#Now. Anyway. This post is about the mirror for duplicating myself which works in the water baseline of reality. It provides an instance

[blackvahana]

Yeah I have important shit to do in the astral. Absolutely.

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 5 – Hey, Soul Sister: Who is Eurus?

Do you get it? She’s his sister? But metaphorically, she’s a part of his soul? I was very impressed with myself for this title. Anyway…

This chapter of the meta is going to deal with the various times we meet Eurus before TFP and what this might mean, which will help us to understand who she is once we have stripped off the disguises.

Before series 4, we had real!characters and MP!characters set up as distinct entities, particularly in TSoT, which distinguishes between MP!Mycroft (the deducing brain) and real!Mycroft, as well as MP!Irene representing desire and real!Irene, who doesn’t come near the episode. The MP section in TSoT, for a lot of people in the fandom, broke down Sherlock’s psyche into MP!John vs. MP!Mycroft – and John is clearly winning.

However, I want to suggest that Sherlock’s psyche isn’t nearly so straightforward as a tug of war between the brain and the heart. Whilst MP!Mycroft undoubtedly represents the oppressively reasonable part of Sherlock’s psyche, that’s not the only thing repressing him – it can’t be. If it were simply a rejection of ��sentiment’, this wouldn’t be the powerful queer love story we know it to be – there is a lot more internalised homophobia being dealt with than just love being illogical. That’s where Eurus comes in.

Eurus and Mycroft are parallel oppressive forces in Sherlock’s brain, but they’re oppressive in different ways. Having family members and childhood trauma be the psyche’s symbols for repression is particularly poignant in a queer love story, for obvious reasons. However, I want to take you through my reasoning behind Eurus being the most secret and troubled part of Sherlock’s soul.

The first clue is that her prison is called Sherrinford. We all assumed that the third Holmes sibling was going to be Sherrinford back before s4, and it seemed that way in the beginning, with Mycroft mentioning speaking to Sherrinford several times, construing it as a person rather than a place. This is no coincidence – for those who aren’t familiar with the history of the stories, Conan Doyle’s original name for his protagonist was Sherrinford Holmes, which he later changed to Sherlock. That Eurus is trapped inside Sherrinford is a clear suggestion that Eurus is something that’s trapped inside Sherlock – a dangerous MP entity. More important than that, Sherrinford is the version of Holmes that never made it into the books. Plenty of people have worked on queering the Holmes canon and working out what ACD might have been implying and leaving out and arguably none more so in an adaptation that Mofftiss. Let’s think about the implications of this. A kind of second self, not shown to the public, buried inside your mind and forgotten since childhood, which is bursting out into a moment of acute psychological distress. Gee, I don’t know what that could be about. The Sherlock that Sherlock thinks he is has thus far been dominated by MP!Mycroft, but this series is about uniting canon!Holmes with the non-canon, queer Sherrinford who has always existed, judging by the name, and who is currently dominated by the destructive MP!Eurus. The other important point to note here is that Sherrinford is an island in the middle of the sea – that’s not a coincidence, given how much water imagery abounds in this series. I spoke briefly in Chapter 2 X about how water represents Sherlock sinking deeper and deeper into his own subconsciousness – this is the deepest he can go. In Greek mythology, Eurus was the name of the wind most associated with causing storms at sea X – this isn’t a coincidence either. She’s very deliberately tied in with water.

(In real life terms, of course, all this means that a real!Eurus probably does or did exist in some form, although I can’t begin to hazard a guess about this. However, I’m trying to refer to her as MP!Eurus when she’s in her normal form in the MP, in case we get a series 5 with Sian Brooke as real!Eurus, and also to distinguish her from therapist!Eurus etc.)

This is my reasoning as to why MP!Eurus represents Sherlock’s innermost trauma. She is not merely the fact that he loves John – he deduced this in TSoT without her appearance. She is the trauma that he needs to come to terms with. A running theme through our analysis of Eurus will be that her gender is particularly important; her representation of Sherlock’s repression cannot be but as a woman, because for most of s4 he is only able to process his identity through the most heterosexual of lenses. We see this hinted at quite early on in TST, when Sherlock takes on a case called ‘The Duplicate Man’, warning John that it is never twins. The word ‘duplicate’ here, removing twins, leaves us with the only real possibility that it is in fact the same person. Eurus’s gender makes that more difficult to see; she needs to be female, but it’s much more difficult to elide the two characters without employing a Cumberbatch doppelganger. However, this hint that Eurus is not only male but an actual ‘duplicate’ of her brother should give us pause for thought. With this in mind, I want to use the rest of this chapter to analyse her three forms before TFP.

1.)    Faith!Eurus

I’m certainly not the first to point out that Faith!Eurus is a mirror for John, nor will I be the last – people jumped on it pretty much as soon as TLD aired. There are a few good reasons for this. Firstly, she walks with a cane, a throwback to ASiP – in case we’d forgotten, however, Sherlock has a flashback to John walking with a cane to make the link explicit. We are supposed to link these two characters, the authors are saying pretty clearly. Faith!Eurus is also suicidal, which John was at the start of ASiP, as made clear by the fact he carried a gun – and Faith!Eurus does the same. Sherlock also takes her out for food (for more on the food/sex metaphor, see here X) which he doesn’t with anyone bar John, and we certainly never see him talk so easily with someone who isn’t John. An eagle-eyed tumblr post that I can’t find now also broke my heart in pointing out that Faith!Eurus’s unseen self-harm matches long-sleeved John Watson a little too well.

This isn’t just the show trying to remind us of what John was like in ASiP, however. MP!Eurus is the trauma prodding Sherlock’s sexuality – it’s going to be hell to get through it, but he absolutely needs to do it. This is Sherlock’s trauma, not reminding him that John was suicidal, but forcing him to acknowledge it in the first place, something which Sherlock has buried. We know this because of the way the image of John forces its way into Sherlock’s mind – it’s much like the way Moriarty breaks into TAB. His brain is making a connection that he’s not quite capable of making and it’s knocking him. His deduction that Faith!Eurus is suicidal is accompanied by that image of John, and he then re-enacts the food ritual he completed with John the evening John left his cane behind, before throwing Faith!Eurus’s gun into the Thames – proving that it was Sherlock himself who stopped John from taking his own life.

This is trauma, however, and Sherlock can’t process it in full – hence why the image of John that breaks in is shaky, and Sherlock tries to push it out of his head. It’s also why Faith!Eurus, who in Sherlock’s subconscious could take any form, specifically takes the form of a woman. His gay trauma means that he first has to process John’s suicidal ideation in a heterosexual dynamic, before fully grasping and applying it to his relationship with John. (Chapter 9 X explains how that plays out over the rest of TLD in full detail.)

2.)   E!Eurus

Taking a jump back to surface level plot here, the first thing that grabbed me about E!Eurus was just how minor John’s flirtation with her was. In the terms of a television show which really rides on very high drama (multiple faked deaths and insane cliffhangers for a start), the emotional peak of John’s emotional arc with Mary being that he texted another woman – not went out for lunch, not kissed, not slept with – is bizarre, particularly when we know next to nothing about E!Eurus at this point. It’s incredibly anti-climactic as a means of John falling short of Mary’s view of him. Maybe we can accept it as in line with John Moral-Principles Watson, but it’s difficult to accept as in keeping with the nature of a show whose intent is nearly always to shock.

With this in mind, let’s delve back into the MP to see how that might give this moment greater emotional significance. Chapter 10 X is on the hug scene, and that will deal with John’s revelation of his infidelity in greater detail. For the moment, the most important thing to remember is that John Watson is not real!John – he is heart!John. In other words, we are seeing a similarly heterosexualised re-enactment of Sherlock’s relationship with John.

I will talk a lot in Chapter 10 X about how MP!Mary is linked to Sherlock’s compulsory heterosexuality; at the end of TST, Sherlock substitutes Mary’s body for his because he cannot conceive of John’s queer grief without breaking himself. This is interesting because the E of Eurus actually stands for Elizabeth in this scene (certainly in the credits, and possibly elsewhere, although I can’t remember Sian Brooke actually saying it). Elizabeth is Elizabeth is Mary’s middle name in BBC Sherlock, which looks like another of those shared name links our creators love so well. If so, this begins to justify how Sherlock’s heart is conceiving of its emotions. We will see in TLD that heart!John’s relationship with fem!John in the form of Eurus is aligned with Sherlock’s sexual desire in the form of MP!Irene. Both are hidden and exist only in texts – i.e., they cannot be spoken yet. But they will be.

 3.)    Therapist!Eurus

This one is perhaps the most straightforward on a symbolism level, but also possibly the most significant moment in the series. Therapist!Eurus, plain and simple, is Sherlock’s trauma prodding at John, interrogating him like a therapist would, trying to work him out – and largely failing, right? She can get basically nothing about how he feels about Sherlock out of him. But this is part of MP!Eurus’s ongoing project to get Sherlock to wake up – the Gay Trauma is interrogating John, trying to suss him, and failing.

Except, in the final scene of TLD, without the help of Therapist!Eurus, Sherlock has finally sussed John – it has taken until Culverton’s confession to recognise that John is suicidal without Sherlock (Chapter 9 X). The sigh of relief that is the hug scene (Chapter 10 X) is a kind of acknowledgement of that relief that he’s finally worked out what he’s been trying to cover up with drugs – so much so, that he misses the obvious, which is that John is suicidal again. When John leaves his cane with Sherlock in the hospital, it is a reminder of the first time he is suicidal, and Sherlock doesn’t make the immediate leap in his comatose haze that this is what his psyche has been trying to tell him. Hence you have this moment of immense relief and fade out at the end of the hug scene which suggests the end of the episode, and could feasibly end Sherlock’s life, except we’re started awake with a much more abrupt and troubling ending scene – Therapist!Eurus shooting John. Because, of course, if Sherlock is gone again, John must be suicidal again, and it has taken a few scenes of cognitive dissonance for this to clock. Indeed, it’s not Sherlock himself who clocks – Gay Trauma in the form of Eurus!Therapist returns and shoots John for us. This shooting isn’t, of course, permanent (in one of the worst cliffhanger resolutions in TV history), but that’s because it’s not real – it hasn’t happened yet. It is Sherlock, through MP!Eurus, finally recognising the problem – John.

This is particularly poignant in light of the opening and closing shots of TLD. Although there’s the fucky not-blood red that fills the screen at the end of TLD, apart from that the shots of Norbury shooting Mary and Therapist!Eurus shooting John are one and the same shot. It’s also a stylish shot (what I call split screen, but given that I never went to film school I think that’s just my name for it) and it’s repeated enough times over TLD that it’s pretty clear the creatives want it to be memorable. By the time John gets shot, then, we shouldn’t be caught up in the drama of it – we should be thinking, as so many did, “something’s fucky.”

And it is – but it’s brilliantly fucky! Head over to Chapter 7 X if you want to read about Norbury shooting Mary, but TLDR it’s a metaphor for Mary shooting Sherlock as understood from Sherlock’s warped and depressed perspective – and he’s finally realised what it means! The version in which Mary shooting Sherlock means John losing Mary (the Norbury version) is one in which John is sad, goes to therapy, and the world moves on. Now, however, that Sherlock has recognised that John was suicidal, he can also recognise that Mary shooting Sherlock will make John suicidal again – hence why it’s the same shot. Mary shooting Sherlock is the same as John dying – and the latter is much more important in Sherlock’s mind.

[It’s worth noting that the identical shots we see in TST and TLD don’t match the shot in HLV, although admittedly that one’s not in the MP – it does strike me, however, that the sounds are reversed – HLV sounds like a dart, whereas the MP shots sound like bullets. If anyone has any thoughts on that, do let me know – it has me flummoxed for the moment. If you want meta explaining why the shot from TST is the same as HLV, Chapter 7 is here X, and I’m certainly not the first to hypothesise this. For me, the TLD shot being the same is therefore a logical extension.]

[nothingman]

Liberals are still all but helpless in the face of right-wing lies that mutate and evolve.

As we learn more about how Russia used social media as part of its campaign to help elect Donald Trump, what stands out is how easy it was. Spend $100,000 on Facebook ads, create a bunch of Twitter bots, and before you know it you've whipped up a fog of disinformation that gives Trump just the boost he needs to get over the finish line. Even if it's almost impossible to quantify how many votes it might have swayed, it was one of the many factors contributing to the atmosphere of chaos and confusion that helped Trump get elected.

As new as it might seem, this is just the latest manifestation of a broader problem that goes back a long way, one of the degradation of truth, a conservative electorate taught to disbelieve what's real and accept whatever lunatic things their media figures tell them, and liberals who can't figure out how to respond.

In the latter, I don't exempt myself. I've been thinking seriously about this problem since the 1990s, when I first went to graduate school to study political communication. And I still don't have the answer to what we ought to do about it.

On a recent episode of the podcast "Pod Save America," Hillary Clinton described the problem as she saw it:

The other side has dedicated propaganda channels, that's what I call Fox News. It has outlets like Breitbart, and crazy InfoWars, and things like that. In this particular election, it was aided and abetted by the Russians and the role that Facebook and other platforms played. We are late to that. We did not understand how a reality TV campaign would so dominate the media environment, and I confess, I was trying to do everything I could to build on the success of President Obama's campaign, I had a lot of people you guys know involved in the campaign, we were really proud of it. But boy, it was tough to break through. So I think the Democrats can do a lot, but they are still going to face a very difficult media environment. And we've got to figure out how we're going to break through. Obviously, more podcasts, more other ways of communicating so voices can be heard and real positions can be understood is part of it, but we're still at a disadvantage.

She says liberals were "late" to it and didn't "understand" the kind of collective madness that would overtake the broader media environment, which may be true. But if you could go back in time to two years ago and give them advice, what would you tell them to do? Would calling attention to the Russian manipulation have mattered? What would you advise them to do about a news media possessed by the idea that Clinton's email management practices were the most important issue of the campaign? How would you tell them to respond to the fact that the GOP candidate was perfectly willing to tell dozens of lies every day and repeat them over and over no matter how many times he had been fact-checked?

At the heart of the problem is that when it came to what conservatives were willing to believe and act on, 2016 was simply an exaggerated version of what had come before. This is where Clinton is right that even if liberals come up with "more other ways of communicating so voices can be heard," it won't be enough.

That's because liberals have plenty of ways of communicating. There are huge numbers of liberal websites, and magazines (Like this one! Subscribe today!) and even radio and television shows out there where their perspective can be heard. But the effect they have on their audiences is of a profoundly different character than what conservative media achieve.

There's a doctrinal basis to conservative media that makes it fundamentally different from liberal media, that makes Rush Limbaugh most definitely not the mirror image of a liberal radio host and Sean Hannity not the mirror image of Rachel Maddow. It's not merely about the conservatives' and liberals' respective adherence to truth or penchant for ugly demonization of their opponents, though they differ in that too. It's that an argument about the larger media world is the foundation of conservative media. Conservative hosts and writers tell their audiences over and over again that nothing they read in the mainstream media can be accepted, that it's all twisted by a liberal agenda, and therefore they can only believe what conservatives tell them. It's the driving backbeat to every episode, every story, and every rant.

Liberals complain about media coverage of one story or another all the time. What they don't do is tell their audiences that any news source that is not explicitly and exclusively devoted to their ideological agenda cannot be trusted. But conservatives do.

Hearing that message thousands of times over the last couple of decades has left them not only uniquely vulnerable to fabricated stories and ludicrous conspiracy theories, but with an immunity to the kinds of sober refutation of those lies that mainstream media, with the noblest of intentions, attempt to carry out. Who cares if The Washington Post's Fact Checker or PolitiFact says that the story my aunt just put up on Facebook about Hillary Clinton is completely bogus? They're just liberal media! As the Russians discovered, those stories can be injected into the electorate from anywhere and they spread like a malignant virus, eventually infecting even some  who aren't already devoted to the right-wing cause.

Not long after the election, NPR spoke to a man in Los Angeles who had hit upon a money-making scheme in which he'd create bogus stories under official-sounding but nonexistent publications like the "Denver Guardian." Stories aimed at ginning up conservative outrage—people are buying pot in Colorado with food stamps! An FBI agent investigating Hillary Clinton was murdered!—quickly went viral, spreading to thousands or even millions of unsuspecting eyeballs. But he couldn't duplicate his success with the other side. "We've tried to do similar things to liberals," he said. "It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out." And now conservatives have a president who feeds their gullibility and contempt for anyone who tries to distinguish between what's true and what isn't.

The optimistic take on all this would be to say that it only matters at the margins. After all, despite the best efforts of the conservative propaganda machine and his own relentless fabulism, Donald Trump's approval ratings are in the 30s. Your uncle may tune in to Fox and watch Sean Hannity tell him that Trump had the biggest inauguration crowd in history and criminal immigrants are killing and raping all our white women, but he was never going to vote for a Democrat anyway.

The trouble is that even if it matters only at the margins, sometimes the margins matter a great deal. Like they did in 2016, where the candidate who got nearly three million more votes lost the electoral vote.

And as media change, disinformation will change with it. Twenty years ago it was Jerry Falwell sending out hundreds of thousands of copies of a videotape called "The Clinton Chronicles," which accused Bill and Hillary of running drugs and having their enemies murdered. Today it's Russians spreading bogus stories on Facebook about Hillary Clinton having Parkinson's disease. Twenty years from now it will be computer generated holo-fabrications of a Democratic nominee kicking a puppy placed into our VR brainstreams. A certain number of conservatives will believe it all, and liberals will still be asking themselves how they can fight back. And we still won't have the answer.

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via AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

[kicksparkleaxe-blog]

I actually no longer drink alcohol or take any drugs at all at this time, because on August 23rd, 2013, a group of men gang-raped me at The Lorenzo near USC, and I remember that three men did rape me, and their names were Antonio Longobardo (Tony Longo), John Sullivan, and Edward Rolwes, and that’s a very intense and lengthy narrative which I will express when it does.

Anyways, I actually used to love drinking prior to their attacking me, and I mostly drank variations on Macallan, Wild Turkey, and Johnnie Walker as I really love whisky, but I drank two shots of Johnnie Walker the night those men gang-raped me, so mainly since, I don’t drink, and my lucidity has saved me when other people have attempted to rape me, because sexual offenders often abuse their power, and they use whatever skills and privilege they have in order to attack, and they’re disaster artists, so they can drink anywhere. 

I would actually love to drink and explore alternate modes of consciousness, but only if I record it, and control my environment or anyone present. I’m positive that the substances we consume alter the processing of our sense data and manipulate our consciousness and unearth realms inside of us that are usually inaccessible, and I would actually love to do that, but I hold the camera now. 

I am my own muse, as I create and amuse myself. Every women should be her own muse, every person in fact. Do not let other people post musings about you or cast a static frame of you when you are always changing; do not inspire a brand or another creative, be your own, and should someone mine your essence for their own diamonds, know that others can always find you, the source.

You are the source of everything you do if you realize that you control your narrative and your movements and your mind and the expression of all that you store, and we store everything in our body, so do not let anyone else control your story. 

Your story is your destiny, so you define your story, you write yourself, and you hack any system that tries to alter you without your consent. 

A model can inspire an artist. But someone who is their own muse inspires the world, for they are a Goliath in a David of their own, and they move through the halls of history with the greats. 

Never be a model. Be a conceptual art piece, a performance, a player, an actor, an athlete, a thinker, an experiment, a break dance, a rap, a trap of deeper minds, a slam poem, a visual artist, a hacker, a programmer, everything at every time. 

Consider everything you do and think and believe and consume and expose yourself to with care and caution because you don’t deserve the pain others choose to inflict or which the world inflicts so protect your heart with your wits, but let everything in, and always respond, do not react, and record so that when you react, you know how to hack your autocratic sense. 

Be an actor, realize that a surface is a mask, and manipulate yourself, for you are the instrument; men should not be your pulse, you are your pulse. Society loves dead white girls, because they want idols; do not let anyone deify you, tell them they must deify themselves, and always be grateful and humble, and know everyone is equal in a cosmic sense no matter what they do. 

Do not aspire to celebrity, for celebrities inherently steal others’ sunshine and spotlight, and that’s also an anti-democratic impulse. Believe in yourself, and believe in everyone else, even against all the odds and agony, and distrust what is considered true, and trust all the absent space, because the negative space also defines an object, and what is missing tends to be the most interesting of all. 

I enjoy this nap dress because it spoofs Gap, and the word Gap reminds me of what’s between a women’s legs or the Gulf War. Who a woman is should not be defined by an absence, because you’re everyone you’ve interacted with. 

There is no gap, just a society that doesn’t see femme-identified people, and other minorities, when a minor key is always more interesting than a major. Mine the minute moments and spaces for the infinity they hold. A major hogs the attention, a minor is a mirror of what it feels like to be alone, and there is an arrow in that sorrow to hit the origin of it all.

Collect everyone you know, and color in the absence with a black light and neon, be a neon Venus in a world as black as coal.

Be and become and create yourself to crack the technicolor spectrums inside, in a human world that falsely believes you are a gap due to your uniqueness, authenticity, and threat. 

The body and the universe and all your thumb prints and stories store everything, even when others will not buy it due to fallacious optics of who matters when we are all matter, and the environment and you will know your thunder, even if others will not admit it. 

"The Gulf War” is interesting, because a gulf is an absence that one believes they cannot bridge. You can bridge any absence with construction and a bond, and any broken structure can be fixed again, so there is no need to war except others who do not believe that. 

War is a warehouse of people who oppressors want to deny, the people who build the world with industry, who are humble. 

It also sounds like wear, because wear your wear and tear like a badge always, as life belongs to the soldiers, and a foot soldier is always more courageous and strong than a general who sends him to a war no one needs to fight. 

Think on your feet always, and record the way you move through every space, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, locational, and in time and history, every dimension contains a space you must fill yourself in relation to every other facet and refraction. 

A general is called a general, because they are clueless, and they do not realize that a generalization hides the multitudes inside. Never be a general when you can be a polymath, because this is all code and philosophy and every subject is in you and must be mastered, and to be a polymorph is to be everything, and always be evolving so the world does not leave you behind.

Research, annotate, demolish, rebuild, sample everything, trust strangers, do not trust the familiar, because if you are ever too comfortable, that is a passivity that will hurt you. Always be searching and discovering and making, that is what response rather than reaction is. You are art itself, never be a muse or an artist, know that you are art, art is creation, and it is knowing that you are that pulsating spark, all the time.

I dropped out of USC due to legal and social trouble which I will get to, but most visionaries realized that institutions do not have vision, they confine people and they get inside you, and they have you repeat the past in a way which is calcified, which is not novel. 

But I wear my cunning exile around my neck, it is an heirloom, not a noose. Every pain someone else inflicts can be a noose or an heirloom, a treasure which watches and inspires you, or it can choke you. 

Never choke, swan dive into any wormhole, as that’s how you spawn into a new space, and newness it always good, even if it is difficult, because something new is always an adaptation of what preceded it. 

If you are scared, force yourself to jump. You should loom your inheritance with your own weave, you must spin your own destiny or the Fates shall cut the strings and fashion you into a puppet, so realize everything is strung together, atom by atom and brick by brick.

Sewing the fabrics together is connecting the fabric of reality into a patchwork that maps the whole, so be a cartographer, every patch is a piece of work, and all work is kinetic energy, and all kinetic energy is a bounce that shakes this grid we must break. 

So if someone rips you, weave, bob, bounce, anything, and sew your tears up to everything else you’ve ever done, as the strands of time wire everything that exists, like your hair or your muscles or every cell reflects what you’ve experienced and made. 

You make yourself, you do yourself, you exist in the present-progressive, so be mindful, fill your mind with the shifting and shimmering and infinite gemstone of reality, or you will be an absence where it refracts its celebrities and idols, and that is all falsehood and counterfeit.

You are your own prophet, but have no idols, and celebrate yourself every moment, because every moment is an invitation to respond, and every response is art. 

A noose has a duplication of an absence inside. If you see a pattern and it is empty, fill it with everything you know and can do. Do not die because of sorrow, die for everything that pierces sorrow with a sonic boom. 

If someone wants to kill your for your beliefs and you have no fear, even if humans don’t remember your name, you will echo in the structure of all the spaces you inhabited and all your interactions, and that’s enough. 

Be so revolutionary and true that people refuse to see it, be so revolutionary that the oppressors want you dead. Destroy power, and master everything you can. That’s what mastery is. 

It is honoring your own divinity and everyone else’s, it is spitting at prestige which is a shell corporation for many rotting cores and teeth, trust me, people forced me into “prestigious” situations like Sage Hill School and USC, and I have personally seen the rot in the mouths of the gabbers who speak without thinking.

I crawl into any maw and I inspect, I drill and I excavate danger if I cannot evacuate, and if something bothers you, catch it in a mason jar like a firefly and fashion it into a harpoon of lightning. 

So yes, I have seen the celebrities and the rich, and anyone who wants to steal the vantage point or the space is a hoarder of illusions and delusions of grandeur, and many rich people are poor inside. 

So yes, I have records of everything, I’m posting them under different names on every platform. I am only afraid of illusions, I know I control the optics now, and I will tell you everything, and people can harm me for my truth. I would die for it. 

They already have harmed me and destroyed me much, and I’m still alive, and I choose to not be defeated. If people want to hurt you, it is because your strength threatens their solipsism, autocracy, and narcissism. Lean in to the belly of the beast, inside is a key to get out.

[ddrkirbyisq]

Let's see here...the first major thing I have to write about is foobar2000!!!

I'm perhaps ages late to the party (?), but I've finally taken the plunge and switched from using iTunes to foobar2000!  This was not a decision I took lightly, but I decided to pull the trigger after working with foobar2k and considering the pros and cons, and I've been pretty satisfied so far!

Foobar2000 is a free windows-based audio player that is known for many for its customizability, advanced features, modular design, and basically being the dream of anyone who is not scared of complexity and wants to really have their music player function the way THEY want.  It's also available for OSX as of ~1.5 years ago, though I have not tested that build yet.

Perhaps more importantly, foobar2000 now (as of ~a year ago I think) has a mobile client, available for all of iOS/Android/WindowsPhone.  This is key as one of the primary things tying me to iTunes has always been the fact that my ecosystem includes a lovely iPhone SE running iOS and of course I'd really like to have my music readily available on that.

Right, so let's first talk about the things I'm losing during the move to fb2k:

First off, syncing music to iOS is a bit more involved.  Unfortunately, foobar2000 has no way of directly interfacing with the iOS media library, so instead you write music to the foobar2000 app's sandbox and only fb2k can access it.  There is no "automatic" way to do this, but fortunately the iOS fb2k app includes an FTP server that you can use to transfer files via FTP.  This is as far as I can tell the best way to transfer music to fb2k mobile as you can't access the foobar2000 app sandbox directly (without jailbreaking your phone).

Of course there's no built-in "sync management" like there is with iTunes, so instead I first use foobar_onewaysync to copy out the relevant playlists (and their associated music files) to a temporary directory, then use WinSCP to mirror that on the iPhone over FTP.  So like I said, this is "a bit more involved", but now that I have that flow set up it's as simple as running those two commands and waiting for them to complete.

Like with all things in foobar2000, I have so much more =confidence= in what is happening here with the sync.  There would be all kinds of uncommon weird annoyances back when iTunes was in the picture -- you'd find it transferring old files again and again (why?), you'd find that certain songs were missing and showed up on the device but weren't actually playable (why?), you'd find that every time you did a sync one of your playlists mysteriously duplicated itself (why?).  I think a recurring theme so far with foobar2000 is that you have to spend some effort setting up your workflow for doing certain things, but once you do, it Just Works.

The REAL main thing I'm losing during the move to fb2k is actually a significant one: it's bluetooth media browsing via the AVRCP protocol.  In other words, browsing music via my car's on-board display (or through the controls on the steering wheel).  I can still trigger playback and track skips via bluetooth, but any attempts to browse the tracks/playlists/etc from my car's bluetooth interface will result in it looking at the native iOS music library, which is now empty (as all of the music is in foobar2000).  This is actually a pretty major loss as it means that I can't really fire up a music playlist in my car unless I'm parked or stopped for a good minute, as I have to actually do that browsing on my phone itself.

As far as I can tell there's no real way around this.  foobar2000 used to have an iPod management module but that is looooooooong defunct and iOS tends to be very closed off in terms of these sorts of things anyways.  The only way I could really get this functionality back would be to bring iTunes back into the picture, and then use iOS music as my mobile app while still using foobar2000 as my desktop/laptop music player.  We'll see if it comes to that, but I don't think it will.  foobar2000 mobile is a better media player anyhow, and I don't see an efficient way to sync from foobar2000->through itunes->to the iOS device for anything more than maybe a single playlist.

That being said, what I'm =gaining= in the transition to foobar2000 feels well worth the loss so far:

- A =working= ReplayGain implementation!  I now use replaygain to play music at adjusted volumes for normalized listening.  iTunes has a proprietary "Sound Check" feature that is supposed to do this but completely fails on VBR-encoded files.  This is super useful for social dance DJing in particular as having normalized (normalized as in equal perceived loudness, not as in peaking at 0dB) volumes is pretty important.

- I've customized my UI to include a clickable waveform display that shows the current song progress and can be clicked to seek to any point in the song.  Super useful for visually seeking to a given point in the song!

- The ability to work with ID3 tags and file metadata in a very fully-featured and rich way.  Want to convert all ID3 tags to ID3v2.3?  Want to batch-append a genre or grouping tag to 500 songs?  fb2k can do it all!

- The ability to ensure that your media library's files are organized correctly and robustly.  iTunes of course attempted to do this automatically, but it wasn't customizable at all and there were a lot of times when it would come up with filenames and/or paths that seemed a little....off.  fb2k gives you the option to organize your paths however you want and will give you a preview of what files need to be moved where before actually reorganizing everything.

Anyhow, that's sort of been an ongoing pet project of mine, but I'm basically done with the switch now and have been enjoying not only the new functionality but most of all the peace of mind and robustness that fb2k offers.

=====

Alongside that big customization project, I also spent quite a while looking at mechanical keyboards and finally decided to get myself a pink Filco Majestouch 2!!!  I first started thinking about buying a new keyboard when I saw the Razer Huntsman Quartz Pink edition, but after some research I figured that I'd probably be much happier with a less "consumer-y" brand and decided on the Majestouch 2.

Just look at that beauty!  It's possible I might replace the keycap color scheme with something a little more exciting in the future, but I'm happy to just try going with the all-pink for now.  I decided on Cherry MX 'brown' switches, as I'm not a huge fan of the infamous clickety-clackity noises of the blues, and I'd still like some tactile feedback (so not going with the reds).  I also decided to go with a "TenKeyLess" size -- you'll notice that it has the arrow keys and home/end/printscreen/scrolllock/etc but no numpad.  Having full arrow keys around I think is still very useful and necessary but I think I can actually live without a numpad as there are only really a few cases where I really use it and I think the prospect of having that additional desk space freed up (and having the mouse be closer to the keys) is pretty exciting.  (if I REALLY miss the numpad I could always buy a standalone numpad, but I get the feeling I really won't miss it that much)

Anyways, that should theoretically arrive in a couple days -- super exciting!!!

I've also already gone ahead and got a Quartz Pink Razer Basilisk to go along with it:

Unfortunately for getting an aesthetically-pleasing pink mouse there are wayyy fewer options than keyboards, so it was pretty much between this and the pink Razer Lancehead (which has a symmetrical design), or perhaps a pink Zowie mouse, but that seemed to both look worse and have a worse scroll wheel/etc. (despite being lighter/etc).  Razer's Synapse software is.....a bit shady to say the least, but unfortunately that is an evil I ended up having to swallow for now.

On the plus side, the mouse itself is working great.  I was previously running a Logitech MX Revolution and this mouse feels more sensitive/smoothly responsive, and the control mapping is actually a step up as well.  There's an optional thumb trigger (they give you two different sizes!) that you can use as a modifier to give yourself a whole other set of mappings, so for example thumbswitch + mouse wheel up increases my volume, thumbswitch + mouse middle click triggers a pause/play in whatever media player is open, etc.  The media controls also work better than that of Logitech's -- no annoying onscreen display and it is also pretty intelligent about looking for media players to send the command to.  I miss having the scroll wheel free-spin function, but I'm fine living without it to be honest.

No bluetooth version so I'm back to having a cord, but I don't actually find myself minding that too much either.  Plus, it's got two multicolored lights (one in the scroll wheel and one on the logo display) and I have them set up to react to whatever audio is playing from my computer, which is pretty spiffy as well.  If I wanted I could have gotten a keyboard that also has fancy backlighting (basically the corresponding Razer model) but I really didn't consider that a priority, so just the mouse lights will have to do.

Oh, related to mice: I downloaded Smooze for OSX and am happily using it for one thing and one thing only: disabling scroll wheel acceleration!  I'm not super against scroll wheel acceleration in theory, but in practice the way OSX handles scroll wheel acceleration for mouse has just never seemed to be sensible for any mouse I've used (maybe it's different for an actual apple mouse).  Now that I've completely disabled it, I can go back to sensible scrolling, yay!!!

=====

In other news, our game Goodnight Meowmie has gotten quite a lot of attention since I posted it on itch.io, which is really great to see, especially because I feel like this is the most significant game I've ever worked on.  It's gotten about 2.5k views on itch since I threw it up there, which is pretty amazing.  It's also been really cool watching people's video playthroughs of it on youtube, seeing their reactions and interpretations of the game.  It really makes me feel like we did something worthwhile, that we were able to reach out to people and have them listen to our story, and perhaps take it to heart.

=====

In other other news, I'll be DJing at Friday Night Waltz this Friday!  Be sure to come out if you're in the area, it's gonna be great!

Life has actually been going pretty fantastically lately -- this weekend was a lot of fun, between FNW, spending time with good friends, and just being in a good place.  I feel as if I'm not losing my attachment with the past because of it either.  Things are really good right now.

[atypical60]

Yes I did!  And I’m gonna tell you all about that stuff I got!!

Yes I did.  But I paid mostly with cash!

I got another eyeshadow duo.  This one I purposely bought because I decided that I would make myself a “makeup bag” for work. (Which, by the way as I write this, I have not done) Now—I normally don’t do touch ups during the day but because I’m at the computer all day my eye makeup can sometimes get a bit wonky because I’ll rub my eyes without thinking.

I’m really hung up on the MAC eyeshadow refills. I need to stop this obsession!

It could be a good idea to perhaps do a bit of an eye touch up if I run errands after work. Know what I mean?

Anyway, I ordered Patina, a slightly shimmery neutral and, naturally, Quarry—my go-to shadow shade.

Patina on the right. It goes on so lightly that it looks like your eyes are shaded. And Quarry on the left is more of a taupe than the lavander hue the photo took on!

But I was really excited about the lip pencil that I ordered.  Half Red by Mac.  One of my favorite YouTube Beauty Gurus, Aly Art, loves this and her lips always look so beautiful so I decided to try it.

Half Red in the box….

Let me tell you something. I’m thrilled that I did.  I feel as though the purchase was an epiphany.  I don’t like a lipstick that feels “heavy” and some matte lipsticks have a texture that makes them feel dry and heavy on the mouth.  And I want staying power because during the day, I do not want to be constantly applying lip gloss or lipstick.  And if you use a lipstick/gloss that’s a bit on the more “colorful” side and not a neutral, as the color wears off it looks a bit “off”.

The one concern, though was that a pencil needs to be sharpened.  And my luck with pencil sharpeners isn’t exactly great.  Regardless, I still bit the bullet and bought it.

Half Red is a truly neutral type of red. It just blends into the natural lip so well!

And I couldn’t be any happier.  This goes on the lips so nicely.  I did prep by exfoliating my lips and adding a bit of concealer to tone down the natural pigmentation in my lips.  Then—I went to town!

Me, wearing Half Red to the office this week.  What the heck. I’m changing this to A+ anyway!

Overall, I have to give this an A.  I think as I get more used to wearing this, it will reach A+ status. But I’m relatively new to using a lip pencil as lipstick so we’ll see.

Mascara.  Yes. I did.  I bought another mascara. I couldn’t help it. I’ve been fondly reminiscing about the Bourgeois mascara that Oona and I loved back during her Irish Dance days.  The mascara was two-fold.  A white primer at one end and mascara at the other.  It was great.  Made the lashes long and lush and there was not one con about the product.

False advertising on the package.  My lashes did NOT look like the lashes on the package–but this does a very decent job with making the lashes look lovely!

When I saw this Voluminous Super Star mascara from L’Oréal, I dug deep into my wallet and made the buy.  I’ll say, this isn’t bad. It isn’t bad at all.  It isn’t perfect either.  The primer is good is coats the lashes evenly but, there isn’t a lot of actual product in the tube. That’s annoying to me.  I can imagine that the mascara end of the tube will outlast the primer.  The mascara isn’t bad either.  The wand is a good one because there’s decent separation and the bristles are a great size. Not too thick and not too thin. It reminds me of the old “The Falsies” by Maybelline wand before Maybelline changed the formula and packaging that now basically stink.

Primer on the left, mascara on the right.  The wands are very good ones.  My issue is that L’Oreal is stingy on the primer!

My only complaint about the mascara is that I wish it made the lashes a bit thicker.  It gives a nice length but I like a slightly clumpy look. and there wasn’t a good amount of lash primer!

Just in case you get confused, the primer is number 1 and the mascara number 2!

Overall, this gets a B+ to an A- simply because the primer end of the tube is stingy.

Eyelash Curler.  I had an eyelash curler that came with a little replacement rubber.  I had that little replacement rubber for about two years. And when I needed to replace the rubber that was in my eyelash curler—the replacement disappeared.  God knows where it went—it most likely either ended up where the odd socks from the dryer go or Chippy ate it.  And I never bothered to replace the eyelash curler or buy replacement rubbers.

So, while at Dollar Tree last Sunday, I spotted an eyelash curler and figured all they are worth is a buck anyway.  And I’ll be honest.  Don’t waste the buck on a dollar eyelash curler.  The size is weird—because it doesn’t “grab” the lashes the way the other lash curlers do.  But—for a buck, it’s worth it to keep in my travel case.  If you are at Dollar Tree or any other Dollar store, pass on this. Please.

This eyelash curler isn’t worth the dolla spent. In fact, notice that on my hand is a paper towel. That’s because I accidently stabbed my finger with the scissor that I opened the packaging with and bled for a half hour!  Ok–15 minutes.  Alright already–a good three minutes!

I also picked up a two-part cosmetic case.  This is actually a very good thing for me.  My lip products can go in the smaller case. I’m a lipstick/gloss slob and the glop gets everywhere.  By putting them in a separate case helps to keep things clean!

For a buck, I should have picked up a couple more of these to throw into various tote bags. I’m not big on expensive makeup/cosmetic bags because within six months (ok–make that a month for me) they get filthy inside.  These work for me. And I’ve yet to fill them with cosmetics..

I did pick up and placed in the larger bag this little mirror/brush combo.  I can use the brush for my wigs because the bristles are plastic and synthetic-wig friendly!

Who can pass up a pair of dollar flip flops?  Not I!!!  One pair can be kept in the car and one at the office for those days when the heels start to bother my dawgs!  A very handy item of footwear, I must say!

The flip flops with the anchors are right up my alley.  The white ones are July Fourth specials!

Now. Since we were at the beach on Saturday, and I got a bit of sun on my face, I decided to rummage through my old makeup case to see if there was any face tanning product that I could use as foundation.  I came across a sample of Tarte’s Brazilliance.  I don’t even know if it’s a face product because the printing on the sample tube was too small but I put it on my face anyway.

Well..the tube states this is a self-tanner but it washed right off at the end of the day!

Here’s how it  rolled!

The Tarte Brazilliance is a gel.  And it’s dark. Real dark. But when you apply it to your face, it blends.  And it blends so well that it ends up giving just a hint of color. This is a great product to use after you’ve gotten a decent color on your face from the sun or if you tan easily.  It isn’t hydrating nor is it dry-it just is what it is.  If I had a great tan, I would purchase this as an extra.  But due to the fact that I just turn red, I need something that’ll make me look slightly tanner… For those who tan easily and want a bit extra, I give this an A. For those like me who get red. It’s a B because despite the dark color of the gel, it could go on a bit darker.

This is how Brazilliance looks straight outta the tube. It’s dark!

But here’s how it looked on my face. Not bad but could be darker!

Albolene.  OK. Last night we went out to celebrate Bonaparte’s birthday (I’ll be writing a post later this week), when we arrived home and I went to remove my makeup, I realized that there was nothing left in the jar of Albolene that I have.  It didn’t surprise me either; in fact, I was pissed at myself for not searching enough for it.  I went to Walmart during the week but there was none to be had.  I did something so awful.  I ended up going to bed with my makeup on.

This was the empty jar last night.  I use a ton of this due to the amount of mascara that I plop on my lashes. For me to go to bed without removing my makeup is atrocious–but I did!

It all came out in the shower this morning!  So, earlier this afternoon I drove to Rite-Aid because I know the store sells it.  After searching through the shelves for five long minutes, I spotted it on the bottom shelf.  It pained me to shell out $13 bucks for it—I could have ordered it cheaper from Amazon but I needed it NOW!   After I write this post I’m heading to my Amazon store and ordering a backup.  This is, hands down, the best makeup remover ever and I’ve been using it for years and years and years.  It’s an A+++++ product!!

It just about killed me to spend over $13 (with tax) on this but I needed it so badly.  This is lard for the face. It moisturizes and cleanses and is THE BEST MAKEUP REMOVER OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!!  I’m heading over to Amazon to price check after I write this post! Meet me at my store!

Last of all, I ordered another duplicate Goyard-inspired tote from Amazon.  Amazon sent me a rewards card and I used it to order the tote.  And a sincere thank you to all who have ordered from my Amazon store because I would not have received the card if it were not for you.  Seriously.  I’m filled with gratitude because, as you know, Like to Know It refused me four times but Amazon has taken me on and I’m thrilled.  I’ve started to monetize which inspires me—so again.  Thank you!!!

My “replica” tote.  My sister paid over a hundred bucks for this on the streets of NYC and my niece has the real thing.  Not much of a difference at all!!

Anyway, this tote is an all-around great item.  My step daughter ordered one and loves it. I think she uses it as a beach tote.  It’s totes ma goats!!

The humidity has crept up and I don’t care because I can just plop a wig on my head!  I’m telling you, the beauty of wigs is that you don’t get a bad hair day in the summer! I received my third Violet this past week in the mail. I paid a deep discount on Wigoutlet.com.  I freaking love this wig by Estetica Designs!

Violet’s looking mighty fine, she is!!!  

More items have been added to my idea list:  Let’s Make Up.  Have a looksee and I filmed a Sunday Chat video on my YouTube channel this morning.

Please enjoy my little chat and let me know what you think of the cosmetics packaging that I rant about!

I Got Some New “Stuff” Yes I did!  And I'm gonna tell you all about that stuff I got!! Yes I did. 

[aplanterofthought]

I noticed something pretty incredible about myself recently. These are 3 paintings of mine that I have painted over the last year. In order from left to right. The middle painting was a semi conscious deliberation but there is a deeper sequence that only revealed itself to me as of late. And it’s a divine example of the power of my subconscious, as well as my spirit. So I think it’s worth sharing!

They are all self portraits, in fact all female portraits that I paint are, whether they look like me or not. Call me vain. But by the end of this post you will learn that vanity has nothing to do with it. Not these 3 anyways.

When I have the feeling to paint, I address it immediately! Within 2 hours I had bought that canvas and was painting. I prepared by dressing myself up in my favorite summer dress that I once got in Mexico 10 years ago. I had the idea to bring a mirror out on my balcony thinking I could capture some interesting light. I used the slow motion video recording option on my phone and recorded myself moving around, flipping my hair, throwing the fabric up in the air knowing it would be recorded falling in slow motion and could look great! Then I took screen shots of the parts in the video play back that I thought had an interesting composition. There were many, and of the 3 I narrowed it down to, this one was by far the most challenging, but it really spoke to me. For reasons that weren’t clear at that time.

But became clear after I completed the third self portrait, and an unintended portrayal of my sequential spiritual awakening.

I had been going through a lot of changes within myself for about 6 months prior to the first self portrait. I reached a point where I felt I was teetering on transitioning but it was a while yet until I finally revealed to myself the path that would lead me further inward.

It was in that time and space of teetering that this portrait poured out from within me. I thought it was pretty, nothing really more….

BUT NOW I SEE! And it’s so beautiful to me <3

It’s a portrait of my self reflection. Without knowing why, I was drawn to the image of me looking at my reflection. Me–literally self reflecting. I had gathered all of the plants I had from my home and surrounded myself with them for the photograph. This was me gathering as much force of nature as I could find. With all of it’s unseen healing energy. I had also decided to change the landscape within the reflection. This stood out to me because I wanted this painting to be as realistic as I could make it….yet I was being drawn to creating something more alive, not from the photograph rather something from within me. I painted what made me feel peaceful, I painted a sunrise. In the original photograph I was still surrounded by plants. Now I had surrounded myself with the simplicity of the earth and her sky.  I interpret this subconscious change in artistic direction as an intuitive foresight of what was soon to come. A vision of my future. This painting is a story, one I had no idea I was telling, it’s a story of a girl in nature, searching to find the nature of the girl.

My second painting was inspired by a photograph I found online. A pregnant mother holding her child, both nude, and surrounded by woods. The moment I found it, it reached in and kissed my soul. I loved it and so I went out and bought a canvas. I uploaded the photograph into an editing program and changed the woods into something more abstract so that I could combine realism with abstract. I ended up with these geometrical shapes and somewhat of a glow around the woman and her children. This held no significant meaning to me, other than I simply thought the composition was interesting.

Not long into my painting did I realize just WHY this photograph kissed my soul. It was exactly what had changed my life. It was my source of healing, it was not only my journey into self but my profound appreciation and gratitude for it.

You see, what I was teetering between, months before…was my physical reality and my inner formlessness. An encounter during meditation became my leap. An encounter with myself, but myself as 3. I had found a way to channel my higher self, and through my present self, spoke to my inner child. The power in this was enough to change my physiological perspective of the world and my place in it. I embraced this with more love than I ever knew I had.

And more than anything, I embraced my inner child. She became what was most important in my life. She became my source of love. My higher self was my source of wisdom and truth, but my inner child became my reason. And in order to truly nurture her, I had to nurture myself in my present being as mindfully as I could, as to provide a safe channel in which my higher self could speak to her.

This photograph was that.

This photograph wasn’t just me holding my inner child, with the force of nature within me…but this photograph was ME–always an innocent child of God, being held in the arms of my higher self, together nurturing and GROWING STRONG, the very essence of life itself. The simple, beautiful, presence of life, where in its most absolute state of mind, is ONLY consciousness, in a body.

This became clear to me during my painting. Yet it wasn’t until after that I made sense of the abstract direction I took.  Those geometric shapes, almost taking a threatening form, with their sharp edges, was a (now clear) representation of the harmful forces from outside of me. And the aura of energy and mystical glow surrounding us, is the protective force of our uniting love. Because when we are together, nothing can harm us. I also looked into the color blue—why I decided to paint this in primarily blue tones and accents.  A balance of the color blue brings intuition, inspiration, sincerity, peace, joy, tranquility, faith in oneself.

I thought to myself when I was finished. “Wow”. Yet at this point I still had made no conscious correlation between the relationship of this painting, and the painting that came before it. Because the story they all 3 told, hadn’t fully spoken until I finished the 3rd.

Right after I finished my blue painting, the bizarre poetry of it had me feeling very inspired…a few days later was valentines day and I received the SAME exact size canvas and an entirely new supply of incredibly gorgeous colors of acrylic paints.  From my totally perfect for me boyfriend. While he was out shopping, ironically, I had been on my digital editing program designing my next painting, not knowing when I’d have a chance to finally create it.

When he came home with supplies in hand I knew my next painting was meant to be!

About half way through, it occurred to me I was on my way to having 3 very large pieces of art work. I thought about finding a place to display them and then thought to myself, “I wish I had had the idea to make them related somehow”. I realized then…that my new painting was of 3 female figures….

The original photograph that I used as inspiration for this painting was of 1 woman, a ballerina (I found her off of the internet) when i took it into my editing program I made a duplicate image of the woman and resized her and put her off to the right…I loved the way it looked and after playing around with it I decided to do the same thing a third time and place her off to the left. Visually the composition just spoke to me. The colors were amazing and it seemed to have a very elegant balance to it.

The moment I realized I had just initiated a second– very personal and powerful interpretation of my “journey”—my heart filled with so much joy!!! I have been painting practically all of my life but never anything that told a story. I always knew something was missing from my art. What was missing was my spirit, my Kundalini. She had been asleep for so long.

This new painting was my attention to my self awareness. Since I found my higher self and my inner child, and after a long period of holding them so tightly and lovingly …I proceeded to consciously walk beside them both, every single day. Sometimes we hold hands. Sometimes we dance, everynight we fall  to sleep together. But always we are together. Maybe they drift slightly off in their own directions from time to time but THEE MOMENT I call to them, they are beside me. Within me, all around me.

This painting is not of me embracing the self love anymore, this painting is the result of self love, and never letting it out of my sight.

And now I realize, the colors of it, are the colors of the landscape within my first painting.

I love you dad.