This idiot just scared me half to death by choking on water immediately after eating. I was still feeding other snakes and out of the corner of my eye I saw Mouse the Everglades rat snake take a sip from her bowl and then pull back like it bit her. Then I heard her sputtering and coughing.
I took her out and checked her mouth and then watched her for a while. Like most of my rat snakes, she tolerates handling but she’s not keen on having her face touched so that was fun. She wasn’t too pissed at me but she did conveniently open her mouth wide when I got near it!
She was definitely gurgling at first and I saw clear water come out of her glottis, but she seemed fine after a few minutes and was clearly still thirsty. I scrubbed her water bowl again (nobody wants to drink backwash) and refilled it. There was no mucus or signs of a respiratory infection so she’s on observation. If I hear even a huff from her by tomorrow evening I’m making a vet appointment on Monday.
Oh, Mouse.
MA'AM.
Your glottis is supposed to be a pretty much fool proof method of NOT choking, and which allows you to continue breathing even as you swallow large prey. How did you forget to close it while drinking????
It’s all “we love mobility aid users” until we say that small businesses shouldn’t be allowed to get away with violating the ADA and then it’s all “but but the money giving you the same basic access as everyone else is soooo hard and expensive”.
If a business doesn’t have an ADA-standard ramp it deserves to fail. If a store can’t keep its aisles clear and wide enough it deserves to fail. If a business can’t keep the floors even and non-slip it deserves to fail. If users of any mobility aid can’t navigate a business it deserves to fail. We are not a nice addition or an extra customer base. We are non-expendable human beings with the right to enter public places with the same ease as everyone else.
[image ID: a banner that says “this post is about physical disability, don’t derail” on the first line and “physically ableds don’t speak including talking in tags” on the second line].
Wait wait you can't just drop that off and not elaborate. What do you mean is there a mafia presence in Wales?? Please spill, what things did you notice??
Okay so bearing in mind that I have ADHD and Chronic Terrible Observational Skills:
I am in Cardiff
For a concert I am attending solo
Doors open at 5
4:15 ish I go ‘hmm I should eat something’
Cardiff is - unsurprisingly, being tiny and yet home to FOUR concert venues - Very Busy
Find McDonald’s
McDonald’s is very full. I recall my last concert related McDick’s experience, and promptly bounce
Directly across the street
Is an Italian restaurant
It looks closed but fuckit maybe I can beg for like. Bread or some shit
Go over
Am immediately pounced upon by the hitherto unnoticed chain-smoking woman hanging out by the door mostly hidden by a potted ficus(?)
“I was wondering if you were open and if-” “yes yes we are open what would you like?” (strongish Italian accent)
Inside restaurant is Deserted
Explain that I’m sort of in a rush, am assured it’s fine
Order chicken milanese which is generally a pasta dish with a breaded chicken component
Am led to seat nearish the front and promptly provided with a pint of coke in a glass tankard
Am then provided with a front row seat to an absolutely incomprehensible series of people entering and exiting (and in one case walking directly into) the door to what I can only presume is the kitchen
Starting with the guy who had been sitting at a table chain-smoking over a pile of papers
I counted at least three people exiting at least twice without actually entering in between
Am finally brought food
It is a breaded, butterflied chicken breast approximately the size of my face and a small pile of pasta approximately the size of my fist
It is all delicious
Chain-smoking papers man reappears, now wearing a chef’s apron labcoat thing
Go up to pay, chain-smoking ficus lady is now having a very loud argument in a language I did not recognise but was not Italian Welsh English French russian Gaelic or Spanish
She sees me, says, and I quote 'ah little girl lost, one moment’ and promptly hangs up
I am 27 and only nominally female
I am not remotely lost
She charges me for the pint of coke but not the food
I try to point out that she hasn’t charged me for the food
'do you want to pay for the food?’
’…. Not if I don’t have to?’
'good’
I leave. The door is now full of half a dozen very tall very Italian men and one absolutely adorable cocker spaniel
I ask if I can pet the dog (I have my priorities straight okay)
I am allowed to pet the dog. The dog and I are now best friends
The dog lead holder asks me in extremely accented but impeccably correct English if I had enjoyed the food
'yeah it was great!’
Everyone laughs a bit
I smile and pet the dog and realise I’m now late for the concert and hurry off
I see a post on Tumblr about mob fronts and several connections are made in my brain all at once
okay, there are many legitimate reasons to dislike disney, but can we please stop using “disney tells stories based on folktales!!11!!!” as one of them? pretty please, with cherries?
Why is this not a legitimate reason? Isn’t it sad, to see all the most iconic and familiar-to-most-children forms of folk tales be under copyright?
…The problem isn’t that Disney makes stories based on folktales, though. Honestly, I don’t think the problem is even the copyright. (Though that sure doesn’t help.) The problem is that Disney has the brand recognition and the deep pockets to freeze out anyone else who tries.
I know, it’s a subtle distinction. I’m going to use dolls as an example, because Special Interest Hell. Bear with me for a second.
A while back, Mattel made a doll line called Ever After High. Ever After High had a gimmick- it was a doll line based on fairy tales, but instead of being based directly on the fairy tale characters themselves, it was based on their children. This meant that they could create iconic and memorable designs for the characters without being accused of ripping off Disney’s designs.
This is an original “basic” Ever After High doll:
The dolls are almost fully articulated- they have 360 degree head rotation, articulated shoulders, elbows, wrists, and knees. Their costume designs are complicated, often featuring multiple layers of fabric and lots of accessories. Each doll came with a stand, a hairbrush, and a bookmark that told their “story”. They retailed for $16.99.
The dolls came in two factions: “Royals” (the children of heroes) and “Rebels” (the children of villains). Each one had a backstory and a motivation, and they had an accompanying webseries that told those stories.
(I swear there’s a reason I’m going into Excruciating Detail.)
Even though I didn’t like the sculpts… Ever After High was a pretty good doll line, and it was moderately successful. It brought in 53 million dollars- not nearly as much as Barbie, but still a decent profit.
The first was that they took the license for the Disney Princesses away from Mattel and gave it to Hasbro. Since that’s, obviously, a big money-making license, that was a pretty nasty punishment.
But the other thing Disney did, the thing that I think was what properly killed Ever After High… they massively expanded the merchandising for Disney Descendants.
…Now, it looks like Disney Descendants was already in the works when Ever After High started coming out. I don’t think Disney got so OMGSCARED of Ever After High that they made a product directly to compete with it. And I can’t say anything bad about the movies because a) I haven’t seen them and b) I think @bpd-dylan-hall will kill me.
But the two franchises share some notable similarities- they’re about the teenage children of fairy tale characters, who are split into two factions: “hero” and “villain”. They’re very ‘modern’, with colorful hair and flashy, iconic designs.
This is a basic Disney Descendants doll:
I own both Ever After High and Descendants dolls, and I gotta say: the Descendants are way lower quality. They’ve got almost no articulation- just wrists, hips, and knees. They don’t come with a stand or many accessories. Their costumes are much simpler, and most of the designs are screen-printed on. They’re not crap dolls, don’t get me wrong, and I like their sculpts more than EAH- but by comparison, they’re not very good.
But that made one important difference: The Disney Descendants basic doll retailed at $12.99.
Now, riddle me this: if you’re the parent of an eight-year-old girl who loves dolls, which are you more likely to get: the high-quality expensive doll with a lot of small parts she’s likely to lose, or the cheaper one with a brand name on it that you recognize?
Disney was able to massively undercut the competition. Mattel couldn’t keep up. They made cheaper versions of the Ever After High dolls -they went for $9.99 or so, they’re absolute garbage, and collectors and kids both hated them.
Mattel hasn’t officially canceled Ever After High. But the show’s not coming out anymore, the dolls aren’t on shelves anymore, and we haven’t heard anything about either since 2017. Disney won, and they won hard.
If Disney didn’t have the kind of money they do, if Disney didn’t have the kind of clout they do, this wouldn’t have happened. I mean, sure, all doll lines end eventually, that’s the way of the world, but Disney deliberately undercut the competition. Depending on how much dolls cost to make and ship, they might even have been making them at a loss.
But Disney could afford to do it because they’re Disney.
The only time anyone’s ever really been able to successfully make a fairy tale franchise without getting shot down by Disney was Shrek, and that’s because Disney didn’t want to touch the aeShrektic with a ten-foot pole. They were scared they’d ruin their image.
Any other time anyone does anything with fairy tales (or princesses, or talking cars, or talking fish, or pirates, or…) Disney can make their own version and sell it at a loss, driving their competitors out of business. They have more money than God. They can afford to lose money on one theme park, let alone one toyline or one movie.
The problem with Disney is that it’s a monopoly. and like any other monopoly, Disney can freeze out anyone who tries to compete with them. I think if you trustbusted Disney- left them with their animation studio and maybe their theme park division, but took away Pixar and Marvel and ESPN and all their television outlets and all the other crap they own- they’d have a harder time undercutting everyone else. you’d see more stuff based on folklore and fairy tales, and it’d have more than a snowball’s chance in hell of being successful.
This is a place that the artist Zaiqukaj (Eve Dailey) posts art and random stuff. I specialize in cute and fantastic things.
I'll do my best to be posting a mix of old and new things. Even if some are bad I like a good deal of my older art.
Another thing I generally do is reblog at least one interesting animal photo a day. There is so much variety in the world and I really like showcasing some less known animals and interesting or stunning features. If you don't like bugs you probably don't want to follow me since I think they are adorably fascinating.
Anonymous
