Day: July 4, 2016
Okay people, history-fail story-time…
So back in the 1780′s when our country was still figuring crap out and ol’ George Washington was just elected president, G.W. decided to send a letter to Congress along the lines of ‘Looking forward to working with you all, this will be exciting!” Congress, not wanting to slight the president and also trying to express their own enthusiasm, sent back a letter along the lines of “Glad you’re excited, we are also looking forward to working with you!”
Then George sends another letter back saying something like “Cool cool bros, glad you’re just as excited as I am,” and Congress, again not wanting to be awkward or just ignore the PRESIDENT, sent back ANOTHER letter saying some dumb crap that was probably along the lines of “Glad you’re excited that we’re excited that you’re excited.”
Democracy at its finest.
And while this in itself is funny, that is not even the best part.
George Washington, while being powerful, was not extremely eloquent, and at this point was also aging, busy, and overall very stressed about his new position (which he did not want in the first place). So he asked his old friend James Madison, who had a much better way with words, to write the first note to Congress. Good old James Madison, wanting to oblige his friend, did just that and composed the note to Congress. Now, J-Mads was himself a member of Congress, so when the note arrived, he was in session to hear “Washington’s” letter read.
Congress got nervous and worried about who could possibly compose a formal and acceptable letter back to Washington. Who better than his old friend, James Madison? So Jimmy, being obliging, wrote the response. When Washington received the reply, he once again asked his friend to write the response.
And who did Congress choose to write their final letter? That’s right….none other than Jimmy-James-Madison himself.
So James Madison, future 4th president of the United States, wrote himself 4 letters under the guise of George Washington and the first Congress of the U.S. And he was too embarrassed to admit it.
catfish of the millenium
i’m crying. this is too good that it’s making me kind of sob a little
Pratchett went back to older throwaway jokes (like dwarves being apparently unisex) and used them as metaphors to discuss social change, racial assimilation, and other complex issues, while reexamining the species he’d thrown in at the margins of his world simply because they existed at the margins of every other fantasy universe. If goblins and orcs and trolls could think, then why were they always just there to be slaughtered by the heroes? And if the heroes slaughtered sentient beings en masse, how heroic exactly were they? It was a long overdue start on redressing issues long swept under the rug by a parade of Tolkien successors who never thought of anyone green and slimy as anything but a notch on the protagonist’s sword, and much of the urgency in Pratchett’s last few books seemed to be related to them. “There’s only one true evil in the world,” he said through his characters. “And that’s treating people like they were things.”
And in the last of his “grown-up” Discworld books, that idea is shouted with the ferocity of those who have only a few words left and want to make them count. Goblins are people. Golems are people. Dwarves are people, and they do not become any less people because they decide to go by the gender they know themselves to be instead of the one society forces on them. Even trains might be people, and you’ll never know one way or the other unless you ask them, because treating someone like they’re a person and not a thing should be your default. And the only people who cling to tradition at the expense of real people are sad, angry dwellers in the darkness who don’t even understand how pathetic they are, clutching and grasping at the things they remember without ever understanding that the world was never that simple to begin with. The future is bright, it is shining, and it belongs to everyone.
Happy Birthday, Captain Rogers! A Happy Independence Day to my American followers!
I feel like I should feature my process and sketches beside the final artwork a little more often so you can see how this piece started off and finished.
Captain America © Marvel
Art © ramida-r
Font © LeFly Fonts
the true american experience is wondering if you just heard firecrackers or gunshots
PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS A JOKE
Bonus points: one is illegal in your state and it is not the gun
no
Challenge mode: it’s the 4th of July
knock knock mother fuckers
“I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.”
Happy 4th of July Captain America and Happy Birthday Steven Grant Rogers!!!!!
kototyph 