Grimlock, then Starscream—classic characters from our childhood.

You never saw a bunch of college dudes scream with as much shock and awe as we did. To describe it as magical would be an understatement.

Cobra Commander invaded the home of a bunch of drunk assholes. It was amazing.

This morning, our boys realized 7th grade doesn’t have recess and now they’re pissed.

This morning, our boys realized 7th grade doesn’t have recess and now they’re pissed.

Making calzone dough from scratch for some visiting frien...

Making calzone dough from scratch for some visiting friends.

(📸 by Glen Starkey, one said friends.)

First day of 7TH GRADE!

First day of 7TH GRADE!

Photo

lyricwritesprose:three–rings:mikkeneko:doctorbluesma...

lyricwritesprose:

three–rings:

mikkeneko:

doctorbluesmanreturns:

pennie-dreadful:

fluffmugger:

godlessondheimite:

#so did they miss the part where gatsby ends up floating dead in a pool and all the miserable deaths in wuthering heights#or did they miss that because there weren’t any chapters titled In Which The Sinners Are Punished For Their Errors#like. even if you require explicit moral instruction from literature it’s pretty hard to miss the comeuppance in those.

“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”

Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.

I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance

please try this on for size:

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument.  Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM.  The message is that it is BAD. 

My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.

Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary.  And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it.  I’m not going to participate in this system.  If that means I go to Hell, so be it.  Going to Hell now.”

(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature.  Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too.  Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.”  Interesting guy.  Sorry for the long parenthetical.)

Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.

And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.

“a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it“ <– THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!

Me: *eating grapes in the kitchen*[12-year-old son enters...

Me: *eating grapes in the kitchen*

[12-year-old son enters the kitchen, sees me eating grapes]

12yo: Are you eating grapes?

Me: *eating grapes in the kitchen*[12-year-old son enters the kitchen, sees me eating grapes]12yo:...

Me: *eating grapes in the kitchen*

[12-year-old son enters the kitchen, sees me eating grapes]

12yo: Are you eating grapes?