Have I watched the movie in the last decade or more? No. Do I have iron clad evidence to support my argument? Yes.
1. She’s the most knowledgeable about candy. She’s committed to it, and knows her stuff. When Wonka holds up a little yellow piece across the room, she recognizes it immediately. She was able to switch to candy bars for the sake of the contest, so we know she has personal discipline and is goal oriented. Also, two major projects play directly into her strong suits: the 3-course-meal gum that Wonka failed to make safe (gum) and the neverending gobstopper (longevity).
2. She’s the most fit to run a business. Violet is competitive, determined, hard working, and willing to take risks. Her father is a small town car salesman and politician, so she could easily pick up knowledge and support from him. (Veruca’s dad is also a business man, and in a compatible market (nuts), but it’s made very clear that Veruca has no respect or knowledge of business practices or hard work.)
3. She’s the most sympathetic to the Oompa Loompas. She critiques Veruca when Veruca demands to buy one. More importantly, Wonka has been testing the 3-course-meal gum that ‘always goes wrong’ on Oompa Loompas while he presumably just watches. Violet is ready to put herself on the front line, instead of treating the Oompa Loompas as disposable, and would therefore be a better boss.
4. Her personality ‘flaw’ is the most fitting for the company. In the moralizing Oompa Loompa song, they just say ‘gum is pretty cool, but it’s not socially acceptable to chew it all day‘. The thing is, we already know that she can stop if she wants, because she already did that to win the golden ticket. And yeah, she is defensive about the perceived impoliteness of her hobby (like when her mother tries to shame her about her habit during a televised interview) but the obsession with candy and neglect of social norms is EXACTLY what Wonka is all about. This is on brand.
5. Her misstep in the factory is reasonable. Wonka shows everyone a candy he’s very proud of. Violet is like “oh sick, that’s gum, my special interest.” Wonka is then pulls a “WRONG! It’s amazing gum!” So in the very moments before she takes the gum Wonka has mislead her just to belittle her. So when he’s like “I wouldn’t do that” why should she give a shit what he has to say? She’s not like Charlie over here who’s all “Sure Gramps, let’s stay behind while the tour leaves and secretly drink this thing that has been explicitly stated to fill you with gas and is too powerful for safe consumption, oh and also I just saw what happened to Violet so I actually KNOW what this stuff can be capable of” Also, Violet is not selfish about her experience, she tells everyone what she’s tasting and feeling, and everyone is eager to hear it. Taking a personal risk to share knowledge with everyone. Violet is Prometheus: fact.
So Augustus contaminates the chocolate river. Charlie sneaks around and contaminates the vent walls. Veruca destroys and disrupts the workspace. Mike knows exactly what will happen to him and transports/shrinks himself deliberately. Violet had no idea what the gum could potentially do to her, and caused no harm to anyone or anything but herself.
Lastly: Can you imagine Charlie filling Wonka’s shoes? That passive, naive boy? Violet is already basically Wonka. She’s passionate, sarcastic, candy-obsessed, free thinking, and a total firecracker. She’s even better than Wonka, because she doesn’t endanger others.
Violet should’ve been picked to inherit the chocolate factory.
Tags:
#Charlie and the Chocolate Factory #I don’t know whether I endorse this but it’s #interesting
Today, I am thankful that my workplace does not play Christmas music.
Our radio developed some issue a while back that severely restricts which stations it can pick up, so this year–for lack of better options–we *are* on a Christmas-music station.
I’m actually coping a lot better than I thought I would. I think there’s a lot more pressure on *children* to like Christmas, and as I spend more time away from that it seems to be getting easier to appreciate Christmas on my own terms. And understanding what my problem with “The Little Drummer Boy” is [link] seems to have taken the sting out of that song. And IIRC, all of the co-workers whose shifts overlap with mine are first-gen immigrants from non-Christian societies, which lets them take an outsider-but-laid-back-about it attitude towards Christmas that might be rubbing off on me.
My preference ordering tends to go hymns –> songs that aren’t about Jesus but *are* explicitly about Christmas –> secular winter music: the hymns tend to be prettier, and the secular songs can feel dishonest and…nonconsensually inclusive? Just because you didn’t say the C word doesn’t mean you aren’t *thinking* it–in fact, I *know* you’re thinking it because the announcer literally just called this a Christmas music mix–and it doesn’t mean I should be happy to join you in a celebration that isn’t mine. Please go back to singing about Jesus so I can go back to Your Culture Is Not My Culture But Your Culture Is Okay.
(Also, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” is still fucking creepy.)
But overall, it’s actually been surprisingly okay.
Tags:
#on Black Friday (the first Christmas-music day) my (apathetically Hindu) manager wished me a happy Christmas and split a cookie with me #and I find I have no objections to this #music #Christmas #oh look an original post #oh look an update #in which Brin has a job
Got up a bit early for an appointment at the doctor’s office, because starting a few months ago most of my menstrual periods have been significantly worse than usual, and after the 2.5th bout of debilitating dizziness (the .5 was a time where it felt like it was *going* to happen but never quite got bad enough that I couldn’t stand up) I figured there was enough of a pattern developing here that I shouldn’t bet on it going away on its own.
The first-line treatment is daily iron supplements, plus two naproxen twice a day around the onset of menstruation (apparently, in addition to the painkilling effect, higher-dose naproxen can also make periods lighter). If the OTC stuff doesn’t cut it, the next step is to “”sample”“ some birth control pills. (She is one of those doctors who, when possible, keep their poorer patients supplied with enough ”“samples”“ of a medication that they never actually have to spend money on it.)
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Then my brother and I went to the bank and signed up for index-fund RRSPs [link]. It’s not so much that I’m planning for retirement per se (though my brother might be thinking of it that way, I’m not sure), but after many hours of very stressful research regarding which forms of investment fall in the intersection of “non-awful returns”, “low fees”, and “won’t piss off the IRS [link]”, this is the only entry that I am sufficiently confident is on that list.
(I came scarily close to buying some non-RRSP index funds this autumn–even set up the account for it!–and only found out that doing so would incur the IRS’s wrath because my brother mentioned he was thinking of getting a TFSA, and this inspired me to read the Wikipedia article on them [link] (they are also terrible, for some of the same reasons). Thank you for telling me this extremely important information, Wikipedia, because nobody *else* fucking did!)
It looks like we are allowed to have *some* ETFs [link] under *some* circumstances, but I don’t have a clear sense of which ETFs/circumstances those are. Once we’ve reached a point in our lives where [18% of all the post-immigration income we’ve ever had] isn’t enough room to keep our savings in, we will have to find an appropriate specialist to consult about exactly how to tell when an ETF is permissible.
Tags:
#sometimes I wonder if I should go into U.S. tax preparation so maybe one day I can actually fucking understand what my own taxes are doing #but I think I’d rather do something more in the realm of bookkeeping or cost-benefit analysis #this stuff does not seem to *quite* be my style #but it’s even less everyone else’s style so I took the research upon myself #(at least I get to cost-benefit-analyse the various types of investment?) #adventures in human capitalism #oh look an original post #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #medical cw #menstruation #the more you know
“I can worship multiple gods, I’m polyamorous!” “…You mean polytheistic?” “I’m into that too!”
Tags:
#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #(Tumblr can’t quite seem to decide whether or not the formatting on this post is broken) #(sorry if it’s on ”broken” when you see it)
they were not kidding when they said this economics textbook had been adapted for Canadian audiences, huh
Tags:
#this image file on my computer is named ”Have We Mentioned Lately We’re Canadian.png” #(I wonder what this example is in the original American) #oh look an original post #our home and cherished land #adventures in University Land #reactionblogging #bluespace #(not *exactly* but it does seem to have a similar blurring between the picture and the other elements of the page)
everyone’s posting their links to the other social media they’re active on in case their tumblr gets deleted in the latest and greatest ill-conceived ineffectual attempt to algorithmically combat pornbot spam
so in case my tumblr gets deleted for some reason, here is all the other social media i use:
none. really hope my blog doesn’t get deleted
I don’t *currently* have any other sites, but in the event of a Tumblr shutdown–either of me personally or of everyone–you can probably figure out where I’ve moved to by googling my username.
Unlike a lot of blogs that claim to take Tumblr imports, WordPress includes reblogs and images. My WordPress is currently private, mostly because the formatting is fucked up in ways that would be simple but tedious to fix (tags insist on displaying on alphabetical order, which scrambles the commentary; intra-blog links link to the Tumblr copy and not the WordPress copy): if the original Tumblr copy vanishes I will go through the whole thing, clean it up (moving commentary tags into the main post body), and mark it public. If anyone else reading this wants to be more reliably able to link people to their old posts, I recommend a WordPress backup.
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While I back up my Tumblr to my laptop daily, and to my phone weekly, I’d only done a WordPress backup once ages ago. Thanks for the reminder to add it to my routine backup schedule: I’d hate to be unable to link people to old posts, or to have to figure out how to host the local copy in a reasonably linkable way.
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(Sorry for getting my seriousness in your joke(?) post, but it inspired me.)
Tags:
#Tumblr: a User’s Guide #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #amnesia cw #reply via reblog #(every time I suggest backups as a solution to something Dad scoffs and says that nobody actually does those) #(he keeps doing this even though I always respond with ”…*I* do them”) #(if my laptop abruptly fails again it’ll suck having to buy new hardware but that’s all it’ll be: new *hardware*)
“On the outskirts of Paris, eight metres below ground in a climate-controlled vault, sits a 143-year-old platinum alloy cylinder. Standing just 39 mm tall, it has never been touched by human hands. Like a delicate Russian doll, the cylinder is caged inside three nested glass bells in a room that can be accessed only with three keys kept by three different people. Surrounding the mysterious object are ‘the witnesses’: six ‘identical’ cylinders cast from the same platinum alloy.
“Though preservation efforts rival those of the Turin Shroud, the cylinder is not a sacred religious object. It is the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK), the one and only true kilogram against which all others are measured. Housed in the Pavillon de Breteuil – home to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) – the IPK will soon lose its unique status and become a relic of a bygone age. It will then be as quaint as the International Prototype Metre (IPM) – a platinum alloy bar also housed at the BIPM – that served as the world’s official metre until 1960.”
Good article about the history of the kilogram and the new definition that was officially adopted yesterday (November 16th).
About the vote, another article: “Scientists for whom the update represents decades of work clapped, cheered and even wept as the 50-plus nations one by one said “yes” or “oui” to the update in the French city of Versailles on Friday (local time).
Nobel prize winner William Phillips called it “the greatest revolution in measurement since the French revolution”, which ushered in the metric system of metres and kilograms. “
