Just 44 months before this photo was taken, Danny Ellerd was homeless, standing on a street corner with a sign in his hands.
He was trapped in addiction and struggling to survive.
At the time, the life he would eventually build for himself must have seemed almost impossible.
But Danny entered recovery.
Slowly, his life began to change.
He graduated from two recovery programs and went back to school, studying Computer Information Systems at Oklahoma State University Oklahoma City.
Then came the moment that made the transformation almost unbelievable.
Danny graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA.
“44 months ago I was homeless, holding a sign on the corner to feed my addiction,” Danny later wrote while reflecting on his journey.
The man who once stood on a street corner consumed by addiction was now standing in a suit, sober, educated, and holding a college degree.
Same man.
Different chapter.
BREAKING: Denver Communists held a protest outside the Christian-owned coffee shop “The Drip Cafe” claiming the cafe is transphobic
They now declared that they will hold a protest there every month until it shuts down
If you’re in the area, consider supporting this coffee shop!
I’m afraid your pithy attempt at a point does not hold water.
There’s nothing about The Bride that is “woke.” Beatrix Kiddo is not a ball-buster smart-ass that disrespects her male superiors. In fact, she respected her male master Pai Mei, the man that trained her. And she earned his respect through perseverance and hard work… so much so that he taught her his exploding heart technique, something he didn’t even teach Bill.
You see, Beatrix has to work for everything she gets. She has to struggle to attain it. She has to listen, learn, and hone herself into the living weapon she becomes.
Your modern “woke” equivalent would have been better than Pai Mei, and would have reveled in the discovery that she was always better, she just had to realize it for herself… and then rubbed his nose in it. The one character that DID roll up on Pai Mei with that insufferable, modern-day girlboss attitude was Elle… and it cost her an eye.
Furthermore, The Bride’s motivation was inherently feminine… she was seeking revenge for the death of her child. In fact, she abandoned her life as an assassin when she realized she was pregnant. She chose motherhood over her career, anathema to modern feminism.
The female assassin trying to kill her even backed off when she realized Beatrix was going to be a mother.
The difference, of course, is that the women of KILL BILL were actual female characters, not male characters in female skin-suits, which is what we get now, which is what everyone ACTUALLY hates.
Modern progressive stories suck because nobody is allowed to be different. Men and women have to be interchangeable. And a thinking person’s brain rejects that, because you know that's not accurate. So you don't relate to these people. You never actually met these characters in real life before. Women don't act the way they’re portrayed in these zombified male skinwalker versions.
You can trot out Beatrix Kiddo, Ripley, Sarah Connor, and say they’d be called “woke” today. Use that to try to defend the personality-less husks that pass for female icons in this current moment. But your argument falls apart, your poison worldview cannot allow you to realize that’s simply not true, because they’re not just male characters wearing make-up and a bow like Ms. PAC-Man; they’re fully realized female characters and the primary engine of their character, their drive, the ultimate drive of the divine feminine… is motherhood.
So no, KILL BILL would not be called “woke.” KILL BILL isn’t “feminist,” it’s FEMININE… and as long as modern Hollywood chooses the former over the latter, their skinsuit girl bosses will never connect with the larger audience, and will continue to fail.
Took my 3 year old niece to see Supergirl. Half way in she cried and told her friend “I can’t believe the hegemonic cis-heteronormative patriarchy has finally been decolonized enough to grant narrative sovereignty to a female superhero. At long last I witness my full intersectional self—my gendered, embodied, and existentially marginalized subjectivity—mirrored back to me on the silver screen in all its radical, agentic glory. This shatters the phallocentric gaze and liberates the symbolic order. I want to be just like her, wielding power as praxis while dismantling every oppressive structure in her path.” I was unable to hold back my tears.
@WesleyLHuff Thank you for sharing.. my wife and I bought our first home last October. Weeks later, we were hit with the floods in WA state. This encouraged me just now as we are still waiting on God’s timing for us to move back home. Many blessings, brother.