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onthecue · 5 years

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Road to RPm: How to be a BLEPP Passer

The Board Licensure Examination for Psychologists and Psychometricians (BLEPP) started in 2014. It’s safe to say that this is one of the relatively new national exams in the Philippines.

Through the years, only more or less half of the total number of takers are successful in passing the Psychometrician board exams. Here are the results:

2014 - 1,290 out of 3,283

2015 - 2,061 out of 4,466

2016- 3,690 out of 7,312

2017- 4,957 out of 8,701

2018 - 4,035 out of 8,453

I placed these numbers not to scare future takers. I just want everyone to have an idea on how tough the exam is. So you can get the picture, the board exam is not easy as it seems.

I passed BLEPP 2018. For someone who is in the helping profession, I would want to extend my knowledge and help fellow Psychology majors who would want to take the Psychometrician licensure exam.

Knowing that you are here, searching for tips on how you can attain your goal of being an RPm too says a lot about your determination. Keep that up and I’m pretty sure your name will be on the list of passers too!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs):

1. What are the subjects included in the Psychometrician Board Exam?

The Psychometrician board exam is composed of four (4) subjects namely, Psychological Assessment (40%), Theories of Personality (20%), Abnormal Psychology (20%), and Industrial Psychology (20%). However, there are news that additional subjects will be added in future examinations. This isn’t confirmed yet for BLEPP 2019 so you can calm down a bit. Just a bit.

2. What is the passing grade in order to become licensed?

You need to attain a general average of at least seventy-five percent (75%) for all subjects, with no grade lower than sixty percent (60%) in any of the subjects.

However, there is what we call a conditional passer. These are the examinees who attain an average of 75% but they have a grade lower than 60% in any of the four subjects. What's the catch? Conditional passers may retake the subject(s) within the next two years and they must obtain a grade of at least 75% in order to pass the licensure exam.

But of course, that’s not THE GOAL. Aim to completely pass all subjects and become a board passer. If you can, go the extra mile and even top the board exams!

If you have any questions, kindly send a Tumblr ask, I would gladly help you out if I know the answers.

MY TIPS ON HOW TO PASS THE PSYCHOMETRICIAN BOARD EXAM:

Disclaimer: These tips helped me a lot but it doesn’t mean that it will certainly work on you too. It will still depend on your personal preference and your learning style.

1. Have a study schedule and STICK TO IT.

Set a goal. Since there are four subjects, I allotted at least one month per subject. I started reviewing as early as June 2018 so I had ample time to review. By October 2018, I had around a month for a refresher and to reread.

I had daily and weekly goals to meet. This helped me a lot because I wasn’t only organized with my review but it helped me to feel accomplished once I see my progress on paper. It felt great to tick off topics on my to-do list. It was reassuring for me.

What if you don’t meet your goal? Of course there will be days when it’s harder to study, especially during the rainy season. There are days when you’ll be distracted and you couldn’t focus. Don’t be afraid to adjust your schedule as needed. But refrain from always doing this and putting off your goals for tomorrow. We all know that each hour of studying matters! “Bukas na lang” and having a lot of excuses won’t help you pass the board exam. Make sure to make up for your backlogs and delays.

It’s better to study in advance than to cram. Besides, you will feel more confident when October comes. Imagine if you are still halfway through the coverage and it’s already October first. I swear, that will be terrifying! SO STUDY IN ADVANCE.

2. Fix your body clock.

On the day of the board exam, you will need to wake up VERY EARLY. If you are nocturnal and you are more productive at night, you will have a hard time to focus during the board exam if you do not fix your body clock. Trust me, I’m a night owl as well.

Why is this important? If you stay up all night studying, your body will be used to waking up late and feeling sluggish during the afternoon. It will be hard to wake up and arrive on time for the exam. For me, it was a challenge to train my mind to be ready for the first exam at 8am and also make sure to fight that after-lunch-siesta sleepiness for the afternoon exam at 1pm.

So my tip is to fix your body clock. While reviewing, I woke up as early as 5am. My study schedule was from 6 in the morning up until 8 in the evening only (breaks included of course!) But it’s still up to you, whatever works for you. That’s just my study tip.

3. Reward yourself!

As mentioned, I only studied for around 12 hours. After a day’s worth of studying, I make sure to reward myself IF I FINISH MY DAILY GOAL OR TARGET. I watch my favorite tv show to unwind or eat my favorite comfort food or go out for a drive and get milktea.

This is important too. Remember that too much of something is always bad. Rewarding yourself will keep you sane, make you feel motivated to accomplish your review goals, and to of course, free your mind of the fears and doubts!!!

4. Choose only one to two reference books per subject.

There are a lot of books available that would help you, but it will be too overwhelming if you study too much books per subject. I will list down below the books that helped me throughout my review.

Psychological Assessment and Theory by Kaplan & Saccuzzo

Psychological Testing and Assessment by Cohen & Swerdlik

Abnormal Psychology: An Integrative Approach by Barlow & Durand

Theories of Personality by Feist & Feist

Industrial and Organizational Psychology by Aamodt

Sikolohiyang Pilipino by Pe-Pua

These were the main materials that I used. I finished these books from cover to cover. These books were recommended by the lecturers in the review center that I enrolled in, RGO.

I also used some of the powerpoints that our lecturers provided as well as the review booklets and drills that were given to us.

5. Enrolling in a review center or self-study?

It’s a case to case basis. Remember that not everyone who enrolled in the review center passed the BLEPP! Enrolling in a review center is not a ticket to those three letters! I would like to believe that this greatly depends on you. Sure, enrolling in a review center has its advantages. You’ll have test drills and review materials. Some lecturers are also kind enough to give a copy of their powerpoint presentations. You’ll also be motivated to study because of a supportive community of fellow Psychology students, review center staff, and your mentors.

But there’s a downside. It was honestly overwhelming and draining to sit from morning til the afternoon, from 8am to 5pm. For someone with a short attention span like me, after two hours, I was honestly zoning out already. It’s hard to pay attention the whole day for lectures.

Another downside is that you will feel pressured, especially when you see your friends’ progress with the review, reading, and results in the test drills. You MIGHT compare where you are and what you’ve accomplished, which leads me to another tip.

6. FOCUS ON YOURSELF but surround yourself with positive people and have a support system!

COMPETE WITH NO ONE ELSE BUT YOURSELF. Don’t compare your progress with anyone else’s. Trust your pace and focus on your own review. It will cause you additional pressure if you compare with the people around you.

Don’t hangout with those with negative vibes. “Hala babagsak ata ako.” “Ako rin.” Remember, our mind is a very powerful place. Feed it with the right fuel. Stay with people who will motivate you and who will not bring you down.

7. Think positive. Be optimistic!

I’m not gonna lie. My BLEPP journey was not easy. There were nights when I felt like giving up. I also doubted myself if I will make it. I shed a lot of tears during that five months of review. My mantra all throughout is: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.”

I didn’t take the exam with the goal of just passing. I wanted to have decent results, to top the board exams if I can. I didn’t have a mindset that’s mediocre, similar to this: “Kapag pumasa ako edi good, kung hindi okay lang.” Why is that, you ask? Because I want to pass the exam. If I give myself the assurance that it’s okay for me to fail, even if in the back of my mind that’s not my goal, and that’s not what I want to achieve, the universe won’t pave a path towards my success. Law of attraction!

So set that goal, claim it. You will pass and all your actions, thoughts, and everything else will be circling around your dream of being an RPm. Believe that you can and you are halfway there.

8. Know your learning style or what works best for you.

In my case, I’m a visual learner. So the use of flashcards (i made my own using index cards), writing down key words, drawing to understand certain concepts, and reading while using colorful highlighters really helped me!

9. Believe in yourself and don’t listen to your demons!

Your motivation will wear out at some point. You will start to doubt yourself. You will begin to question why you wanted to take the exam in the first place. You will feel like you will fail. These are just some facts.

Don’t be afraid. Just pray, trust in the Lord, and His plans. So what if you don’t make it? What are you afraid of? Being judged by others? Being reprimanded? Remember, you can always take the exam again. Passing on your first or second, or third take won’t really matter. What will truly matter is what you do with your license. Just strive, do your best, and believe that you will become an RPm.

10. Apps that helped me.

Forest - The first app that I used is called Forest. It helped me to stay away from social media and to get rid of distractions! It’s also for a good cause because you can plant REAL TREES once you get a certain amount of coins. Stay productive. Help Mother Earth as well.

Tide - This app helped me to stay calm. The “breathe” option where it guides me to take deep breathes was effective in letting go of my anxious feelings! The “sleep” option helped me to fall asleep faster at night when I need to doze off already and it gave me good sleep because of the relaxing music that the app has. Also, the alarm that this app has helped me not to wake up feeling shocked (unlike the usual alarms in our phones!) The alarm increases in volume so you won’t wake up feeling so surprised because of the loud, nerve-wracking alarms. I hope you got what I was trying to say. Haha!

Headspace - Once I get up every morning, I allot a few minutes to meditate and clear my mind. So I can be ready for an exhausting day of reviewing. It also helped me to think more positively and to get rid of my fears, doubts, and whatnot!

Spotify - Studying with music really helped me remember things better and to stay focused. I highly recommend the Deep Focus playlist on Spotify! If all else fails, listen to Oceans by Hillsong and other Christian songs.

11. On the day of the exam:

Make sure you bring everything you need! (Especially your pencils and NOA)

Bring a jacket.

Make sure that your scantron won’t get crumpled, WET, or tampered!!! PROTECT YOUR ANSWER SHEET AT ALL COSTS. Keep it neat and tidy.

Manage your time well especially for Psych Assessment.

Make sure not to spill your drinks. I brought water and coffee (in case i feel sleepy) and drink away from your paper.

You may use the questionnaires as scratch papers. You can mark and write on them.

Make sure to READ THE QUESTIONS CAREFULLY. Some questions are meant to be confusing. Make sure that you know what they are asking for! (Be aware of the double negatives and look out for the words like “except”, “all but one” etc.

When in doubt, stick to the basics. Go back to the roots and basics of Psychology.

It’s better if you bring food to eat. Imagine that there will be thousands of takers. There will be long lines in the nearby restaurants.

Use your lunch break to rest. Don’t talk to your friends and discuss answers! It might ruin your confidence.

It won’t hurt to follow some superstitious beliefs! What’s there to lose right? I wore red underwear. I entered the room with my right foot first. I broke one pencil (donated the others) after the last exam and I never looked back on my seat once I passed my paper! But of course, your success won’t really be based on these but it gave me some sense of comfort and extra boost of luck, I guess.

PRAY. The Lord is with you. Trust His plans and remember that he answers prayers only with three ways: Yes, Not Yet, and I have something better in mind. Stand firm in faith.

12. After the exam, wait patiently.

I know it will be the most anxious-filled days. You will think that your nervousness will be gone after taking the exam but no. Your anxiety will still be through the roof! Remember to pray. Know that you did what you can. Be proud of yourself because months of studying wasn’t easy. Be proud of yourself too because not EVERYONE had enough courage to even try to take the board exam and that alone is already an achievement.

Those are what helped me to become a Registered Psychometrician. If you have questions and if want to ask for reviewers, don’t be afraid to message me through my Tumblr ask or Twitter DMs . I would be glad to help. I already have a Google Drive with compiled readings/powerpoints available for sharing anytime!

Good luck and do your best! Ora et labora.

#BLEPP #BLEPP2019 #BLEPP2020 #BLEPP2018 #BLEPP2017 #Psychometrician #RPm #Psychology #RoadtoRPm #BLEPPpasser #boardexam #study #studyblr #studyblrph #BLEP

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prettymuchdeadalready · 4 years

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100 Important Character Questions

Here’s looking at you kid, @wexarethewalkingxdead !! XD They’ll be below the cut due to length. {{ I despise ‘read mores’ except that it’s so fucking long! XD }}

1OO IMPORTANT CHARACTER QUESTIONS

taken from beth kinderman and nikki walker’s the 100 most important things to know about your character. a good list to help develop a character’s background, personality, and general aspects.

PART 1: THE BASICS

· What is your full name? :: Bobby Autumn Monroe

· Where and when were you born? :: Atlanta, Georgia at Grace Memorial at 4am on a Sunday.

· Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.) :: Maryann JoMarie Monroe (nee Tippins) and Franklin Roosevelt Monroe ;; mama was a stay at home mother who became an addict to opiates and papa was a worker at the mill in Powder Springs, which was a HUGE (in his mind because he always resented it) drive from where they lived on the outskirts of Atlanta in a little cabin home one a sparce patch of land just outside a trailer park beside the woods. Mama was a strong woman who grew weak after nears of being beaten and bloodied by her drunk mean husband; having 3 kids kept her strong to a degree, however, for as long as she could be, trying to keep his attention on her and away from her kids. When she died (Bobby who was the eldest of them by 15 minutes) that all changed; Michael trying to draw the majority of the brutality because he was the boy and his father always was trying to beat on the girls when given little to no reason at all, even.

· Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like? :: Michael Henry Monroe and Katherine Emberlynn Monroe, in chronological order of birth after Bobby. Michael is an EMT on staff with New York Presbyterian Hospital, which is also Columbia University’s training hospital. Katherine is an aspiring actress in the LA area of California.

· Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people. :: Bobby has never left Georgia. The only time she does is when the group moves on after season 4. She doesn’t know why she’s never left before, not even to visit her siblings that left her behind, but she always feels like, as the big sister, it’s her job to maintain a home for them to come back to, should they ever need it.

· What is your occupation? :: Bobby is an ER nurse with Grace Fulton Memorial Hospital and regularly assists with trauma cases.

· Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye color, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks. :: Height is 5’4. (Smol but mighty!) Weight fluctuates from 115 to 120 pounds depending on the time of year and stressors in her life; okay, maybe 124, but not an ounce more! She swears. Bobby is Caucasian American. Hair is an auburn brunet. Eyes are chocolate brown; when she is angry they appear almost amber in tone, and when sexually aroused they usually darken to an almost black. Her fashion sense is usually tomboy, wearing jeans and tee shirts; sometimes a little sporty with tight running pants, spandex or loose shorts, and tank tops. Bobby only has one tattoo that transcends any and all verses she might have: a black rose with three drips of blood on the petals, one at the end nearly ready to drop off, at the small of her back which reminds her of the fragility of life and death and the ever presence of the latter, the pain and struggle symbolized by the blood droplets on the petals. She has a long scar that runs the length of the space between where the band on her bra would rest down to her love handle, on the edge where her side meets her back – given to her by an abusive ex that was just like her father when drunk, only worse because he was legitimately a highly functioning and violently brutal psychopath and burn marks on her upper back/right shoulder blade and left outer thigh from where her father and her ex had their fun using her as an ashtray.

· To which social class do you belong? :: Middle class. Working class.

· Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses? :: Maryanne had carpal tunnel and severe arthritis in her left arm from it being broken a couple times by her lovely husband. After her mother died Bobby was cooking dinner one night and her father, who had been drinking all evening from end of work until right that moment, picked up his hammer and hit Bobby in the upper left arm twice, hard. She had to wear a cast for two months (part of that time an extension after being thrown against the wall another separate night that shattered the first incarnation of the cast) to heal the broken bone. Thus, sometimes when its too cold she has bouts where her left arm is weak, not able to carry heavy things, and there was minimal nerve damage in the hand as a result which means she can’t always feel too hot, or too cold. This does not impair her job as she isn’t responsible for surgery where the steadiest of hands are needed; thankfully Bobby’s aid in the field is at most a needle and thread for mending/stitches, of which she can do with her dominant hand.

· Are you right- or left-handed? :: Right handed.

· What does your voice sound like? :: Natalie Portman.

· What words and/or phrases do you use very frequently? :: Y’all. Jesus Harold Christ on crooked crutches. Jiminy Christmas. Calm down there Satan.

· What do you have in your pockets? :: A pocket knife with combination of other fold out tools. Mini canister of mace. Car and house keys in some verses. Apocalypse verses she sometimes carries car keys.

· Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics? :: Bobby doesn’t consider anything she does as strange or annoying but just ask one of the people she considers family and he would say she talks too damn much. At least the other man in her life appreciates that she knows how to turn out the lights…

PART 2: GROWING UP

· How would you describe your childhood in general? :: Stressful. Her days were constantly spent fearing what would happen when daddy got home, what mood would he be in, what would he do, would he just hurt mama or would he come after her and her siblings too…? Bobby grew up worrying about things no child should ever have to worry about or fear.

· What is your earliest memory? :: Bobby doesn’t know for sure if this is a memory or some part of her subconscious trying to bring her peace, but in the quiet moments when she closes her eyes she can hear her mother’s voice softly singing to her as she’s being held, cradled in safe arms with worn delicate hands gently rubbing her back. “Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night and wouldn’t you love to love her…? Takes to the sky like a bird in flight and…who will be her lover? All your life you’ve never seen a woman…taken by the wind…”

· How much schooling have you had? :: Bobby went through two years of high school before she was forced to drop out to care for her other siblings and make sure they got the best lives possible. It wasn’t perfect anyway, but she tried. She went back and got her GED when she turned 21. Immediately upon her father dying ( when she turned 19 ) she began putting some money away toward furthering her own education, enrolling in community college once her GED came through. She got a bachelor’s degree in science and biology, and earned certification and licensure as an EMT and trauma nurse.

· Did you enjoy school? :: Bobby loved school. It was the only thing she could do outside the house that was usually constant and unbreakable, a schedule that the state decided for children and one her father couldn’t stop. This was she could be free of the worries and fears that usually plagued her days and simultaneously learn things about the world at large, all around her and beyond. It was refreshing and awe inspiring.

· Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities? :: Anything she didn’t learn from her mother and her father ( positive or not ) she learned from school and the teachers and children in that environment.

· While growing up, did you have any role models? If so, describe them. :: The only role model Bobby had growing up was her mother, Maryanne. Mama taught her the strength and the tenacity she needed to make it in the world, both in her father’s house, and later.

· While growing up, how did you get along with the other members of your family? :: Bobby and her mother started as adult to child relationship and then at the end when her mother was dying Bobby became an almost equal to her mother, taking care of her and herself and the siblings she had. Likewise, with her siblings, it was mostly a jovial peer to peer relationship ( and what sibling relationship was complete without the occasional fight and attempted murder ), which eventually merged into a motherly feeling over them, protective of them when their mother passed. Her relationship with her father was always strained, always wary and tumultuous and it only worsened when Maryanne died. He became more possessive of the kids and Bobby feared being raped or sexually abused by him after a time ( she looked more like her mother than Kath did ) as he would get drunk and beat her, yelling things like ‘how dare you leave me’ and ‘I’ll show you something to cry about you weak whore.’ That relationship was strained and haunted until the day he died.

· As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? :: She wanted to be an astronaut or a pirate. Anything that could take her far far away from where she was and keep her safe, eventually far enough to make her happy in life.

· As a child, what were your favorite activities? :: Anything Bobby could do outside the house. She spent AGES outside in the woods, roaming with nowhere in her mind to go in particular; she could sit on a stump deep in the sea of green and just space out, let her mind wander for hours. She would try to fish. She made friends with small woodland creatures like something out of a Disney film. She sometimes sat alone out there all night, looking up into the moon under a blanket of stars and a bed made of fallen leaves and long grass.

· As a child, what kinds of personality traits did you display? :: As a child, Bobby was pretty devoid of personality; at least when she was at home. At home and when she was alone she was quiet, too quiet. A mousy brown haired brown eyed little girl with nothing to say and who would lay low on purpose, anything not to catch her father’s attention. Outside of the house she often put on a brave face, smiling and laughing and acting like nothing was wrong. Sometimes she could even forget that she was a victim of domestic violence and forget her usual invisible act, coming out of herself and being herself, talkative ( almost too much talking for some ) and bright. Her light shines bright from within her and her strength and perseverance really show in her eyes.

· As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like? :: Bobby was not a popular kid at school. She often sat alone or with her siblings. Even the losers didn’t want to sit with them because everyone knew what the Monroe home life was like and who their father was, what he did to them and their mother. No one would claim them as friends, at least not outwardly or in public.

· When and with whom was your first kiss? :: Daniel Dunn was her first kiss in most all her verses. He was a messed up kid, a psychopath that was highly functioning and much too sadistic, even as far as most psychopaths are concerned. He used her and abused her for most of her young adult years, as her father had her mother. ( What was it they said about emulating what you saw as a child and being doomed to repeat it…? ) In one of her verses she has known Daryl Dixon all of her life and he is her first kiss…her first everything.

· Are you a virgin? If not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity? :: Same as the question above to be honest. Most of her verses features Daniel Dunn in that role, as fucked up and cruel as that is, and in the one it’s Daryl Dixon.

· If you are a supernatural being (i.e. mage, werewolf, vampire), tell the story of how you became what you are or first learned of your own abilities. If you are just a normal human, describe any influences in your past that led you to do the things you do today. :: Bobby was definitely informed by her childhood and her mother’s and father’s relationship as far as what kind of person she wanted to become. She would consciously always pick a path that led her to be her mother, kind and sweet and a pure heart with passion despite being regularly beaten down and broken by outside influences because of her goodness. She was also inspired to become a trauma nurse thanks to all the times she had to help fix up her mom, her siblings and herself over the years, some of the things she’d come into schooling being self-taught after a bad couple of nights.

PART 3: PAST INFLUENCES

· What do you consider the most important event of your life so far? :: The night Dan almost killed her and she survived, barely, to be present and the star witness at the trial that would send him to prison for at least 20 years for attempted premeditated murder. And every so many years when probation is brought before the review board, release for good behavior, she makes sure she’s available to speak. She even takes the day off work to make sure she can go down and make herself and her story with him heard.

· Who has had the most influence on you? :: Mama.

· What do you consider your greatest achievement? :: Bouncing back from being a high school dropout ( even though her reasoning was perfectly acceptable and understandable ), getting her GED and her degrees. Putting herself first. Finally.

· What is your greatest regret? :: Bobby blames herself for her mother’s death. Obviously her mother became addicted to opioids and died of an aortic rupture, which were things no little girl could have realistically been able to help or prevent. Nonetheless she thinks, and has believed all her life that maybe she wasn’t strong enough to help her mother through the worst of their lives, to survive past it and watch her babies grow up and succeed in the way their mama had always wanted and hoped.

· What is the most evil thing you have ever done? :: Bobby pulled the wings off a fly once. Another time she pulled the back legs off of a grasshopper. It was, in her mind ( at least as a pretense ) all for science, but some psychologists and therapists might think otherwise.

· Do you have a criminal record of any kind? :: Bobby has gotten arrested a couple times, all for misdemeanor things like stealing a candy bar from a convenience store and for indecent exposure in her small town when she was caught with her pants down around the bend, side of the road, peeing in the brush while drunk.

· When was the time you were the most frightened? :: Bobby was frightened to the same extent twice in her life. The first when her mother was being beaten for the last time ( which was also the night she died ) and when Bobby herself was being beaten and broken and nearly killed by Dan.

· What is the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you? :: When she was 15 ( which is not a legal age of consent and no, I do not condone anything happening to minors, this is just FICTION ) she was being diddled by Dan in the back seat of his car ( he was older than she was by 2 years as well ) when she opened her eyes to find the window down and a couple of Dan’s older friends jerking themselves off to what Dan was doing to her, turning her on and playing with her. She immediately wanted to stop and thankfully there were other people walking by when she started screaming or she most likely would have been forced to continue against her will. It was both embarrassing for her and equally as dangerous and twisted a situation.

· If you could change one thing from your past, what would it be, and why? :: Bobby often wishes she was older and stronger than she was when her mother died. She wants to be able to go back and take her siblings out of that environment altogether. She wants to have been able to maybe even save her mother.

· What is your best memory? :: The ones alone in the woods. Anything where the woodlands creatures accepted her as a part of their world, knowing inherently she wouldn’t hurt them.

· What is your worst memory? :: The way her mother died, in her arms, at home. There were no police and no ambulance until it was too late to save her, much too late.

PART 4: BELIEFS & OPINIONS

· Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic? :: Optimistic.

· What is your greatest fear? :: Being powerless and out of control of her own life.

· What are your religious views? :: She’s spiritual but does not ascribe to any one particular religious sect or view. She tends to take a little of this and a little of that from various religions, whatever she feels she can identify with in the moment and incorporate into her lifestyle.

· What are your political views? :: Progressive Liberal Independent.

· What are your views on sex? :: The more the better. Well, provided it’s the right person and it’s consensual. Also, sometimes a little kinky if she trusts the person she’s with implicitly.

· Are you able to kill? Under what circumstances do you find killing to be acceptable or unacceptable? :: In any verses where the apocalypse doesn’t exist ( or not yet ) she could only kill if it was someone threatening her life or the lives of her family/spouse/kids. In the apocalypse, she begins just as they all did, saying they would never kill the living, then only if she had to, and progressing until doing it regularly because she had to and there were rarely other options. Not to say there are moments when she should kill and doesn’t, for one reason or another, but she makes sure to weigh the call. Taking a life, being a healer as she is and continues to be, isn’t an easy call to make.

· In your opinion, what is the most evil thing any human being could do? :: To abuse physically, emotionally, mentally, and/or sexually a child. To Bobby that is the most reprehensible crime.

· Do you believe in the existence of soul mates and/or true love? :: Yes.

· What do you believe makes a successful life? :: The impact one has on the world around them, whoever or whatever they touch/influence. What a person leaves behind, their legacy.

· How honest are you about your thoughts and feelings (i.e. do you hide your true self from others, and in what way)? :: Bobby is pretty honest about her feelings now, almost to a detriment. She’s brutally honest about thoughts and feelings and has been pretty intense in all aspects of her life since her father died and set her free from the binds of her past.

· Do you have any biases or prejudices? :: Bobby has biases against rapists and child molesters, child abusers and domestic violence offenders. Really, she feels as though anyone who breaks the law for more than stealing some food ( if a person is desperate to eat or feed their family ) they should do the time applicable to the crime.

· Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it? :: Bobby doesn’t like to lie. She won’t do it. If asked to lie she will retreat from the conflict altogether, saying nothing to either party. If asked for the truth, therefore, she would have to tell the truth. Her replies at being asked to lie always include some formulation of ‘if you want to propagate lies and slander then do it in your name.’ Her refusal stems from years of her mother and her family lying to the authorities, to medical professionals, to the world about what they went through at her father’s hands. ( Whether they knew or not otherwise wasn’t the point. )

· Who or what, if anything, would you die for (or otherwise go to extremes for)? :: Family and friends that have become family. Her spouse, her partner, the person she’s chosen to spend the rest of her life with. Her children, adopted or natural, blood or not.

PART 5: RELATIONSHIPS W/OTHERS

· In general, how do you treat others (politely, rudely, by keeping them at a distance, etc.)? Does your treatment of them change depending on how well you know them, and if so, how? :: Bobby is always guided by the other person. She will usually begin friendly and polite, if a bit wary and gruff depending on the circumstances. It always depends on the first impression and expression of the other person how she reacts and treats them from there, forward. Sometimes a rude or dislike situation can be changed over time if both parties work toward making it positive or a catalyst turns the dynamic around. Likewise, if someone starts off friendly with her it can turn to dislike and even hatred if given the right cataclysm. She read this quote once that she lives by : ‘if you feel it necessary to judge me by my past, don’t be surprised when I put you in it.’ Most often, however, if a person is able to get past all the walls she’s built over time against being hurt viscerally by someone intimately, they’re in her heart and they’re usually there for good.

· Who is the most important person in your life, and why? :: It depends on the verse. Sometimes all she has left are her brother and sister. Other verses are dependent on her family/attachments/spouses/significant others. Rick, Shane, Daryl, Charley, etc. Family is important to Bobby, especially at the end of the world. Her children are first and foremost the most important people in her life in the verses in which she has them.

· Who is the person you respect the most, and why? :: Carol. No matter what verse is concerned, this holds true. She sees a lot of her mother in Carol. A lot of the same strengths and hopes and dreams that have been tramped down by a man with a heavy hand and an awfully small constitution. Of all the people Bobby has the pleasure to meet in all her travels and all her realities, Carol is the one person she loves and supports and looks up to the most.

· Who are your friends? Do you have a best friend? Describe these people. :: Bobby has very few friends in the real world. As stated before she was never a popular kid growing up and only got any recognition for her beauty by boys or girls with one thing on the mind. The only people she considers as true friends she made after the world as she knew it already ended. Carol. Daryl. Rick. Shane. Maggie. Glenn. Enid. King Ezekiel. Jerry. Jesus. Aaron. Etc. The only exception to this is the verse where she’s known Daryl all her life; in that case she’s always had him. He is her best friend. And her cat, Patches, a gray and white tabby cat with darker gray almost black ears, definitely constitutes as a best friend.

· Do you have a spouse or significant other? If so, describe this person. :: Daryl – nickname Tracker; annoyed and frustrated with how much she talks but loves her for it anyway and finds it kind of endearing despite himself; afraid of intimacy in the same way that she is and was and what makes them a good fit is their willingness now to grow together solely with one another; can’t live with her and can’t live without her; hillbilly grump with the most honest, pure, innocent heart of anyone she knows. Shane – nickname Deputy; knows who the real boss of the house is; is probably afraid of Bobby…maybe…like a lot; strong willed, passionate, and has an easy anger reflex; they fight a lot about the silliest things but it always come back to love; the thing he probably loves the most about her is that she knows how to turn the damn lights off. Rick – no nickname as yet; he really stepped into the leader role over the time they’ve known each other; Bobby never expected to follow him as closely as she does now; they don’t always agree but they rarely actually fight; he’s the epitome of calm and problem solving in dire situations; he’d walk through Hell and all its fire for her and his kids and probably everyone else he cares for and that’s the one thing she loves the most above all else about him. Mac – nickname Cupcake; strictly a fanfiction/headcanon ship at this point; used to ship this pairing exclusively with macxtheanimal way back when; a meth head, rapist, murderer, criminal, muscle and enforcer for his father’s crystal meth operation; he’s a villain that makes no apologies for his actions but she can see the broken little boy in him, abandoned by his mother so long ago to his father’s lifestyle; kept her hostage as a sex slave for a long time until they had an intimate exchange one night and she whispered to him that she just wanted to be free to make the choice; he let her go, saying she was free and he knew she’d always leave because they all did if given a chance; she stayed. {{ All are subject to change based on verse or partner writing this with us. Mostly these listings as spouses or SO’s are exclusive right now to wexarethewalkingxdead and macxtheanimal. }}

· Have you ever been in love? If so, describe what happened. :: She’s only been in love a couple times in her life. ( Verse dependent. ) It almost always ends in pain and suffering for her, be it physically or emotionally, but there are a few over the verses/years that she’s found true happiness with.

· What do you look for in a potential lover? :: Connection. Chemistry. Sexy/pretty eyes. Rough pads of their hands and they have to be steady and firm. Stable.

· How close are you to your family? :: Bobby and her siblings are VERY close, even though they don’t live in the same place anymore. Sometimes herself and her sister Kath haven’t always been as close as they should have been. Those moments are almost always based on imagined slights of some kind because Bobby is and always has been an outspoken person; she never sugar coats things that should be communicated. It follows in the same vein as her always being truthful. Hence, sometimes hurt feelings. Bobby and the people she’s come to think of as family are likewise, VERY close with these same issues of hurt feelings now and again, resulting mostly in a short time of silence or avoidance between the parties.

· Have you started your own family? If so, describe them. If not, do you want to? Why or why not? :: This is dependent on her verses. In some she does make a family with someone special. In others she hasn’t, whether because she hasn’t found that someone yet or because she’s afraid of finding a man like her father and subjecting herself to the same life her mother lived prior to her death – not to mention subjecting any children they might have to that lifestyle.

· Who would you turn to if you were in desperate need of help? :: Bobby would turn to her siblings first, provided it was something they could solve realistically. If they aren’t available or they can’t fix it because they live out of state, etc, the next stop would be her chosen family, friends she’s made along the way that would go the extra mile for her, and she for them.

· Do you trust anyone to protect you? Who, and why? :: Very few people and they have to prove themselves to her with their deeds, not just words and promises coming off lips and tongues that have lied so many times they probably don’t even know they’re doing it anymore.

· If you died or went missing, who would miss you? :: Her family ( her brother and sister ) have been living in different states from her for quite a few years now but that doesn’t mean they’ve become distant. They would definitely miss her. Also any of the family she’s made in the apocalypse. Obviously this is verse dependent.

· Who is the person you despise the most, and why? :: Actually, I think Bobby despises her mother the most of anyone she’s ever known in her life. It’s a very complicated relationship. Bobby still loves her mother; while she was alive she was the only kindness Bobby and her siblings knew. She was strong and endured a lot but that same strength could also be considered weakness. Why couldn’t she have left their father? Why couldn’t she have taken them away and made a go of it on their own? Maybe she’d be alive today. Maybe a lot of things. So Bobby is constantly fighting with love and hate for the woman that bore her.

· Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict? :: Bobby has a good sense for whatever a situation calls for, usually. In most circumstances she will listen and hear someone out before saying her piece. But she is southern and strong willed, a stiff backbone, and sometimes the outrage comes dripping off her teeth like venom before she can stave them off. In moments when she can’t be smart and hold her tongue, and even when she does, Bobby is a woman who is definitely not afraid of conflict if she feels the situation calls for it.

· Do you tend to take on leadership roles in social situations? :: Bobby is strong enough to take the weight of the world on her shoulders. It certainly depends on what the situation is, but in the case of her primary verse – in the Walker apocalypse – she doesn’t hold back. As a healer, a nurse, she will absolutely take on a leadership role if one is needed. If another leader is present, and she respects that person, they will only gain support from her; likewise, if they do not have her respect, all they will get it push-back until they either utilize her and her ideas to their potential or she potentially replaces them as the leader. She’s very strong but she is versatile. She knows when to step back and let things shake loose.

· Do you like interacting with large groups of people? Why or why not? :: Bobby has always been a little bit of a loner. She’d personable but she also likes her alone time. As previously discussed, there wasn’t a lot of silent time in her home and she much rather would have been somewhere alone with her thoughts instead of lined up ready to catch a beating. Large crowds do tend to make her a little anxious. She’d much rather only deal with a few people at a time.

· Do you care what others think of you? :: Bobby does care what other people thing of her, to an extent. She doesn’t dwell on it, however, and if there are ever opinions that are misconstrued or wrong she will make sure not to ever think on those things again. The only thing that usually can get to Bobby is when people she loves and is devoted to make comments to her that can be considered derogatory or hurtful, judging.

PART 6: LIKES & DISLIKES

· What is/are your favorite hobbies and pastimes? :: Hiking and taking walks in the lush green forests. Photography. Reading. Her grandma taught her mother how to sew and thus, taught Bobby enough to get by; those nursing lessons on stitching wounds up didn’t hurt either.

· What is your most treasured possession? :: Patches. He is a grey and white tabby cat with dubious bloodline origin with black ears. She’s had him with her for a long time and she’d walk through fire for him if she had to.

· What is your favorite color? :: Blue.

· What is your favorite food? :: Seafood boil.

· What, if anything, do you like to read? :: Bobby is an always will be a fan of anything she can get her hands on. She does go through moods, however, devoted to certain genres over the others. Predominantly she reads works of fiction about murder and crime, who done its and thrillers. Horror novels are a must as well. A favorite series of hers is the By The Numbers novels about Stephanie Plum and her life fumble bumbling through the Bounty Hunter business by Janet Evanovich. Romance novels, unless well written with a predominant plot encompassing one of the aforementioned genres, can go suck lemons!

· What is your idea of good entertainment (consider music, movies, art, etc.)? :: Bobby is mostly a music person. Movies are fine and television can captivate her attention if its done well but there’s nothing better than putting in a CD, or plugging her headphones into her phone’s jack and playing some tunes on the digital frequency. It sets the mood, no matter what that mood is, 100% of the time.

· Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to quit? :: Bobby used to smoke. It was something to do with her hands and a nervous tick that she adopted mostly in crowded groups of people to help calm her nerves in those situations. Social smoking. Whether or not she still does it verse dependent. Bobby also drinks alcoholic beverages but within reason and rarely ever to excess.

· How do you spend a typical Saturday night? :: In the apocalypse there is a lot to do, all of the time. There’s never a dull moment. Saturdays are usually reserved for whatever needs doing that wasn’t done the day before, as well as making time for family and friends trying to reclaim what was stolen from them by the world as it exists now. In the other verses where the world is normal, Saturdays are usually reserved for family time, the park, the zoo, barbecues with family and friends, etc. On the rare occasion work comes calling – she is an emergency room nurse – she will sometimes go in. And sometimes not.

· What makes you laugh? :: Stupid jokes, dad jokes, horrible puns. Her husband. Her kids. New airings and reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

· What, if anything, shocks or offends you? :: Racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, slurs and swear words used in conjunction with said slurs and behavior, etc. Anything that could be considered along the same vein by small minded people who are afraid of anything they don’t know and haven’t bothered to become educated about/in.

· What would you do if you had insomnia and had to find something to do to amuse yourself? :: Insomnia does sometimes strike. It happens in those moments when something exceptionally traumatic happens at work or there happens to be a scare with her husband, kids, or siblings/family, those moments when she’s in the dark of the night, sometimes alone, with her own thoughts and fears. Sometimes there is no amusing herself. Sometimes she has to talk herself down off a very high ledge. Sometimes she has to wake up her significant other ( if present ) just to know they’re there, they’re alive. Sometimes the heartbeat and the steady breathing isn’t enough.

· How do you deal with stress? :: Bobby reads. She keeps her hands busy cooking, cleaning, and caring for her family. Killing Walkers in the apocalypse, keeping a tight perimeter. Yoga and pilates in the verses where the world hasn’t changed.

· Are you spontaneous, or do you always need to have a plan? :: Bobby is usually a very plan oriented person. She’s learned over the years that the only way to be is concerned, vigilant, if a bit controlling. That isn’t to say that she’s a control freak, but she does have strong opinions and will be heard on them. She wishes she was more spontaneous and sometimes makes attempts to purposely exit her comfort zone in certain situations she deems it appropriate, such as her sex life, dates, etc.

· What are your pet peeves? :: People who can’t follow directions or laws of an ordered society. People who lie or steal unless circumstances are such that would overwrite the negative or somehow make an allowance for it. People who judge others or presume to tell other people their business when they don’t even have their lives together.

PART 7: SELF IMAGES & OTHER

· Describe the routine of a normal day for you. How do you feel when this routine is disrupted? :: Regardless of what her work schedule works like ( days or evenings ) Bobby gets up around 5 a.m. daily. She makes coffee through the slits of her eyelids. She then returns to the bathroom where she showers and brushes her teeth. By that time she usually is ready to start breakfast for herself and whoever else is present. Morning shifts she works until 3 p.m. She will usually run any errands she has to do at that time before coming home and making dinner. Night shifts she works until 11 p.m. doing the errands and prepping dinner before leaving for the night for her shift. If her routine happens to be interrupted or subverted in any way, she usually gets a little perturbed, might make a dramatic comment about everything being a mess, and carrying on with things as best as she can.

· What is your greatest strength as a person? :: Her heart and her generosity. It helped her overcome a lot of odds that were stacked against her from the beginning.

· What is your greatest weakness? :: Her heart. Sometimes she’s loyal to a fault even though the people she let inside of it use her and abuse her. Also her stubborn as a mule attitude and her stiff backbone. When she’s made up her mind there’s very precious little that can change it.

· If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? :: How her past shaped her to be numb and emotionless in certain situations that require feeling. She doesn’t always respond in the right ways to tragedy or loss. Sometimes not responding at all. It’s a more calloused wounded part of herself she wished she didn’t have.

· Are you generally introverted or extroverted? :: Generally extroverted but in small doses. Large gatherings or venues kept to a minimum.

· Are you generally organized or messy? :: Organized.

· Name three things you consider yourself to be very good at, and three things you consider yourself to be very bad at. :: Good – 1) Problem solving, 2) Nursing/healing, 3) Being a wife and mother. Bad – 1) Spontaneity, 2) Letting go, 3) Cleaning vomit.

· Do you like yourself? :: Yes. For the most part.

· What are your reasons for being an adventurer (or doing the strange and heroic things that RPG characters do)? Are your real reasons for doing this different than the ones you tell people in public? (If so, detail both sets of reasons…) :: It’s a choice you make. When things get difficult, what kind of person would you want to be? If a child cries in the dark, scared, alone; would you help them? Or would you turn away? Tell yourself it’s not your concern. If a mother and father are fighting for their child’s life as the child is being physically removed from their arms, wounded, killed before them. Would you intervene if you could? Or turn your back? Would you do everything you could because you have the ability, because you have the choice or do you do nothing, make the choice not to, and perhaps blood be on your hands…? It’s a choice she makes every day to do better, to be someone she could be proud of, that her family would remember and be proud of long after she was gone. Her sacrifice, if needed, would not be in vane.

· What goal do you most want to accomplish in your lifetime? :: Leave the world a little better than she found it.

· Where do you see yourself in 5 years? :: She can’t say. She hopes to be alive and well, actually living a life and happy within its confines. But she knows that may never come. Not even tomorrow is guaranteed…

· If you could choose, how would you want to die? :: Old and grey in her sleep. In the apocalypse, if she could choose and she was bitten/injured beyond the ability to be healed, she would want to shoot herself in the head before changing. She wouldn’t want to leave it for any of her loved ones to do; she doesn’t want that burden to be on their soul.

· If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do in the time you had left. :: 1) Write little notes or letters to those she loved who would miss her and feel her loss the most. 2) Love on and spend a lot of time with the children, 3) Clean, load, cock and ready her gun and wait.

· What is the one thing for which you would most like to be remembered after your death? :: Her kindness. How many people she helped. How far out of her way she sometimes went to make that happen.

· What three words best describe your personality? :: Brave, Generous, and Loyal

· What three words would others probably use to describe you? :: Bold, Daring, and Realistic

· If you could, what advice would you, the player, give to your character? (You might even want to speak as if he or she were sitting right here in front of you, and use proper tone so he or she might heed your advice…) :: Bobby. You are without a doubt the biggest pain in my ass, second only to Shane and Daryl. You are the most generous, kind, loyal person I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. You’re also one of the most stubborn. A word of advice might be you think too much. You plan and you organize and you get shit done. I get it. But sometimes, you’re a little too extra. Learn what it’s like to be a girl. Let your hair down more. Unscrew the dick sometimes. It’s fun being a girl. And I know that you know that but you’re too afraid to lose control because you think if you do you’ll lose everything good you ever had. And I know it’s because you don’t think you deserve all the good you have received over the years. You’re beauty. You’re grace. You’re the kind of person I wish I could be sometimes; but you need to be a little less afraid of what you could lose and more willing to risk it all. A man in my life asked me once if a moment of happiness was worth a lifetime of anything else. And the answer is yes.

#ic #about Bobby #• you got some beach ball sized lady nuts on you • { bobby monroe }#character development

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turuses-blog · 5 years

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Space Suede

Space~Suede

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UUUNNNN

taste

Without spectacle or speculation To disprove either, why this contrite act Of order - wrought twice over now - with patience Is an obedience foreign to lapse… Within perfect solitude and solace that To rend an addict’s said, dictatorship… Oh! in bellows, battling always, lapsed Steering clear of crystals from any hip… Oh! trapped for good in ambient control A wave formation, phalanx, to peruse Notwithstanding ministry! to unfurl Freedom, from nothing in essence. Peruse A’ some chapters’ few, and connect To an indeterminable static.

sallow / pallor

it must be the burnt lemon tree fall upon us solid-crysallids of almondine kiss and please, never let go of this almond fists’ criss-cross lisp to hold boiling fugue it is that the dusky forever’s took a tan gentle shrub enough of a lover’s hug wild at first yet plunging into cupid’s burning lungs o, that sweet passion, to be thy mouth of windless notion… promontory, flora where to end thy’s pursed-when, or begin, what fond of recoil and jettison-nonplus we’ve bout begged to dine at its smouldering tartine plagued with ragged snakes and flame to please for the sakes of this lonely burnt lemon tree I’ll assail all with what the burnt lemon takes to consume

breakneck

the ivy has pigment on the crux of the arch. the sagging arch of ivy’s pass. it used to be a pasture for silent matters and setting an eye-on and detach. i fear yet the ivy grows me down to this domicile. in the atrium for tea. oh i hate making flavored drinks for such a characteristic ship, sewn together by and by leaves. dare i yank it dare i pull, double-dare i uproot it; and tassle with it’s finland barbs… wait does it flower? does it own this home? where does it retreat at night when the lamp post posits chrome * no this ivy has a freedom. almost sent from thy heaven’s aftermath… calculating cold evenings alone, and sunny days for scaffolding craft… *it has the right to my door I guess, yet, I must depart tonight… I wish it wasn’t that easy to spot the lamplight’s goneth out tight a splaying, praying, hinge!, yet amorous as pups, that gild by day, and sleep by night… ’just where to go, least infected, so and so, I had for breakfast… as yet, to, I follow the light trodden path out of this dwarve’s town quite, all the while pretty sure - with baggage, light - I may endure a night made up for sleep, not just the itch of playful ivy. and which it’s poison is though soft, maest expedia is complicated as if gazing on twilling willows, accord perpindicular armed these pillows made by man, i completely can’t understand how it got there, or if it’s coming down, whether or not storm of protest, or friendly nether… I’ve tide us together… with a silent jag… the keystone pocketed by horse… to ride out until yet

serious settlement issue

“oh its just an odd-knocker, this storm.” Praytell forsooth not for teeth clenching prone to roarish brethren. the typeset that abhors onlookers and grave shade yet, whet for grass movements in an erroneous of swivel-floods and tourist. oh and Percival protecting the glass sass root, cellar with ornament and scone (already on hand) “oh it is quite an odd-knocker, this storm.” grassroots do tell of its aberration, the middle of fall. When and where a witch could scold up a cauldron of cabbage and sugar… to melt your eyes, she switches the lever on… yet no flying, nor sabbotage, in the old bottom-smith, glass loot, cellar for pause. “oh its dying down. this storm, what an odd knock.” as I was in teem, miserable-mind-sleeping… the middle of this seeping womb - the steady creaking of antiquated quaking - without cause. and till the water breaks I shall whisper twas an odd-knocking, as if nothing at all. nothing devoid of a forecast for glasses to toss shadows on the floor which soon shall bind all my fastest convex as storm!

peti teach

if it weren’t as bad as it was the shelter would have taken scorned crops to this hearth but snowfall brawn on the spruce young guns - find the children-chimerical toast points everywhere… green pea pods appear! everywhere, just for a few seconds from way up here…looks toyish, wonda’ if it id be a boy’s-wish!I

‘lest ye revolve around a stick! (once again) a kernel of hope! a bravish…with wits, rope and vhs tapes as these oils, and balsamic vinegarette! my choose, you,

the scalding hot crouton, bouillin outside like noodle… the exposures almost ready….! ‘spooky’-A.R. battle for the prestige of having a show to perform, the second night… the sun is a baffling cradle, lullaby magnets to master for when rapheal posee’s

tittilage

a truck stop south of the horizon… three perfect miles tilled in tile and daily tallied, the lapse being ticket to a calm shout-out…I’m ’talkin max shout out

too many at the table...

shelter… pass it around, At least floridian-meritous, pass the dish… thanksgiving gobbs, out his final mouth. “what is this? a poet convention? I’ve heard the cooking from the fridge. “strange postulate…mmm” Jason takes a sweet friccasi… pass the dish… the moon lost its directions, sitting clock-wise, to floridian-merit boasts! lucky guise… pass that dish… and someone reignite this/that candle, oh yet…” the braille-felt ham tasted too-full, aux musing at last “is that ham from the fridge Jason? is already cooked? shelter, why, I will get it…

oh, it has to… bottom of the jar stuck in pretzal’s sobriety… it has to so it can reach the others! the end of the bag, I do say! inquisitive little grasshopper… oh, it has to last… past the two twilights we caught… develop sobriety like a hawk’s bitten chalk… screeching out the taffy just to feel how hops oh, it has to last shorter? why are we backwards like arks? why do we persevere on this quest for the arts? sobriety teams with the green, forensics will catch sight… of a drunkard, with wallabees stationed peruvial at night…. but, might, this door, be friendly? be friendly this door? how can i call my licensure insured? sobriety oh it has to last longer, take a look at this fjord, theres room for candy, Now, I wonder, it’s make! high fortutious exhibition that three some odd twilights i see on television… all requited and paid trick fore, “i keep mine in elastic bands twirling orange fashioned melt-corn-caramel-candy…’ ‘where did i put my sword…’ ‘in fact next year I’ll get the hang of this and cut the corn out’ “bags of melt-caramel-candy” which is what i would frau, to peaceable elements of the nightgown i see crown…” “oh, the door,” “can this last any longer?” the fastest way to sink a tooth into something, valued like sales!, when the aliens embody us, do they where costumes… pouring ale? ‘i sent a message to an alien once, now in closest procedure, it said, nothing like servicing the eccentric and the outfit’s they where, colloquial as procedure!…’ that’s enough flapping your lonely gums, man, the candles are out…yours?

jump

the snowy peat piques under our feet a week to bend around the corner till cumbersome cleets - may! - be whittlin the trees and run, ran, tepid in a gauzy defeat all along the terrace, yet not where whet marks’ from… oh the dance of fall, trance-like snow and inward expansion, that is, from a handsome dole of ears on farmer’s land some mottled and took shape to swindle ransomed territorial foot jerks, root/root-marm type glances - a lot of this would happen the peckish birds in order the final cloud stops to talk the defunkt plough hits its rhythm when they crash into Noah’s Arc

block-q

liquid frozen cherry hearts

“used to plunder, here, pitch” “nitrogen in the gun, a black shark” appointed toward with the pistol ridge. sequential ultra-violet lights hearken

now, aiming at perfect concentric circles a miracle to miss, a martyr scorned at every outer or other disc a lively ancestral adagio of bank clutching triggers affronting notions of hands with gifts on cigarettes, alleviating the end of this type of pistols’ training measure, arriving behind, now, through doors, a field of ace-cards, to score, Since, as all alive, they arrive via assault rifles brought by forklift to the mire

january in code

although they do know hospitality, and efficiency among the dreary… well, since the nurse left, it was sweltering inside the cabin. which forsook the season came early, Good Heavens and when we couldn’t take it at all, we issued out into the ramps of snow as blockade and like beforehand spotted the of tufts tobacco far off, gunfire outlets and discoed merrily gauging, yet gouging our gait…

we still had the ridge around this necropolis half-faced, and as we spread, like butter on a skillet, we lost contact, our breathe no longer visible, plodding on into the flurries laying in graves

possibly still warm, we had moved out earlier than as expected… the extra flattering isometric movements we made were cantankerous. at mortar - we lay along the ridges - a fresh footsteps’ walkway past the trekked banks, still with us. , digging now back, surrounded by snow, towards the cabin, which this bearing clod and snow curtain imposes in testimony to a feverish loan, …before we start freezing, submachine guns on our postuler comprisals’ with whoady-demons hiding in the banks… whoa… I had strong, black coffee in a flask, which acted fast, yet put me at a loss with the frostbite of that cabin drought…

etc

As he gaze past the blinds, blinded by sun and shade, he pulls the chord aperture, at an angle and walks away to the study… Now as some say he makes beautiful sonnets… he to turn on the light to dawn it - these unbelievable inexplicably structured poems, which, in delight - glaze as he flips through; and raise the top right hand corner at the dancing wick to see the roman numeral to expedient light… Waiting to shop for milk and cheese, just to go ‘home… …and count [his] poems.’ again - replete, with pen names and invisible device, catalouge and camoflauge - jagged jarring shadow mare, bleached-Marrakesh, displaying their centre of weight. - just to eventually feed the perishable… Yet so - conceited, fashion to vague response and acquisitions, sometimes wrought - not just with his abundance of makes and modellas - conceited to the even very first time he ridiculously took time to stray from couplets and into: haikus, tankas, couplets, stanzas, coupons, colored leaves, radio jazz limericks, sonnets and shoes, just you-bet that until you read his work, that’s all you hear about, etc…

spot spice

i trot alien to the moon, passive and plausible to make the rise soon… its still early - while she ties her frown in thoughts, laying down - for her. mirth married to tarrier, wincing fairy-gilded to answer the wrought specs ‘in step with the window - the next possible contact swoon so certain and so far away the curtains of fall and May destined to be some other day - the dry champagne - co-ordinates slow - and the clamor, cauterized by locks of snow… until, ray upon ray of thy whetted smile - the merry festoon parlay as he gestures in a hard place… ‘I shall climb this tower, and rescue thee, not since Aesop, hath I believed, that there, a way to contest in speech, win and render this read heir besmirched your fate-meet, to a tender of every mention of my search… to seek. if I don’t climb to Luna, I may not resolve A pageantry for my waking ours’ and roses, in which to impeach.’

sandy welts

I went through there a while ago… it was fun crouching and dodging the trees… pressed to be, at war with the cite pleading-seething, not early enough to sneeze, yet being and in the beating pulse fleer of a rich,slow, (atomized) culture… in a way it felt untouched, I author… yet as i went on it seemed the way was receding towards an uncomfortable nature. First: the crickets’; sharp territorial lacerations, and the grass; against my calves, the smells of raw dirt; sobbing & the static-firecracker chlorophyll, all dashing ample pressure without building moisture, nonplus- with a bark of tree-like controlled temperature, ready as the rain and sun… it was cool, like an artic-submarine, as i wilted my holder’s keep then yet the thinning sun through the vertices’ expenditures clearly dipped to keep what expedience eye to eye… - I had trekked in a straight line so I took an about-face and marched back through…

‘talk about a red forest; passchendale spread dirt worked crescendo in quiet anticipation… scene from fantasies with a clumsy flourist…(stocked to the teeth) possibly enroute to explore the extra toxic mycological experiential plummets of the sport, known around here as half-plums - down-the-road, flash-back driven to protect snails…that’s all to say about it… yet I know they left trails… all waiting beside, an unevenly undulating mossy-short-fringed-shore…

The forrest sweat with me. It was on fire, the sun reached the luminescence cast from mark… on this relief of a march (more a thoroughfare) I couldn’t remember sites or paths or anything except the cyphered boughs… I dare say the leaves (in control) had me trapped, or lesser-oblong, blinded a gigantic swirling record of historians…! twas, more a terrestrian color brigade’s way of choosing way; and off to the sides: hay and what have you on one side, and a hedge high as high buildings envisioned from the fence ‘far off feudal. ‘all it needs is a fashionable mortuary on this plot to clear the woods I say… ‘next to congregational fences therefore, for they say the woods ain’t no normal woods…could be… I don’t frequent forrests too much, but maybe

the cedar incarcerated graveyard to last past wroughten fig draws

the screech of an antique drawer… the ‘screams at night to be extra visible, in the swift wind. almanac worthy, sale-item, pearl-obelisks of miniature mince through acumen fro-whistling. thats it with the fields, yet a myriad of several more super-imposed ghastly victims float through the dying leaves, kicking up dusts and leaf-coupons… I hear the roof belongs to the moon, and the smallest matters’ seek the light…

partridge

a twisted piece of grass in his responsible thumbs. he takes in, and lets out and some crickets jump in. had he known, grass-gowns for licorice, he’d had not blown his cover, oh so covetted as a tomb ground nearby, so surly, metamorphic reprise done under. what with a sandal stepping on top of small hills. ants and moth and flower and soil… best if he heads home the sun seems to be toiling

may weather

the bulbous’ businesses bias is of this hyacinth park - next to a frequency-trip rhododendron mention -parched my upper and hidden tensions of sinuses on a timeprint trip toward the sun. blocking the way a few feverish violets graying on the task ‘afront. ‘ i uncontrollably thought of sneezing, i know just the one… with a muddy print flurring off into the grassiest patches of hatchwork passes… chastised with practices of cold mashed potatoes and born of bread in sandwhiches…just to get past this…

she wore along with a song of the ancients - some climactic recession - that of butterflies and their swift tangential progressions; more than half - by a bit - past suspension… yet hammer’s smith smith moat, floating - to say - and blinking infinitely on a saucer of dismay… what several willows’ pillows at thought to bade, arrays of colorific centrepieces no more than just a bit clay… yet cloisters holsters sprays and sprays… while indeed the worthiest longlash fashions the gray. running away takes more time… i guess

rest

it was like destiny’s letters… cheavauh brawten… myriadical faucet (on) break-up patents, loose jean, palindromatic headdress on the lap of conclave…

‘just building, destroying miracles.. sorry worry-issue, razing glass tubes with the fictitious friction, how so~ felicitous at mention… rented a co-op back to baccyus (too) painted leisurical

praytell

an oriented cat figured its way across my lap and sat ‘correction, with articulation… and that, these

witchy-cat’s-eyes did stare at my frozen-folded slacks of worrisome pseudo turmoil - contingent on witches-cats’ body prompting hyphenetic enfolding upon, yet may not capture, the riding - crumpled - as i got up. and, yet let the yarn of her fretful sorcery fold mercurially into a snow man’s legs…which happened backwards…accidente’ ‘thought i might snatch my in-hand-done papers; plucked like a c string…out and on this same diaspora singular-editions… of which might defribulate a countenance leaving hooks cards’ on door knobs…quo now and forever, and with thinning trim as, whispering spurs dropped that witchy cat into the time-signature of my noumenal greeting prepositions to date, and all anti-slack band fashion - to temper to hands off and on… for instance I grasped the gnomon that i construed out of wrought natural materials, including but not limited to mangoes, caramel and magnesium… shaving the time…~ it wears like glue I had forth created the sheathing effect of its width set, scent, and scoal that is that time and time again cat’s are proven to exist forever… the scary-witch-cat caught up with me at the door harboring a big, black, bubbly cauldron-stir… with a peacemeal glance back at the forth chapter and muttered, just a bit, whetted. the air quickly jetted to phenomenal… what time was it, was it? i left my apothecary, things were looking up! soon to spread the time ah the settlling slug, the maniacal ant reserves the bald men selling rugs and the pills that people deserve… - always awake yet - and feverishly asleep; sleeping all the time away my undulations and motion-derivatives tart in series and sets complexed the fluish tenders of the herrendous heat tarp to act art contradictory veritas minutely and breathe hearty of the daze chalk if thats what is entailed - the job was simple yet met with some combattant like.

- perhaps outside where the cigarettes burn; platonic mnemonic, reindeer begged for antlers cash spent enroute to the spot, most of it traditional cat’s telephone machine… who knows?

a semi-efficient compromise of plexiglass scratch flat - the vivid pock marks of the projector, which’s capacity was quite muddled. and the cat had it (either way) yet the cat call worked the cat, santa claus, some other big names… kicked a freestyle session, pretty dope stuff. for instance… “i bring you presence” that guy has way too much time on his hands.

Houndstooth is soundproof

1. quay

1.tell everyone, the basement’s done flooding…

1.my house, a crumb within a flute sharps of embankments

1.patients testing lesser things for flooding or dried fish

1.“you’ll have yours”

1.“its windy outside”

1.the basement is whetted while i rinse through blades and shower my facial

1.while spirits sink from the comforter - morse code balancing, with this art

1.blinking, blinking, blinking…

1.stridents

1.0

1.kneedeep

1.‘back in the day, when i was young, i’m not a kid anymore’

1.bliss crystals sift through stealth, miss you ‘xoxox’

1.plagarize dexterity for another half-surmised

1.blur of the edges insofar fit for a fistful of life, twitch, came short and sought wife-

1.Those, curious pledges to deltoids, the -esiuz of the ledger

1.blasting surfeit in two lasting past the forth, fortnight eclipse…

1.you get to fight; aside a private glass of modern man’s ant-hill

1.some tvo granted chain of command through the grass blades,

1.sit, fantasy, break, elven toxicology…speak worldly through a spasm i once had…

1.no doubt it would wash away in mineral deposits, so accursedly shallow…

1.pressur

1.patches, on delt’s quay -

1.milk and chips…

1.chocolate on the mint press procedural stress

1.need so many…

1.tell me about it,

1.abdicate

deltoid

i fell into a double-pronged - gift - marriot of song. play flacons fillial fish bladed oblong…merro sketched on sever audacity (semblance) with a crew-dillitant - as if fading hair to a nightmare of irrevocable capacity, to grow there…

poppin off, lots of toss, to the clouds though, the floss (ignoring bliss?) which topped my chart, on my single hit-or-miss mark… flakes of gentle seabass, of which it wash… bark bark!

seriously took a reel in to exist…

chalk melted and bladed the number’s drawn on a pheonix,

of which was sent to bring her flowers? can you believe that, ‘girls in the shower’

metabolizing her voice, rainy day style opaque sky? cast me a derivative - oh ‘that.

coy, built, fahrenheit height, instant passion

the bastings

it truly is beautiful,

which does not

for some instance, at insinuating loss

most of all, the givance-

of tectonic call & calf

which tends to break ocean’s in full yet in half…

mildly tending an impish flame,

the fire texture, fixed-ie-feeling pane

and a flame, for all - yet the forth!

a myriad of haggus or something borne

blurring ant mimic in god’s resin - like an earthworm

a notable fishhook… scraggled into my salmon… my salmon; port.

in don quiote’s fashion he swam on land, like a sailor; port.

a wednesday never came faster in the history’s of monday; though I don’t calm thence…

and an umbrella-spider taut, taught me spider-lingo: i was like, one cheese order…

a peacable reason to deal with whilst vacant… perhaps a book caught the fish, caught the grip, caught the sights, hit the port

2. waltz

2.oh willow, play me crazy, breeze by my censorship on your trip up to a bird’s eye-spicate-spies-especially-willow in my eyes…

2.with each farther and ruse planted to ferment the lurch of dues, of perfect clot and tie, why don’t you turn to the appeasement of the highest skies in you

2.they say

2.be forth written and climactic, aimed at with telephones, tilled derision, still precision, still precision and make marks sifting shifting sniffling, to , to mother, to bride bring down your own centre and break the sky… ive been there, many times

2.what will open the dice face, for miser, in fact, ive never seen a bead of it’s echo the perpetration of a perpindicular tie.

2.start first and end where you began in fact, delineate between a restitution that each petal will latch; yet closest, the fountain needs tract, spritz and follow ornate heaven’s grasp…

2.blasphemy bounded and gave you a match!

2.… pluck a further moment with the lass, who brought sew… she writes, willow, oh you breezy, easy going, so-so.

2.response edition 2

2.s’matter o’dillitant to the number 2

2.catoring brevity points for instant revery’ dilute with two thirds hair and rose…

2.i spose i could check the bars again,

2.mine would be “diaspora co-lect’ my favorite make to model, yet i have one lingering rose point, stemming off and finding water in …well

2.i just walked from here to tim hortons three times in 3 hours, thats prosaic dystolic for a fortress made of forgotten lure…

2.tho’ yo’ spoiler, which stands accrued such as more luke warm cadmium.

2.playin safe here, the number, the winter, you forgot about me… iced percentages, that may melt

2.no edit

2.‘past the point of g hosts’, a dendria lantern for my soul *i press the tip of clasp-broken oration to extend my thumb like a chapter, in the book of yet to put down (robert frost, selected poems) it moved my lighter into a rolled lighter, and right now i was ignorant of the place, where I watched, and what i’ve got. blink

2.20 fast minutes clocked a wall of brick to assail my placard heart, hearing art - and arabic insinuendoes… mesmerized by chalk…when? my knee placed my whole shoe, yet built with the shock, destitute rhythms i misused… i did not want to die, fore my word, lifts strong, then or now a peacable remission into what i thought cool lingo for was ‘friction’… and i stuffed my pecan dish with egyptian ecstacy bliss crystals’ remarks… plark, quarked down and through the nicest police car parlor with talk of being stopped. and there i was for 3minutes i was responsible for, divining my belief in stop…so awake… so awake… the ghosts sought a magistrate… i told my sister of mummy-eating practises in Egypt.. what saved me was television’s widest spectrumx2 tv… on TVO…. i i, and today, more subtle it was Ron Burgundy 2…

2.for the record, i prefer articulation to humour 4 times out of 5

2.double minks

2.the pharoah decreed: we shall not stop, till, there is a top… and with lightening fast reflexes Albert Camus later recites loop and/or ladder building as a mechanism distributed by mountains and rocks… that lead to an uphill battle, all around - yet more importantly - he with the thalidomide predominantly scare out the bliss that’s inside of us, mark, he felt the only logically question is…

2.the pharoah walkled up to the ledge of his honour and a hissing snake caught his attention - waltzing primarily in its unyarned crinkle, and shushed it with great calamity… oh what a great calamity it was. and so, he, was, rejoiced~

2.the outsider l’etranger, excites a little snake into the forces of egyptian solitude, at a reasonable price…

a list of treason

a single wrinkle on the rose petal, arose such suspicion, roses’ thorn’d build failed to permeate…

a paschendale of artifact magic cards crinkled in the pack age… in jumps a soldat- of basketball-talent!

left remission for the hard-wood floors,

a list of treason

—-bleek bloom

watching the 9:10pm its darker than most, clouded thou drought. thought-catching

a misty 9:30pm, conceptualized way far for enough backings baccus flow like foam,

a wooded section of way back.

attaching to too petals, square like a orchid-skin-electric game-docket…

3. russians

3.braille she dots furtive longeurs parting…

3.into a frosted flute

3.braking and entering into the fury of a jazzman’s jazzhand

3.which came with a breathe of fury…. wasn’t, chapped-so

3.quite why i had a myriad of worry

3.so surly to surely moresal-piece wear and tear the lury,

3.whilst penury from pencil tip equitable myriads of lury… into

3.questing for a stop-end bureau or bearer… to bust open the dirty, six-piece cylinder making shift shift shift shaft and lury…

3.and spin

3.a sizeable gap of educative dually provocative slurry, of a book!

3.and rampart the ignitable fruition of a head(strong) blasphemy out of order..

3.departed… roman,

3.arrived… prosaic,

3.middleman… Proxy,

3.-to the cause,

3.and manage the intern, pattern-stripped clasp of a low-riding pair of jeans’ilk

3.bludgeoned to malady, (my lady, my silk) myriad….

3.rare wilting sun of the sun… run with me, ‘till i see the pageantry, build… let alone a quill, that does

stacked mind

i battled minutely and broke the index chapter-area-rearish and pristene in itself; that is an arrangment cloaked within a book’s barriers thinner than the thick letter-plaque, laced and unthinned; it didn’t get me down so much as to renew it, in fact, it seems like its gaining worth, like precious candy, i don’t know, obviously there is a worthier cause to incur growth, yet, none as sweet.

oh the smell - elemi - delicatesans’ sanitation with food… green, mini blade thickets…. ie. take some brick laying liasons… how meddlesome…and obstruct passage in libraries - and those the thought.

turuses

oh its like we are entitled

to every fabric across from this foliage, even the varying fabrige undergrowth wrought of this, a mason's fable, nightmare or shovel

catch us

tracking a whirlwind of pollen as dust onto available petals

and i wonder, if any cross-pollinated beeless…

and that bugle’s horn is to die for

submissive in pledges to and fro, discerning incoming autos

________

turuses

wrags

many…pennies-weight, within the jurisdiction of an edicette known to falter, pre-empts, plausible postulates of which, from all but one can hitherto alter. and yes you or you may have pennies for all the angles of a pressed coin, yet, emblazoning idols with them spastically hurdled through the air in one show of robust emblazoning, does not yield it’s capacity to promote growth against time. and against time is supremacy I guess forthwidth the renegade that it is… whatever bevels it connects eventually in surplus determines the surface of the moment a wrecking ball broke through; entrepreneurial, sadistic. Neitzsche’s “atavism” clocking in….

a direct line of command somehow got contraband…

r.i.p.

4. herbs.

4.a well, felt next to the smooth-shop, and rainwater doused it from time to time.

4.it fell upon the worthiest of the town, to stop and take some time.

4.at once one day,

4.a coin did break,

4.the surface of the water…

4.and just on time - or the clock that authored - it was surfeit with tea and proper.

super

cajolery

blazon, directory from the mashed out

maison, perfunctory list watchers, flout…

grazin’ perfunctory wist latchers, gout…

break the beak or break bread? i mean, what is the dire mutation doing now?

safety

on a samosa of a backwards warpath, petty - perhaps pedestrian - recall from the HQ led Preston into the net structure and pronds of the opposite of oblivion, ‘eh sos goes for us all… by that mark…. engagement where, in the microscopic-frothing-tangiblity experiment-ecosystem, the variety of decedent in ‘sublimated level 3″ unknown section to requisition note biene , ‘a new verse of well-crystalized piety was tinging for recall as those Mills marbled the petrie-centre. some powder, of, magnesium, later; the very small, yet informed hallo-wentrepreneur took just under full form…element 7.5 tacked to his right wrist band with insignia from some government chap, beside~ it

before much, and before long, the thing surprisedly formed around one side of the dish and taut predictable effervescence… again, more much, same long. as it stands, a hatching period known to the subdivision failed to mention or document that this was subservience of the…device!? willing to form - and that it was taking shaped around the slight, circular concave that- thinning?-turning to water? which was growing in uniform metabolism… like the focal prism scratch on the refracted index… element 7.5, has been recalled, ad diminue’ pro quo, and as deciduous’ are pronounced, tangled - appropriately - into the vacuumed perforations of the topiary inert proficiency of shell-like…larger than usual octopus vessels…

str

beyond progress within the computer mainframe and it’s strictly-digital capacity to preface backing up several attempts to testify - these as experienced coherent hackers - sent a rumikab of articles (known as an infinitely singular testament) wheeled light… gyro-cryptic, ‘shells, had a light disco sliding through the avenue fresh with baking soda and drink… blotches of small resisters; which accounted for the eerie glow, tilt-pink. i pieced together the sata and its particle party-favour cable… instant spring…

stand tall

placid it sits; a remonstrance, in the midst… of what-is-it? that of where the best cherry blossom hath splits… cider says hard: its the pits, the fits, the ritz russet-dark cherry molasses tis’ it for a list of super nintendo-binding dualisms to exist,, so jinxed…ummm it would take minxs to douse themselves - and we’ve two shots at this… quick, as a back up, before a tail up, yet ipso-facto… elastic like that of dopamine to endorphins perhaps yet the cherries ferry chariots and arrive in focal piety…the pits, again! we sit with the cherries across the fence. to climb, to the condensation-swine-rhetoric, sits… uhh, blimp? clenched like a rinsed hand, i grab the retrograding-officiated root, and route my right foot for the first elbow of a live one… pinching 2 bundles of hoodlum-ante and jump down and then to eat them… the cabbage-like puncture, to just graze the centre, piece, tincture of light vinegar…. and He’s cleaning the eavestrough for another… on second chomp, a brandish of sheer pheromone, thigh… spots a ladder to the shed and fro… before i brandish another, i’ll throw the rest in my pockets to rest - professed to cherish! yes, they’re unbreakable… —————hey you, where’d you get those… like he didn’t know?

eucalyptus

I”ve gots a shallow for-aloe, wound, wound from malpractise already,

my atlas stabbed my marble backward ‘back gammon theism, with warding capabilities crestfallen to thee tree, and it’s galvanized antissory film decay’a’wedding with the moisture involved in distraught dust and underage car… my first wishes was to dish wash the woven bovine roving of a uut disorganizing pallete entrepreneur in sevens… yet when i arrived tango, it was obviously a “jericho” moment, and i clicked the six six six… my emblem was duty; payed.

(mind on plinko, straight shooter on the hip) -turuses which has x2 paved the way for an astral projection that’ll guide me into the centre of the known solistice - forever just a teem - to deserve uut zero inert… inertia to a rotisserie clocked, rocketflag tango. Bounced that check ‘thralled, in specs. flekked one gold - the army stock in check, slivered to the dentist cuz i swallowed a praying mantis- at best and was the width of elastic band with working man’s best specs… perhaps>>> might need to run through a bit more radial arguments in the past; to, durst, deposit seriousness in my clay-abiding ipso-nouns, pro-abiding, to send in my resume of duality when it comes to rooting out clowns! thanks for the lovely slug you set loose on my concrete slab… x

Set’till

contralto vivified in plurality reign to indict the heart ache of such departure sparks in-dissent the friction of smart boxing, in three fold. a diorama

from

the pandering window, maybe the soda water crystals aside at my desk. Sometimes its good to hear about perfect leisure, when the legions are brass-steel self-alleged

i use to be quite a pro with pencil-spinning, and its strictly from my heart, the art that begins with pencil-rinsing… oh, i gave mechanical pencils something to believe in. doesn’t matter, twas a glorious match up of mechanical pencils, and spinning them, that i partook in. clad in an unsharpened… no question…

bark

a larger than normal tarantula poised to eat a small tree outside the restrictive park area came to the conclusion that, if he had studied medicine, he might have enjoyed eating sooner.

who knows?

title wave

darling loss, providing hosts with mothballs, independent of cause… the objection of walls corrects its paucity - dash costs… and in betrothal of sauces, paints - if thats what you call them - a dish, is left… cold fish… best viewed with a hook

its all wrong, maudlin fathoms, deep brilliant eyes of squid… the watch of witches in the crow’s nest, explode, then make fire for fish

the ice has originally melted - that, thin straw stout route to two too nihilist dire platforms of the underaffected that are down for precedence, that be: ignorance, either side of the fence with indescribable turmoil already, or even just because of the actions which seem impossible; and a strict mouthpiece, within limited to authority, via sanctioning and the underfunded promises therein… yet… as Mephistopheles has it, logic lasts till the last sentence… and the USA is in jeopardy

order some CATs to skulk around and sit and dig

tunnels to offshore…? trenches from spawn fly some jets in there if it helps with aerial footage perhaps isolates of pressure. ie. lots of liquid nitrogen! & even some type of bomb….. i know, bomb a hurricane w/ convoys of concrete trucks and/or logs

yet my venture permits both lines of caring to be merry, i was ready to say fish may need to swim onland for some reason and no that doesn’t help anybody, studying where fish are during so might be beneficial…same thing with people…helicopters!

makeshift trailer bridges? leaving taps on? gtfo of there? the final clue is: where would you like to live? and, the answer: florida

bitter stasis

why is it the sand gold? speakth before’n to see the moulds: grazing iguanas claim, climb, clad the folds, where ‘ and all the little pharoah scald with drolery- it must be the summer-line, crossing into the spill, long-horn, to horn, to horn exploding instruments turn to soil and nefarious- deltoids rest in summer-line wrest,

and as I am for ease of etching…sorry, possibly just saw a necklace-peice of a pendent permeate itself into an anubis coat- of- strictly fashionable-that-some-green, which as the light accustom brown-pouting was incandescent at best, maximized i, its deliverance as a frosted-scarab… motionless, iceberg of fabric from the mathematical subscriptions limited upon brick face, to seize armiture as one and one, yet but not captured… either purpose or meaning… tbc

pick me up twice

that and a night drought came in with a robust, roving massive darkness; across spanning over the minute divits of thunder clods, over this land gratefully, without its gander of low pressure; finally welcomed where the lakefront promenade - municipality to mine own - met the lake. i heightened up and spritzed the window to a cramp. like i say its not everyday one can live among confused feathers and disco lamps. i sped to my notebook and sketched the nuthatch i saw dabbling the air - like my vision was relegated to all and/or most of the movement in the bands - of sleevefilled horizon lines and the figurines. the hedges here to there, the short paved escape, the trees; flanked so-on forever, and the firmament. yet it moved fast, twas twice as vast, iconoclast clear skies bank where aroused was a shaky 5pm red sun- only visible now and so-where, a wind picked up and doused the downed whiskey rinsing through some impossibly pretentious banter, along the shore.

diagonally

it hasn’t even been a lock since my prized synced sundial ammended even blacksmith’s blind… the twilight hour… a still rather elliptical - outfit of my lot’s labor had I could sense turning a final austerity and gently top-heavy field gamon alotting that which continues moderate growth without locusts. at first its like watching a fire, then they settle down around 4:00am. but thats neither here nor there. unless you count the visits I get from Samson I get at all hours. and here we shall share him odd on envoy particular. reticent, self-evident.. my weather vane was drowsy so and so… wishing it could give me a clear patch as a black horse stamped with rider and pulled up… at the hour of 10:00pm Thelma made him a scarlet blend of herbal tea, I the same. Upon courtesy I seated him in my study and we both had at some fresh lemon tobacco. “how are the yellow and red water?” “fresh coal, have you another blend?” “why yes.” I fetched a Drumson Wood and asked Samson, “how long will you stay?” “Oh, just on my way back from town.” Samson took out a newsprint partially twisted in his back over-all pocket. “I’m gonna lay it straight for those aliens.” “…The crop circle people?… they seem vengeful and organized…” “More Drumson Wood, and I’ll just finish this tea here. I say, a price on their heads…” Samson pulled out the page, “seems a group of people do the circles too in order to show the ‘aliens’ we are intelligent too, near the back, smaller part of the publisher, called locustfocus.” “Why that’s as clever as it sounds.” “it says here we’ve seen the last of them this season, or they’re spreading, ready to ground.” “so what am I to do? What are we to do?” “stay vigilant. drink tea. in the extra fine print it says they are a judgement call, a reflection tranmorgified, a mirror as transition through life can only manage, all run by those who use livestock, those who value life.

onew one

its so noiseless that i ask you nobody knows this if i left without a trace to let loose my face,

existence, would start with thee last left bashful eyelash by alibi that to leech around a winding hill of coal at rest and, yet when abreast two fifths fine grass, and a wine glass, broke at home

finishing with an invisible penny for twisting, an oasis reminding me that im out one seashells finding colored beigh with patina of five sevenths temple displacement that striking up on mine own binds of

where my eye is a filament for the engrossment of ‘those’ others - skeptically close- but don’t you know you were never one to run away, from the salted roads

hey cold warm 2

I was on the brink of falling asleep, late and complacent on the couch in the front - for once one floor above the basement. My eyes slightly jumped open now and then, revealing - honestly - the life that played with myself and the scene… Decorations abounding around the walls and shadows from all that was seen. On one extended viewing of the partially lit walls covertly at the door - the indigo ceiling melting into normal orders - did buckle and remotely douse me with ubiquity and order of operations to discretion in architecture, the culpability of movement arrayed. my blanket in disarray - knit and white - became a sleeper’s foyle as it reigned on me as ordinary occurence; yet this, I was deeper.

why yes, the blocks of ceiling, my ballast; window and furniture, shifted, all to make something, something I either slept through or woke up suddenly into subriety - and had come about from all my condescension, with an expedient opt to reassign the ceiling to whatever it was. That know I knotted locales and a opaque ceiling.

My eyes began doubting the stillness, several times. My best guess was a moving candle operative, of fairy or pixie dissent, ushering me into the basement through the vent… the comfort from the blanket growing exponentially, I jarred my eyes, feigning fright. at which the ceiling came bearing down on me and started a lament for the rug in front of the door… I swear I wanted to move; somehow I just knew I was not in the malady of a malevolent being, perhaps just proverbially and most likely - an impish flame rekindling from closed eyes’ near blind, and sallow angles reshaping…

I had been in this purgatory gearbox, for an hour or two… I waited for the birds to chirp. when the candle went out… it was now well-past midnight hour and I lay in the darkness, comfortable, yet partial to wakefulness. I lit another candle… the indigo folds, the impish flame, the blanket, all the same

There it was… the first bird chriping like a lovely siren.f

hey cold warm

a brazen on the barometric deep in the throat of recognition, plumes in loose flute position, angled a slolom solemn, so-seam - so-so - slotting into my lower chest, such as do dotted candy strips and just as memorable as the swindle mentioned specifically its the purple opal octagonal-pointed and the brunt cindrous dazzling cinammon my eyes yet its dark

arising phase I flew on land, a kite that racked from a bird’s nest in the clouds… angels… swiftly upon me eleven albatrosses came down I"m like, “where’s the waitress?” once as was thought, I throttled the full-armor-car-aft-facade on quickwork-flat blatant dune backing up to pull the chord down “all this from from the former backseat the lower order keeping distracted with menial attempts at diction drifting through the world, there she was, she cast a thoroughfare glistening aura, beside - on the board walk

Guage of an arrow, splinted roughhousing nothing more to climb, cherries full and waiting - and flagstone, drops in x. waiting for labels

razings’ dreams drifting through the world… heralding minutely, and casually on a mini skateboard, albatross full foyle ~ about. most - some pure coasting,.., buoyantly why I mean Cinderella had some natural artifice actually restricting limitation the wake of sheer wind, her able lateral shark of compute, which limiting more but hair it just comes to some things thats shes just into and really, across, where onto the window my reflection plucked my core,

the flagstone remorse. searching distance.

"check them, check them.” the limits that attest to, ward, all those feesible mentions… in both edges of a carrion dispositions of regret now, now… I’ve pent the stencils to be filled in and over with ink, the nets can’t even capture prize still frames to sync can’t even think in the now its so quick - the odd neglect cubism tares cares to fasten - yet? so - so finish quick

~moon cycle had i

it gets predictable the miserable the madness talent and those who wrap the falcon’s beak around and break the brow from beaten artists, (going )far'n finite for marbles quark, florid fauna, fond of a final fantasies for real, just how those are where those naught (reached…) phantoms lanterns saturn asprin a symposium where shadows’ riot for platony, create a credenza of its spectrum, a two-something measure of disparity insofar as he who was brought pox inequal pressed-to silhouettes of rockness frets, yes, sir, thats rounded-edges-talk of fast-misery wave-technology all-so spaced out like emaciated chocolate or space cadets… spying loch ness even the uneven

!54 104

as will lace’d rivulets of feathers felt into italic line, become barbarous against a feverish fire where no friction echoes of finite time perhaps already forgotten there own make marking burning - like this very poke - spokes of wind super-tropical winnding and,

nothing but glorious ignition as soon as bent backwards…to the ground, from the grind, as iconic rivulets of home break apart the hands… and posit… pheonix seeds, brought to term in ff7 to plant and plead with reality sometimes…

130

to sew the wounds up… my hand to play the part of spoon, hook, ransacking tolerance. I, with swoon in hand and maudelin talent even if i make a pamphlet on benelovent rancor, someone’s prediliction might ignore the horseshoe plants still stiff as to lay on my to-do list as one thing to hand out once its… in print and then wander into the abyss. till vastness becomes iconoclastic and I last this matress out till its endoplasmic reticulum becomes a magnet, and then on until it fractures, and polarity shifts, do it all backwards, with stronger magnets

farther into the w

breaking broke stuff that’ that satellites back-up flashes that sound as diamond scratches on doctor’s recommendations I vaccine some dollar bills for entertainment crystals - thats non-nickel-cadmium adjacent the cinema with her

just flashin’ against the line

I broke through the borrowed past, presented myself - bounced on calves… neck nexus to the side panorama first strident, an attack secondly merely contender ballast dear hearts with the task of fast or faster.

assured,

entry 3

Journal Entries in Blood Part three I went out to the market at midnight tonight, just to look around. A howling the other day made me think there might be a stray dog or wolf or something. I could probably train a wolf couldn’t I? The shop was dim though the neon open sign still cycled, coupled with metal bars and the lock, I somehow found my way home, and then it was… a howling, not of wolf, but of upset life or wind. It grew closer with another, then it stopped. My eyes were out like a dog, not a wolf, surveying the area for something other than leaves twisting attached to branches. I started my way home, a different way this time, I ate my trailmix and made safely to this attachment. It is nearly waking hour, and there it is again.

new new 1

i reckon there was a coast about 20 seconds ago, the earth drops’ moon cycle

i left without a trace to let loose my face, by alibi that to leech around a wind of fine grass, a wine glass, broke at home reminds that im out one seashells find that striking up on mine own binds of my suitcase working my shovel into an ovendouble shift one for mistakes, one for muscle… and one for miscellanious my find was called a jarhead and was for strictly pure profit in the warbly march sand and soil at this time of night

yes, yes here, where fleeting doesn’t cost - anything - except the loss of a waist here and there, below the flaying gargoyles which embed one’s soul lies some treble conspiracy quo and today in cue stone, turnt to evening fire cutters, even welcomed evening grace, and i don’t see it happening any other way

little foggy, like always probably won’t rain, but i’ll jog if it gets on me… twenty past a single digit, and drunk mates had made a religion to stop me… not on my map, they don’t even know where i live systems down, this was hardly… what you would get out of me.. like always i shutter and i see a zombie, it’’s me

new new 2

i reckon there was a coast about out and abrupt up about 20 seconds ago, the earth drops’ moon cycle had it different

on land. oh how! docking reminds that im out one seashell - my first boat - and up around $1000 each toss of the new one. for that striking up on mine own binds - of my bane suitcase - working my shovel into an ovendouble shift one for mistakes, one for muscle… and one for miscellanious a net growth my find was called a jarhead and was for strictly pure profit in the warbly march sand and soil at this time of night ‘that in treasures found scintillating matches, sparks, and clods

little foggy, like always probably won’t rain, but i’ll jog if it gets on me… twenty past a single digit, and drunk mates had made a religion to stop me… not on my map… they don’t even know where i live systems down, this was hardly his heart, always bound… what you would get out of me.. like always i shutter and i see a zombie, it’’s me

one one

its so noiseless that i ask you nobody knows this if i left without a trace to let loose my face,

existence, would start with thee last left bashful eyelash by alibi that to leech around a winding hill of coal at rest and, yet when abreast two fifths fine grass, and a wine glass, broke at home

where my eye is a filament for the engrossment of ‘those’ others - skeptically close- but don’t you know you were never one to run away, from the salted roads

zrunning

just flashin’ against the line

I lick my pen against the flower to appear chic yet damage nothing… How subject - of abstraction - forms torque on normally debatable craft ending, mending within art’s perametre; thus stated reverence, may exceed instead of submit to vision - though limited - image which is contrary in most cases, hitherto where this percent of contraction may hold true in reverse for cubism garullously settling upon it’s true form…

sober slurry

a puzzling equivalent - unto which i know of at very least twofold - habilitated itself with my side order of large onion rings…to go was and will be, cheddar jalapeno dip, oh, and a bottle of soda, a small pricey one… it seems these were on side as i gazed at the game sippin on my gazzeiu, that of the way over yonder to the other half of the staggering petition to heresay glee club mods who say no and who’d attribute new age convention with extremely age’d tradition… bless them. and their future seeds

nor zeus, nor he be the king of wizards, and poseidon - damned to eat plankton, that i relish eating wagon wheel cookies

—

turuses

curiously appetizing

I passed the telephone company’s brick building on the way back (like always) and like always it caught my glance (and probably, properly stored my electrolytes’ dot product in it’s heaving face)

I couldn’t fit inside the telephone machine building. for some reason, the telephone, had it in for me! yet, after 3 hours i sit by it’s ‘therefore’, wondering… why i must get inside this telephone.

soma

a riddle what starts with a middle four fretting that is, not ice cream, yet just as meddlesome when together between them specimens vary very robust, that is when not brushed… you can pick it up some say you can master it, some do as a clutch rapport, and clash together, with so much but sport. some think silence can take hold of the being… calming astronauts and marrying marigold flocks all abandoning the forge of earthly locks… consuming this tug of war with this rebel heart

destined for back pane, yet strained resonating with two thumbs on next whatever that may mean its suspect to a violence sometimes only ascribed to in old folks home, where the bloods been beaten hot and that

outer space

fare long freight to dim dimensions rate penchants whilst trenches, in… a way.. never saw them coming yet hospitals frost the tips fitness and fair stipulation lips conjugation of list - equivalent - while separation wiles, stat-wiley over intact, nothing - like platitudes dilution of concrete blocks add attitude yet painful memories by diminished blocks are subdued?

wool

Oh, it’s certain… hundred-thousand militant measures of a broken yard by metre (estranged for the reader) a meteor shower amends the broken pleasures of such a Neapolitan attack on the criticism for the cynicism had me open! Yes, oh my… plenty coin-like credit-card-scam-brilliance, sign the marks on my frail, weathered effacement into a blithering commensurate, yet forever emblematic union of staccato! The moon, was following me yet, and As I had sprained my ankle, I were had to, run over roots, scurry past pledges, that with a fluid limp-jump… mildly hopping over tracks, which my upper-back, caught on to splayed roots on the ground… as to be seen, wildly kicking up the scarce twig and twixt, ‘and anon: oxygen millennials - when and where necessary my powers of narration became anaesthetised and somehow configured itself somewhat, that into an old VHS tape conception format. After a little tracking the odour of odium prices on wolf masks with that plastic diffraction slips And the moon by the window, cocked it’s wonder-gun at me, Pleasure of unthinkable amounts, resting in negative, all conceived

v.1 “lemon tree”, postaged bout 10 days, (lemon-earth days)

sallow / pallor

dendrose

1 this is for that usury,

used to be awake, censorship encumbered-package, usually~ Asleep, clad in yesterday’s haze, beep, beep, beep first to rise, which just happens to be a phase… 6, clock, spearmint 6:15, cries. 2 identical clock cavities, brustlin’ busts of oven-cannot, trallop suites… I’ve officially dye-cast silver from coin to sweat, wheat and parametres, of which i’ve never spoke! 3 down by the second leap of day’s scales, the moon’s lymph tickle, play trick on the sicler… ‘say Death creeps out like how it does North Farther… ‘say don’t be scared of the ion, curtain, cascades… they say they break soon enough, that is as the iris tissue combusts!

4 and the parliament in laymens, rise like spite, muscly, and whelk; totally combobulated enough to qualify for thalidomide and seeing wealth. documents privvy to a living type of surrepititious musical scale.

5 around noon, the shops are broken into, the salad’s tossed, the forks, mashed in the gravy… without the sauce… stocktips holdfast like plateaus - how pleasant - bout the size of a yogurt… rain flares out of specifics… and barbers, leave there parlors… cars park - forward and backwards! 6 round about now the static combs diagonals, slate and tie, like an Egyptian wedding order for two, who killed you, and how you survived… 7 soon enough one must become one, and it always may… if i had to I would pat your heart a lullaby in your mummified chestplate just to be certain that I could breathe ~somehow.

8 its safe now for the mystriant, or the leader clad in torn bloody clothes in plain deniable site… to march upon the moons tumultuous creators, now maybe high noon all night.

just x 3

(bystand…)s are outnumbered by and yet while the juri is in… weather the atmosphere is tight enough, expediant and gruesome for the sudden fog! !oh what a sudden fog! plus, the lust for cummulative lush and hush, of, flesh, rut rooted room for relish, oh, im out of legalities to logician’s flexfit fever, ferver-fluish… “rabbitfoot-talisman” and, that they are

at least for now and sheesh I couldn’t count all these…

maudlin, vaudvillian pleats and hill battling in fleets, bleeding the tattle, in thieving the leaves, as this somehow presents itself, in a waltz within the season -

whilst, some reassuring sequence that thy betwixt bane and bosom, slaying, and slalom straight, out the demonic cellar of Helen Keller, ~looking for a piece of plastic - bendy, black - whilst sweating through tissues as would molasses !oh quite reluctant~

just to envelop the feasting concept in enamel-persona, that, “looks”, could be a snug fit as slang for glasses!oh

well, no match for shelves or sleeves in it among mashed-out color additives, “Madvillain” - trapped like tylenol packages… just too, pry that thing off my sling, slang sugar rifle, .35s to just need to carry this for triflin’ broken-oxen+wrought-trophy, a token for the inert.

marching through the swampy mud

balm

~a drag with bisquick, mistaken. a martyr broken, out spoken a pledge ‘though,’ mystics saw - in blind pageant - that it had been coming, the change in self / perpetual melting (maybe even wealth and static (theduality ))(- of practise expedient…) patient momentum quite like: eddies now, that tend to slop up off with the the prophets.’ toxicity and all textures on hand! mesmerism-synthesizing-metabolic, clox “A tall tail of uncommon fixtures to abed the solstice!” Ail uncommon Oxbridge- flyers…

who! ~ never saw this it coming - it, being. antithesizing avec beau shashay - passing by -round noon -,a slash a dash of anti-septic aid from the atmospheric changes )oh what a terrible 1 haiku ) 2 cacoon cannot forget the forfeit with a timurus attendant addendum of excess lemonade, -the patchy landing on cobblestones as a final order of direct ability to access sweet lemon merange pie! so cold! slay the dragon Oh, how moylent whoa, whoa, whoa dragon wings circled, moving more tweaked than lofty, that the shady concentric, crown-ambulent missletoe fleers stocatto flamed resisting arrest, sat down to rest on the ashy rooty charred bark deposit, chalk outline and all. And he seemed to pout, resting in his petulance, all on final penguin-feat exhuming the fallen lemon tree + roots Why? The sky - a death sentence, yet the crestfallen three-dimensional tilt of matter integrity beaming so honest from the sky’ now just past noon, sliding through like a dull lens (ingenuity), christened expedia! as and sent through the bloody-rack of fossilized hub temperature, gaily enjoying and blasting & mashing hulls lithosphere to the dragon, for now. the size of one third day, tending in an ache, forced tired like ambulances, and breaking off chips of lemon rinds like toothpaste…. oh! perambulating fonder chest cavitity status by chasing marche,’ strips, off commonly dragon mouth chaste stasis places, ready to eat pate’ and break blades off a graceless fairy ring, situated for bleak outlooks with its correct gargoyle smile missletoe at every sharp corner and as it was granted that this crystallizing dead tantrum of claws, wings, thighs, to be scaled for consumption

boe-loose

it crumbled like cartlidge, brisky-brisk then nonchalant at its content - ever so rich, in, conch shell whistleblowing labella, labelled able in its lapel to cache and cast a spell, upon which the worthiest pearl-whirring, cat-nip tail made for cats, some effect… for people, zizing - and whizing the cats backwards-bats… out of hell, surprisingly distasteful… cruella deville

perhaps atrocities, within the minds of these pilfered oddities by the hundreds, take malnurish me, on second thought its usually redundant asunder opposition to Gravity that spots of wine cause catastrophe

flying, like snails at a clean stop operation ~loosed from the grave

topsicology

the scarecrow glided past as apostacy towards err. perhaps more than air. the long corn crops gilded the found floundering stare-off. perhaps more wispy than fair… the greatest movement jackal, basically all impaired… just waiting in its frothy, slow-growth to find a child or conjugate terror why, ‘see that, I am a child of burden, sent from ion ridges and whisked past ice-sturgeons with respect to facilitate the growth - that in tandem - sent into the proximate atmosphere for a slow-burning ‘till its torn apart, and till its worn to wrought all a vision a scarecrow, which rends his smarts, filled totally gut of surroundings, and one day imparts a version of itself, which had lorn to lock, but had to step down from the part.

bark

a larger than normal tarantula poised to eat a small tree outside the restrictive park area came to the conclusion that, if he had studied medicine, he might have enjoyed eating sooner.

who knows?

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emilys-life · 2 years

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Second Chance

I’ve been sitting here for the past few weeks trying to rack my brain to understand how I feel. The truth is there is a lot to untangle as there was a lot to process in the first place. So, let’s begin…

I look back at the last year of my life in phases as it is the only way to make sense; I had dreams about where I would be as I knew my Graduate School was coming to an end. To be honest, where I am is not what I expected. I did not expect that I would be diagnosed with endometrial cancer three days before graduation, which would lead me to a hysterectomy or early menopause at 31. I did not expect that I would have a breast cancer scare a few months later where I laid on a table with a stranger’s hand in mine while I cried and feared yet again for my future with the result being that it was benign. However, that I would have to have a mammogram with contrast potentially every year for the rest of my life. I did not know that not even five months later, I would be back in that same hospital, having to be checked to make sure that I did not have colon cancer.

What I expected of this year was to graduate and then obtain my licensure to begin practicing as a clinician, but what I found was so much more. I found that even in the darkest of hours while I lay among my floor that I was able to be surrounded by my loved ones. I discovered that advocacy for your body would continue from diagnosis ’til death because if you can’t tell a healthcare professional that they are wrong and that you know your body better than them, they will continue to give you drugs, peruse your veins, or do more tests. I found the love for my body that even though I have many extra pounds that are not necessary that I still love every ounce because it helps me make it to the next day and that the air in my lungs continue to let me sigh in disbelief of what is happening around me, and that the tears that stream allow me to feel the emotions that I cannot verbalize.

This week I questioned why I was so angry, and the truth is that I have felt that I had not been in charge of my life when in reality, the decisions I have made have helped me face the next day. Financially, I might not be where I expected, but I have so much more because I have survived.

#cancer #health #advocacy #life

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stephenmccull · 3 years

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Telehealth’s Limits: Battle Over State Lines and Licensing Threatens Patients’ Options

If you live in one state, does it matter that the doctor treating you online is in another? Surprisingly, the answer is yes, and the ability to conduct certain virtual appointments may be nearing an end.

Televisits for medical care took off during the worst days of the pandemic, quickly becoming commonplace. Most states and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services temporarily waived rules requiring licensed clinicians to hold a valid license in the state where their patient is located. Those restrictions don’t keep patients from visiting doctors’ offices in other states, but problems could arise if those same patients used telemedicine.

Now states are rolling back many of those pandemic workarounds.

Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, for example, recently scrambled to notify more than 1,000 Virginia patients that their telehealth appointments were “no longer feasible,” said Dr. Brian Hasselfeld, medical director of digital health and telemedicine at Johns Hopkins. Virginia is among the states where the emergency orders are expiring or being rolled back.

At least 17 states still have waivers in effect, according to a tracker maintained by the Alliance for Connected Care, a lobbying group representing insurers, tech companies and pharmacies.

As those rules end, “it risks increasing barriers” to care, said Hasselfeld. Johns Hopkins, he added, hosted more than 1 million televisits, serving more than 330,000 unique patients, since the pandemic began. About 10% of those visits were from states where Johns Hopkins does not operate facilities.

The rollbacks come amid a longer and larger debate over states’ authority around medical licensing that the pandemic — with its widespread adoption of telehealth services — has put front and center.

“Consumers don’t know about these regulations, but if you all of a sudden pull the rug out from these services, you will definitely see a consumer backlash,” said Dr. Harry Greenspun, chief medical officer for the consultancy Guidehouse.

Still, finding a way forward pits high-powered stakeholders against one another, and consumers’ input is likely to be muted.

State medical boards don’t want to cede authority, saying their power to license and discipline medical professionals boosts patient safety. Licensing is also a source of state revenue.

Providers have long been split on whether to change cross-state licensing rules. Different state requirements — along with fees — make it cumbersome and expensive for doctors, nurses and other clinicians to get licenses in multiple states, leading to calls for more flexibility. Even so, those efforts have faced pushback from within the profession, with opposition from other clinicians who fear the added competition that could come from telehealth could lead to losing patients or jobs.

“As with most things in medicine, it’s a bottom-line issue. The reason telehealth has been blocked across state lines for many years related fundamentally to physicians wanting to protect their own practices,” said Greenspun.

But the pandemic changed the equation.

Even though the initial spike in telehealth visits has eased, utilization remains 38 times higher than before the pandemic, attracting not only patients, but also venture capitalists seeking to join the hot business opportunity, according to a report from consulting firm McKinsey and Co.

Patients’ experience with televisits coupled with the growing interest by investors is focusing attention on this formerly inside-baseball issue of cross-state licensing.

Greenspun predicts consumers will ultimately drive the solution by “voting with their wallets,” aided by giant, consumer-focused retailers like Amazon and Walmart, both of which in recent months made forays into telemedicine.

In the short term, however, the focus is on both the protections and the barriers state regulations create.

“The whole challenge is to ensure maximum access to health while assuring quality,” said Barak Richman, a Duke University law professor, who said laws and policies haven’t been updated to reflect new technological realities partly because state boards want to hang onto their authority.

Patients and their doctors are getting creative, with some consumers simply driving across state lines, then making a Zoom call from their vehicle.

“It’s not ideal, but some patients say they are willing to drive a mile or two and sit in a parking lot in a private space and continue to get my care,” said Dr. Shabana Khan, director of telepsychiatry at NYU Langone Health’s department of child and adolescent psychiatry and a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s Telepsychiatry Committee. She and other practitioners ask their patients about their locations, mainly for safety reasons, but also to check that they are in-state.

Still, for some patients, driving to another state for an in-person or even a virtual appointment is not an option.

Khan worries about people whose care is interrupted by the changes, especially those reluctant to seek out new therapists or who cannot find any clinicians taking new patients.

Austin Smith hopes that doesn’t happen to him.

After initial treatment for what he calls a “weird flavor of cancer” didn’t help reduce his gastrointestinal stromal tumors, he searched out other experts, landing in a clinical trial. But it was in San Diego and the 28-year-old salesman lives in Phoenix.

Although he drives more than five hours each way every couple of months for treatment and to see his doctors, he does much of his other follow-up online. The only difference is “if I was in person, and I said I was hurting here, the doctor could poke me,” he said.

And if the rules change? He’ll make the drive. “I’ll do anything to beat this,” he said of his cancer.

But will doctors, whose patients have spent the past year or more growing comfortable with virtual visits, also be willing to take steps that could likely involve extra costs and red tape?

To get additional licenses, for instance, practitioners must submit applications in every state where their patients reside, each of which can take weeks or months to process. They must pay application fees and keep up with a range of requirements such as continuing education, which vary by state.

States say their traditional role as overseer ensures that all applicants meet educational requirements and pass background checks. They also investigate complaints and argue there’s an advantage to keeping local officials in charge.

“It’s closer to home,” said Lisa Robin, chief advocacy officer with the Federation of State Medical Boards. “There’s a remedy for residents of the state with their own state officials.”

Doctor groups such as the American Medical Association agree.

Allowing a change that doesn’t put centralized authority in a patient’s home state would raise “serious enforcement issues as states do not have interstate policing authority and cannot investigate incidents that happen in another state,” said then-AMA President-elect Jack Resneck during a congressional hearing in March.

But others want more flexibility and say it can be done safely.

Hasselfeld, at Johns Hopkins, said there is precedent for easing multistate licensing requirements. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, allows medical staffers who are properly licensed in at least one state to treat patients in any VA facility.

The Alliance for Connected Care and other advocates are pushing states to extend their pandemic rules. A few have done so. Arizona, for example, made permanent the rules allowing out-of-state medical providers to practice telemedicine for Arizona residents, as long as they register with the state and their home-state license is in good standing. Connecticut’s similar rules have now been stretched until June 2023.

The alliance and others also back legislation stalled in Congress that would temporarily allow medical professionals licensed in one state to treat — either in person or via televisits — patients in any other state.

Because such fixes are controversial, voluntary interstate pacts have gained attention. Several already exist: one each for nurses, doctors, physical therapists and psychologists. Proponents say they are a simple way to ensure state boards retain authority and high standards, while making it easier for licensed medical professionals to expand their geographic range.

The nurses’ compact, enacted by 37 states and Guam, allows registered nurses with a valid license in one state to have it recognized by all the others in the pact.

A different kind of model is the Interstate Physician Licensure Compact, which has been enacted by 33 states, plus the District of Columbia and Guam, and has issued more than 21,000 licenses since it began in 2017, said Robin, of the Federation of State Medical Boards.

While it speeds the paperwork process, it does not eliminate the cost of applying for licenses in each state.

The compact simplifies the process by having the applicant physician’s home state confirm his or her eligibility and perform a criminal background check. If the applicant is eligible, the home state sends a letter of qualification to the new state, which then issues a license, Robin said. Physicians must meet all rules and laws in each state, such as requirements for continuing medical education. Additionally, they cannot have a history of disciplinary actions or currently be under investigation.

“It’s a fairly high bar,” said Robin.

Such compacts — especially if they are bolstered by new legislation at the federal level — could help the advances in telehealth made during the pandemic stick around for good, expanding access to care for both mental health services and medical care across the U.S. “What’s at stake if we get this right,” said Richman at Duke, “is making sure we have an innovative marketplace that fully uses virtual technology and a regulatory system that encourages competition and quality.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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beforethesunsetsinthesky · 3 years

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No White Coats

I think that was the real premonition that it was bound to get so much worse. November 2020, we were told we're going back to the hospital for our face to face rotations. There were several rules, of course. One of them was we're not allowed to wear our white coats--the distinguishing uniform of an intern in our hospital. We protested, of course. We paid for it way before. We were excited to wear it. The reason didn't make that much sense for us either. But the hospital was strict about it. And in the end, our return to the hospital was postponed for several more months.

It's just a white coat. I know. We accepted it anyway. We accepted also, that we're bound to have only 2.5 months of face to face hospital rotation as interns. We accepted that we won't have those amazing stories and experiences in the hospital. We accepted that we're not graduating on an actual stage. We accepted that we might not be able to celebrate with our families and friends either. We accepted that we only have 40 days to prepare for our Physician Licensure Exam.

Those are the "white coats". The glamour of this journey that was taken away from us.

But beneath the white coats, we're just people. People who get tired. People who get hurt. People who suffer. People who endure. People who break down.

No medical school would include a box in their application form that asks "Are you incapable of emotions? Yes or No."

We were people when we entered medical school. We're still people. We didn't become robots.

So I write this in the middle of that 40 day preparation period for the PLE with a heavy heart. I remember everything. My entire family getting COVID. My grandmother and my mother getting confined for COVID. My cousin dying from leukemia. I remember how helpless it felt to be in the hospital carrying all those thoughts. I remember how ironic it was to help other patients but unable to do anything for my own family. I feel guilty for not seeing my relatives for a very long time. I've spent a year alone in a house in the middle of an unfamiliar city. I'm not sure what kind of character God is building in me but this process is painful.

Our class is dealing with so much emotional battles too. Someone's father died from COVID. Someone's family is confined for a different disease. Long-time pets even died. Everyday we live with the fear of contracting the virus because if we become positive -- we can't even take the exam we've been preparing so much for.

So we sit before our laptops, handouts and books like this. Burdened by anxiety, memories of our loved ones and the fear of failure. We study for an exam to become licensed doctors--but there's no certainty for our futures. Our politicians are corrupt. The healthcare system is falling apart.

Strip off white coats and more, what's left in you, future doctor? Why do you want to become a doctor?

It feels like God is asking me that question constantly. But I only have one answer. I've heard the question so many times and I've said a variety of answers depending on whoever asked it.

But my real answer is simpler.

Because God, you said so.

And no matter how much I lose in this journey I'll always come back to His promise. For who can stand against what God has declared?

Who can stand against His will?

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garudabluffs · 6 years

Photo

I'm enjoying the whimsical if temporary serendipity of the location of the soon-to-open recreational #cannabis store in #Salisburyma -- it's taking over the building of a retail outlet with the old sign still out front. I suspect they'll get a new one. pic.twitter.com/GVuJW6rut0

— Rich Nagle (@rnagle) August 17, 2018

THE BIG RIP this week's top story Should the pot czars crack down or leave well enough alone? IT'S NOT THE LABS, IT'S THE AGENTS I told you last week that all the hoopla over the lack of licensed testing labs in the state was overblown, at least as it related to the delay in the rollout of recreational sales.

“ Our findings Of the 19 provisional licenses issued by the commission to date, at least 18 are connected to host community agreements with legally questionable provisions — according to the commission's own guidance on how such contracts should be written. (I couldn't immediately get a copy of one agreement.) Just one of the eight agreements — between the town of Leicester and Cultivate Holdings for a retail shop and cultivation facility — calls for the payments from the operator to the town to be reviewed and adjusted depending on the actual costs imposed by the facility. The rest make no mention of actual or anticipated costs. So much for reasonably related.”

I.N.S.A., Inc. paid Easthampton an additional $10,000 upon signing; New England Treatment Access (NETA) will pay Northampton another $10,000 annually for "marijuana education and prevention programs," and in Brookline, a further $25,000 annually to a drug-related nonprofit chosen by the town. In Franklin, where it has a large cultivation and manufacturing facility, NETA promised to pay the town at least $300,000 a year, plus 3 percent of all recreational and medical marijuana revenues above $10 million annually.”

On the other hand, these eight contracts make it crystal clear that in the absence of oversight, cities and towns are frequently seeking payments above and beyond the apparent limit in state law. Between those large payments and the uncertainty (are donations to charity really voluntary if they’re required for licensure?), smaller operators seeking local approval face a challenging and inconsistent landscape. Not one so-called "economic empowerment applicant" (entrepreneurs affected by the war on drugs who are eligible for faster review of their license applications) has yet won a provisional license.”

READ MORE http://view.email.bostonglobe.com/?qs=bfe7e3929ecd33bf93f6e848d2318343c0e4eebae87b386a91fee1301cad48958d1e99d67ff04c478bd0a9eee44251568a52eda53f3707c57c256ea9c62ad8bc892a877e951dafb7cd3fe0569988646b332d3c21d266fb5b Well here's one actual reason your local pot shop hasn't opened yet: the Cannabis Control Commission isn't yet accepting employee registration forms. See, at its last meeting, the agency decided it didn't need to immediately re-do background checks on workers ("agents," in regulatory parlance) who had already been cleared by the Department of Public Health, which regulates medical marijuana. (As noted above, all the companies with provisional licenses so far are current medical marijuana operators.) Ultimately that should save time, but I learned this week that the commission has told licensees not to send in any employee paperwork while its software company sets up a system for issuing background check waivers in accordance with the new policy. That should be done next week. So, as I've said a number of times here before, there's no one villain or cause behind the delay. It's the mundane stuff.

YES, THERE'S SUCH A THING AS TOO MUCH WEED We've told you in earlier editions about the oversupply of pot in Oregon. Well, it's also a problem in neighboring Washington, where cannabis officials and executives fear a ganja glut and freefalling prices will prompt farmers to cut corners to save costs or unload their crops on the illicit market.

Industry experts say Washington grew too much cannabis, and it could be a serious problem August 16, 2018

“Go to any weed store in Washington these days, and you're likely to leave a happy customer. Strains of seemingly all kinds stock the shelves. A gram sells for less than $10. _ The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) hired a consultant to study what the supply and demand of cannabis looks like, and what might be the driving forces behind overproduction. They've also sent a team out to measure how much weed is actually being grown in Washington. _ _ They've issued around 1,500 licenses for producers, processors or a combination. Each license imposes a limit to a farm's grow area, or its "canopy," depending on what kind of license was applied for. Meanwhile, there are fewer than 500 retailers operating. Yet, of those producers and processors, the state expected around half to go out of business. That didn't happen. Instead, just 73 ceased operations to date, according to data provided by the LCB. The rest — nearly 1,400 — are presumably still operating businesses competing to get their product in stores, or they've sold their license to another business looking to expand its canopy. But the combined canopy of all the farmers statewide may be too large, leading to oversupply. _ _ _ The farms are either destroying the plants, sitting on growing inventory or selling it, possibly on the black market. And those options aren't good for anyone. _ _ _ _ Waiting for the market to correct itself might have consequences, which is why the LCB feels it has an obligation to monitor the cannabis market.“

READ MORE https://www.inlander.com/spokane/industry-experts-say-washington-grew-too-much-cannabis-and-it-could-be-a-serious-problem/Content?oid=11473656&mc_cid=4ebbe0f6a2&mc_eid=23729348bb&et_rid=1768069659&s_campaign=weed:newsletter

#pot MA. WA.

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morbidly-queerious · 7 years

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There's something really exhausting about the experience of having chronic conditions with massive impacts on your life that you are already doing what you can to try and treat or resolve to no avail. And the biggest part of that exhaustion is how tired other people get of hearing you complain about the effect of those conditions on you, as well as how tired ~you~ get of it. I'm an anxious person. I have a history of fixating on things and hyperfocusing on my unhappiness to the exclusion of everything else and to the detriment of my ability to problem solve or negotiate my situation. I also have chronic conditions that flare up and create regular and repetitive frustrations for me. Between these two things, what ends up happening is that I repeat the same kinds of thoughts and fears over and over again. Sometimes because I'm fixating. Sometimes because of a flare up. Sometimes because it feels like a different but related issue this time. And sometimes a terrible hybrid of the three. But what happens is that I start to talk to someone about how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking right now only for them to get irritated at me for repeating myself so to speak. Every time I bring up certain topics, it gets irritably brushed off as me fixating on the thing to no good effect. And that's really exhausting and isolating. Even when I ~am~ actually fixating on it. But honestly? Most of the time it's more flare up then fixation. For example, vaginal bleeding is now nearly guaranteed to coincide with emotional distress for me now. It combines with a lot of interconnected but separate issues that I'm always dealing with and thinking about to an extent but which tend to coalesce and become overwhelming whenever I realize that I've started bleeding. A similar thing happens whenever I get a particularly bad flare up in the rotation of my hips. I live with this stuff. It is a pretty nearly constant awareness for me, no matter how well I'm managing my anxiety. And so every few days or weeks something will come up and I'll want to talk about it, but everyone in my life has heard it before. Nearly verbatim. And they're exhausted by giving advice or support they feel like I'm not making use of because they remember having this exact conversation last week and two weeks before that and a month before that and the week before that ad nauseum. It's exhausting for them to experience my chronic condition and anxiety second hand. And it's exhausting for me to be experiencing it first hand. And everyone's miserable and irritable because it seems like nothing's getting better and there's other, more urgent feeling stuff to spend our emotional energy on. It's hard to figure out exactly how to navigate that part of the experience. Because I could just never talk about it with people anymore, but that tends to be really bad and unhealthy for me and my relationships. Or I could tell them I don't care how annoyed they are, if they care about me they would listen, but that completely disregards the reality that these are other human beings with their own anxieties and chronic concerns that may also be going unaddressed. Or I could try to schedule it so that I only mention each thing once a month or every other month or something, but to be honest that's inconvenient and difficult and stressful and I don't want to. Sometimes there's just a solid several weeks in a row that things are bad and it doesn't stop being bad after the first time I complain to someone. Often it gets worse. But they know that. They've heard it before and they were around for the last time a flare up escalated for a while. Chronic conditions come with a lot of grieving too. A lot of longing for what life could be like without the condition and it's hard to get over that even when you know that it's pointless to wish for it. I don't know what they point was even for me to make this post. I think I'm just tired of trying to talk about something that makes me feel deeply vulnerable and unhappy or unfulfilled only to be snapped at and realize it's the third time I've broached the topic that day let alone that week and the person is just as sick of hearing me repeat myself as I am of grieving a life I'm never going to have anyway. I'm tired of feeling like my choices are to constantly irritate my loved ones or bottle myself up and suffer in silence. I'm tired of being fucking sick and having no answers and never getting better. I'm tired. Today I sat with an overnight pad in my underwear on my second day of bleeding only two weeks after my last round of bleeding and listened to children playing in the other room and thought about my sister in law who is struggling to not give birth too early and lose one of her sons and realized that only one day earlier I'd been sitting in an office full of middle aged women who hate their bodies and think 1200 calories a day is healthy and tried to argue that it wasn't and also realized that I missed having the time and opportunity to be a really active person but that the last several times I've tried it's been very painful. And I just.....sort of felt a lifetime of chronic struggles all come down on my head at once and knew that there was no one in my life I hadn't talked to about at least one of those issues in the past three days. I don't know how to talk about what I'm feeling right now without being a broken record and I'm as tired of feeling these things as people are of hearing about me feeling them. But here I am. Still struggling. Still in limbo. Still waiting for the next thing I'm supposed to do to maybe have a chance at fixing any of it and not having much of any way to acknowledge what's happening to me in the meantime. We'll be getting our gym membership in a couple of months when all our cash isn't tied up in moving house. Once moving and my licensure exam is done, my stress levels will be down and I can go back to working with my therapist on improving my coping skills so that I'm not setting off my PTSD. Once my intake happens in August I'll be seeing the new doctor to try to manage some of my symptoms. Once I have a little more time on my hands and a little less on my mind I can find an OBGYN and start monitoring my hormones and getting fertility support. Once I have been getting to the gym regularly for a few months maybe it won't hurt as much to move and I'll see some improvement in my PTSD. An endless list of things-I'm-in-the-process-of-doing-that-may-have-results-if-I'm-patient but in the meantime.......here I am. With no progress to be seen and still struggling with the day to day with no guarantee that any of what I'm doing will change that in the future. I'm tired. And there's not a whole lot anyone can do about that.

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circumswoop · 7 years

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Is the Interregnum a Grave?

Peaceful transfers of power are boring by definition. Unfortunately, we’ve never had another kind, until now. Inaugurals and counter-inaugurals always bypassed each other without incident, unless you consider the occasional riff of pepper spray incidental. As it’s usually one group of recidivists handing off to another, how could such a transfer ever be peaceless?

Presidents and their wives, always to the manner either born or raised, hang out with each other during inaugurals, incoming and outgoing. There will be four former presidents at the Trump ceremony, five if George HW Bush plans a surprise skydive. (He could drop in a wheelchair held softly aloft by baby blue balloons, and then be rolled jovially away by security.) This is the licensure of the always-in-power, the ability to feel camaraderie with your replacement, whether or not he (it is always he) humiliated you in public. It’s the most exclusive club in the world, with provided airspace both preferred and elite. There are no cucks in tuxes. Meanwhile, there are presidents-elect yet to be born, and it is not too late to abort them all.

Obviously, one of the five living ex-presidents, and one of the four to attend, will be Barack Obama, whose election eight years ago settled a lowkey war between MySpace and Facebook, or so we thought: look which one is still here, being awful. Obama’s ascent overlapping with the descent of Top 8 culture is probably just me, but I remember the two months between Election and Inauguration Days presenting as forever young, not instantly iconic but worse: instantly idyllic. I’m not gonna tell you how old I was then, but I had a Martine Rose haircut. I was always drunk on one of two things, cheap vodka or soft white power. Still in the running-around phase of my learned liberalism, I anticipated the Obama presidency with a kind of guileless nightvision, blowing out my spectral range. I knew he was already top five presidents, easy, let alone top 8.

Sooner than you can say “drone strike”, that presidency is over and I’m sitting here with a buzzcut that I fear is trendy, reading about the Xiang River Storm and the Red Army Faction, trying not to treat radicalization as merely a way to get through whatever this is, this diastema between waiting to die and waiting to be brought back to life. Maybe that one Netflix series that looks like either a deep FKA Twigs video or a vintage HBA show really did nail what’s going on in the country, this sense of loitering in an unmade bed while outside the air turns green with breathed disgust.

[Stent]

The word “interregnum”, in the aggregate, means pause, interval, suspension--or in one iteration, the distance between discovery and detailed understanding. In the original English version (always worth checking out!), that distance was 11 years between the execution of Charles I and the accession of his son Charles II. In U.S. presidential politics, it was about 70 days before this year, when a majority of everyone freaked out, flatlined, did some modern Movements to try to enter another dimension and then, failing, collapsed into circular contemplations of self-harm. 70 days? More like 70 times 7, which is either the number of times Jesus told his entourage to forgive up to, or the number of “counter-terrorism” strikes the Obama administration(s) authorized in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. I forget which!

What even is a peaceful transfer of power when the best we probably ever had soothed us partially by making his murder softcore? (My friend made a joke once about Klaus Kinski sounding like a really good cotton candy flavor—it’s like that but in reverse.) Where is the virtue in a proportional scale of human rights? Is it a redundancy covered by the most perennial of all insurances? During downtime, where do our hearts beat? Where is the sound? Will we live? Is life even a quality worth having?

[Stent]

Sometimes, when I drink too much, I pass out but am aided back to consciousness, in little rivulets, by concussive symptoms of withdrawal. Half melodic/half thrash, I moan and writhe. It sounds pretty but it’s not, because all that’s happening is I’m waiting to throw up. I guess I feel like I’m about to throw up, only for four whole years. Don’t even talk to me about eight.

I believe Obama is not a good man but possesses goodness, and I guess I feel bad writing that out loud despite stanning for him the entire time in loyal opposition to his record. Now he’s being replaced by his absolute antithesis, in optics and in credentials, a man who may not be wholly evil but who possesses evil, who puts on its underthings late at night and capers ghoulishly in the mirror; who will sneak into your room and place his hand squarely in the middle of your pillow to see if it’s warm. I truly believe the evil Trump possesses is not despotic but the petty, flesh-crawling kind that smells of talc and sewer, the desperate grasp of the night sweat. For all his fame and millions legit or forged, he sure is resentful.

This principle of possession preoccupies me way more than any argument abt what he’ll do or won’t do. I don’t think even he knows, because his particular evil seeps and blocks alternately. The incredible contradictions of Obamawere his possessions, or weights if you will—he always seemed genuinely capable of empathy while slaughtering innocents all the livelong day. He neither delivered himself from the crypto-corporate Medici who made him nor ever once laid off the deport button, yet in his healthcare and LGBQT approvals he probably freed more slaves than anyone since FDR or Lincoln, the two socialist presidents. Obama always knew what he was doing, whether those acts were faithful or egregious. Trump’s maniacally nonlinear behavior cinches at least one truth about him: that he knows not what he does. His evil is tinnitus-like, and has too many mixed messages to adequately receive. All he hears, understands, and emits is noise.

[Stent]

So we are left with the vape trail of a president who was “good for a neoliberal”, an introspective, Marilynne Robinson-loving father figure, inspo for dreamers trying to turn into dream leaders, kids growing old with blogging histories and classroom allergies who consented to his sway and cadence as proof of love, even if it was denatured or abusive. Nobody ever sold the lie of liberalism better than Obama, bc the way being lied to feels spinily, spinnily good as long as everyone’s a little bit in on it never felt so good.

One of the great belletristic disputes of the 1990s, albeit a passive-aggressive one, was between Andrew Sullivan and Tony Kushner on purposes of politics: shd politics relieve anxiety (Sullivan) or misery and injustice (Kushner)? How you answer outs you as either a liberal or a leftist, but if your arrival at the right answer took eight years then maybe Obama is to blame. Maybe the center-left is an industry of death, of lullaby and stalling and overprescription.

[Stent]

Leo Bersani’s essay “Is the Rectum a Grave” is a model of sacred rage, as opposed to average anger. Published in October 1987 at the peak, or nadir, of the AIDS crisis, it quotes MacKinnon, Dworkin, and Foucault and documents a society “that at once celebrates and punishes pluralism”, one that has “no political need to save or protect any homosexuals at all” and that is given a finishing sadistic edge by the family in Arcadia, Florida who set fire to a house wherein three hemophiliac children were believed to be infected with HIV. Bersani argues that anti-loving and hatred are synchronous, but more often the latter hides its head in the former. He also begins the essay with the funniest lede ever, defiantly unburied: “There is a big secret about sex: most people don’t like it.”

I believe the Trump presidency is already the greatest moral crisis in America since AIDS. No reflection on the Cold War and spies slipping in and out of closets or consciousness would be complete without a contagion—one to which, in Bersani’s words, the only necessary response is rage (not anger). Wraiths of the Weimar working class would not provide a better remonstration for Trumpism than the bags of bones the Reagan administration(s) put out with the trash. Reagan and Trump are compared almost as often as Trump and Hitler, but not often enough—a new eighties is more likely than a new thirties simply because the eighties were the most American decade, and the thirties were conducted in a Europe that blew its own head off rather than look in the mirror ever again.

Trump tweeting a picture of his handshakes with Ronald and Nancy was way more of a message than his tweeting days later about Nazi Germany—the Trump family, for all their leopard-killing, vacuity-shilling horrors, are decadent directly from the Me Decade. Trump the paterfamilias has lived in the American imagination since at least Marla Maples went in the New York Post in 1990 and said sex with Trump was the best she ever had. Others reference the 1979 Wayne Barrett cover feature for the Voice as prequel to a decade.

Either way, by the time he gave Kevin McAllister directions to the lobby in his, Trump’s, own hotel in Home Alone 2 (1992) the deal was closed: Trump was the first name that came up when anyone talked about riches. America and its imagination will never get over the 1980s, and if there’s any shrewd or non-shriveled wisdom that can be gained from Trump’s senescent rise it should be that America has still never really gotten over AIDS. Fascism feared by anyone with a pulse, let alone one that’s only intelligible in their left wrist, is better detected in viral terms. It can only by stopped by a contagion mentality, by the kinds of education and mobilization the social agents of AIDS provided and to some extent pioneered. Bersani named, as its essential crisis of care, “the general tendency to think of AIDS as an epidemic of the future rather than a catastrophe of the present”. All you have to do to diagnose whatever age we’re in is find/replace AIDS with Fascism. There is a big secret abt power: everyone likes it.

#trump #aids #fascism #interregnum #inaguration

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puttingfingerstokeys · 4 years

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the shambling deceased

Nanowrimo day 23 Featuring an unnamed narrator Post-apocalyptic setting, zombies Zombies, death, body horror Finished and unedited

Human olfactory senses are not meant to become accustomed to the sweet stink of death. I don’t care how many television programs you have consumed over the years, where the heroes don’t notice the shambling threat until it is far too late. If the noises these revenants make are not enough to alert the characters in the show, surely the stench of rot and decay would catch their attention, right? Depending on the dramatic needs of the program, it may or it may not. But I am here to tell you, point blank, that the dead—they stink. They stink bad. They stink worse than the ugliest most odious smell you have ever experienced, bar none. A skunk cannot compare to the smell of death, though it certainly tries. The smell permeates, sticks, clings, and drags on you until you are well away from it.

And if the dead are the pursuing kind, rather than the sort who lays on the ground like a corpse really ought to do? Well, you do the math. They are not what anyone might call “quick”, but if the wind is right, the smell will do you in but good. It is rot, decay, and wrong. The smell is actually alarming, if you can believe that. Trust me when I say this: you never want to experience it if it is at all avoidable. Most people, in their lifetimes, smell death once or twice, usually when an animal has gotten itself up under their home and done the indecent thing, dying there to stink up the house and the surrounding area. They always seem to do this on hot days, too—it’s in rather poor form. Regardless, this stench only mimics what the shambling dead bring with them when they rove through an area.

That they move in herds is something the old shows used to get right, at least. I genuinely have no idea what, precisely, attracts them, though I think it might be sound. The dead, you see, don’t have lung capacity; their vocal flaps are generally decayed beyond use as it is soft tissue and, as a result, are unable to produce sounds like the groans you might think they would make.

I guess that might be one thing the television would have had right, about not being able to hear them, except those ambulating corpses would always moan and snarl and make all kinds of animalistic sounds. It was as if they were begging to be discovered. Real ones are hardly apex predators, but at the very least, they do not alert their prey of an incoming attack via audible means. It would really be embarrassing to be killed by a loud, stinky corpse.

It is still incredibly unclear what exactly animates these things. They do not appear to have normal blood flow or brain function; nothing beats or moves and they are decidedly lukewarm. Something is still firing up in their rotten noggins, but it certainly is not what you would call “proper” function. It seems to drive them toward the base urge to feed. I don’t think their bodies process the flesh they consume, however. The stuff probably sits in their guts and ferments—that’s where you get the explosive ones. We haven’t really bothered naming them anything fancy or cutesy. They’re shambling, bloated corpses and honestly, flippant as this commentary has been, there is absolutely jack shit all that’s funny about seeing once-living humans reduced to … that.

They cannot help it. There is no malice in them. There is nothing in them. They are husks, which is as good a name as any. Zombie has always sounded kind of silly to me, even if the implications are always fairly dark and dire. Husks better describes the hollowness of them, I think. So “the undead” or “the infected” work, but “husk” is a better term, given that we do not actually know if they are infected with anything or how they got that way and when you call something undead, it makes the thing somehow spookier than it has to be, lending it some sort of power. We should not fear these things. We need to dispose of them quickly; it is the absolute least we can do.

As far as corpses go, they are just as brittle and easily-perforated as what you might expect a half-decayed corpse to be. The hardest part, to be perfectly honest, is the clothing. Most people did not turn whilst also happening to be nude, unfortunately. Piercing clothes with a stick or any other blunt instrument is a lot tougher than the television shows always made it seem. You are best off with a machete or even a bat. Cutting off brain function stops ambulation. I… do not know if it stops brain function entirely unless the brain is vaporized. No one seems inclined to hang around husk-infested areas long enough to find out.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I was (partially) wrong about the events of a so-called “zombie apocalypse”. I had always theorized (during slow times at my job, mostly) that no society with known zombie-based media could fall victim to the idiotic happenings of your average zombie show, that the zombies could not last much longer than a few months, at most in, for example, a densely populated city, but that in the country, the problem would be solved within a week. There is simply more space way out in the boonies to see things like that coming—people are more armed, too, and not necessarily even with firearms. I am referring, of course, to basic farm implements: pitchforks, shovels, a literal tractor, splitting mauls, axes, actual logs—I could go on.

I was foolish, thinking it would be easy to simply go out and strike down things which had formerly been human, because I would know that they were not. What they don’t usually show in zombie shows—or didn’t; I doubt anyone will ever produce another, assuming we get to that point—is that when someone is freshly dead, they still look… human. Not just humanoid, mind you, but like a sick human being.

Okay, so remember when I said the husks don’t make noise? The old ones don’t, that’s true. But the fresh ones… sometimes it feels as if they are trying to communicate in some way. It definitely is not the growling-hissing sound you get from a movie or whatever. It feels like speaking to a person with a severe speech impediment, who is also deaf, and has some combination of Alzheimer’s and dementia. That is to say, you are not speaking with them, so much as listening. I have no idea what they are trying to say and I have only seen a fresh one a few times; thankfully, by the time they reach our home base, they have deteriorated thoroughly enough that there isn’t any more of that half-talking thing. It gives me the shivers even considering it. Do they consider what they are doing? Can they feel it? What part of them is left—if any?

I am one of those people who hopes that whatever they feel is rudimentary, pure instinct, that there is nothing of the soul who was once occupying the body—yet another decent reason to call them “husks”, rather than zombies.

They are chilling to behold, more than any George Romero film could attempt to portray. As a matter of course, anyone who has ever owned a zombie film or series has tossed it summarily out into the gutter, so to speak—though in some cases, literally. I have genuinely witnessed people with whole collections, tossing them out into our now-defunct trash bins. The gesture seems more symbolic than anything else; the only garbage truck I have seen in the area is the one the former “rogue garbage man” (a story for another time) had used to make his living, except this thing was ass-over-teakettle in a swamp. Whether it was a group of husks or just some of the run-to-riot wildlife in the area that drove him off the road, I guess I’ll never know.

The village I call home is a small place, a five-by-five mile square with probably five hundred people, total. The cop shop doubles as the library and town hall, if that gives you any idea of the scale of things. We have a four-way which is the biggest attraction in town and isn’t even a stop—traffic on the old highway zooms right on through. We have the essentials, a bar, a hardware, a convenience store and two churches, one Catholic, the other non-denominational, the church equivalent of “Original” and “Spicy”. I’m not entirely sure which one is which, but since the Catholics serve wine, I’m going with Original Recipe—they’re the ones who own the one graveyard in town, which I am pleased to say has expelled none of its residents. It probably isn’t feasible to rise from your grave when you are encased in cement and filled with formaldehyde. Who knew that our uncomfortably Egyptian burial practices would come in handy? There are a few cross streets here and there, but they either lead to dead-ends or a twisted mass of nonsense roads that curve and twist and transform into other roads as they hit county lines.

Everything that is not a house or trailer is a field, woods, a swamp, or some combination of the two.

For having so much farmland, however, there are very few farms. In recent years, times have been tough on anything that is not a massive, factory farm and, needless to say, anything called a “village” does not have the consumer base or, likely, the location to support such a thing. The government has been doing what it does best: making it hard on the little guy. I wish I could tell you it was because of this regime or that, red or blue, but to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure the agenda changes much across the aisle—not where regulatory licensure is concerned, anyway. Farmers just cannot keep up with government subsidization if they aren’t an approved recipient and then they lose their farms, plain and simple. It isn’t the best explanation, nor is it a terribly sympathetic one; don’t think me cold for this, but I recognize that there is plenty about the world I cannot change and, when the dead are walking, you quickly learn which battles to fight, which passions to chase, and which issues to leave behind in the dust of a previous age. I’ve shaken that particular blend of mud from my shoes.

My family is one of the fortunate few who had a “hobby” farm before this whole thing went down. I don’t know who decided to call it that, but this thing is no hobby. It is absolutely, without question, a full-time job taking care of the animals. We have the staples, chickens and hogs, like you would expect in the rural Midwest, but rather than cows, my family long ago elected to raise, breed, milk, and butcher goats. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it, my friend; goat is good eating. The milk is creamy, the cheese is exquisite, and they are friendly, mid-sized beasts who can be pushed and pulled where you need them to go. Sometimes, we lament not having at least one cow, but upon reflection, the sheer size of any bovine is enough to stop that thought quickly; they eat a ton and if they do not want to cooperate, they simply won’t. There is little a human can do without a cattle prod (or dogs) and we’re fresh out.

We are fresh out of cattle prods, that is, not dogs. We have dogs. Everyone around here has at least one dog. It’s just something you do in the country. You have dogs. We have four, actually, and right now, they make for excellent guards, alerting us to the presence of the undead with quiet barks—we call them “low-commitment”, because it isn’t a full-on bark, but it’s loud enough to let us know something is up. It’s as if the dogs understand that the dead are attracted to sounds. Now, if a human being wanders by the fence, the dogs go all out. They’re really the epitome of “a bark worse than their bite”, but nobody else knows that, so they keep the riff-raff out. By riff-raff, I mean drifters, thieves, those who are not committed to survival by hard work, but by capitalizing on the work of others. Around here, there are plenty—or there were. Needless to say, that behavior does not win you many friends during a crisis like this one. My family is generous, but we are not soft, nor stupid. Telling the good from the bad has never been difficult for us… or the dogs, actually.

So there you have it… “hobby” farm with doggy security system. We have ham, goat, and chicken a-plenty; we have eggs, milk, and cheese. We are very well-outfitted for this “apocalypse”, if you want to call it that. I think it might be a bit overblown, but nobody asked me, did they? There are plenty of people and families out there who were not so fortunate. It did not take long to realize how well-positioned we were (and still are) to survive and even to thrive in these new dark ages. Oh, but I guess I got ahead of myself again—or maybe behind… again. You probably aren’t here for logistics or whatever. You probably saw the opening monologue and thought “shit, she’s going to spill it all; we’re going to get a real juicy story”. You want to know how it started, or at the very least, how it started for me, don’t you? Well, strap in. This is a long one.

#OC #OW #zombie apocalypse

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