Who You Should Fight: Marching Band Edition

The Sections At 1 AM The Night Before A Competition

flutes/piccolos: asleep scattered across the floor of someone's bedroom wearing matching sweatpants.

clarinets: moodily playing pokémon

alto saxophones: all at walmart separately because they all think they're the ones responsible for treat bags and forgot until now. never see each other and each get like ten treat bags the next morning. confused but happy.

low reeds: finding more ways to hide dirty jokes on their section hoodies.

trumpets: practicing their "marching face" in the mirror to make it suitably focused and serious yet smoldering.

mellophones: trying to figure out how to attach a large sign to their instrument that says "it's a mellophone, not an exceptionally large trumpet." they are doomed to fail and the masses remain uneducated.

trombones: frantically trying to fix their instrument from attempting to pop to the box in their bedroom with the slide as far down as possible and slamming into the ceiling.

baritones/euphoniums: reflecting bitterly on all the times the tubas have upstaged them. vow to never let it happen again.

tubas/sousaphones: standing in front of a mirror trying to figure out precisely which angle at which to tip their beret to look the most roguish.

pit percussion: still loading their equipment on the band truck even though they started after school; one of them is missing for no reason.

drum line: performing a ritual sacrifice.

color guard: already doing their hair. still almost don't get done in time.

drum majors: practicing their salute 40,098 times, then making sure they don't "stand weird" while conducting.

- @jistring

ok srsly who invented color guard??? like one day “sir you know how me and some guys carry our country’s flag and guard it with rifles?” “yes” “what if we threw that shit in the air” “….fucking BRILLIANT, Jim”

criminal minds as vines: part two yeet

Obi-Wan: where the fuck did you get a lightsaber??

Alpha-17: your idiot padawan kept dropping them everywhere, so I just kept one

The mashup you never thought would work

when hayao miyazaki said that true love was two people inspiring each other to live…recognizing just how hard living is, putting one foot in front of the other every day, how easy it is to lose our passion for it…… that’s the real shit

Here’s one good thing to come out of 2020:

Paleontologists completed a life-sized replica of Sue, the most complete T. Rex ever found.

And she is freaking GORGEOUS!

As I read more about this beauty, I found out some new details regarding things I thought I previously knew about the beast that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I’m going to share them with you.

First, and most obvious, her size:

This is nothing new, we all figured T. Rex was big, but I for one never stopped to consider exactly how big it was. Nobody ever really knows what to imagine when they read about something the size of a whale that walked around and ate everything it could kill. 

Speaking of eating things, I just want to remind you all that T. Rex had–by miles–the strongest bite of any terrestrial animal living or dead, somewhere around six and a half tons of force. That’s over six times greater than the current estimate of what Allosaurus was capable of, and three times what was delivered by the highest measured reading of the living title holder–the estuarine crocodile. It didn’t have to waste time swinging its head open-mouthed like Saurophaganax for a little extra oomph, or grow fancy serrated teeth like Carcharodontosaurus to cut pieces out of its prey. It opted for the simplest approach: get its mouth around something and crush it to death; imagine the full weight of an elephant on whatever was between this thing’s jaws.

“How did it find something to eat?” I hear you asking. “It can’t see something if it doesn’t move, right?”

Listen, I love Jurassic Park too, but that’s a big crock of shit.

Notice how both her eyes face forward. That gives her binocular vision (the ability to focus both eyes on one target, like you and I). More importantly it means she has impeccable depth perception due to overlapping fields of vision from each, large, eyeball. Researchers agree that T. Rex not only had incredible vision, but that it was probably better than most modern animals–including eagles, hawks, and owls–and that she could likely spot something three and a half miles away. If something that big can see that well, it doesn’t matter if you move or not, she’d be able to tell if it was an animal trying to hide or a piece of vegetation. So pray she isn’t hungry if she lays eyes on you. And even if by some miracle she didn’t see you, she’d still smell you. 

If she decided you looked tasty, you probably wouldn’t hear her coming as much as you’d feel her. Modern science indicates that T. Rex didn’t roar like in Jurassic Park, but rather bellowed or maybe even hissed like crocodilians. If she were on to you, you’d most likely feel this sense of unease creep up your spine as a low-pitched rumble in the air permeated through you. You wouldn’t know what it was or where it was coming from until you hear her footfalls. By then it’s too late–you could try to run but she’d probably catch you. There’s plenty on YouTube that reconstructs what T. Rex may have sounded like, and it’s legitimately haunting.  

To wrap all of this up, the one bit of good that came out of the cursed year that is 2020 is that this wonderful child of science and art came into the world, and reaffirmed my respect and admiration for the eight ton slab of muscle and teeth that is this magnificent creature.

…and it is nothing if not magnificent.

chirrut: i am the kyber crystal guardian, guardian of the crystals

baze: the empire quivers before him!

chirrut: -roundhouse kicks ten stormtroopers- FUCK OFF!