It’s my grandpa’s birthday next week and he said “I don’t want to be 85” and my grandmother, his wife of 59 and a half years, said “well your only alternative is to die”, I can’t believe how affectionate they are
I was having lunch with them today and my grandpa started throwing napkins at my grandmother, and she balled it up and looked all set to throw it back but then she put it down and said “I will not throw it because I was brought up properly, you were dragged” she has spent ¾ of her life with this man
How the heck did her hair get braided like that? Did she and the other officers just have a braiding train at night? ????
do you think Peggy carter needs anyone to braid her hair? she does it herself. The right hand’s nail polish? my girl has it covered. Zipping and unzipping the back of the dress? pff… Peggy Carter can do anything. Liquid Eyeliner? in one try. Peggy carter can do anything.
anything.
a n y t h i n g.
That’s not a braid. It’s a roll. It is one of the most beautiful hair styles to come out of the 40s and is incredibly simple. The hair styles you should be impressed with are these.
Waves: I had a 1920s themed dance last month, and I wore my hair in waves. I sat in a chair with a professional stylist for AN HOUR for FOUR of those beauties. I see at least eight. And she does those regularly for work.
Victory curls: I can do victory curls. Two, to be exact. Not counting practice, I have worn my hair in V-curls exactly twice. It took me an hour and a half last time, and I didn’t even curl the ends, just two v-curls on the top of my head, and they weren’t nearly this amazing. Again, another casual work look.
Do you think Steve curled her hair? Fat chance. Be in awe of Peggy Carter. Be in awe.
I now have a mental image of Peggy Carter doing her nightly routine, which of course doesn’t necessarily happen at night, just whenever she has a chance to lie down and sleep. It starts with sitting at her desk, where a mirror has been wedged into the right position by militarily files, but she doesn’t look at it any more. Instead she’s pouring over whatever has to be memorized for the following day, fingers working on automatic as she wedges pins into place. It takes forty seven pin curls to get the look she wants, and she’s done with it before she finishes reading the memo.
There’s little flickers of red on her gun as testament to smudged nails before she learned to check her weapons first and then paint her nails. While they dry she reads something else, filing it all away for future reference and remembering key words by which finger she was painting at the time. When Peggy Carter checks her nails she might well be looking for chips, but it’s more likely she’s remembering names.
She ran out of cold cream weeks ago, but she stills has some rose water left and uses it sparingly, careful not to get it mixed up with the other little vials in her kit.
And of course there will be that one night, when the alarm sounds and everyone is forced from their beds in a panicked hurry. Peggy Carter will not only be at the center of it, but she will be the one keeping the intruder pinned down. Dressed in a faded floral nightgown thrown over her night clothes, smelling like rose water, her hair hidden under a silk scarf to keep her curls in place, gun held steadily in a perfectly manicured hand. Everyone else is dressed, however hurriedly, but it’s Peggy who is the most put together, even in her pin curls.
I love the expression, “Hell in high heels”, but frankly Hell has never met Peggy Carter.
ALL of this ^^^. Also, the glorious queen probably does her winged liquid eyeliner in that stupid jeep, bouncing along the path to a meeting.
This is the most beautiful thing I’ve read so far about Peggy Carter. *chinhands and sighs, dreamily* Because Peggy fucking Carter.
A new report
summarizing three years of from the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee on the TSA calls out the agency for its “toxic
leadership culture, misconduct, mismanagement, whistleblower retaliation
and obstruction,” citing these as the reason for the agency’s 20%
annual attrition rates.
The report was a long time coming, faced many hurdles and featured many
lowlights, like the 2016 testimony of Office of the Chief Risk Officer
program manager Mark Livingston, who described working for the TSA as
like “Lord of the Flies; you either attack or be attacked.”
like all electronics, robots are extremely susceptible to ghostly influence
Glumshoe, S. (2018). Getting the Ghost Out of the Machine: Practical Exorcism for Androids. North Central Positronics. 19(09), 167-188.
“Ten?” Darya whispered. “Are you alright…?”
The android shuddered and rose slowly to his feet. There was something stiff and insectoid about his movements – nothing like Ten’s usual inhuman grace. His head twisted on his neck with a sound like a creaking gate.
“Hoowee! Talk about a haunted doll!” The voice that came out of the robot was not one Darya had ever heard him use before. “I’ve never gotten to play with a toy this fancy before!”
Darya took a step back. The android’s eyes fixed on her. Even in the dim lighting of the kitchen, she could see his pupil-like ocular lenses expanding and contracting independently, whirring in protest at the unnatural function. A shiver went down her spine.
“Ten?” she asked again, her mouth dry, and raised her hands slowly in front of her.
“Sorry!” sang the android in that strange voice. “’Ten’ can’t come to the phone right now! Care to leave a message?”
It lunged without warning. Darya screamed and stumbled backwards, bruising her spine against the edge of the counter. The thing’s hands shot out and grasped her by the throat, pressing cold thumbs against her windpipe. Its face contorted into a wide, manic smile that strained the synthetic skin of its cheeks.
Darya choked and clawed at its wrists. The android, insensitive to pain and far stronger than a human, ignored her and slowly began to squeeze. The pounding in her head grew louder and louder as she felt pressure build behind her eyes. Her vision blurred and her hands slipped off the thing’s wrists, falling leadenly to dangle at her sides.
Suddenly its grip loosened. Blood rushed back into her head and Darya wrenched away, gasping for breath. Ten’s body twitched again as she scrambled for the doorway.
“Ooh, am I not supposed to do that?” it chuckled. “Looks like I forgot to turn the safety off! Hey – where are you going, little lady? Don’t tell me you’re too old to play with dolls…”
Stumbling into the hallway, Darya froze. She wanted to run, but there was no way she could make it further than the edge of the yard without support, and that support had just tried to kill her. She glanced over her shoulder at the robot. Ten – or Ten’s body, at any rate – was still standing beside the sink, twitching weirdly as if something was shifting around inside of it, trying to get comfortable.
“Ahh. Much better.” It stretched its arms. “Now… where were we?”
“I’m so sorry. If only I’d known!” Ten’s face reappeared, his hand pressed against his cheek in mock concern. “We could have had so much more fun. Just think – I could have ridden around inside him, biding my time, making him do awful little things he’d never remember. Eventually you’d have to deactivate him. I wonder whose heart would break first… yours, or his?”
Rationally, Darya knew that Ten could not feel physical pain – at least, not in the sense that a vertebrate with a nervous system could. Even his emotions were muted, limiting his ability to suffer. Theoretically.
Why is october the 10th month of the year and not the 8th? Like it literally has ‘octo’ meaning 8 in it’s name
It used to be!! But because the Romans added the month of July in honour of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C and then later in 8 B.C they added August after Augustus Caesar, they threw off the calendar and everyone is bitter about it.
we should totally just stab caesar
We already did that.
we should do it more than once
Motherfucker..
I was actually JUST having this conversation with T.
Like OCTober… but also DECEMber, SEPTEMber…. are all pretty obvious, but then like, NOVEM means nine… and the rest are a little screwy, I was expecting more numbers from SOME tradition… but no…
JANUS -god of beginnings
March for Mars, April “the opening”, and then a couple more obscure things…
But then straight up 7,8,9,10… until they fucked it up and then didn’t bother re-naming them…
But let’s be fair…. Fun as Rome was, and whatever good and bad came from it, it was a series of poor decisions and unfinished projects more than anyone gives it credit for.
This is really clever and really well done! If it were me, I would frame this in a double-sided glass frame, and hang it in a window, so the viewer could always enjoy both sides.
You know, this scene is so powerful to me that sometimes I forget that not everyone who watches it will understand its significance, or will have seen Casablanca. So, because this scene means so much to me, I hope it’s okay if I take a minute to explain what’s going on here for anyone who’s feeling left out.
Casablanca takes place in, well, Casablanca, the largest city in (neutral) Morocco in 1941, at Rick’s American Cafe (Rick is Humphrey Bogart’s character you see there). In 1941, America was also still neutral, and Rick’s establishment is open to everyone: Nazi German officials, officials from Vichy (occupied) France, and refugees from all across Europe desperate to escape the German war engine. A neutral cafe in a netural country is probably the only place you’d have seen a cross-section like this in 1941, only six months after the fall of France.
So, the scene opens with Rick arguing with Laszlo, who is a Czech Resistance fighter fleeing from the Nazis (if you’re wondering what they’re arguing about: Rick has illegal transit papers which would allow Laszlo and his wife, Ilsa, to escape to America, so he could continue raising support against the Germans. Rick refuses to sell because he’s in love with Laszlo’s wife). They’re interrupted by that cadre of German officers singing Die Wacht am Rhein: a German patriotic hymn which was adopted with great verve by the Nazi regime, and which is particularly steeped in anti-French history. This depresses the hell out of everybody at the club, and infuriates Laszlo, who storms downstairs and orders the house band to play La Marseillaise: the national anthem of France.
Wait, but when I say “it’s the national anthem of France,” I don’t want you to think of your national anthem, okay? Wherever you’re from. Because France’s anthem isn’t talking about some glorious long-ago battle, or France’s beautiful hills and countrysides. La Marseillaise is FUCKING BRUTAL. Here’s a translation of what they’re singing:
Arise, children of the Fatherland! The day of glory has arrived! Against us, tyranny raises its bloody banner. Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers? They’re coming to your land to cut the throats of your women and children!
To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Let’s march, let’s march! Let their impure blood water our fields!
BRUTAL, like I said. DEFIANT, in these circumstances. And the entire cafe stands up and sings it passionately, drowning out the Germans. The Germans who are, in 1941, still terrifyingly ascendant, and seemingly invincible.
“Vive la France! Vive la France!” the crowd cries when it’s over. France has already been defeated, the German war machine roars on, and the people still refuse to give up hope.
But here’s the real kicker, for me: Casablanca came out in 1942. None of this was ‘history’ to the people who first saw it. Real refugees from the Nazis, afraid for their lives, watched this movie and took heart. These were current events when this aired. Victory over Germany was still far from certain. The hope it gave to people then was as desperately needed as it has been at any time in history.
God I love this scene.
not only did refugees see this movie, real refugees made this movie. most of the european cast members wound up in hollywood after fleeing the nazis and wound up.
paul heinreid, who played laszlo the resistance leader, was a famous austrian actor; he was so anti-hitler that he was named anenemy of the reich.ugarte, the petty thief who stole the illegal transit papers laszlo and victor are arguing about? was played by peter lorre, a jewish refugee. carl, the head waiter? played by s.z. sakall, a hungarian-jewwhose three sisters died in the holocaust.
even the main nazi character was played by a german refugee: conrad veidt, who starred in one of the first sympathetic films about gay men and who fled the nazis with his jewish wife.
there’s one person in this scene that deserves special mention. did you notice the woman at the bar, on the verge of tears as she belts out la marseillaise? she’s yvonne, rick’s ex-girlfriend in the film. in real life, the actress’s name is madeleine lebeau and she basically lived the plot of this film: she and her jewish husband fled paris ahead of the germans in 1940. her husband, macel dalio, is also in the film, playing the guy working the roulette table. after they occupied paris, the nazis used his face on posters to represent a “typical jew.” madeleine and marcel managed to get to lisbon (the goal of all the characters in casablanca), and boarded a ship to the americas… but then they were stranded for two months when it turned out their visa papers were forgeries. they eventually entered the US after securing temporary canadian visas. marcel dalio’s entire family died in concentration camps.
go back and rewatch the clip. watch madeleine lebeau’s face.
casablanca is a classic, full of classic acting performances. but in this moment, madeleine lebeau isn’t acting. this isn’t yvonne the jilted lover onscreen. this is madeleine lebeau, singing “la marseillaise” after she and her husband fled france for their lives. this is a real-life refugee, her real agony and loss and hope and resilience, preserved in the midst of one of the greatest films of all time.
I remember when I first saw Casablanca, and being struck by this scene, and that was without knowing the history behind it or all that Madeleine Lebeau – and so many more refugees- had suffered.
Do yourself a solid and watch this film. Watch this scene. And most of all, remember refugees, the ones who lived then and especially the ones who live now.
I knew this movie, of course, it’s one of the mains from my mother’s list of movies you should see “At least once in a lifetime”, but I had never until now felt any desire to watch it.
It’s one of those movies where context and the (not so quite) subtle subtext are vitally important to understanding the importance of it, not only as a classic piece of film making (hokey old timey speech and all), but as a political and social commentary of the times, rooted fiercely in protest and a whole lot of “fuck you fascists”.
I never really got it until my father (raised by his Jewish grandmother who fled Austria with the clothes on her back and a single suitcase and swathes of dead loved ones left behind) sat me down and told me the full context of when the movie was made, what it was actually about and who it was made for.
It made his casual way of saying “here’s looking at you kid” whenever we skipped school to go to protest rallies (start of the Iraq war) all the more poignant for me. I just thought he was being an old man quoting the popular cult media from his youth. But it means so much more than that.
Cause here’s the thing about that iconic line from the end of the movie: you’ll find screeds and screeds of people talking about how he’s using it to flirt with her once last time and just how suave it is, alluding that it’s purely about her youth and beauty and his ever lasting love for her even though she’s married to someone else.
But that line? Had been in use for a good 50+ years prior to Casablanca gracing the screens. It’s a toast, a wish for your health. And the people watching would have known the significance of it, particularly the displaced Europeans knowing that they’ll likely never see their loved ones again.
Cause here’s looking at you kid– and the unspoken meaning behind it– one last time.
Rick isn’t just letting go of the love of his life in that scene. He’s using his position of power and privilege as an American with access to outside networks (predominantly crime related, but hey) to help her escape the country with her highly persecuted and sought after husband to a place of safety.
He had the option to just take her himself and run– and her husband even urges him to do so at one point. But Rick endeavors to get them both to safety, and he shows up armed to do so. He fights for their freedom even though he doesn’t have to. He goes from staunchly refusing to help them out of bitterness and cynicism, to realizing that if he doesn’t do something people are going to die. And he doesn’t just save the woman he loves, which would be oh so easy. He saves the man he hates too. Because he can, so he must.
The final scene ends with Renault (played by Claude Rains, an Englishman), head of the local police (and a character largely played for laughs), making the decision not to arrest Rick or anyone else involved when ordered to, actively defying the orders of a fascist. When he and Rick are walking away, he insinuates that he and Rick should join the French Resistance movement in
Brazzaville, and Rick again delivers the other iconic line from the movie: “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Casablanca is about forging alliances in the face of tyranny. It’s about doing what is right, even though it goes against the law when the law is corrupt. It’s about being willing to give up your own liberties and comfort to preserve the things you love, even though it won’t directly benefit you. Hell, it might even kill you. But someone’s got to do it.
And yea, it’s old, it’s dated and a product of it’s time and it shows. There are times when the modern viewer will cringe and rightly so. But it was also incredibly out there for its time, when the world was going to absolute hell in a hand basket and it seemed like the walls were closing in, it held many important messages, but primarily: Resist.
