Every article talking about this study talks about how bosses can squeeze more labor out of workers, or how workers can squeeze more labor out of themselves, but the reality is that the human brain only has so much capacity to focus on unpleasant tasks, and people generally won’t work more than that without the threat of force (like in manual and service industry jobs where work is easily quantified and workers are being monitored all the time to make sure they don’t slack off; the threat of being fired and losing one’s ability to eat is the threat of force). People in hunter-gatherer societies do about that same amount of work.
The working day isn’t only about productivity, it’s about keeping you busy too, so you’ll have no time do to other things (like study, discover that you can fight back capitalism, organize, things like that).
On Saturday at New York Comic-Con, Marvel was scheduled to do a splashy launch event announcing the crossover between the Avengers and Northrop Grumman, a notorious arms dealer whose stealth bombers and drones have been front and center in the US campaigns of assassination in many theaters of war, declared and undeclared, in which literally uncounted civilians have been collateral damage.
After widespread fan outrage on Twitter and in person at the Javitts Center, Marvel announced that the deal was dead and the comic would never be published.
But what about vampire history teachers. Vampires who read something from a text book then proceed to light the book on fire and throw it out the window because “No. that’s not even close to what really happened. Listen up nerds I’m about to teach you what really happened in France during the revolution”
I need this as a series
Vampires sharing the recipe for Greek fire.
Vampires speaking in dead languages.
Vampires being able to translate untranslatable scripts.
Vampires who react to straightwashing historical figures like “Are you kidding me everyone knew that man was queer!”
Vampires from cultures who were once antagonistic towards each other stubbornly maintaining a friendship that’s lasted longer than their civilizations.
Vampires who honour forgotten deities you won’t find in mythology books.
Also, vampires who secretly saved stuff from the Library of Alexandra.
A vampire show that does not revolve all around sex and eternal cursed love.
nerd vampire whose knowledge of current events is terrible but they can always remember everything that’s considered “history” so they have a super-detailed knowledge of everything up to about thirty years ago and then ?????
vampire who couldn’t tell you what caravaggio was known for but duelled with him at least three times and slept with him at least ten. “cara-who OH YOU MEAN MICHAEL yeah he was cool”
vampire who spent 100 years in a convent and is still so bitter that in all that time they never made her mother superior “GODDAMMIT I HAD SENIORITY! I HAD SENIORITY!” “okay so first off janet, that was six hundred years ago, but more importantly, maybe if you didn’t always start those complaints off with blasphemy…”
vampire professor who just sort of showed up at oxford when it was founded and is still there (and nobody’s noticed because he still never actually shows up to his lectures)
vampire politician who lifts all their campaign speeches wholesale from speeches given 200 years ago and just waits for someone to catch them out (nobody ever does they’re prime minister and their approval ratings are through the roof)
WAIT I HAVE MORE
queer vampire who constantly talks about the fashion for straightness and you need to be really careful because if you tell them straight is default they WILL scream at you for five days straight about what a modern concept heterosexuality is
vampire hoarder who has an entire town where they just kept having to buy new houses to keep their stuff in and some of it’s probably worth tens of millions by now but you’ll never find it in among the 1950s kitschy kitten sculptures and boxes of newspaper (the newspaper is a wonderful mix of yesterday’s guardian and daily courants from 1725)
vampire sailor from manderville’s time who just has so many stories and some of them might even be true
vampire bluestocking girl who took to the internet like a fish to water and spends her whole unlife engaging reddit antifeminists about women’s rights because that’s one fight she’s determined to see through. also with the advent of cheap dyes she literally wears blue socks every day and hopes one day someone gets the joke
vampire doctor who just gets SO CONFUSED about the literature because do you know how hard it is to keep up with medicine kevin? when i got my doctorate we thought leeches were good and then they were bad and now they’re good again? i was published in issue one of the lancet kevin that is 387 lancets kevin how the hell am i meant to remember which one’s current kevin why are they saying cannabis is good for pain like this is news??? (but also lives in a state of wonderment every day in hospital because wow look at all this stuff we can do now look at it kevin!)
entire coven of vampires constantly quibbling over manners because they’re all from different periods: “HATS OFF AT TABLE” “SCREW YOU LEONARD ONLY PEASANTS EAT BAREHEADED” “TABITHA THAT HASN’T BEEN GOOD MANNERS SINCE THE 1500S NOBODY HAS LICE ANY MORE” “IT ISN’T ABOUT LICE LEONARD IT’S ABOUT GOOD MANNERS YOU NEED TO HAVE GOOD MANNERS WHEN YOU HAVE PEOPLE OVER FOR DINNER” “I SWEAR TO GOD TABITHA IF YOU MAKE THAT PUN ONE MORE TIME I WILL SHOVE YOUR STUPID HAT DOWN YOUR THROAT”
vampire musicians who might not have been child prodigies but goddammit 500 years of practicing an instrument is bound to get you somewhere (also knowing the composer and being the first person to start playing a song doesn’t hurt either)
my favorite will always be vampires who know fuck-all about the standard major historical events because they were always somewhere else whenever big shit was going down:
“yeah i heard about the hundred years war but i was in northern african at the time so…”
“the roman empire fell??? how did the fucking roman empire fall??? i spend a fucking handful of decades in india and i come back to this???”
“russia needs to stop having revolutions, i can’t keep them all straight…”
“when did france become a democracy?? and america’s now it’s own country??? i’ve spent the last century in a forest in wallachia scaring small children so––wHat dO yOU meAn we’re calling it romania now??? when the fuck did it become romania???”
“WE HAD A WORLD WAR??? WE HAD TWO WORLD WARS???? well obviously ‘world’ is an exaggeration because i heard nothing about it while i was lost in the amazon rainforest for the last fifty years…”
“listen i spent most of the fourteenth century as a pirate in the south china sea so someone’s gonna had to clue me in on all this ‘black plague’ nonsense.”
My honest reaction … Does anybody know the last time he’s been to a football game?” Reid said, via a video from Jennifer Lee Chan of Niners Nation. “With that being said, he tweeted out a three-year old photo of him at a Colts game so with the information I have the last time he was at a Colts game was three years ago. So this looks like a PR stunt to me. He knew our team has had the most players protest. He knew that we were probably going to do it again. This is what systemic oppression looks like. A man with power comes to the game, tweets a couple of things out and leaves the game with an attempt to thwart our efforts. Based on the information I have, that’s the assumption I’ve made.
Hello Friends! Happy Labor Day (or as one of my college professors humorously called it, Socialist Christmas)! I hope you like freedom because this week’s McMansion definitely has…some of that!
This 1996 beauty features 4 bedrooms and 3 baths, but somehow ends up totaling almost 5000 square feet. For under $1.3 million dollars you’d think you’d get at least 5 baths.
Onwards!
Foyer
Friends, I’ve found the Jaws theme window, and, of course it’s an awkward stairwell window. Best not slam the front door too hard, lest you send those vases tumbling to the ground, where they shatter into a million pieces coating the foyer in 21 years worth of dust bunnies.
Gr8 Room
I will never not make a joke about Bullwinkle upon seeing a cruelly beheaded moose used as a centerpiece. Also that tiny little stove is negated by the tall ceilings and wall of windows. New England Winter: 1, McMansion: 0.
Dining Room
(extremely Lemony Snicket voice:) If one spends a long period of time anxiously waiting in a particularly dreadful place, such as a dentist’s office or tucked away in a municipal post office crawling with several enemy spies, one fixates on the details of said place. In the case of the dentist’s office, one might seek refuse in a particularly bawdy floral painting, or, in the case of the municipal post office crawling with several enemy spies, the increasingly heinous price of postage stamps in a desperate attempt to distract oneself from one’s dire situation.
Sitting Room
Alexa can never truly replace the hole in Jerry’s heart left by his eldest daughter’s running off with an artist.
Kitschen
Did every rural working class family get one of these catalogs or was it just mine?
This blog was looong overdue for one of my pithy generational political jokes. Also shoutout to my wealthier girl-friends growing up in the South who had to hear “how do you expect to find a husband when you [insert nonconforming behavior here]” as a method of policing deviation from the norm.
Master Bedroom
Uncle Jerry is the guy who DVRs football games and doesn’t fast forward through the commercials.
The minstrelsy sun wins the worst ‘an art’ on mcmansion hell dot com award, one I think it will hold onto for a very, very long time.
Bedroom 2
Imagine listening to The Cure in this room before answering the reader poll thanks
Basement
Folks, I’ve seen more inviting tax offices.
Anyways, we’re coming to the end of the post, which means its time for our favorite part:
Rear Exterior
Time for a McMansion Hell Personality Test: Which “feature” window are YOU??
Left Window: you are passionate and intelligent, yet neurotic. Your friends worry that you won’t be able to handle the punishing amount of work you force yourself to do because you would rather be physically exhausted than have to spend ample amounts of time alone with your own insecurities.
Middle Window: You are confident and idealistic, yet neurotic. You think that your problems can be solved by yelling louder than the person you’re currently arguing with. You may have been poor at sports as a child and also have an energy drink dependency.
Right Window: You are kind and dependable, yet neurotic. You enjoy spacing out while reading difficult books, liking but never reblogging, and earnestly avoiding cable news. You may have a penchant for emotionally unavailable romantic partners and ignoring your newly bought cookbooks in lieu of a good old-fashioned round of takeout (your fifth this week.)
I got..all three of these, wow!
That’s it for this week’s post folks! Be sure to stay tuned tomorrow for our special NEW JERSEY McMansion, and this weekend for another installment of Looking Around!
OH AND ONE MORE THING
Are YOU in the Baltimore metro area?? Do you want to witness me give a live diss on McMansions and talk about my rad as hell politics in one of the 3 coffee shops I write this blog in? Well you’re in luck because Thursday, September 7th, I’ll be doing a McMansion Hell LIVE event at Red Emma’s Bookstore & Coffeehouse. More info here, if you’re up to it.
If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon!Also JUST A HEADS UP – I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content on Patreon!
