me: finally realizes what that actor was also in
me: screams the role with no warning or explanation
Remember when you were 12 and attracted to other 12 year olds? What the fuck was that?
When I was 12 I was attracted to Oded Fehr in The Mummy.
a tale of trees and espionage
okay story time:
my professor (lovely man, married to our TA, 5'2", about as intimidating as a muffin) is a dendrologist by trade, so he studies trees. it was about three hours into our social sciences course, last lecture before exams, everyone was frazzled and exhausted, so he told us about his most exciting/in-depth research to date to cheer us up.
(the few of us who actually showed up were like “ok sir im sure its fascinating” but in our minds we were totally like its trees what. is. exciting. about trees. You might be wondering the same thing - the acorns? the leaves? the roots? BUT NO. IMMA FUCKIN TELL YA.)
ANYWAY we settle in, he had a few pictures loaded up from his field work (we were chuckling at this point…. ‘hehehe field work’ i giggled to my frend. its trees.) and began to tell his tale. it’s long, imma warn you, but……. god. just read it.
theres an species of tree called the cucumber tree (Magnolia acuminata, if ya wanna get all Latin-y). its super endangered, in our region there’s only ~280 that are registered by the government, yadda yadda yadda. my prof thought that was tragic
(i know)but also strange, because when he was writing his thesis about local trees years ago, he kept coming across cucumber trees in really random places. we’re talking like backyards, independently-owned nurseries, etc. WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE because, according to tree law(i know)it is very strictly protected by the government, and thus super “illegal to possess, transport, collect, buy or sell any part of a living or dead member of a listed species if it originates from wild sources.” essentially, the govt takes control over growing the trees and anyone who independently raises them is breaking the law (i know)so he’d ask people “do you have a permit for these trees?” and they were like “uh no, it’s just a tree someone sold me, i think it looks nice, are you gonna arrest me?” so he’d be like “nah nah nah just tell me who sold it to you”
eventually, months/years later, someone did, and turns out it was like this underground sort-of illegal tree dealing club
(i know). so my prof went, got a bit of funding from the government, who were getting pissed at independent cucumber tree numbers, and THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTO THE GOOD SHIT I STG.he infiltrates the tree trafficking organization. he buys a cucumber tree from an independent nursery, raises it for months, ensures he gets noticed by the traffickers, and then INFILTRATES it and convinces its leader to LET HIM JOIN. he has to pay like a steep entrance fee, which he does (and it blows my mind that the government of my country paid money to illegal tree dealers), but then he is given full access to records and maps because they think he’s one of them, not a SECRET AGENT.
now this part blows my mind because the tree lords don’t even have to try very hard to find cucumber trees because government agents MARK THE TREES AND DISTINCTLY TAG THEM SAYING THIS IS ENDANGERED DO NOT TOUCH. so, ya know…………. it’s a bit obvious. my prof hangs out with the members so much that he figures out their “hit spots”. these are where the trees are relatively secluded and unguarded. (he writes all this shit and numbers down for his research.)
BUT THATS NOT ENOUGH BECAUSE THE GOVT SAYS HES WASTING THEIR FUNDING IF HE DOESNT HAVE PROOF and they are willing to take LEGAL ACTION for misuse of funding (my prof doesn’t have the money nore time nor power to take them to court, which would also blow his cover). so my prof literally STAKES OUT a copse of cucumber trees at a recognized wildlife reserve for. DAYS. he camps there, and watches the trees, is about to give up, he’s going off an unreliable rumor from the traffickers that a harvester would be going there within the next week. finally, this guy comes and takes the cucumber tree seeds from the CLEARLY MARKED trees by the government, and my prof takes pictures (we are shown these pictures, most of us are speechless at this point). dozens of candid shots of a man my grandpa’s age with a grocery store bag, garden shears, and a ladder, clipping away the illegal seeds and then going on his merry fucking way.
so my prof has the proof, he’s been undercover for months now at this point, he writes up his report, gives it to the government who is like…….. “oh shit”, helps them draft up a new LESS COMPLETELY FUCKING OBVIOUS way of marking endangered trees (so that way non-tree-lovers wouldn’t damage them further, etc.), and then never returns to the tree traffickers. he’d given them a fake name, address, everything….. he disappears.
…there was a full minute of stunned silence from us students at this point, during which he grew more and more nervous (again, he’s a muffin) and all of us students are just like……. “whoa.” we asked him what happened to the remaining illegal cucumber trees & if he turned the tree dealers in to the government, and that is when he smiles a little bit and shows us the last few pictures. because here’s the kicker… he never turned the smugglers in. he burned all the data he collected, defied the government pressuring him to turn them in, and the only reason he’s not incarcerated is because his work is so prominent in certain circles now & universities love him, that there would be an uproar if he got arrested. he’s like a fucking anti-hero and then he tells us (i’ll never forget, it’s the most inspirational green-thumb thing in the world) “it may be ‘illegal’, but those who risk their liberty to ~save the world~ should never be reprimanded, no matter what those in power say.”
we are all stunned. some of us are considering dendrology as a field we’d now be interested in pursuing. he clicks his slide one final time, before we leave our last lecture and, since he had an asthma attack (lil muffin) he didn’t attend our exam, so i never see him again…………
and there, on the slides, the last picture? THERE HE IS. in his own backyard. with his equally lovely TA wife. both grinning innocently, standing underneath a……. FUCKING. FULL GROWN. ILLEGAL. CUCUMBER TREE.
my sister-in-law, who has no kids and does not spend time around children ever, decided she wanted to take my kids on an “outing” yesterday. (she sees them like 4 times a year usually). she took them to some weird historical u.s. military fort museum thing, it’s like a big compound with like 15 buildings enclosed by a fence. anyway my 5-yr-old saw one of those red metal fire alarm boxes on the wall and asked his aunt “what does that say?”
now the correct answer to this question, in my opinion, would be “that is a fire alarm. we only touch fire alarms if there is a fire. if there is a fire, you would pull the handle and it would make a very loud noise so that other people know to get out of the building.”
according to several reliable sources, my sister-in-law’s answer to the question was, “it says ‘pull.’”
so anyway that’s how they managed to evacuate all 15 buildings at the museum and why this is probably their last “outing” for a while.
“Even in interviews in the last few years, people have said to me, ‘I can’t believe that happened, how did you feel about it, that is insane.’ And my response always was, ‘That was then, this is now.’ And then it happened again!”
They're Rebooting the Classic Fantasy Movie Labyrinth, But Who Can Replace Bowie?
If they’re going to do it, they had damned well better do it right, that’s all I’m going to say.
Well. That and “Good luck recasting Jareth.” Honestly? My only possible suggestion would be Tilda Swinton. That could maybe work. Maybe.
made some graphs on my wild friday night. i had noticed that dylan was great at creating offense night after night but wanted to find hard proof. fun things from these graphs:
- zetterberg and dylan are paired together the most which is why their numbers are so high (side note - z has 9 goals this season and dylan has a primary assist on 5 of them nice)
- however, when dylan gets moved to different lines, he still scores (11 different players have assists on his goals)
- 14 of dylan’s 17 assists are primary assists, aka he sets up scoring chances for other players too
- 14 of his goals are at even strength
- i am not surprised his +/- is +23
- i am a homer but dylan larkin is still very good
Cats Who Just Realized You Took Them To The Vet