IT’S MICKEY TIME!
Category: Children
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If You Can Beat Them, Join Them
A Chronicle of the Insurgency, Part Two:
If You Can Beat Them, Join Them
by Tonio
“So, the second time I got pregnant I had gotten really drunk with this boy who seemed so nice and said he had a condom, but when I was cleaning up the room the next day I didn’t see a condom in the trash. I missed my next period and tested pregnant, then he was a total shitlord douchenugget when I asked for abortion money. I had just joined Campus Action Feminists and Professor Kudchuian told us about Rescue This! I told her I was pregnant and asked if she could put me in touch with them.”
“A week later I took the train up to DC and met the RT! activists. They took me to this out-of-the-way toilet they had found at the Immaculate Conception Basilica and kept watch while I aborted. That time was pretty quick and easy. Then they stickered the inside of the stall with their ‘ABORTED FETUS IN TOILET’ bumper stickers and locked the door. Once we were back on the Metro they emailed the church and the media.”
“And we all know the rest of the story,” said Angelica Cortasio-Ortez. She remembered the news footage of the clerical outrage, and the countless crying and praying nuns, and then the of the Knights of Columbus in their silly fucking patriarchal antique British Navy hats staging a full dress funeral for the news cameras.
“So Moira,” asked Ella, “how many people know that you’re a fully fledged RT! activist?”
“Outside of the RT! women, only Professor Kudchuian.”
Ella ticked her pen against her teeth. “If this ever comes out the entire right will turn into poo-flinging monkeys, just like they did the first time. And then you will own the abortion debate from the left for a few news cycles. You can always distance yourself from her if she becomes too hot.” She looked at Moira. “Everyone is expendable except your officeholder, dear. That’s the first thing you learn in politics.”
Angelica nodded at her chief of staff.
“May I excuse myself, Congresswoman,” asked Ella, “I want to be there to greet the Superintendent of Buildings people for your next appointment. You know how they like to wander off.”
“Of course, Ella. Thanks. ”
Angelica waited for the door to close.
“Do you still want the job?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Moira, her voice squeaking.
Angelica’s desk phone did the intercom buzz. As she picked up the phone she heard the receptionist scream “can’t go in there…” and then silence.
A cold breeze blew in through the closed office door. Moira shivered and huddled, drawing her feet up into her chair. “It’s him,” she whispered hoarsely.
Every woman’s worst nighmare, thought Angelica, your boyfriend going violent after he learns that you aborted your pregnancy. Earlier, Moira had said that her current boyfriend was some sort of church leader and that she had kept the pregnancy from him. It had to be one of the patriarchal religions since progressive boys understood it wasn’t their decision to make.
She pressed the alarm button under her desk and hoped that the receptionist had already pushed hers. The wind intensified and her office door became somehow different, like there were extra angles in the doorframe. The wind blew colder and faster and was now accompanied by howling. The door now appeared to be made of dark roiling clouds. Suddenly there was a thing in the room, a vastly large and incomprehensible tentacled thing. The thing loomed over Moira and yelled at her in a loud booming voice.
“YOU ABORTED MY SPAWN, THEN BEAT IT WITH YOUR SHOE. FOOLISH HUMAN FEMALE.”
Yoko Ono wasn’t right enough, thought Angelica, not just the world, but apparently the entire universe. “Now look here,” she said, then everything just stopped for her. She was paralyzed with her mouth open and her index finger extended. She could see and hear, but could not move; she couldn’t tell if she was breathing but did not feel out of breath. How patriarchal to police the speech of women.
“Here we go again,” said Moira rolling her eyes, “‘I am an elder god.’”
“I AM A GREAT OLD ONE.”
“‘And I’ve destroyed races greater than yours.’”
“STOP THAT, YOU IMPUDENT SLUT. YOU ARE THE ONLY BREEDING VESSEL IN ANY TIME, PLACE OR DIMENSION WHO HAS DARED TO TRY TO HARM MY SPAWN. I AM ANGRY. VERY ANGRY INDEED. BUT I AM ALSO IMPRESSED. NOT ONLY WILL I ALLOW YOU TO LIVE, BUT I WILL GIVE YOU A BIRTHING GIFT BEYOND ALL MEASURE.”
Angelica just couldn’t even.
“Birthing gift? You mean…”
“OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T KILL HIM, BUT HE’S SCARED AND HUNGRY AND TRYING TO FIND YOU.”
Moira didn’t like the sound of that. “Hey, I can’t…”
“I KNOW YOU CAN’T TAKE CARE OF HIM.”
How typical, thought Angelica, angry patriarchs telling women they were incapable of proper motherhood – like they’d know anything about that.
From inside the bathroom came the sound of water, first a stream, then a gush. Just as the carpet outside the door started to darken with fluid there was a great whoosh and the door was sucked open from within. Then the pipe where the toilet had been erupted with a geyser of sewer gas and moisture and a parsnip came screaming out and made a bee-line towards Moira. At least it looked like a parsnip, only fatter; it was conical and wrinkly and had small rootlike tendrils. The parsnip was scooting along on its wide flat base, leaving a moist trail on the carpet.
“SOMEONE HAS LEARNED HOW TO FEED ALL BY HIMSELF,” boomed the tentacled thing, proudly.
The parsnip reached Moira’s chair and stopped. “Mama,” it cried in a voice that was at once both high and low, mewling and echoing. The parsnip then scrunched down and quivered its tip like a cat tensing for a vertical jump.
“WE’LL HAVE NONE OF THAT, YOUNG MAN,” said the great being, quickly extruding a long tentacle and coiling it tightly around the parsnip pinning the base to the floor so that only the top third protruded. “YOUR MOTHER’S BIRTH CANAL IS OFF-LIMITS. YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW THAT YOU CAN FEED YOURSELF.”
Just like his father, going straight for the pussy, thought Moira. Ick-factor aside, she was glad that the baby, or whatever it was was being restrained. Her son had grown considerably in the half-hour or so since his birth. Her son. She’d have to get used to that.
The parsnip opened a mouth and clamped a set of sharp teeth down on the tentacle encircling it.
“WHY YOU LITTLE…” There was a flash and a pop and the parsnip emitted a small shriek. The sewer smell was punctuated by the smell one experiences after a thunderstorm.
Using electroshock on a fussy newborn, thought Angelica. That’s the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard of.
“Can I hold him,” asked Moira?
“AFTER WHAT YOU TRIED TO DO,” asked the large tentacled being.
Moira tilted her head down and stuck out her lower lip ever so slightly and looked up at the being.
“YOU ARE TREACHEROUS AND YOU EXEMPLIFY THE BANALITY OF EVIL. I AM TOUCHED,” boomed the being and extended the tentacle containing the parsnip and placed it atop Moira’s ample bosom, then resting the tentacle on Moira’s shoulder. Moira encircled the smelly little monster with her arms. The parsnip snuggled in to her cleavage and made a happy sound.
“So what comes next,” asked Moira.
“I WILL TAKE HIM TO LIVE WITH MOTHER HYDRA; SHE HAS RAISED MY FAMILY’S SPAWN FOR EONS AND HAS THE POWER TO KEEP HIM UNDER CONTROL.”
“WE’LL WORK OUT VISITATION, IF YOU LIKE.”
Moira nodded, tears running down her cheeks. Her son’s eyes shut one by one and he started a low vibrating noise that she was felt as much as heard.
“MAYBE WE COULD ALL DO THINGS TOGETHER…”
“Oh Hastur, that is so sweet.”
“HE IS ASLEEP. WE WILL GO BEFORE HE WAKES AND NEEDS TO FEED AGAIN.”
Hastur copped a major feel as he retrieved his son, and they exited via the method by which he had arrived. Angelica found herself unparalyzed.
Then the Capitol Police arrived, followed by fire and rescue people, then people in yellow plastic hooded suits with reflective letters that said HAZMAT. Angelica and Moira spent the next hour being alternately hosed off and scrubbed; the water was cold and the detergents harsh. And then they were given blister packs of antibiotics and told to be prepared to spend the next 48-72 hours shitting and to stock up on Pedialyte. “And you won’t be able to go back into your office for a few days, anyway, Congresswoman.” The little weasel from building management was enjoying kicking her out of her office.
The evening news was full of stories of sewer eruptions on Capitol Hill with workers and residents terrified by what the DC Water and Sewer Authority claimed were sewer rats expelled by the pressure. Mayor Bowser demanded more money from Congress to update the sewer system.
And it was the next day before anyone noticed that Amy Klobuchar was missing.
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Cartoon Network: English tutor to 90’s Romanian kids
This may come as a great surprise to most people, but television did not exactly flourish in communist Romania. The equipment was bad, there were only a few hours a day of programming and it was mostly the Great Leader speaking. Romania, for whatever reason, was generally worse than other European socialist countries in this respect. Back then cable was not a thing in this region and antennas were all the rage. If you were lucky enough, so to speak, to live near a border – Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary – and had a tall antenna, you could catch some extra programing from those countries.
Children, Pie being no different, liked cartoons. It was a great misfortune in my young mind that my parents had to pick me up from kindergarten in the middle of the only daily cartoon shown – if I remember correctly something with a girl call Heidi, and I frequently missed the ending of the episode. There was also something Russian with a wolf and rabbit. My parents owned a VCR – a significant thing, most were black market and quite expensive – and a couple of cassettes with cartoons – some classic Disney, some Asterix and Obelix, some Tom and Jerry – which I must have seen 100 times. In fact, a few years before 1989 my parents had a JVC VCR which also had the capacity to record, and that was a rare beast indeed, they sold it for half the money of a new car.
After communism ended, things changed reasonably fast. One day, I would say about 1992 or so, I do not remember the particulars, after coming home from school, I noticed an unfamiliar black shape – a new Panasonic TV set, and with it came cable and with cable came Cartoon Network. Cartoons, all sorts of them, all day every day. It was truly a revolution.
My first one was an episode of Birdman, which at first I thought it was Batman – I did not know either, but had vaguely heard of Batman and it sounded familiar enough. Soon, for as long as I was allowed, I watched everything else shown on Romania’s Cartoon Network in the early 90s. Everything. There was still some drama. My parents watched the nightly news on the TV every day at 8 PM, right when Swat Kats was on, which I loved as a kid.
Back in that time, cable was young and there were no local subsidiaries of the big foreign networks, so there was no dubbing or subtitles. I had some knowledge of English – my parents got me a tutor for the duration of first grade that actually taught me a lot, and there was some in school. The problem with learning a language in Romanian school is that you learn rules, grammar, and some vocabulary in a formal way that does not always tie together. I had the same experience with trying to learn French, I knew some words and could read and somewhat write, but struggled to form sentences when speaking. The tutor helped more than school, a young woman who brought cassettes of English people speaking, and focused on that not on grammar rules. Learning this way was better – and I did real well at the grammar tests in school because, without really knowing the rules, picking what sounded right to me was usually right. I feel the same for Romanian, I would struggle right now to explain to a foreigner grammatical rules –although I studies them extensively in school.
Whatever learning I did before, it was accelerate greatly by Cartoon Network. At first I did not understand everything spoken. But I didn’t need to. Just having cartoons was so great, nothing else mattered. And I watched and I watched. And slowly, I started understanding more and more each time. Episodes tended to repeat on Cartoon Network, but for me it was quite alright, I liked them and I understood better as each month passed. And I learned organically for lack of a better word. This is important, as phrases often have cultural meaning and just knowing what the words mean is not enough, and this way I learned both. Sticks and stones does not mean sticks and stones, paying the piper does not involve singers and currency.
This also had had a positive effect on verbal skills. To be fluent in a language you just speak, you do not need to think of the rules. I was never fluent in French, though I learned words and verbs and conjugation. They just didn’t come together when I needed them. In English, on the other hand, I never really thought of the rules. If it sounded right, it probably was.
Not all kids in Romania were like this, but my generation of urban middle income kids were. By high school, movies and TV shows kicked in, praise be bit torrent and DC++. My generation talked a lot in what we called romglish, Romanian peppered with English words and phrases, mostly movie quotes. There were nationalist politicians that wanted to ban English words in advertising, to somehow preserve the purity of the language. Hell, there still are in several countries. But, for us, in a country with a native language that is, to be frank, useless internationally, learning English was a huge help. Most of people my age use it daily in their work; use it on vacation or watching movies, reading books not translated in Romanian, and off course writing fabulously. And many of us hold a debt of gratitude to Cartoon Network.
Cartoon Network is dubbed these days. I can understand why, but I still think it is a damn shame. Kids these days take cartoons for granted and maybe do not have the patience to watch a language they do not understand. Or maybe they do, if they were left at it, but the parents try too hard to make it easy on them. Who knows? Of course with internet, they have ample opportunity to learn English – but just internet often leads to broken English. And if they watch cartoons, why not get some benefit from it, hearing the language young and trying to understand. A bit of struggle grasping it might even help.
I am generally opposed to dubbing. It is rarely good enough and always takes away part of whatever you watch. In fact, for movies, I find delivering good lines is harder than facial expressions, and the way the actors speak are important for what the director want to achieve. And a lot of the subtlety is lost for those who happen to speak the language, and unlike you Americans we can handle subtitles. I have met Austrians who saw The Godfather only dubbed and were like: what is the point? Or just imagine hearing “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” in German… Of course the new cartoons are often crappy, not like back in my day. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Damn kids these days! But seriously, the recent cartoons are crap.Now, my fine fellow glibs. You have all read, I assume, at least one of my pieces and maybe a few of my comments, and such know of my writing. What you clamor to know is: how does Pie speak? Does he have an Eastern European accent? The short answer is yes. Unlike some people I know, I never made any special effort to change my accent. Some went to great lengths to sound British, and most sound reasonably well but kind of pretentious. I do not have a very strong accent, due to all the movie and cartoon watching I did. I, for example, pronounce “the” with a silent Z, which cannot be said of many Easter Europeans. I think, were I to live for an extended period of time in an English speaking country, my accent would greatly improve. But, as things are, every English and American I spoke to understood me without issue and as far as language flow and grammar, I speak just as I would in Romanian. So, in conclusion, I speak well enough for practical purposes, good enough for government work, so no need to spend time fine tuning my accent. I mean, I would be othered anyway in the States for my exotic good looks, so language would not necessarily make me blend in. Without further ado, for the ending of this little piece… Pie speaks. I recorded myself on my phone, just for you.
I did not want to say random bullshit or use too little word variety, and as such for my first piece I have picked something that is explicitly going through a large variety of English words. SOURCE
For my second, I decided to quote the classics. SOURCE
And for my third, something short and personalized for the glibertariat.