#i have written 20 variations on the same cover letter

[the-everqueen]

once again grappling with the peculiar grief of the almost post-grad student: i like doing this work, and there is no guarantee i will get to continue it after spring. i went into grad school knowing that the odds were not good for academic employment, but i also spent six years studying this thing and building a highly specific body of knowledge, and i might have to let all that go soon.

[calaisreno]

A Guide to my Fiction

I've written a lot of short stories, which you can find here.

That's a lot to wade through, though, so I've organized many of them into series. If you're looking for a particular type of story, I hope this helps.

I rarely write sad endings, and I do leave warnings about things that you might want to avoid. If a story is tagged Author Chose Not To Warn, please read the tags, the notes, the warnings.

BBC:

Just Johnlock / 26 standalone stories: These are all stories that take place in BBC world. Some are alternate first meetings, canon fixits, and missing scenes. Many are fluffy, and some are angsty. Basic Johnlock stories.

Speculative Shorts / 22 standalone stories: These stories involve a degree of magic, fantasy, or science fiction. What-ifs and Twilight Zone moments. Again: fluff, angst, and Johnlock.

Those are my two main series, and most of my stories belong to one or the other. No story belongs to both of these series, so these are the two main places to find my short fiction. Neither series is complete, so you will see additions.

I do have some other series that overlap with Just Johnlock and Speculative Shorts. Some of these are one story arc told in multiple parts.

Many Happy Returns / 12 standalone stories: These are all variations of Sherlock's return from Reichenbach, each of them a fix-it with a happy ending. I will be adding to this series.

Random Strangers / One story told in 5 parts: John is a former POW who only knows Sherlock from the letter he was forced to write to a serviceman while in rehab. Their relationship begins in wariness, progresses through sympathy and understanding, eventually to love. Covers events of the series from a different first meeting through The Great Game, Reichenbach, and finally retirement. This series is complete.

May 4 / 2 parts: An amnesia story. Memento Mori: John has undetected brain damage (caused from the fall he took when the cyclist hit him) and can't remember what happened to Sherlock. In Absolution, Sherlock deals with John's amnesia and tries to atone for leaving him. This series is complete.

Author / 5 standalone stories: Writing and writers (usually John). I may add to this series.

Happiness: 2 parts, so far; two related stories that can be read independently. In Happy, John reflects on his long estrangement from Sherlock and reaches out to him; in Knight Errant, Sherlock explores his understanding of love, and explains why he waited so long for John. No more parts are planned for this, but you never know.

Seasons: 2 parts, so far; related stories that can be read independently. In Solstice, Sherlock determines that the way to win John back is the same way he lost him: so gradual that it's almost imperceptible. In Equinox, they're together and learning that, thanks to real life, the course of true love isn't always smooth. Each story takes place over one year. I have one more part planned for this series.

ACD:

Conductor of Light: 8 parts (with two more parts planned). Best described as a non-canonical, not-quite-an-AU retelling of ACD's detective and his doctor. The stories assume that Watson was an unreliable narrator attempting to make his telling of their cases acceptable for publication. As a narrator, Holmes is more reliable, but justifies many things to himself as he struggles to understand and express his feelings for Watson. Parts can be read independently, but are part of a long arc stretching from first meeting to Reichenbach and beyond.

Fin de Siecle: 20 parts, complete. Each part can be read on its own, but there is an overall arc to the stories that will make more sense if read in order. Only one part of this is somewhat explicit. The story assumes that Holmes and Watson are lovers in Victorian England who must hide their relationship. At Reichenbach, Holmes loses the battle with Moriarty and must go into hiding, faking his death for seven years; while Watson is put on trial for gross indecency and sent to prison. Reuniting after Holmes's secret return, they join the battle against Sebastian Moran, who has used his influence to corrupt the government.

Longer Fiction:

The Last Envoy: My longest work to date, 127k words. This is science fiction, but not hard SF. Sherlock is a very human alien who comes to Earth with a mission he doesn't completely understand and quickly falls in love-- with the planet, the people, and a certain army doctor. There is angst: war begins and he is caught up in events he cannot control, while still trying to fulfill his purpose in being here.

Do No Harm: 2 parts in this series, more planned. Novel-length. This is not strictly ACD; it's set in the interwar period (1920s-1930s). In Part 1, Do No Harm, Watson stands trial in 1923 for the murder of his mistress, the mystery novelist Mary Morstan. If convicted, he will hang. Sherlock Holmes sets out to prove his innocence. Part 2, Where I Cannot Follow, takes place ten years later, after Holmes has faked his death and returned from a three-year mission.

Off-Axis: These are not short stories, but a novel-length story and two novellas. Their connecting theme is parallel realities.

Synchronicity: John and Sherlock meet again, years after they were school boys together. John hasn't forgotten why he still hates Sherlock Holmes. Enemies to lovers.

The Short Tragic Death of John Watson: Thirteen years ago, Sherlock starred in a television series about an alien boy stranded on Earth. Now Molly has written a reunion episode and he's expected to join his old costars and recreate the role of Alex Tribble, now an adult returning to rescue his old friends from an alien threat. Having had some success since playing a teenage alien, Sherlock is reluctant to reprise the role. And there's another problem no one wants to discuss: John Watson, who played his best friend, is dead. NO MCD.

Blank Slate: Sherlock has been dead four years when John receives the shocking news that he's actually alive, that he's been held in captivity for the last two years. When he returns to John, he seems like a different person. Is the man John loves somewhere inside that amazing brain?

Starting Over: A disappointing blind date set up by well-meaning friends brings together John Watson, invalided army doctor, and Sherlock Holmes, asocial, "married to my work" consulting detective.

Accidental Magic: Soon after his return (TEH), Sherlock takes the case of a woman seeking stolen books hidden in her late husband’s library. He invites John to come with him. Working together after so much time apart, they begin to discover more than stolen books. This isn’t really a story about magic, except for the ordinary kind of magic that happens when people realise they’re in love and it’s time to do something about it. That kind of magic is the best kind.

[cagestark]

Better Late Than Never//1

And Merry Christmas to YOU

Aka I started another project that I will take twenty years to finish. But @starkerflowers prompts were just too fucking good.

About: With interest in his work waning, famous writer Tony Stark (under the pseudonym AE Potts) changes his entire public relations platform, which includes hosting a meet-and-greet contest where one lucky fan will get to spend the day with him. That one lucky fan is Peter Parker. Peter is 21. Will contain nff, alcoholism, suicide attempts, character death (not major), drug mentions, anxiety, anxiety attacks. 

Read here on AO3. 

-

Tony is awakened from a drunken, dreamless sleep by a tub of envelopes and small packages being upended over his head. He jerks upright with a shout from where he was slumped over his writing desk, upending the (empty) bottle of whiskey that had lulled him to sleep. Pepper stands over him, impeccable in every way he is not.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, pushing envelopes off of where they have pooled on his lap. “You could have taken my eye out, Peppercorn. What are you trying to do, perform Lingchi on me? What is all this?”

“Fan mail,” she says. Her voice is stern and unsympathetic. The first time she’d found him passed out drunk over his desk, she had panicked and nearly called for an ambulance. The next handful of times she had just covered him with a blanket and regarded him with sad eyes the next morning when she brought him coffee. But those were ten years ago. Not to mention, all in her first few weeks on the job— “Social media is revolting. You never answer fan mail, you never do Q&A’s, you haven’t done an interview in almost a decade.”

“Fuck this,” Tony mutters, opening one drawer. “Where’s my whiskey?”

“In your bloodstream, I’d imagine. Don’t brush this off, Tony. Sales are waning. We need to make some serious changes in our PR or I’ll be putting in my two-weeks’ notice.”

That gets Tony’s attention. Pepper hadn’t threatened to quit after his last book when he’d killed off one of the most popular characters (one of his personal favorites, may she rest in fictional peace) and the public had flipped their shit. She hadn’t threatened to quit years before that when she walked in on him hunched over his desk with a straw to his nose, three sheets to the wind on far more than just whiskey. She has the disposition of a mountain: unflinching and ever-enduring.

“You mean it,” says Tony.

“I mean it.”

His shoulders sag. He glances around the room: the mess, the junk, the empty alcohol bottles, the half-finished manuscripts. There’s a strange feeling in the back of his throat, acidic, like he might throw up. Or cry. When his mouth opens to say something sarcastic, something about not letting the door hit her on the way out if she expects him to play nice with the media, all that comes out is a broken: “I can’t lose you, Pep.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. “You will. If you don’t make some changes. Okay?”

Maybe this is what it means to be balanced on a knife’s edge, where one way ends in pain and the other ends in terminal inconvenience. But he knows which one he has to pick. His whole life is just a big inconvenience, but pain? Tony has spent enough time with his hand flat against the stove’s burner to know that he’d rather die than feel it again, rather die than lose one of the only people left who can stand him.

He picks up the closest letter and tears it open, blinking heavily to clear his eyes. Pepper leans down to press a kiss to the crown of his head and then gags. “Take a shower, when you get the chance,” she mutters, smiling.

-

The letters start off by being good for one thing: his ego. Adoring fans have been writing to his penname and business address for decades since he put out his first super-hero novel, titled IRON-MAN. Pepper has chosen to give him recent fan-mail, considering he’s spent so long ignoring it that if he were to answer them in order of reception, he might encounter fans who didn’t even remember the letters once sent. Or ones who were dead.

They are all variations of the same thing. The handwriting changes, gentle feminine cursive to childish scrawling to neat block lettering, but the message is usually the same. DEAR MR. POTTS. I’VE READ EVERY BOOK YOU’VE EVER WRITTEN. I GOT YOUR NAME TATTOOED ON MY ASS. IRON-MAN IS MY HERO. I’VE NEVER READ PROSE AS LOVELY AS YOURS. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?

At Pepper’s request, Tony drafts a generic letter to send in response, something about how he can’t respond personally to every letter but he wants them to know that he’s read what they’ve written and ‘holds it close to his heart’.

“It’s good,” Pepper approves. “Sign them yourself.”

“Good?” Tony says. “I was joking—this letter is trash. Anyone who knows me would see this for the sarcasm it is—”

“Then thank God none of the fans know you,” Pepper responds coolly.

She has a point. Tony has existed in relative seclusion since he first began publishing his works at 24. After twenty years, he’d managed to remain mostly anonymous. A pseudonym does most of the work, including non-disclosure agreements for his employees. Any time a presence is required, he sends Rhodey or Happy or Pepper even. Theory pages abound on the internet, sites devoted to finding out who the real AE POTTS is. Even though one picture leaked of him during the early 2000’s (a grainy godforsaken thing that didn’t even show his best angle), there were still some disbelievers. One popular conspiracy theory is that AE is Pepper, considering Tony stole her last name to use as his own.

Maybe that’s why his declining image in the media bothers her so much.

A week later, Tony’s hand has a cramp the way it hasn’t since he was a little boy learning to write his letters. Freehand has never been his specialty—it’s far too slow for the way his mind works, bounding a sentence, a scene, a chapter ahead. Signing so many letters is going to freeze his hand in a claw like position. He’s sure of it.

Then Pepper drops the next bombshell on him: the contest.

“It goes against everything I’ve been working so hard to do for the last twenty years,” Tony shouts at the zenith of their argument. “I do not want to be known! I don’t want the fame; I just wanted the goddamn fortune, is that too much to ask for?”

“Times have changed,” Pepper says through her teeth. She holds her own, spine straight. She hasn’t shirked away from his angry outbursts ever, not even when they were children growing up together in Manhattan. “I’m not asking you to do a 20/20 Special. I’m not asking for an interview on Ellen. I’m asking for you to meet with one fan. Have a goddamn lunch with them. If you can’t handle that, then you can kiss your fortune goodbye. Mark my words.”

Tony marks them. He fucking marks them, okay? When he’s drinking himself blind, locked in his office (good luck getting in now, Pep), they ring around his skull like a dime in the dryer. Sometime around dawn, she picks the lock on the door and mops his brow while he vomits in the tiny trashcan beside his desk.

“I’m not doing this to torture you,” she says with uncharacteristic tenderness. Her hand on his forehead occasionally rifling through his greasy hair is not what’s making his eyes prickle with tears—it’s the vomiting. Honest. He’s not that touch-starved. “You know that, right? I hate seeing you like this.”

“I know,” he chokes miserably, gagging again. So he agrees to the Willy Wonka Initiative. Pepper puts out the word that the infamous AE POTTS will be selecting a single fan to meet face to face. Anyone eighteen or older is eligible to participate, as long as they write a letter explaining why they should get it blah blah blah. A golden ticket might have been funner. At least then Tony might have had an excuse to wear the tacky purple suit and tophat.

In the meantime, Pepper reveals that she’s been having Happy screen his mail to only show him the happy letters—figures. His hate mail isn’t extensive, but it certainly exists, having increased exponentially since he killed off Natasha in the last novel.

FUCKING MYSOGINISTIC ASSHOLE, Cheryl from Newport tenderly writes. YOU HAD ONE GOOD FEMALE CHARACTER, AND YOU KILLED HER OFF. I HOPE ANOTHER WOMAN NEVER LETS YOU BETWEEN THEIR LEGS AGAIN AND YOUR DICK SHRIVELS OFF.

Tony thinks that’s pretty succinct. He posts it up on his desk propped up against the last picture ever taken of him and his mother. Killing off Natasha had been an idea he’d personally revolted against for months. Sure, it made sense that sensitive, strong Natasha would be the one to sacrifice herself in order to stop the villain from succeeding in wiping out half the universe. It made sense for a woman to be the one to give her life to protect others.

After all, hadn’t his own mother died trying to protect Tony?

The weekend after the contest drops on their social media platforms, Pepper texts to tell him that it’s being received far, far better than they might have ever hoped for. Already dozens of letters had been received, letters which must have been penned and mailed just hours after the news had spread.

Joy, Tony texts back.

I haven’t told you the best news, she says. That’s how Tony knows that the next news will be the worst news, absolutely the worst news of all. You get to pick the fan.

-

“Any letter catching your eye?” Pepper asks him over lunch in his office.

“They’re all the same,” Tony laments. Even his own ego can only take so much stroking. After a while, the fan mail has become mostly routine and lackluster, though he keeps opening it, keeps signing the response letters, keeps sending them out. “I’m going to end up picking one at random, Pep.”

“I don’t care how you pick,” Pepper says. “As long as you do—and as long as you’re ready to suffer with the consequences of your choice.”

“Suffer? God, I love the light you bring into my life. The unending optimism. The unparalleled faith and trust in me.”

Her eyes glitter even as they roll. “If you like me so much, you can buy lunch next time.”

Tony snorts, taking a large bite from his burger. “Gold digger.”

“I’ve seen your taxes, Tony. These days, there isn’t much gold to dig for.”

“Ouch, kill shot.”

-

The letter arrives only one week before the contest deadline. In the top drawer of his desk are three other letters from potential winners, mostly picked at random, sometimes because Tony likes their handwriting, sometimes because they say something funny that actually makes him laugh. When he opens up the letter from Peter B. Parker, he scans the first lines not intending to be impressed.

Dear Mr. Potts, Peter writes.

I’ve written you so many letters that it should be easy by now. I don’t know why my hands are shaking. Maybe I’m nervous because I know for certain that this one, someone will actually read.

I received my first copy of IRON-MAN when I was eight years old—yes, a little bit heavy for a kid that age, but my parents had just died unexpectedly in a car accident. My aunt and uncle took me in, and my uncle gave me his first edition. Iron-man’s story was one of the only things that got through to me as a kid. His struggle to come to terms with losing his own parents, his loneliness, his fear. The way he overcomes all of that and still goes on to do good…yeah. It meant a lot to a grief-stricken kid. Obviously.

Pretty much every birthday and Christmas, I end up receiving one of your books as a gift. My family and friends know me so well, I have nearly a half-dozen copies of AVENGERS (it’s one of my favorites). The things you write about are so close to my heart, so close to some of the experiences I’ve had in real life. My struggle with mental illness. My abuse and neglect. And the way you write these things makes me think…fear, I guess…that maybe you know something about them too.

I would love to get to meet you and talk about your incredible books. I’d love to get to know you. Not going to lie, as a fanboy, I’d probably be happy to just sit at the same table with you and have a meal. I’ll buy. We don’t even have to talk (okay I swear I’m not as desperate as I sound!). I’m sure you’ve received so many awesome letters, and I know that the fan you pick will be so, so lucky.

(Every letter I write to you, I ask if you could please return my book. It’s been five years since I sent it. I’m sure you don’t even have it anymore, maybe you threw it away from the start. But if you do have it, even if you don’t pick me to win the contest, it would mean so much if you sent it back. When I mailed it to you in Jan. 2014, my uncle was still alive. He’s gone now…anyway it’s one of the only things of his that I have left.)

Your fan always,

PETER.

PS: please disregard the last letter I sent…obviously.

Tony rereads the letter twice. He feels a swirl of emotion in his stomach, not dissimilar to the queasiness after a long night of drinking. This—this is what he sacrificed by being so closed-off from his fans. While he’d known that his fans were real and obviously human, a part of him had never felt the magnitude of it before. These are people with feelings and experiences. This Parker kid (a self-proclaimed fanboy) lost his parents too, and far younger than Tony had. In a car accident.

Maybe Peter hadn’t been there, hadn’t been in the car, hadn’t watched his mother parents go up in flames, but it’s still a tragedy all in its own right. And all at eight years old. Jesus Christ. This kid has been looking up to him for ten years and more, and he had no fucking idea that kind of dysfunctional altar he’d been worshiping at.

Tony goes into the private bathroom connected to his office and gags up—nothing. Drool. But it still leaves his mouth slimy, so he brushes his teeth until he’s spitting pink into the sink, and when he catches sight of the haphazard reflection in the mirror, he pities it. He leans forward to touch foreheads with it, auto-intimacy. Do better, some voice in the back of his head says, but it’s not his voice.

Happy picks up his cellphone on the first ring. Of the ninth call.

“What do you fucking want, Tony?” he hisses into the receiver. “I’m at the movie theater seeing that new Star Wars. You made me go out into the lobby—”

“Then I’m doing you a favor,” Tony says, cracking open the cap on a sparkling water. “Look, I have important questions, I wouldn’t have called otherwise. My fan mail—how much of it has Pepper kept?”

“Jesus, how should I know? Totes and totes full, at least—”

“Brilliant—”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself? I’m missing the movie!”

“Didn’t I say you’re not missing much? I’m asking you because Pepper will make me do it myself: I need you to find specific letters from one fan: Peter B. Parker. Address is Queens, but he could be from anywhere. I’m also especially interested in acquiring a package he sent me in January 2014.”

“Christ, could you be any more mysterious?” Happy mutters. “Text me the details you bastard, I’m not missing another moment of Mark Hamill.”

-

It turns out that Pepper is not only a saint in all ways previously mentioned, but she is a saint in this as well: his fan mail from the last ten years has been saved and meticulously organized by month and year of reception. Happy comes to Tony’s office in the city the next day with a package, the outside brittle but address clear.

The writing is the same script as the letter newly received from Peter, though the handwriting has become more mature over time. Neater. Confined. No more hasty slant from an enthusiastic hand. The kid’s contest entry is in the top drawer of Tony’s desk—the previous potential winners are now the cherries on top of the reject pile. His stomach is heavy as a stone while he tears open the five-year-old package.

Out tumbles a pre-addressed package that was meant to carry the book back to its owner, back to Peter. Then, one first edition of IRON-MAN, the cover a little tattered, the spine creaky. Also included is another letter, torn from a spiral notebook. He opens it with shaking hands.

DEAR MISTER POTTS

I KNOW THAT GETTING A RESPONSE FROM MY LETTERS IS A LONG SHOT, BUT I’M REALLY HOPING THAT YOU’LL AUTOGRAPH THIS COPY OF IRON-MAN AND RETURN IT TO ME. IT IS MY UNCLE BEN’S…

It goes on to describe how his Uncle’s birthday is coming up and Peter hopes to give the autographed book to his Uncle. Tony reads with a heavy heart, knowing now that Tony hadn’t bothered even opening the package, hadn’t tried to sign it—and even if he had, Ben hadn’t lived long enough to celebrate his next birthday. What a son of a bitch Tony is.

For the first time in three months, Tony goes home.

Most days he stays at the space he rents in the fancy Manhattan building, the one that holds his office and Pepper’s own workspace as well as the other people who work for him (Happy, Beck, Rhodey). The mansion outside Manhattan belonged to Tony’s father and his mother. When his mother had still been alive, it had been a cold place that he had endured staying at for her sake. After his mother had died, it had been a torture chamber, or worse—a stale, suffocating tomb.

Then Howard had died and somehow left it to Tony (probably out of some misguided duty to ‘keep it in the family’). Tony made a personal habit to visit it infrequently and stay there even less often; but Pepper maintains it for him, has it cleaned, keeps it safe. Uses it as storage, Tony knows. For his fan mail.

It takes up three entire rooms, floor to ceiling clear totes labeled with months and years. Just looking at it makes Tony feel small, ashamed of how little he cared about interacting with his fans. It’s no wonder sales were down. Searching for Peter’s letters would be like looking for a needle in a haystack—but he has to do it, and he can’t let Happy bear the brunt of the weight anymore either. This is on Tony.

So he begins pulling totes from the room and scattering their contents on the oaken table and floors of the dining room. Five hours and seven totes later, and Tony still has no letter from Peter.

Pepper finds him at midnight. She comes bursting in through the front door—Tony can hear the sound of the door colliding with the wall from the force she’s used—shouting his name. The hysteria in her voice chills him to the bone. It’s worse than the tone she uses when Tony fucks up; this is the tone she uses when there’s a Tragedy, when something is Wrong.

She finds him in the dining room surrounded by letters, kneeling up from where he was slumped on the floor. He must be a sight, but she is one too, her hair a mess, her eyes red. When she sees him, all the breath goes out of her, one hand clutching at her breast as the other grabs the back of a chair for support.

“Jesus, Pep, what’s happened? Is it your father, another heart attack—?”

“Why don’t you ever answer your goddamn phone, you bastard!” She says through heaving breaths. “You don’t leave the office for weeks and suddenly no one can find you, you won’t pick up your phone—”

It takes a long moment for the pieces to connect.

“Oh Christ,” Tony says, chidingly. “What, you were scared for me?”

She slumps into one chair and puts her face into her well-manicured hands. Tony drops back onto his ass. He’s not a good man, not a sensitive man. The last woman who had cried in front of him was his mother, and look at all the ways he had failed her. But the longer he sits letting Pepper cry, the more it feels like bamboo shoots growing under his tender fingernails. Fuck it. He gets up, knees creaking, and goes to her.

They sit side by side at the dining table no one has eaten at in twelve years. Pepper leans into him, her thin shoulders shaking. Shame makes his own eyes burn, because he thought what did she have to be afraid of? But maybe she saw his car in the driveway of the unhappy home he avoids and assumed that he’d come here to Hemingway himself. Maybe she sat in the drive steeling herself to come into the sight of his body.

“I’m going through the fan mail,” Tony says at last.

“I can see that,” she says. Her scathing tone drips with tears.

“I’m okay, Pep,” he says. He’s not sure if it’s true. He’s not sure if he’s been okay ever since he blinked awake upside down and suspended by the seatbelt in the back seat of his mother’s Cadillac, glass littering the roof (and the roof had become the floor, then, see? Because they were upside down), the smell of gas and smoke in his nose). Maybe he’s not okay. Maybe it’s all a fucking lie, but he’s not going to off himself. Not when there’s a mystery afoot. “I promise.”

She nods, one damp hand reaching out blindly for his. It’s an awkward angle to hold hands at, but he doesn’t complain. And awkward or not, it feels nice to be touched in a kind, even platonic way.

“What are you looking for?” Pepper asks at last, wiping at the wet, swollen skin beneath her eyes.

“Why? You want to help?” Tony asks.

“Might as well,” she says. “I always do your heavy lifting, don’t I?”

-

With Pepper’s help, they find the first letter. Somehow the Willy Wonka Initiative has reversed until Tony feels like a kid, ripping open chocolate bars, desperate for a glimpse of gold. At dawn, a cry echoes in the dining room startling Tony from where he was slumping against a tote, dozing.

“I’ve got one, Tony!” Pepper shouts. She’s barefoot, her panty hose taken off and folded on the table, her sensible jacket removed and slung over the back of a chair. Her rumpled shirt and tendrils coming free from her ponytail reveal how much energy she’s been putting into this with him—maybe to make up for her emotional outburst earlier, maybe like a mother humoring a child’s singular beneficial interest. “From Peter B. Parker, address is Queens, same as before.”

“What’s the date?” Tony asks. He slips in a pile of letters from last August and nearly breaks his neck. Wishful fucking thinking.

“Last May. Here—”

Tony takes the letter and collapses in a chair, his lower back grateful for the support. He recognizes Peter’s handwriting as he tears the letter open, and he can feel Pepper’s presence over his shoulder, reading along with him.

This letter is different from the others. Tony knows it right away. The first indication should have been the date; Tony’s most recent novel dropped early May of last year. His most controversial work to date, with praise glorious and venomous in kind. Which way did the scales tip when it came to Peter, Tony wonders.

I know that you won’t read this. I’ve written you twice a year since I was ten years old, and you’ve never written back. I don’t blame you. I’m sure you’re busy—I guess I just needed to get these words down somewhere, so that they exist, so that somewhere there is a record of me after I’m dead.

Tony reads the rest in a dazed blur. At one point, Pepper’s hand lifts to press against her mouth, but still they read on, huddled together for convenience and then for comfort.

In the letter, Peter describes the tragedy of his uncle’s death and how he felt personally responsible, and how after months of guilt, when he’d read about Natasha’s sacrifice, he’d decided to take action. Against himself.

If someone’s death can do so much good in the world, Peter wrote with shaky script. Then maybe mine could too. I’m not deluded or anything. I know that I’m not a superhero and that I’m not fighting against some sanctimonious super villain. But I feel like if my death could make May’s life easier, then I have to do it.

“Jesus. Tony, don’t read this—” Pepper reaches out for the letter but Tony nearly rips it in half trying to keep it away from her.

It’s not just for May, Peter admits. I’m ready to stop hurting, too.

Peter signs off, for good. Only it hadn’t been for good—Peter’s most recent letter had obviously proven that, and hadn’t he written it himself? Ignore my last letter, obviously, he’d said. Something must have changed Peter’s mind, but one thing was clear: it hadn’t been Tony. Because Tony had been so self-absorbed, so tangled in his own grief and ego and addictions he hadn’t even read the letter. If Pepper hadn’t saved it, then it might have been destroyed, no record left of Peter’s words at all.

“Tony,” Pepper says. She takes the letter from his fingers and he lets it go. His hands are numb. “This isn’t your fault. Peter obviously was unstable—he’d just watched his uncle being murdered in front of him. No one in their right mind would read Natasha’s death and think that you were encouraging them to take their own life.”

“I know that,” Tony snaps. Lying. Then: “I’m not an idiot, Pep.”

Maybe the biggest lie of all.

[shrimpcolour]

answer them all coward

take two after closing the tab when i was almost done w every question im gonna fucking lose my shit

angel; do you have a nickname?

people call me nicknames but i hate any variation of taylor

awe; how old are you?

16

baby; favorite color?

lilac

bloop; spirit animal?

kitten

blossom; favorite book/movie/song?

Fahrenheit 451 im1 shes so man matchbox 20 

blush; what was your stuffed animal as a child?

my lamby who i still sleep w everynight bc i am baby

breeze; most precious childhood memory?

getting told i can keep my cats

bright; mermaids or fairies?

fairies all the way

bubbles; do you have a best friend?

not so sure i do

buttercup; showers or baths?

shower

butterfly; dream destination?

anywhere outside of the us

buttons; are you religious or spiritual?

no but i wish i was

calm; favorite scent?

vanilla

candlelight; what did you dream about last night?

some fuckshit on the beach

charming; have you ever been in love?

yes

cozy; eye/hair color?

blue/brown

cuddly; what’s your favorite time period?

time is fake

cupcake; favorite flower/plant?

hibiscus 

cute; what did you get on your last birthday?

money  like a lot

cutie pie; most precious item you own?

my kitten lucifer but saying i own him sounds weird

cutsie; what makes you happy?

jillie

daisies; describe a moment when you felt free.

i cant remember

daydream; how do you want to be remembered?

i want to be remembered as nice? kind? please . 

daylight; favorite album of all time?

kindly now by keaten henson

dear; zodiac sign?

scorpio

delightful; concerts or museums?

concerts but i love museums

dimples; have you ever written a letter?

yes but i didnt send it

dobby; dream job?

something that has to do w art

doll; how do you like to dress?

i like to dress in a cute button up and jeans but that doesnt happen

dovey; any paranormal/magical experiences?

no but i wish so bad 

dreams; do you want or have any tattoos?

yes i want many tattoos and on my 18th im going w my dad to get one

drizzle; do you believe in aliens?

fuck yeah

euphoric; talk about someone you love.

i love my sister so much she is my literal will to live she is so fukcing funny and happy and just UGHHH shoutout to kaylleee

fairy; do you have a pet?

yes i have two cats, boots and lucifer, and a dog named finn

fluffy; ocean or mountain?

ocean is where its at 

forever; where do you feel time stop?

the park near me at night

froglet; are you a good plant owner?

sadly not

garden; how many languages do you know?

one bc im weak

gem; who are your favorite tumblrs?

not tagging them but like . cmon . yk

giggles; what is your aesthetic of choice?

that warm cozy library aesthetic ? i love that

glittery; do you like anons? why/why not?

i love them bc it gives me the opportunity to talk to ppl who are too scared to talk to me (please dont be scared of me)

glow; list the top 5 things you like about yourself

my eyes my hair my sense of humor my friends my socks

heart; silk or lace?

silk

honey; coffee or tea? how do you take it?

coffee w almond milk

hugsy; do you enjoy people watching or bird watching more? why?

people watching bc i like to give everyone a story in my head

hunnybunch; what sounds help you sleep?

melatonin LMAO

jewel; what’s your favorite kind of weather?

rainy and cold

jiggly; what do you usually like to do on weekends?

sleep my life away

joy; do you laugh loudly or giggle more?

loud laugh baeby

kinky; do you blush easily?

i dont think so

kisses; what romantic cliché do you wish for most?

that friends to lovers mutual pining takes a little bit to realize what they want is right in front of them i love that

kitty; what’s your favorite time of the day?

1am-8am

ladybug; what’s your favorite artist to listen to when you’re sad?

keaten henson

love; what is your favorite season and why?

fall bc the weather and the holidays and my job ITS ALL TOO GOOD

lovey; what is your favorite flavor of macaron and ice cream?

i have never had a macaron but i love oreo iceceram

magic; what are five flaws you have?

i overthink AND underthink at the same time like what a dumbass bitch, i doubt myself, i am not so bright, i am too loud around ppl im comfortable with and i am selfish sometimes

moonlight; do you prefer soft pastels, warm neutrals, or cool darks?

i like all of them it depends on my mood

munchkin; what do you look for in your significant other?

i dont really look? 

paddywack; how would you describe a perfect date?

minecraft and sweatpants 

pebbles; how do you spend free time by yourself?

on minecraft or on here or just like . sitting

precious; what is something valuable that you learned in your life?

dont judge a book by its cover is so fucking cliche but like .  you gotta learn it

pretty; do you like to cook or bake more?

cook baeby

prince; how would you describe your handwriting?

lazy oops

princess; do you play any instruments? if not, are there any you wish you could play?

i played the flute when i was like 10

prinky; how do you relieve stress?

scream

pumpkin; what is your favourite kind of fruit/vegetable?

strawberry/sweet pepper

rainbow; what was the last line of the last book you read?

“so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

roses; what is the most significant event in your life so far?

my sister being born

smile; what is one thing that has greatly affected you?

the loss of all my friends bc im fucking stupid. thats the one. 

shine; art or music?

both 

shimmer; do animals tend to like you?

they do

smitten; do you collect anything?

i collect disney pins

smoochies; how many pillows do you sleep with?

one? two?

snuggle; what is your favourite candy?

kitkats

snuggly; do you have a camera? if so, what kind?

i do but i dont know what kind and idk where it is

sparkle; do you wear jewelry?

i wear earrings  and a necklace sometimes

spooky; sunrise or sunset?

sunset

sprinkles; do you like to listen to music with headphones or no headphones?

with head phones but too loud so you can probably hear it without

starlight; what was your favourite show as a child?

hannah montana baeby

soft; describe your favourite spot in your house.  

my bed. it has so many blankets and its quiet bc of the AC and it has my favorite things

soothe; digital or vinyl?

digital

squeezed; who do you miss right now?

my best friend francesca like a lot 

sugary; what traits do you value most in friends?

loyalty 

sunshine; do you prefer for things to be practical or aesthetically pleasing?

practical? 

sweet; do you find it easy to open up?

no i dont think ive ever completely opened up if im being honest

sweetie; do you like kids? if so, do you ever want to have any?

i do! i want two kids!

thimble; is there somebody you look up to? who are they?

this is gonna sound so fucking dumb but i really look up to jenna mourey/jenna marbles

toot; what is something you find unique about yourself?

idk man im quite basic

tootsie; what kind of friend are you?

im very loyal but i tend to hold a grudge so like . thats an issue

treasure; what was something that made you smile today?

tina made me laugh shoutout to tina

velvet; are you an early bird or a night owl?

night owl 

whiffle; if you could have a magical power, what would it be?

invisibility baeby

whimsical; do you prefer doing stuff at home or going out?

home home

whiskers; do you usually wear makeup?

no but i like doing it

wiggly; are you a messy or tidy person?

messy oops

wispy; do you like the place where you grew up? do you think you will live there when you get older?

i like my town but i dont think i wanna lvie here

wobbly; have you ever wished upon a star?

yes i have

[fred-frederator-studios]

Arlen Schumer: The Frederator Interview  

Arlen Schumer is the designer and illustrator of our Frederator Fredbot, the robot that’s inspired so many variations.

You read that right.

We all hear so much from fans about our “red robot” that I thought the time was right for Arlen to design something for us again, 20 some-odd years after his first.

So here it is! The 2019 Frederator New Year’s poster. (You can see some of the poster’s development work here.)

Arlen’s not only a fantastic artist/designer, but he’s a prolific pop culture historian with some great books and essays to his name, and a thriving lecture series on some of the famous (and even more unsung heroes) of comic book art.

How did Arlen Schumer come to Frederator? And how did Arlen come to art, specifically, comic book art? As you can read below, he and I have known each other and worked together for several years, even pre-Frederator.

All this and more, in the first Frederator interview of 2019.

Hi Arlen. When did you start drawing? 

I grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, a great place in the early-mid ‘60s, with equal parts bucolic American suburbia and small-town Rockwellian, pop culture ambiance—everything from an uber-Jewish deli like Petak’s to Plaza Toy & Stationery, which had a classic 20th Century soda fountain: it was there, after school, that I read all the comic books of my youth while drinking chocolate egg creams (with a pretzel log, natch). And because Fair Lawn, like all of New Jersey, was in the shadow of New York City, I grew up on all that pop culture through television, not just the 3 networks but the 3 local stations that showed everything from the old Universal monster movies to The Little Rascals to The Three Stooges to the George Reeves Superman TV series.

One of those local TV shows, a children’s show called Diver Dan, which was filmed in black & white to look like it took place underwater—the actor, in a deep-sea diver’s suit (with a helmet that never revealed his face, so he was like a superhero), walked slowly like he was underwater, surrounded by pop fish hanging by wires—triggered my interest in drawing, as I watched my brother draw him first, and copied him. I’ve been drawing ever since!

What was the first comic you fell in love with?

Giant Superman Annual #7 (Summer ’63): Not only is its cover the hands-down greatest of all the great multiple-panel Superman Annual covers that Superman Artist of the Baby Boom Generation (and my first favorite artist) Curt Swan drew in the ‘60s—not only does it feature perhaps the greatest single Superman figure ever rendered by Swan (in pencil; head of DC coloring Jack Adler did the hand-painted grey wash tones over it) or any Superman artist, before or since—but it is the first comic book cover I can recall ever seeing, when I was five years old, in summer camp that year. What an image to come into the wonderful world of comics by!

What was your first professional job as an artist?

My summer job between freshman and sophomore years at art school (Rhode Island School of Design), creating black & white line illustrations for a t-shirt silkscreening company in Fair Lawn.

I know that you count Neal Adams as a primary mentor? Were there any others?

Neal Adams was one of two Gods of Comic Book Art in the late-‘60s: the other was Jim Steranko, who was described as the Jimi Hendrix of comics, because Steranko’s career was as meteoric in its rise, and as short-lived. Though Steranko didn’t die in ’70 like Hendrix, that’s when he left Marvel Comics after less than 4 years of explosive and experimental works—and, like Hendrix, his impact on both the art form and its audience was in converse proportion to the relatively small amount of work he turned out. In particular, Steranko’s design sense and typographic talents were a tremendous influence on my choosing to major in Graphic Design at RISD.

It was sometime in my junior year there that I must’ve written Steranko a fanboy letter, gushing about those very things—and much to my shock and surprise, he wrote me back, inviting me to come see him in his home/studio in Reading, PA! So I took a bus from Providence, RI to Reading, and spent the day with Steranko—except I barely remember a thing about it! Why? Because I think I was having a Dr. Strange-like ectoplasmic out-of-body experience the whole time I was with him—I, a fan, spending quality time with one of the Twin Gods of Comics!!!

He wanted me to leave RISD and begin working with him as his apprentice! I couldn’t believe what he was offering me; I remember the bus ride back to Providence in a daze, feeling the utter cliché come to life of my future like the road in front of me: I could either stay on the main highway of getting my college degree, or take that exit ramp and join the circus! What do you think I did?

I stayed in school and got my diploma a year later. Had it been freshman year, maybe I would have left; but not when I was a year away from matriculating—not to mention honoring my mom’s sacrifice of putting me through school financially. But I’ve remained in touch with Steranko ever since, and feel both fortunate and unique, that I am the only fanboy who grew up to not only work for one of the Twin Gods of Comics (I ended up working for Neal Adams 3 years after I graduated from RISD), but almost worked for the other, too!

And then, Fred, there was—YOU! You were one of the first great professionals I met/interviewed with after I graduated from RISD and moved to New York City, when you were still at Warner-Amex having just created the MTV always-changing logo [actually it was Manhattan Design; I was the company creative director]. You impressed me as someone who was “real,” who didn’t hide behind a phony “professional” mask. We stayed in touch after that, and you gave me my first real breakout illustration job when I went solo as a freelancer a few years later, designing and illustrating an animated 30-second spot for a radio station, working with Colossal Pictures in LA (who later became Pixar)—and a NY metro-area billboard to go along with it!

Since then, we’ve done a bunch of great things together, up to and including this Frederator poster! And I’ve watched you wade through your own career waters as a multi-dimensional leading man, wearing so many different hats over the years—the decades—which has inspired me to cultivate my own Renaissance Man attributes. I’ve always described you to others as a mensch, the ultimate New York pro who’s got a great big beautiful heart an d soul to match his creative mind. If I could ever be described that way one day, I would consider that to be the highest compliment I could ever receive!

How about the mentors that you never met?

My father died when I was only four months old; my mother raised my older brother (by a year and a half) and I herself. Neither of my grandfathers was alive, and, though I had a handful of uncles, I would only see them a few times a year at family gatherings. So I had to find surrogate father figures elsewhere—and I found them in the American Pop Culture I grew up with in the’60s, in roughly this chronological order: Sean Connery’s James Bond, my first idealized masculine role model (the first movie I ever recall seeing, when I was around four-five years old, was Dr. No, the first Connery Bond, at a drive-in theater); Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, a pop prophet of moral righteousness in the vast television wasteland, looking cool as all get-out in those incredibly tight TZ introductions—all of my artworks based on the series can be seen as my ways of honoring Serling’s legacy as a son would honor his father’s; and the superheroes in comic books, first and foremost Superman and Batman (the Yin-Yang of the genre), pseudo-paternally teaching me right from wrong, good from evil, and standing up and fighting for one’s beliefs. These are the things I suppose sons learn from the fathers, as well as their religious and academic authority figures. But “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Comic Books”!

You've published a few pop culture histories, and given countless lectures on various great, neglected figures. What got you started as an historian?

I don’t know how any artist in any genre or medium, if they truly love their work, cannot also be equally-interested in the history of that art form. When Keith Richards plays any of his classic Rolling Stones licks, he knows which black bluesman he nicked it from; filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorsese know the history of film like they know their own films. And the history of comics is as rich in artistic triumphs (and personal tragedies) as the histories of the other major 20th Century art/entertainments: film, television, popular music and rock and roll.

When I was a senior at RISD, for my degree project, I toyed with designing an exhibit of comic book art, and when I went looking for a theme, the only subject that seemed both worthwhile of my passion for the material and deep enough for the demands of the assignment was one based on the comics I grew up with in the 1960s, and the artists who drew them, the twin founts from which I drew the inspiration to become an artist. Though I never did that exhibit (I ended up doing a giant autobiographical photo-comic instead), I kept the ideas and images that I gathered, in the hopes that one day I’d use them in some other form. Many of those 1979 layouts are the same ones I’ve used in my book published in 2003, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art; its introduction, in which I place the images and ideas encountered throughout the book in a socio-political, historical framework, is composed of essentially the identical concepts from my aborted exhibit idea.

The idea to do a book instead on this period of comic book history goes back even further, to 1970, when Jim Steranko, on the heels of his amazing barnstorming stint at Marvel Comics, wrote, designed and published the first of his twin-volume History of Comics, which remain the best books of their kind, and were—and continue to be—a source of inspiration. Except they were about The Golden Age of Comics (circa 1938-1950), the period Steranko grew up with and was affected by, not The Silver Age of Comics (circa 1956-1972) that I, and the entire Baby Boom Generation, was turned on to.

Steranko himself might have been inspired by the first great book about comic book history, Jules Feiffer’s 1965 The Great Comic Book Heroes, even though it’s more of a handful of wonderfully written, witty essays on specific Golden Age superheroes Feiffer followed avidly as a boy, accompanied by reprints of the origins or earliest adventures of those heroes. Feiffer may not have realized what it was like to be an 8-year old comic book fan in 1966 and hear that there was actually a book in the Fair Lawn public library about comics!

How did you come to design the Fredbot?

When you asked me to come up with my take on the classic Japanese-influenced sci-fi trope of the giant-monster-attacks-the-tiny-people back in 1997 for your first Frederator brand image—but make it a robot, and make it look like you [I don’t remember this last part], to boot—I immediately thought of the animated robot Gigantor, one of the first Japanese anime to reach American shores in the wake of the Batman TV series in 1966. Once I started drawing my version of Big G, it was a no-brainer to add the distinctive Seibert horned-rim eyeglasses, topped by the equally-distinctive Seibert eyebrows, and voila! Fredbot!

OK, I know you love Bruce Springsteen. How come?

I believe there are Four Pillars of Rock & Roll, in roughly chronological order: Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, representing the greatest voice, lyrics, band, and guitar; hence, The Four Pillars.

Like Elvis, Bruce is a singular, dynamic presence with a commanding vocal power; his lyrics and songs have stood the test of time and made him the only one of the many “new Dylans” to actually live up to the label, living a true, real rock & roll life while writing it down, The Great American Novel but on records, great American songs chronicling not only his life and career, but that of the postwar generation that has come of age with him, timeless anthems like “Born To Run,” “Thunder Road” and “Born in the USA,” just to mention three of his greatest hits; with The E Street Band, Bruce captured the sheer joy, enthusiasm and positive energy of the early Beatles; and, like Hendrix and any of the other guitar gods—Clapton, Page, Van Halen, The Edge—Bruce has played searing, soulful, melodic leads with the best of them.

But Bruce isn’t one of those rock & roll pillars—he’s the rock & roll roof built over them, the complete rock & roller, putting it all together as no one has before. Bruce Springsteen is, quite simply, the promise of rock & roll...delivered.

His uncompromising and unparalleled creativity, body of work, attitude, and performance and work ethic have been an inspiration to me since I first heard the song “Born to Run” over a tinny AM car radio when I was 17 years old in the summer of ’75. Especially when I lecture, I employ what I call the “Springsteen Performing Style,” which is to give your 110% all to your audience, whether it’s 10 people or 10,000 people.

Bruce is also a bonafide moral leader for our age, doing what a true leader should be doing: living his life by example, and using it to inspire and exhort others to do the same.

He is the true President of the United States.

Thanks for the interview Arlen. And of course, thanks for the Fredbot! Happy New Year!

[ofwolvesandbutterflies]

Synonyms for Painful - Part 1;  SHINee’s Key

20 - difficult; had anyone told me before, I would’ve laugh and said they’re stupid. Only now without you here do I realize how difficult living without you is.

A/N: hullos, I’ve finally decided to post this Part 1 of ‘Synonyms for Painful’. In case you’re new, I will not be posting the sections of this series in chronological order because none of the parts, unless mentioned otherwise, are really connected at all, unless indicated. The numbers before the prompts are just for organization purposes. Without further ado, please enjoy part 1!

and yes... i did take some artistic license to key’s character. 

you should also listen to this nice song as bgm; (x) 

I only have one thing to say about working in an office building; it’s boring as hell. There’s no dragons flying around setting buildings aflame with their fiery breath, there’s never a damsel in distress hanging precariously with one hand from a ledge of a 50-story tower. There’s no dice of destiny deciding your fate; dice that -with one roll- could grant you all the treasure in the universe or trap you in a slow, excruciating death.

Yeah, nope. It’s pretty boring.

Every day it’s the same thing. It’s just me and my office, Kim ‘Key’ Kibum in our shared office as the hours tick by slowly with only a flickering light bulb hanging above us. From the crack of dawn to the first sign of nightfall, our bgm is the the quiet buzzing of the weak light bulb.

The most exciting thing that’s happened throughout our relatively uneventful careers must have been 

that day a storm burned out the electricity in the building and Key and I played poker and b.s. by candle light for the rest of work day. Long story short, life as us was really boring and repetitive and neither of us had a problem with it. We both preferred the serene and recurring safe haven in our shared office. We both preferred life boring.

I’ll admit to staring at him and his delicate features for more than was required time and time again, but it was hard not to. He was decorated with prominent cheekbones, a peaceful smile, and eyes that always scrunched up when he smiled, which was not often. He was around the smaller size when it came to men, perhaps because Asian men were infamous for being short, but he still managed to look good in it. Every day, he surprised me with a new variation to the strict dress code we were stuck working with. I always wondered where he got the money for such clean and professional looking clothes, after all, we didn’t have a very high salary.

Key got his nickname from my first day of work. I had forgotten my office key that first morning. Fortunately, upon walking through the hallway on the floor I was appointed to be in for the next long while, I was only mildly pleased to realize I was sharing an office with the attractive Asian male I had been sneaking glances at on the elevator ride up and that he had his keys. I still remember the way he looked over me, a half smirk painted on his lips when he realized one, that I was doomed to being his office mate for however long we were going to be working here, and two, that I didn’t have my keys.

Ever since that first day, we fell into a pattern of me ‘forgetting’ my keys, and him always there to greet me with keys, that half smirk I might or might not have fallen for and a cup filled with my usual white chocolate mocha.

Yes, it was boring. Yes it was repetitive, but we didn’t mind. So we kept it the same.

That is… at least until one day, he didn’t show up to work and I was forced to ask the secretary for a spare key. At first, I didn’t think much of it, after all, though we had each other’s personal numbers, we never really contacted each other outside of work. There was a good chance he was on sick leave, the flu had been passing through our building.

After about a month of becoming awkwardly acquainted with the secretary, a pleasant, small female with round glasses, dimples, and a crazy amount of unwavering patience, I started to get worried. After another week of racking up the courage to ask her if she knew anything about Key, I finally asked.

This time, I wasn’t met with the same, patient smile. In its place was a sad, sympathetic one. She stared at me with unshed tears painted in her eyes and handed me a plain manila folder. Upon entering the soundless elevator, I pondered the pain in her eyes and the sadness in the wordless silence she had greeted me with.

Arriving at our office, I finally opened the manila envelope, expecting to see a pink slip with his name on it or something. Instead, I was met with the appearance of a hastily written url on a torn piece of paper along with a neatly folded letter. Opening my personal laptop, I quickly typed in the url, not expecting much to pop up. I have never in my life been more wrong. What popped up exactly 0.72 seconds later was a news article whose headlines stopped my heart for a brief, jaw dropping second.

No. No. It couldn't be. Scrawled across the top of the screen were the following words; Terrible 10 Car Collision on the 805 north. 5 People Killed, 7 mortally wounded.

I scrolled down further with my hand shaking badly and tears collecting at corners of my eyes. The list of the deceased drivers finally crawled into view and the dam holding back my tears broke. His name was the first one there.

Dropping my expensive personal laptop, I slid to the floor in shock. I covered my mouth, the tears running down my face and bile building in the back of my throat.

I would never see him again. He would never be there to open the door for me with that snarky smile of his. We could never play b.s. again during our breaks and speak about the older lady next door who wanted to set him up with her granddaughter. I would never get that last cup of white chocolate mocha he always bought for me in the mornings. He was gone. Dead. And to think we were foolish enough to promise to marry each other if by the time we were 45 we hadn't found someone else.

After about an hour sitting there on the floor, crying my eyes out, someone knocked on the door.

Shakily opening the door, the secretary I had been recently getting to know appeared with a smile and letter in her hands. She left shortly after, saying she had spoken with our boss and that I had the rest of the day off.

On the letter was the familiar chicken scratch of my late co worker and best friend. I slowly read his writing, savoring the one sure thing I had left of the man I didn’t realize was my best friend until it was too late.

My favorite person in the whole world~

If you’re reading this and I’m not here… That means something bad happened.

I don’t know if you remembered that one conversation that happened a couple years ago, but during that conversation, I promised never to leave you. I know… it was a stupid promise to make, knowing separation is  inevitable, eventually, one of us might have left. I guess it had to be me. I broke that foolish promise and I cringe to think I ever promised you something so impossible and unrealistic.

If you’re reading this… it also means there’s a possibility you don’t know how much you really mean to me. In the case that you already know, I’ll tell you again. In the case that you don’t… I’d swim across the sea for you even though you know I hardly know how to swim. I’d trek across the hottest desert to make sure you were safe and sound. I’d scale the highest mountain and throw myself in front of a train for you. Chances are though… I never told you all that. I’m saying all these things, yet I didn’t have the balls to tell you in person. I’m such an cowardly idiot.

You know I’ve never been the best expressing myself verbally. I hope you forgive me for promising such a stupid thing when we both knew life is short and could, in a flash, be gone. I wish I could promise to never forget you. I wish I could promise you all the dumb, fluffy things we ridiculed while watching those absurd romantic movies. I wish my promise never to leave you had not been the empty promise it ended up as.

My only wish now is to hope this somehow gets to you and that you’ll never forget me… Don’t forget to find that guy that’ll spice up your life like I should have when I had the chance.

Your Key for however long you’ll want to remember me,

Kim Kibum

By then, his written words were hardly visible from behind the torrents of tears falling from my eyes. I was torn. I was angry. I was in complete and utter despair.  My heart was broken. I wanted with all my being for this to be a cruel joke. It’d been too long without him though. It wasn’t just a cruel joke. He was truly gone. And with him, he took a good sized chunk of my heart I didn’t realize he had grasped in the first place.

I took sick leave for the next week. I scavenged the new papers, I sailed through the news clips. My worst nightmare was confirmed. I would never have a steaming cup of hot white chocolate mocha waiting for me. I’d never see his beautiful naturally contoured facial features or hear his teasing laugh again. I’d never get to braid his hair while he slept, I’d never get to read the ending of that story he was in the process of writing.

Had anyone told me before, I would’ve laugh and said they’re stupid. Only now without you here do I realize how difficult living without you is.

[kat-reviews-fashion-and-art]

Autistic Pride Infinity Möbius Unisex T-Shirt — Review

[Image Description: A photo of a black t-shirt on a clothing hanger. Printed on the top half of the t-shirt is a rainbow infinity symbol with the words ‘autistic pride’ written across it. End Of Description.]

Item Type: Unisex T-Shirt

Store: Redbubble.com

Artist: Amethyst Schafer

Sizes Available: Small to 3XL (Unisex), full range of apparel covers Newborn Infant to 3XL in “Men’s”

Base Price: $16.96 (as of March 2019)

Full review under the cut

Been a while since I’ve reviewed anything, had some stuff I needed to get through. But I am happy to finally be getting back into writing reviews.

My first clothing review will be of one of my favorite clothings items, a shirt displaying my pride for being autistic. Since this is a Redbubble item, I’ll be reviewing it in two parts: first I’ll talk about the physical t-shirt, then I’ll take a look at the design and artist.

For those who don't know, Redbubble is one of various websites where artists can have their work be sold on merchandise: from mugs, to blankets, to posters. Redbubble takes care of manufacturing and mailing the product. The artist meanwhile provides the design and chooses what products they're available on.

On Redbubble specifically, artists can also choose the price of the products in their shop, with some restrictions, affecting how much they earn per sale. As such you may come across one artist selling their tees for $17, with another selling theirs for 20. Similar product types may also have different base prices, with the ““women’s” clothing options being more expensive” trend applying here. Individual sizes of the exact same clothing type are the same though.

Unfortunately, as it’s been over a year since I bought the shirt, I do not remember exactly when my order got to me. It was definitely within two weeks of purchasing it, if not much sooner, arriving in a plastic parcel. There was a fabric tag clothes-pinned to the collar tags displaying a “thank you for purchasing” style message. As with every purchase, the shirt also came with a free 4 inch square sticker of some artwork surrounding the Redbubble logo.

The shirt appeared exactly as it was presented on the website barring some slight measurement differences that I discuss below. The colors were accurate to the image, and the graphic had the exact size, proportions, and placement as shown on the website. As I mentioned, the shirt does have only two tags located on the inner back collar. These tags display what you'd expect them to: size, manufacturing details, and wash instructions.

Speaking of washing, I’ve had no issues with cleaning the shirt across the 16 months that I’ve owned it. Yes, the graphic has faded over time, but this is to be expected out of any graphic apparel after several years of use. In fact it’s held up even better than some of my graphic tees from JCPenney, though I should note that I’ve owned these shirts for at least a year longer than my Redbubble ones. I’ve also not come across any issues like threads coming undone, persistent stains, shrinking in the wash, or the like. It’s held up as well as I could expect a t-shirt to.

How it fits and feels is in the same category: nothing spectacular, but still well-fitting and comfy. Due to my small height and frame, I had to go with a small, the smallest size the Unisex T-Shirt comes in. The website lists this size as being 36 inches (92 centimeters) around for the chest and 28 inches (71 centimeters) from the shoulder to the bottom. I measured the shirt to be about 34 inches (86 centimeters) around and 22 inches (56 centimeters) in height, putting it on the average to small side of most “men’s” small and extra small tops.

The shirt is roomy without feeling too loose. I don’t feel any stiffness or strain when I put it on or move around in the shirt. Everything is also well covered. My armpits don’t show when I raise my arms, the collar sits exactly at the bottom of my neck, and, at least for me, the shirt comes down far enough to cover the top of any bottoms I’m wearing. The shirt is also not see-through. At first, I thought this was just due to the fabric being black, but I have since bought a few other tops from Redbubble in other colors, and all are equally opaque.

Now finally, we get to the graphic. I’m super happy to have found such a beautiful t-shirt design. This particular take on the rainbow infinity neurodiversity symbol is really gorgeous. The colors and shapes are very smooth and symmetrical. The lines making up the letters are a bit crooked, though this is almost unnoticeable on the actual shirt, even up close. I usually don’t like rainbows other than the classical, bright one, but being as this a symbol for autism pride, the duller shades make more sense. A symbol that could likely cause sensory overload to the individuals it’s meant to represent wouldn’t make much sense.

And speaking of the colors, since much of the graphic is a spectrum of all colors, this limits which of the available t-shirt colors it shows up best on. While the Unisex T-shirt is available in 18 different colors, I found that only about 6 of the options allow for all of the graphic’s colors to show up well. Though I can’t knock it too hard in this regard as it’s an issue with any rainbow symbol or design.

There are also tons of other designs in the artist’s shop pertaining to disability, neurodiversity, and autism, including a variation of the infinity symbol with the words ‘neurodiversity’ in place of ‘autistic pride’. If you can spare spending at least 25 bucks on a single clothing item and are disabled, I highly recommend browsing through Schafer’s shop to see if anything they’ve got strikes you.

The artist, Schafer, is also a disability rights activist and public speaker. They run both a YouTube channel under their full name and Tumblr blog called @neurowonderful. I haven’t looked really deep into the content they produce, but from what I can tell, they do some pretty good work. I’m especially drawn to their YouTube series, “Ask an Autistic”, where Schafer explains various features and facets of autism.

Since their blog and channel center around combating ableism, there will be mentions of and responses to ableist words and actions amongst their content. I’ve not come across anything really graphic myself, but do be careful if you are sensitive to that kind of stuff.

All in all, I absolutely adore this shirt. It’s by far one of my favorite clothing items. For the first few months I owned it, I even wore in weekly. It's super comfy, looks amazing, and was at a great price with equally amazing service. If the graphic design caught your eye, then check it out on the artist's shop.

Even if you aren't interested in this particular product or design, Redbubble has tons of others to choose from. It’s one of, if not the most, popular site for artists to sell their work in this way, so you'll almost certainly come across something that you’ll love.

[languages-and-first-world-war]

The Ladies from Hell

Ladies from Hell

 The study of ‘war languages’, ‘war words’, ‘trench slang’, from the First World War – and clearly variant forms are a major part of the subject – occasionally leads the researcher into the area of folk-etymology and the mythology of language. Folk-etymology takes two forms, erroneous stories of etymology, and word forms that through change propose phenomenological meanings (such as ‘sparrow-grass’ or ‘alligator pears’, for asparagus and avocado pears). Current from Autumn 1914 were stories that the German soldiers confronted by kilted soldiers from Canada, England or Scotland were so terrified that they called them ‘ladies from Hell’ or ‘devils in skirts’.

 To date no documentation in German, in newspapers, letters, diaries, memoirs or anywhere else, supports this. It is entirely a story reported, and reported vigorously by Allied soldiers, via newspapers at the time, and in postwar memoirs. It can be found as the title of R. Douglas Pinkerton’s 1918 memoir of his time with the London Scottish; in A. Corcoran’s The Daredevil of the Army (1918, p. 139); Over There and Back, by Joseph S. Smith (1918, p. 192); Private Peat, by H. Peat (1917, p. 175). Soldiers repeatedly reported its use to the press, enjoying their reputation for engendering terror. ‘Devils in skirts’ is found significantly less frequently, for example in the Daily Record 30 April 1917, p.4., in an article titled ‘Praise of the Scot’, which proposed that the Scottish soldier ‘considered it a soft impeachment when the Huns defined him in the early days of the war as the Devil in skirts; but he kept his senses when, for for some unknown reason the German papers devoted much of their space proving, to their own satisfaction, that anything good that came out of England was of Scottish extraction’. Unfortunately what the German papers did not do was offer any evidence of German soldiers using the expression. In the British press ‘Ladies from Hell’ appeared in September 1914 (Dundee Courier, 28 September 1914, p.7), continued through the conflict - the Aberdeen Press and Journal 18 October 1915 (p.4) specifically states in an article on ‘War Words’ that ‘The Germans have a phrase for our Highlanders which means “Ladies from Hell”’ -and after the war (The Sphere, 4 January 1919, p.12: ‘“Ladies from Hell” the Germans called the kilted soldiers then, and the term was one which, from the Germans, carried the highest sort of compliment’). An interesting variation/reaction, from the Highland Light Infantry, was published in October 1918: the Evening Dispatch, 4 October 1918, p.2, reported that they were calling themselves ‘Harry Lauder’s Idiots’; ‘no German, however, has yet been brave enough to call them that’. A further suggestion was ‘Hell’s Latest Invention’. After doing a trawl through the British Newspaper Archive, my impression was that reports in Scottish newspapers were outnumbering those in newspapers from the rest of Britain; in reality fewer than a third of the reports were from Scottish papers.

 What did the soldiers specifically say about the term, and did their comments in any way focus more on the gender or the infernal aspect? Private Alick Moore of the Camerons, reported in the Aberdeen Evening Express, 25 December 1914, p.3, stated that ‘ … the Germans nicknamed us ‘the ladies from hell’. We looked as if we were relations of the devil sure enough, our kilts covered with mud, and a few weeks beard on our chins.’ Private Clifford Walker, serving with the Cameron Highlanders, whose letter to a relative in Leeds was reported in the Leeds Mercury, 14 July 1915, p.2, stated that ‘The French people in the villages nearly go daft when they hear the pipes and see us in our ‘frocks’, as they call them. A good many times I have been offered money and a pair of trousers for the kilt, but it is far warmer and helps to frighten Johnny German away’. An interesting use of ‘the’ rather than ‘my’ in ‘the kilt’, indicates its role as an abstract identifier rather than merely an article of personal clothing – each individual kilt is a metonym of ‘the kilt’. There are plenty of comments about bayonet charges, war cries and the Germans running away, but no remarks on the concept of gender.

 ‘Ladies from Hell’ has stuck. Fraser and Gibbons, in their seminal Soldier and Sailor Words and Phrases (1925), define the term as ‘A name coined in the War by the German newspapers and adopted among the German troops on the Western Front’. This is confirmed by an early report from a soldier: Private John Trafford of the Gordon Highlanders (Dundee Courier, 18 September 1914, p.4) wrote that ‘the Gordons had some captured Germans with them, and the latter informed them that in Germany (NB) the Highlanders were called “the Ladies from Hell”’. Perhaps repeated hearsay made it stick faster, and allowed some elaborations: ‘A lady working among the troops’, as reported in the Western Mail (13 March 1915, p7), said ‘By the way I hear that the Germans call our kilted regiments “the ladies from Hell” (Hollenweiber, I suppose; it was told me in English)’. The levels of projection here are very clear – first the term, and then its ‘original’ version. The same German term was reported as being used by General Joffre, commander of the French Army, in the New Zealand Evening Post, 20 November 1915, p.11: on a hospital visit the general, on meeting a Scottish soldier, said ‘you are one of the men the Germens call “Hollenweiber”’. The actual German word would be Höllenweiber, which should be transcribed into English as ‘Hoellenweiber’. A word search on a site digitizing German language newspapers (http://anno.onb.ac.at/anno-suche#searchMode=simple&from=1) brings up no results, while another site digitizing newspapers Europe-wide (http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/newspapers/issue/3000113894506?hp=3&page=3&refine-query=%22ladies+from+hell%22&query=%22ladies+from+hell%22 ) provides only an article in French about Scottish troops during the First World War, from Le Figaro, 25 September 1939, p.3, which finishes thus:

 Lorsqu'en septembre 1914 ils chargèrent furieusement, devant les étangs d'Ermenonville, un regiment de fantassins allemands qui, tous, périrent noyés, ils gagnèrent un surnom : dans l'armée britannique, on ne les désigna plus que sous le sobriquet « The Ladies from Hell » — les dames de l'Enfer... —R. L.

 Specifically this notes that ‘in the British army, they were only designated under the nickname …’ The revival and enthusiastic use of the term during the Second World War shows that it clearly was reckoned successful.

 Other British articles bring a further nuance to the story: a brief note appended at the end of a story –

“The Ladies From Hell”

The German soldiers call the highlanders ‘Ladies from Hell’ because of their dress and their principle of no quarter to the enemy. – D.P.

Thus the ‘from hell’ notion derives from killing surrendering men.

 Other stories refer this back to a song from the Crimean War, ‘The Kilties in the Crimea’, written by John Lorimer of Paisley, in 1865; as reported in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner 9 November 1914, p.2, it runs:

 The Kilties are the lads for me,

They’re aye the foremost in a spree,

And when they’re in they’ll no’ come oot

Tho’ a’ the warld should turn aboot.

They’re no’ the lads will run awa’,

But feicht while they ha’e breath to draw;

Just tell them whaur they’ll meet the foe,

And shoulder to shoulder awa’ they go!

 Etc. The regiment portrayed is ‘the Royal forty-twa’ commanded by Sir Colin Campbell ‘wi’ his kilted clan’. The battle takes an interesting turn when:

 The kilties gaed to help the Turks,

Wi' a' their pistols, guns, and dirks.

But when the bagpipes ga'e a blaw

The Turkies fainted clean awa'.

Their lassies, too, and wives sae queer

They werena like our lassies here,

For they buckled up their e'en wi' clouts.

As if our kilties had been brutes.

 Islamic female dress it seems caught the attention in mid-battle. Later:

 The Russian General, when he saw

The kilties chase his men awa’

Cried oot, " Does ony mortal ken

Whether they're wild beasts or men ? "

Sir Colin cried, « Come here, my man,

And I will tell, for weel I can,

The kilted lads are just,'' he says,

" Our horsemen's wives in Sunday claes."

 Presumably the joke is that the Scots are so terrifying that the Russians are afraid even of Scottish women. The Aberdeen Weekly Journal repeated excerpts from the poem on 4 December 1914 (p.5), an indication that it was not altogether unknown. But it would be unwise to make a definite link between this poem and the appearance of the phrase; despite the use of the kilt in the British Army since the early eighteenth century, this phrase does not appear till 1914, making it more likely an invention, or less likely an adoption, of the New Armies rather than a term from the pre-1914 army .

 If we are to discuss this in terms of concepts of gender, as well as of terror, which the phrase proposes, we need also to take into account that women as well as men used the term. Should gender be discussed as part of the phenomenon? Yes, of course. The responsibility for the term, and thus raising the question of gender, is safely projected onto the enemy: projecting the responsibility for the issue onto the ‘other’ allows it to be discussed, ignored, challenged, whatever, but we cannot pretend that the issue is not raised. But there are two parts to the phrase: if the first part of ‘ladies from hell’ is a clear challenge to the soldiers’ gender, the second half of the phrase stares down any challenge to their masculine power. And being the second part of the phrase, since language is linear, it supersedes the first part, making the whole a celebration of the ability to engender terror, whatever the expectations of gender. Primarily a phrase for expressing the enjoyment of being able to create fear, it as part of the process proposes and then crushes any thoughts of effeminacy. No wonder they enjoyed it.

[jacewilliams1]

The famous quote that da Vinci never said

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

This Leonardo da Vinci quote is everywhere — aviation books, magazines, websites, Instagram posts, coffee mugs, tee shirts, several science textbooks and some Smithsonian publications. It’s been repeated by the Washington Post newspaper, the Italian ambassador to the United States, and an executive director of The Leonardo museum. I saw it last year in big painted letters on the wall of a California flight school. It’s timeless emotion from a renaissance master of art and science. A flying quotation from maybe the most diversely talented genius ever to have lived, penned 400 years before the Wright Brothers flew. It’s evocatively magical and achingly relatable.

Yet Leonardo da Vinci never said it; and it’s nowhere close to 500 years old.

Yep, it’s fakey fake! Like, totally busted. Now, it’s still a great line. Maybe the best encapsulation of what pilots feel like when we’re stuck on the ground. As I write this during the coronavirus lockdown my eyes are turned skyward, longing to return. But how did this distinctive line come to be credited to the famous Italian polymath with a fascination for flight? And who actually did write it?

I started questioning the quotation’s authenticity over twenty years ago, while trying to nail down the details for a book I was editing. It was slow sledding. Several big aviation books had the line, but none of them cited a reference. None. I soon noticed it never has a date or even a year ascribed to it. This was back when university library catalogs were giant physical card files, Google didn’t exist, and you dialed into the internet on Netscape.

Since I don’t speak Italian, flipping through photos of Leonardo’s original notes didn’t get me anywhere. Reading English translations of his words didn’t uncover the phrase. Leonardo didn’t write books as such, but rather had observational and inspirational notebooks that he wrote in mirror-image cursive with shorthand codes and extensive sketches. There are in total about 13,000 of these pages, originally loose papers of different types and sizes.

Leonardo wrote about birds and flying, but not that famous quote.

Leonardo certainly was obsessed with birds and flying machines, drawing and writing a lot about them over his entire lifetime. He believed a bird flew into his crib as a baby. He swam underwater to study how fish fins worked compared to bird wings. His aerodynamic ideas foreshadow Newton, Galileo, and Bernoulli. He was the first to draw flow fields. Charles Elachi, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says Leonardo was “the ultimate genius,” and that “as scientists and explorers we always looked to him as the model.”

One of his famous notebooks, the Codex on the Flight of Birds, is devoted entirely to flight. It was written at the same time (1505-1506) he was painting the Mona Lisa. It contains aerodynamic understandings not equalled for hundreds of years. Elachi believes this codex is “probably the most important document about flight” on Earth. In 2012, a scanned copy of it flew much further, landing on Mars attached to the Curiosity rover. While close inspection of the Codex on the Flight of Birds reveals it was written over old notes, and contains a grocery list as well as other personal notes, our famous line is not there.

Peter Jakab, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, says Leonardo wrote 35,000 words and drew 500 stretches on flying. His last notebook, Manuscript E (circa 1515), has advanced studies of gliding flight and clearly shows how migrating birds use the wind for long range soaring. By then I think Leonardo had given up on mechanical human-powered flight, after a lifetime of never actually making it into the air in any machine. This disconnect from actually “tasting flight” is part of the magic of the quote, that the great master could voice our primal aerial passion before anybody could have experienced it. The general acceptance seems to be that the extraordinary intellect that envisioned so many mechanical possibilities, and could paint so many human emotions, conjured in his mind what flight would feel like, what lingering sweet taste it would leave in our psyche.

The search was frustrating. What if the quote was never in his notebooks? Maybe he wrote it in a letter to someone else? Or maybe was it a bad translation? Or an extrapolation? Or a misunderstanding? But surely not, as the line was quoted so definitively, so often. The only variations seem to be at the start. Sometimes it’s, “For once you have tasted…” other times it’s, “When once you have tasted…” The body of the quotation is remarkably consistent for something supposedly 500 years old, originally written in Italian or Leonardo’s poor Latin.

I found nothing. Neither did some nice folks I talked with at National Geographic magazine years ago, who had contacted one of the world’s leading Leonardo authorities in Italy as part of a long research project, and were told flat out that he did not write it. They were quite confident it was folklore fiction, and privately they sounded a little smug that a Smithsonian publication had recently printed it. I believed them, but how do you prove a negative? And who originally did pen the line?

The question quietly bugged me for years. The 2007 book Leonardo on Flight by Domenico Laurenza never mentions the line. A whole chapter of the 2008 book Leonardo’s Legacy by science writer Stefan Klein is devoted to da Vinci’s dream of mechanical flight, yet it also never mentions the line. Rather, the book concludes “after thirty years of tireless work, Leonardo’s dream of flying had reverted to what it was in the first days of his research—a flight of the imagination.” And the amazing 2017 biography Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, drawing on the latest research, didn’t include it anywhere in its over 600 pages. So every time I saw the quote on a tee shirt or Twitter it was a poke to a bit of my brain that knew something wasn’t right, that something was unfinished.

Well, finally the mystery has been solved, thanks to several patient detectives connected via the internet, using the vast search tools of Google Books and other electronic storehouses. People reached out to book authors and asked where ideas and narrative came from, while others sat through dreadful old copies of films. It all came together in the nerdy discussion page of the Wikiquote entry for Leonardo de Vinci, and now we can reveal the author was… drum roll please…

John Hermes Secondari. An American TV writer. In 1965.

John Secondari discussing rockets with Wernher von Braun.

It seemed all a bit underwhelming. A TV writer? But a little more research finds a pretty cool cat. He commanded a tank company in combat during World War II. He wrote romantic novels. An uncredited Frank Sinatra sang “his” song that won an Oscar. The New York Times called Secondari “a dominant figure in the field of the television documentary” in their February 1975 obituary. He had won three Peabody Awards and more than 20 Emmys during a career making quality documentaries. And while John was mostly found behind the camera, there’s pictures of him from a 1958 Walt Disney Television show—smoking a cigarette and discussing rocketry with Wernher von Braun. And he had deep ties to Italy.

Born in Rome in 1919, at five years old Secondari sailed with his mother to Ellis Island for a life in the United States. After getting a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University, he worked as a correspondent for The United Press and CBS News. In 1941 he joined the Army and saw combat in Europe. After the war he rejoined CBS and was head of their Rome bureau. John also wrote several novels. The first one published drew on his knowledge and love of Rome with a title referencing the famous Trevi fountain—Coins in the Fountain. The book was turned into the 1954 movie Three Coins in the Fountain. It won two Oscars: best cinematography and best song. The eponymous song was sung by Frank Sinatra.

At the start of the 1960s Secondari organized ABC-TV’s first documentary unit and went on to produce over 80 documentaries, covering serious subjects with award-winning substance. The Museum of Broadcast Communications’ Encyclopedia of Television (2nd edition, 2013) says Secondari “forged a coherent house style that featured a heavy emphasis on visualization and dramatic voiceover narration.” One of his projects was a series called The Saga of Western Man, highlighting key historical events that drove civilization forward. It was nominated for five Primetime Emmy awards. The New York Times said that to make the past come alive Secondari used “sound effects and animated the screen by treating the camera lens as if it were the eye of an actual witness to the event—scanning , zooming or resting on shadows, furniture, silhouettes, ships and other objects. As much as possible he restricted the acting to off-screen voices, using historically authentic dialogue.”

One of the episodes of The Saga of Western Man was “I, Leonardo Da Vinci.” The credits state it was written, produced and narrated by John H. Secondari, with “the voice of Leonardo da Vinci” played by Fredric March. Its copyright date is 1965 and it was released in 1966 by American Broadcasting. At 16 minutes and 21 seconds into the second reel, after the off-screen Leonardo narration urges people to build his flying machines, claiming after any crash “the hurts will be slight,” over gentle visuals of a wheat field panning up into a clear blue sky, the voice says:

And once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you would return.

That’s it. The first recorded version of what became the quote. There is nothing similar in any of the millions of pre-1965 documents digitized by Google or other archivers. It was written by John H. Secondari, channeling the real ideas and passions of Leonardo as part of a TV documentary. This was a serious project, with Professor Carlo Pedretti of the University of California as the consultant historian, but it did present conjectural concentrations of Leonardo’s ideas. Condensing 13,000 pages of notes into a one hour show is hard. Clearly it’s a great line, compelling, ethereal—even if it’s closer in time to Leonardo DiCaprio than Leonardo da Vinci.

As an additional fact check, I talked with Marissa De Simone Day, Director of Exhibits and Learning at The Leonardo Museum of Creativity and Innovation in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was part of the creation of their outstanding Flight exhibit. If anyone should know about the line, it’s her. She stated, “as far as we know, the quote originated in the script of an educational film by John Secondari which is titled I, Leonardo da Vinci. The script is inspired by Leonardo’s notes in his codexes and narrated as though by Leonardo.”

This spoken line is not exactly as we’ve seen it repeated time after time over the last few decades. It lacks the “forever” and the ending is missing the “always long.” Those parts came to be added in pieces later. The first time the line appeared in print was ten years later, in the May 1975 edition of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. It was quoted as a Leonardo epigraph in The Storms of Windhaven, a science fiction story by George R. R. Martin (yes, that’s Mr. Game of Thrones) and Lisa Tuttle:

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, and there you long to return.

Now we have the “long to return.” But where did they get the line? A fantastical lost da Vinci codex discovered in George R. R. Martin’s attic? A personal letter from Leonardo delivered through a vortex time portal? Sadly not. Seems the communication was more down to Earth. According to Lisa Tuttle it was the editor of Analog, Ben Bova, who suggested it. An email to Ben revealed that he heard it in a documentary about Leonardo.

It was perfect for the start of a story of human space voyagers who crash-landed on a planet and constructed mechanically simple gliding machines from their wrecked spaceship. The presented-as-historical-fact quotation was read and spread by late seventies hang glider pilots and sky divers. Five years later, a newspaper story in the The Herald Statesman had the compelling headline Hang Glider Died “With His Eyes Turned Skyward.” By the 1980s the power of the line had caught the imagination of the wider aviation world. And then it started being repeated in books and magazines.

Which is when I first saw it. I joined the echoing chorus by adding it to my lists of aviation quotes. Now it’s almost everywhere. It’s easy to understand why. The line perfectly describes a human emotion about our favorite obsession. It sounds just like what we think Leonardo sounded like. And fact checking the line used to be nearly impossible. But now we have better tools. It might take a while for the quote’s attribution to be changed, considering how common it’s become. I heard it as part of a theme park ride. It even made it to page 135 of the 2008 National Geographic book Leonardo’s Universe: The Renaissance World of Leonardo Da Vinci. Emails to the authors were unanswered.

It’s my speculation that the enigmatic Mona Lisa smile is Leonardo’s reaction to his most famous flying quote turning out to have been penned by a ghostwriter centuries after his death. The great man did enjoy funny prophecy-riddles. His quote that “winged creatures will support people with their feathers” actually refers not to flying machines, but rather “the feathers used to stuff mattresses.” His line “feathers shall raise men even as they do birds, towards heaven” is finished by “that is by letters written with their quills.”

While we have to let his most repeated quote go, thankfully there are many well researched, 100% authentic quotations that match his amazing aerodynamic sketches. Like this one from the Codex Atlanticus:

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, and it is in the capacity of man to reproduce such an instrument. A man with wings large enough and duly attached might learn to overcome the resistance of the air and raise himself upon it.

The post The famous quote that da Vinci never said appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/08/the-famous-quote-that-da-vinci-never-said/

[top1course]

How To Sell Millions Without Ever Opening Your Mouth! Copywriting Secrets Simple 7-Step Formula Pt.1

Is it possible to sell millions of dollars without opening your mouth, well is he by the end of this, video I’m going to prove to you, yes is very, possible today we are going to talk about cooperating, secrets I have gave joining me, am I, cole director of social media, and gave manages all might, all my social media especially YouTube, so if you see that how I’m blowing up on YouTube how we went from, in the beginning of this year, with 100000 subscribers now almost the end, office year we’re going to hit a million Subs, subscribers, 10 x growth, is because, the gates help, okay so, he is going to act as almost as an audience or entering me on Sundays covered in question, i’ve been doing this for a long long time so sometimes the concepts, the preceptor I know that it’s, soul, so be with me for so long as I can conscious competent but maybe gave for him it’s a, Copper dick is a new thing for you right, is a new world, he will almost asked questions on your, behalf, now before I go into the, 7 step, on how to create, gray coffee, let’s just defy what cop rating, because I believe most people they could confuse what comprehend, you think copywriting, he’s about, writing, right and we hear I hear this a lot, odana I’m not a writer, my English is not, or I am not very, creative, what is not a, copywriting, what about closing, the way I Define carpeting is, closing in, print, okay closing in print or, closing the introvert right you can close using instead of using your, spoken words, you’re using your written words, imprint, to persuade convince and employing someone, want to make a Vine perch, do do a move to to do a make a decision whatever it might be what a goal that you might have, That’s all that all cooperating is, so if it’s closing you means it is about communication, it’s not about writing, right it’s not about, so don’t be intimidated by the whole concept of, writing cuz I flunked English twice when I was, in high school, but it doesn’t stop me from creating coffee, does May, millions and millions of dollars, deep Eddy questions, so I would say I see a lot in the YouTube comment where people they don’t really, noah copywriting is and how to, pi, and how, actually the origins of copywriting how, for any design or anything part of the business at all goes down to, word of mouth and being spoken and being read, correct, so how would someone I would, say how would they, Shift their thinking to start from a.

Perspective of their user, and the person you’re trying to reach through, i want you to think about cooperating good sometimes people might think it does that mean it is, that words are on the web page, it’s not that, every email that you sent out, is copywriting, are free, what pace are you create that’s corporate, baby social media post, cooperating, are free, even a video, write a video script a video, absl like a video sales letter, operating, infomercial that you, you see that’s copyrighted, so is everything that’s involved with, closing on a very massive, scale, on a mass scale to be. Copper, so you think about, a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners about that, you can hide copyright or you can also ask operator, but the biggest sin when it comes to businesses, you don’t have any understanding of what corporate is, Because that’s what most profit, this one sells appliance service, you can have exactly the same product, but the way that you write you communicate your tickling your marketing message, one, one message could produce $10,000, the exact same, product with a different message, you could create a million-dollar, i always think of this I will let me give you a metaphor, think of it as a, us, dollar bill, okay a dollar bill, the difference between a $1 bill, and $100 bill value, is the message that’s on, the piece of paper, well I want you to do in life, just why sometimes when you understand copywriting I’m not saying you have to be a master copywriter but by having some basic understanding, you can make some small changes may be the subject line, maybe the headline maybe to call to action, with a c LaMotta effort to see my money the same amount of traffic, Southern me now you getting to three times more results, we see this a lot of social media with everything, we were the same thing but we change the message we change the subject line, some minor tweaks, dollywood getting way more results right I wouldn’t be scared to, testing because we do that a lot. Encourages 100% and don’t be afraid to test, 100% guys test, and it is not about, the eagle where I know what works best if you don’t know I still don’t know, right just because I’ve experienced but sometimes you also make certain assumptions about certain things, and that’s a great thing now about the internet, doctor when I was doing carburetor, what do we like to recommend, right licking the envelope putting the stand, so we will send all this say, to a list, a5000 Direct Mail, Letters, good old like paper and print, and then 5002 this list, 5002 Dallas, and we’ll see what kind of response we get, it would take like weeks and months before we know the results, but now it’s internet, with tracking with software, you know exactly what’s happening so much, easier, so, pod up, being a good, copyright, it’s snowing., you and I will not the marketing genius, customer, let them, how you, if the offer, one good thing that I’ve learned from you see who is sometimes we look at what, even you guys Post in the comment and will reverse-engineer that, intoarce, girls page into, if you are not so sure about how how do I get started with this Incorporated, into my business, i’ll give you a very powerful but simple strategy, set up a time to talk to some of your best, okay and you actually talk to them, You can get them a little smoke if it’s a.

I’m just doing some research about my company, i want to do some marketing can pay you your my best and most loyal customer, can I have, 30 minutes, and if they do you can get them some morphe, certificate, starbucks whatever it is doesn’t matter what it is, and you talk, and you ask him questions like hey, you look before you, you do business with, company, what was your problem, right why did you choose us, and why do you stay with, they would tell you all these things, and which one of you want to record it ask for the commission you record it, and this is so easy, you take what they say, and you turn it into, coffee, so let’s say, give me example give me an example of something that people, alternate so let’s say, Yeah like, i can’t find any leads to my clients, and I’m really struggling finding leads and customers I go to these conference, and I talk to other people but none of them that really follow, oh okay so, leads all that so exactly that’s a pain that they have less a yellow product to solve their problem, easley, he’s the light. Could be a potential hotline, it could you want to call I get one of those, benefits team in a bullet point, how to quickly and easily generate more leads for your business without going to these, networking, boom right there you have, how to cook a medium talking about exactly what they say and it turned it into your copy, you do that for a number of customers song you are good, to go, see how easy this is not as complex as you think, right they would tell you your, Your customers they want to buy from you, but what do you want to know is the assurance that you know what, are going through, they want the shoes that, you’ll probably service can help himself., number one, look at 3 I want to teach you, 7 steps that you can take, every single time you buy coffee, you go through these steps, i Promise You by the end of the seven steps, you’ll coffee would be so much more powerful so much more compelling, . one and that is, identify your ideal, this is the most important part, because most people when did Duke operating I used to make this mistake, you so excited, you get you could tell it on the computer and you stopped typing, no you do not do that, you need to First understand truly understand, who your ideal customers, now that the way that is fine I do customers, Is three things, number one your ideal customer, they have a need, volume, so if I am a vegan, if you try to sell me steaks, we got a problem here right, you got to sell stick to a stick lighter so I should have a meeting at 1 for your part at this number one, number 2 is IHOP the ability, biopod, so I want it but also I could pay for, and number three if I have the authority, dubai Abaya service, so if, i am selling something to this a husband and wife, and I’m only talking to husband but we leased a wife that makes it, decision, that is not good, so it’s, they have their Nita want they have their building at the store if that’s the ideal customer, now once you know this, who do custom is even Facebook, This so much.

Targeting that we can do nowadays, with, he could be your interest it could be, gucci belong to it could be your age, ditto, hundreds of variations hundreds of, reference point hundred things you can do to Target, what you know exactly who you talkin bout that is, now you go, talk to them in your copy, one-on-one like this, and that’s what you do, i believe, good copy, 80% of research, and 20% lighting, so if Andrea Spinelli a month, sometimes sometimes 3 weeks a month, working on, coffee walk away campaign, you should spend like 2-3 weeks just in, before you write a single, you should have a very clear idea, exactly what the offer is, all these things, before you, i think another helpful tip, tipsy food that you gave the other day was, you really want to think about, who that ideal customer is in that, Customer profile and really Envision you talking to them one-on-one, like if you were just sitting down talking to them casual, don’t try to use very big mumbo jumbo, words just casual conversation as if, if you’re really trying, talk with them you want to talk to him on a one-on-one basis right you don’t want to be like right now I’m communicating with, with you, at any given time, your reader, audience, oil plus, they are, reading your coffee, the off, watching a video, by themselves, usual Toyota 101 connection, so I’m talking to you, i’m not talking like, speaking to a thousand a million people I’m not talking to groups, that public speaking is, completely different, what way comes to coffee, you want to be very personal I want to be like, one on one, assuming now you know your customer and I could tell you the amount of money you make is indirect, Proportion to how well you understand your car, i’ll say that one more time, the amount of money you make, it indirect proportion, 2 how well you understand, you know this business to fail, that, be entrepreneurs the business owner if they have this idea, on this widget I have this adventure time I am so excited about it, they go they take it to the market place nobody gets, because they don’t understand their, ideal, costume, it’s not enough to say hey my mom likes it my wife likes, did you say, when people typically say while everybody is my ideal cussed, i want to sell to every the white there is a bigamist, he kanaka even company ice Vegas Apple, even a couple days because she likes a Walmart that serves, everyone is my costume, no, yep Walmart, right you have so many your target, They all have different demographics so you know one could say that everyone is, especially for like small business are you mija medium-sized business you got to think you got to narrow it down, very much narrow down because the more you can narrow down the more personal, you can make it message, in Dominion, one of the best reactions you could get and I love this one man to Allen, he said let’s say you have an idea you can offer you want to test it out is that it is, you hang out with your target market, can you bring your offer and you show it to them, do you know what checkout is at 4, right, and if they say if they read the ad and they say to you, this is just as good as pretty good, your ex sucks, images no good, okay, i think if you have this out, No that’s no good.

Do you actually want is they read at, how can I buy some, is my credit card I want to buy some that’s when you know you got something, okay you need the real reaction because people vote with their wallet, don’t listen to Just what they say watch what they do they vote with a wallet, when did minute they put some money online okay I’ve got something, before that is all just like lips, so that’s number one research, knowing identifying do I do, step number, q and that is create an accessible offer, a compelling offer, this is probably the one of the most important steps Indian, higher formula, because you look at most businesses, the biggest challenges, they sound the same as everybody, the office not very compelling, oh you know what, this is my glock my competitors, And didn’t cuddle with you as well, maybe I’m a little bit better and maybe a little bit cheaper, what day is not, huge differentiator, so with what you do not think about how could you make, your offer as compelling as pause, i was talking with, one of a copywriter, and he was asking me well then do you believe, what is Montour, the audience, all the message, i say without a doubt, the market, i could have the greatest message, what I said the wrong people, what is distribution, we will just like yesterday last night we having dinner right, love’s like Rhett meet and all that doesn’t like Steve has so much, so I could have the great like lobster and crab and a great message this is awesome man, i don’t know it’s the right message, but wrong Market, play doesn’t work, so when it comes to offer you have to think about, What is it that your audience truly wants, right what is it that they did cleaning, what more what pain, what frustrations that they have they they just they’re sick and tired of that, so when you can come up with an offer this so irresistible, is easy to sell, in fact a great, offer, you can see, less, anyone still sell, you’ll need to use as many words, let me give you perfect, let’s say it’s a gate he has $100 bill, okay, can you give me $10 in exchange of $100, give me ten bucks I’ll give you $100 right now, that isn’t resistible, right there, what am I doing there is called selling money at a disco, so if you’re selling any kind of, business Improvement, offer or any offer that helps people to make money save money on investment, the concept, money saving money at a discount, Spandex with me, i’m going to teach you how to make, why, right, essay example people who teaches real estate investing, hey spend $5,000 on Discord, i’m going to teach you how to generate you know, 10000 a month in rental income, oh wow that’s a no-brainer, that’s only money at a discount, that’s an irresistible offer, maybe you’re not in the education space maybe you have, do some physical product how do you do this, in so many ways, maybe your irresistible offer is, a free 30-day trial, okay if you have seen those infomercials, where they have those are, skin care, the trifle 30 they see how you like it, example, or a strong guarantee, irresistible, add certain bonuses, jamaican resistant material quick story, the one time many years ago I was late night watching TV, that’s all this, eva Marcille just popped up my loved ones, And this this guy is demonstrating he has a pair of shoes on the desk and his.

Cutting it with a knife, and I’m like, this is cool, what is this is a was talking about house shopping Ibis, is it yeah that’s cool, okay I got the knife and then he cut actually a can, with with a knife, holy s*** this is cool, not going to use it but it’s cool right, so I was watching a commercial and then people like and then he has a lot of, people coming onto the TV talk with a testimonial, using this naive housewife, like people do any kind all kinds of, background that uses knife, and he said well you know what, can you buy today, you don’t just get one night, you get to knife, homelite holyfuck, this is awesome and then he goes on, this is the big knife, But what about All the Small Things, and then you get this knife, and then you get this knife, and then you get this knife, and then before you know what he’s talking about like, twenty f****** divinized, i don’t like this is crazy, this is awesome before the infomercial I don’t need a knife, i don’t need a knife, but offered it is so dramatic and so cool, and then he just dropped the mic and see if you order within the next 5 minutes, you don’t get, these 29th, we going to send you two sets of knives, that’s it I’m done right call number call immediately and by that is, list of offer it when did it the office so irresistible, logic goes out the window, outside bought to set up nice actually the lady cuz I’m like, what the f*** I need like 40 pairs of nice voices stupid I just dumb, It was at that moment it was so compelling, so think about how you could use that, maybe sometimes it’s, faster shipping Amazon that’s good Amazon, proserpine you get a fast, i don’t want to wait when I could also speak about how, you were saying how Amazon offers that fit did you pay them Accenture, that’s right cuz Amazon if you have Prime Membership Eva Prime member, hello, NC, that, with fine what they’re doing is essentially they’re charging you for membership fee, so they can buy more, applicants applying to get your product faster, so think about what Amazon does, and how they encourage you, a simple thing in your system, and it’s not like a hundred bucks or so right they raise the price people, put up a hole stink but everybody’s, bill pay the higher, i have seen people like us now, Amazon, hundred, housing people that you would think Prime is like, it’s a, luxury, everything nice and membership it’s not like a, necessity you’re paying, a hundred bucks you get some benefit in Amazon and, ended a video and entertainment, william painter sponsorship, so you’re paying them so I can buy more stuff, you got understand, i don’t know people, who are like, literally you would think like lower-income, the living in like, trailer park and stuff like that, neither would not think they would spend money on Amazon and yet their Prime members, it’s the last thing you think about, but to them, destify member, and I like you spend $100 a year, but to be a Prime member, is Solaris, it’s like a no-brainer, when you are a Prime member you thinking while you know, i’m going to pay for the shipping anyway, but I’m going to get my stuff faster, Plus you’re not getting all these other benefits I get Amazon need a video I can.

Music, and you may watch email watch it but you like the fact that, you have access, right, that’s irresistible,

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puppy training near me | potty training older dogs

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puppy training near me | potty training older dogs

5. Stop Excessive Barking Mat & Crate Covers Owning a new puppy can be a very rewarding time in your life, but, it can be difficult and challenging as well. When you get a new puppy, expectations, can sometimes be unrealistic. That Is where Gahanna Animal Hospital comes into both of your lives. Your puppy will love you for making its crate into a nice place. Leave their favorite toys in there and reward them with a treat or two. Provide lots of praise for going into the crate and staying there. This helps provide a safe place for your puppy that will be useful for many years, even long after your dog is potty trained. Tap the cushion and instruct “Up.” Featured content People + $5.12 shipping 10 Signs Your Cat Might Be Stressed Richard Wolfson The best dog food 4500 West Wisconsin Avenue SecondNature® Mixed Breed Dogs Not Helpful 12 Helpful 20 Bathing Equipment A puppy expert in your home Level 2 Boulder Good Dog Club Mobile App Family Owned San Diego Dog Training Business 2. Start using a crate the day you bring him home. Crate training is the easiest way to teach a dog bladder and bowel control because dogs don’t like to soil their sleeping and eating areas. A Hungarian dog training group called Népszigeti Kutyaiskola use a variation of model-rival training which they describe as the Mirror Method. The mirror method philosophy is that dogs instinctively learn by following the example of others in their social sphere. Core to the program is including the dog in all aspects of the owner’s life and positive reinforcement of copying behaviors. Mirror method dog training relies on using a dog’s natural instincts and inclinations rather than working against them.[67] We all know barking is a part of a puppy’s language; however, sounds like howling, whining, barking and crying can drive … If your puppy does have an accident when you’re not looking, just clean it up calmly. If you catch your puppy in the middle of going, quietly pick them up and pop them outside to see if they can finish what they started in the right place – if they do, then praise them gently. If they don’t, just be extra vigilant in the house next time. Walking Your Puppy When It’s Too Hot Outside intermediate training: ‘Did Not Rise To Level’ Of Cruelty: SnoCo Auditor On Dog Beating AKC Humane Fund Reptile & Amphibian How to Potty Train a Puppy Fast: The Fundamentals Adult Dog Complete Package Dog Training is about creating a good relationship with your dog, How long they took to potty after being taken to the potty spot 2-oz bottle July 3, 2018 Wednesday, July 4 letters: Oil production, pets, wildfire This is vital to housetraining success. Puppies have tiny bladders, and water just runs right through them. The same holds true for solid matter. Goes in. Goes out. You have to make sure you are giving your puppy ample opportunity to do the right thing. Most Popular Dog Breeds November 20, 2016 7 Steps To Puppy Obedience Training How do I potty train my new dog when they are older? Make sure you know as much as possible about how your new dog has been trained before. This is important, as it is your way to know what to expect. For example, if they were trained on a potty pad, you can’t expect your new dog to suddenly start going out to pee. If you don’t know about their history, try crate training, but be patient. You are changing a habit, which can be hard but not impossible. It will just take more time, observation, rewards, praise and patience on your part. Sammamish-Issaquah RSS Feed Any time you are putting your dog in their crate — be it for a crate training session or when putting them in there before leaving the house — make sure they’ve had a good opportunity to go out to potty and to get in some good play and exercise, too. Trupanion Copyright Dr. Becker Discusses Water with Paul Barattiero What to do if you catch him in the act Having raised and trained various dog breeds for many years, I must state that the content within these pages represents some of the best Labrador information I have ever seen or read. Get a monthly sample of helpful information, tips, and discounts for your dog or cat Whatever happened to the days when collecting signitures for a ballot initiative was a grassroots effort undertaken by volunteers? Now it seems like all these groups end up hiring professional signiture gatherers, literally buying their way onto the ballot. Fleas and Ticks Teach your puppy to be gentle when interacting with people. He must not nip or chew on people’s hands. Learning Comments Our Global History Avoid playing exciting games in the garden before your puppy has toileted, as this is likely to distract them from the main purpose of going outside. If they want to come back inside straight away, or look confused, patiently walk up and down slowly to encourage them to move about and sniff the ground. Stay outside with your puppy until they have done their business at which point you can give gentle praise. Avoid leaving your puppy outside in the hope that they will eventually go to the toilet, as most puppies will not want to be left alone and will instead concentrate on getting back to you, rather than learning to go to the toilet outside. You might also miss the opportunity to praise your puppy if they do go, or if they don’t go, they may then be ‘caught short’ once back in the house! It’s hardly surprising many people have barking problems with their dogs, since most dogs have no idea whether barking is something good or bad. That’s because our reaction to his barking is confusing to the dog. In his eyes, when he barks, he is sometimes ignored, while at other times he is shouted at to stop, and then again he may be encouraged to bark if, for example, there’s a suspicious stranger nearby. Removing Pet Stains in Your Home BREED INFO Can Dogs Have Strokes And What Are The Signs?

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fbq('track', 'ViewContent', content_ids: 'dogtraining.dknol', ); Hill’s® Prescription Diet® k/d® Canine Beef & Vegetable Stew 17.59 Whether you’re looking for an all-inclusive Board & Train program to a group puppy socialization class, we have what you need!  Part 12: How To House Train An Adult Dog – And Solving Common Issues How did you hear about us? Comment: * If you are feeding, exercising, training and playing with your puppy to a schedule, and when you look at your diary there seems to be no pattern to the times they need to potty, you should seek the advice of your vet. — Ken Ramirez, Executive VP & Chief Training Officer, Karen Pryor Clicker Training  Navigation Delivery Worldwide Box Office Mojo What is the best way to train and discipline your dog? CLAWGUARD (2) Going Home Article Index REALTREE Puppy Vaccinations This guide has taken me many weeks to put together so I’m hoping it will prove useful to people. When taking your dog out of the crate, you should immediately take it outside. Until potty trained, confining your puppy will make keeping a close eye on it and training it much easier. It will limit the possible mess as well.[17] Dog Rocks Storage & Scoops I have written an in-depth article that covers all the common puppy training problems that new puppy owners experience. Yorkshire Terrier Aggressive toward other dogs This post may contain affiliate links. We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. Monday – Friday, 9 am – 5 pm Sponsored by Purina® Pro Plan®. Stand Rite No Bite® Dog Safety Program Bus Stop Benny via flickr/wildstray Never leave children unattended and unsupervised with dogs, even ones that seem “safe”. You may need to isolate the dog and/or crate him when a knowledgeable adult cannot be present. 952-914-0292 See also[edit] Dog Rocks Lawn Burn Patch Preventative, 2 months 7 weeks ago Work on supervised separation Puppy Management and Training College Some people recommend to stay out there for 10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever it takes until they go, then praise profusely when they do. Although this advice may be sound, personally I’d rather not. Belgian Tervuren Find a Doctor Angels’ Eyes Why Does My Dog Poop in the House? Campbell You can also switch to other games like fetch or tug of war. With fetch, it’s important to teach your dog to “let go” or “leave it” on command, so you can remove something from his mouth without him getting aggressive. Likewise, with tug of war, you want to make sure the game doesn’t get too rough, as this can encourage aggressive behavior and also isn’t good for your dog’s mouth. AKC Registered Handler Program May 29, 2018 10:05 am The best flea treatments for dogs Potty Bells Housetraining D… Jackson Galaxy (7) Arizona’s Premier Training Facility Yesterday’s News Screen Reader: Supported Rent or hire a carpet cleaner with special pet-urine enzymatic cleaner or use an enzymatic cleaner, such as Nature’s Miracle or Simple Solution, found in most pet supply stores or online. Consultation Alex March 19, 2018 at 9:30 pm Surviving the Night with Your New Puppy View All Events Labrador Facts & Fun Find a formula for your dog’s unique needs & preferences. As soon as you get your new puppy, love on him and let him hear the sound of your voice. What is a typical day like? Biscuits & Snacks Feline fitness: Tips for exercising your cat The good news is that this behavior usually decreases naturally as your new puppy starts to understand that you will always come back. In the meantime, tools like interactive pet cameras or crates can ensure that your furry friend stays out of trouble while you’re gone. Choose Your Training Path Pregnancy Q&A: Travel Forum: Introduce Yourself Posted By: Sheppard wolf Post Time: 04-26-2018 at 09:44 PM Make A Payment To Ahimsa Part 2: Basic Need To Know Facts Before You Start Special Promotions! Diabetes A huge benefit to this is a puppy learns while very young that just because they have an urge to wee or poop, they don’t have to and can actually hold it. With other methods a puppy doesn’t learn this fact while so young. clare power Never punish your puppy if he has an accident in the house. This only teaches the dog to fear the idea of going to the bathroom when people are around, and he will likely still go in the house — just not when his owner is looking. Instead, if you catch your puppy in the act, you can interrupt him with an “oops,” and immediately take him to his proper elimination area outside. puppy training classes prices | puppies barking puppy training classes prices | how to train a puppy not to bark puppy training classes prices | barking puppies Legal | Sitemap

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Menno Henselmans on Steroid Use, HMB & Ketogenic Study Fraud

In this second part of our interview, Menno talks about the recent HMB and Ketogenic diet study fraud, and why using steroids can be like creating a “game over” scenario which you want to avoid.

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Listen on Soundcloud.

3 Key Points

Steroid use, unless you are planning on continuing it forever, is like entering a cheat code in a Mario game. You shortcut your journey and then take all the fun out of training, which is a major drawback that is often overlooked.

Some of the positive research behind HMB and Ketones seems to be backed with fraudulent data.

Connective tissues might be the limiting factor for growth with advanced trainees. So consider fluctuating the loads you utilize, with higher rep range sets as a staple.

Show Notes

Menno’s childhood. Menno is grateful for the work his parents did to raise out of financial hardship. [03:00]

How long is steroid testing accurate? Andy advises his competitor friend at the gym that some people going up on stage against him will have used steroids in the past, so it’s important to focus on being his best self and be happy with that. Menno talks about how drug testing is only valid within about two months of taking anabolic steroids. [2:00]

Is it a good idea to use steroids? The reason Menno does not use steroids because it can reduce natural testosterone production. Menno also talks about a study showing how once previously ‘juiced’ powerlifters came off steroids and stopped lifting, they reverted to their original size. He believes that the long-term benefits of using steroids for a period are small. However, Menno plans to start cycling low-doses of steroids once his natural testosterone production falls, which he hopes will not be until his 50s. He notes how when people get old and gain fat, they get corresponding low testosterone levels. However, you should be able to maintain your testosterone levels from your 20’s into your 50’s if you stay lean and engage in strength training. [3:00]

What about older trainees? If you are 40 years old, don’t worry. If you’re 70, there are certainly some special considerations before jumping into training. Although the threshold isn’t clear, Menno suggests the turning point might be around 50 years of age. [8:00]

Isn’t hitting my maximum genetic potential with steroids a no-brainer? Menno thinks that most people that complete a medically supervised cycle of anabolic steroids will lose purpose and motivation. There is joy in the journey. [9:00]

How do the different rates of development between muscle and connective tissue affect how we should train as training age increases? Menno’s thinking is that the plasticity (ability to adapt) is more difficult in connective tissue than muscle tissue. The research that supports this claim centers around the blood flow for tendons. Injuries are far more common in trained individuals with issues in technique than untrained individuals. Menno uses the analogy of a car and a driver, getting a faster car is like getting more muscle fibers and getting a better driver is like neurological adaptation. Often, for advanced lifters, connective tissue is the limiting factor and not muscle. This is an argument for increasing the use of lighter loading as training age increases. [11:25]

Do I need to bench press? No! Menno says that while the bench press is a great exercise, there isn’t a need to do it, and shouldn’t do it if it causes you joint issues. There are no mandatory exercises. [14:45]

Do I need to squat? As with the bench press, though barbell squats are a great exercise, if you find that you have joint issues performing them, consider a squat variation. Menno talks about how he doesn’t personally have great knees, so he hits a certain threshold where he can no longer squat. It doesn’t matter what squat variation he uses. [15:30]

Do you have any advice regarding exercise selection? Don’t do something that hurts and obsess about the method. You should listen to pain signals. The pain will limit your ability to add volume and reach the advanced level. [17:00]

What happened with the recent HMB study scandal with Jacob Wilson? Dr. Jacob Wilson and Layne Norton had a falling out because Layne was concerned Jacob was manipulating data and called him on it. Part of the research had lead to favorable outcomes for the ketogenic diet, which Jacob is now benefitting financially from. Menno said he saw the unpublished data change twice. Rumours started to circle about data fraud. Wilson and Associates released a paper showing HMB is more effective than steroids, despite all other research showing the opposite. Menno listens several letters produced showing issues with the data. Menno had conversations with eye-witnesses that have admitted to data frauding. Later, Menno confronted Jacob in-person about the data fraud and denied knowing anything about the “rumors,” as he called them. [20:00]

What is the impact on the fitness community because of this fraudulent data? For the average person, there will be very little impact. However, the integrity of the scientific community could be brought into question. [29:45]

Why would Jacob commit data fraud? Menno suggests, while unlikely that Jacob created fraudulent data for fame, however, Jacob has written a book on ketogenic dieting which references his questionable research, and is sponsored by the supplement company Pruv It. [31:00]

Does the mean ketogenic diets are not beneficial? The other research does show some positive findings, but certainly not the extent that is shown in Jacob’s research. Menno believes that purchasing HMB and ketone supplements is a waste of your money. [34:30]

What about people who say taking ketone supplements makes them alert? According to Menno, this is caused by the caffeine in ketone supplements. Caffeine spiking is a common trick in the supplement industry. There is, of course, the possibility of the placebo effect also. [35:30]

When getting clients to lose fat and gain muscle, does Menno autoregulate calories throughout the week? Routines and habits are the keys to long-term sustainability. Menno suggests always looking through the lens of, “are you going to do this for the next decade?” [38:00]

Do you think that nutrient partitioning becomes less favorable while bulking when going over 15% bodyfat? Yes, and Menno will be releasing an article covering this topic on his website soon.   [39:00]

Should you increase protein with a pre-workout protein shake if you go a long time between meals and your workout? Menno suggests using a meal instead of a protein shake while not upsetting your calorie balance. [43:30]

What should you do after plateauing on a diet program? If something is not working, something needs to change. You may need to decrease energy intake. However, if you are getting very low on calorie intake, you may need to look deeper into lifestyle factors (cheat meals and changed activities to name a few). Make sure you are comparing weekly average weigh-in data and consider body recomposition. [41:30]

Doesn’t body recomposition only happen for beginners? No. Most people can achieve both muscle gain and fat loss at the same time to some degree. Read this article. Andy also mentions the benefit of taking stomach measurements when gauging if this is happening. (See our article on tracking progress.) [44:30]

What is an appropriate surplus of calories for contact-sports athletes for recovery? You want to be in the sweet-spot for muscle growth and fat gain. However, it varies greatly depending on your situation. [45:30]

Which is better for a novice, a bro-split or three full-body workouts? Bro-splits suffice for novices. However, as you increase training experience, you recover more quickly and can benefit from more frequency. [46:30]

What’s Menno’s current thoughts on high-frequency training? Menno recommends visiting his website for a detailed response. However, as you become more advanced, you may need to train each muscle group once every 48 hours. [48:15]

Show Links

Contact Menno Henselmans | Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter 

Dr. Jacob Wilson 

Layne Norton 

Pruv It – Supplement company sponsoring Dr. Jacob Wilson

Gain Muscle and Lose Fat at the Same Time – Article by Menno

How to Track Progress – Article by Andy

Thank you for listening! – Andy

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      The post Menno Henselmans on Steroid Use, HMB & Ketogenic Study Fraud appeared first on RippedBody.com.

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Making a Bank Note: A study of El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua bromide proofs

By Connor Falk

The history of El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua (the Bank of the State of Chihuahua) is brief and steeped in the turbulent times of the Mexican Revolution. It was founded on December 12, 1913, as decreed by General Francisco “Pancho” Villa, military governor of the state of Chihuahua and commander of the División del Norte, an armed revolutionary faction. The bank’s stated purpose, in addition to issuing currency, was to “facilitate loans on properties that fully guarantee capital, especially poor farmers who need pecuniary elements to tillage their lands.” The bank’s capital was 10 million pesos, to be distributed in bank notes backed by gold.

Work began quickly to locate a designer and printer for the bank’s notes, and after several unsuccessful forays, El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua contracted with the American Bank Note Company (ABNCo). Design work began in September 1914 with bank representatives choosing the vignettes to be used.

Illustrated here is Lot #1397 in an upcoming Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC, sale, which represents an interesting look at the bank note design process. The lot is a unique set of fourteen photographic proofs (also known as bromide proofs) made in 1914 by the ABNCo when designing notes for El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua. These prototypes consist of both obverses and reverses of all seven denominations issued by the bank, including the rare 1 peso denomination.

A variety of obverse vignettes were used for the notes (shown at right); the reverse vignettes, with minor variations, feature the seal of Mexico. The obverse of the 500 pesos features an allegorical design of two women, “Work” and “Knowledge,” with two young boys and El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua’s monogram in the center. The obverse of the 100 pesos depicts an armored Ceres seated with two men representing agriculture and industry in front.

The obverse vignettes on the lower denominations depict scenes rather than allegorical designs. The 50 pesos features a train pulling into a station, the 20 pesos illustrates a harvesting scene, the 10 pesos shows a rancher driving cattle, and the 5 pesos displays a miner using a pneumatic drill.

Of interest is the 1 peso obverse, which features a logging scene as the central vignette. The same scene is found on the Canadian Bank of Ottawa 5 dollars note from 1906 (Charlton 565-20-06). The later issues from 1913 (Charlton 565-22-02 and 565-26-02) feature a similar scene with the bottom row of logs removed, possibly to avoid cluttering a smaller vignette space than the 1906 issue. However, for the Chihuahua peso, ABNCo designers removed six loggers that were standing on the log pile. On the bromide, this was achieved by pasting the reworked scene directly over the original vignette. Why this change was made is unknown, though it’s possible the six loggers, who are white, looked out of place on what was to become a Mexican bank note.

The central vignette of the 1 peso (note the whiter paper pasted over the original design).

Other examples of “vignette sharing” were commonplace for ABNCo notes. The following issues share vignettes with El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua notes:

Canada, Union Bank of Canada, 5 dollars, 1903-1912, SCWPM-S1493 and S1495, same obverse vignette (harvest scene) as the Chihuahua 20 pesos

Haiti, Republique d’Haiti, 1 gourde, 1914, SCWPM-131, same reverse vignette (harvest scene) as on the obverse of the Chihuahua 20 pesos (an example of an overprinted provisional issue, SCWPM-140a is in this auction as lot 2305)

Venezuela, Banco de Venezuela, 20 bolívares, SCWPM-S286, S291, S301, and S311, 1910-1936, same obverse vignette (rancher scene) as the Chihuahua 10 pesos

This is not an exhaustive list, and I encourage others to provide more examples.

The other interesting aspect about the 1 peso note is its rarity. Although initial plans called for printing one million 1 peso notes, bank officials put the denomination on hold. Instead, an additional two thousand of the 500 pesos note were printed to cover the one million peso shortfall. Although ABNCo received word that plates should be prepared for the denomination, none were ever printed. Just three proofs, as well as the bromide in this set, are known. What should have been the most common note in the series became the rarest one instead.

The greyed out “L” on the 500 pesos.

The other denominations are more common, and this bromide set provides insight into their design process. Edits were made on the notes throughout production. The 500 pesos obverse bromide displays this best. Above the central vignette, a banner with the decree date reads PAGARA AL PORTADOR EN EFECTIVO SEGÚN DECRETO DEL 12 DE DICIEMBRE DEL MIL NOVECIENTOS TRECE. The second “DEL” should be “DE”; the ABNCo designers realized this and greyed out the erroneous “L.” On the printed notes, the sentence reads correctly, and the letters are slightly shifted to fill in the space.

Another design change on the 500 pesos is the change in signatories. Spaces are available for the interventor del gobierno (government controller), the cajero (cashier), and the presidente (president of the bank); however, presidente is crossed out and gerente (manager) is written below. All printed notes display gerente printed in place of presidente.

Changes were made to both the signatories and the gold backing clause.

A major change between the working copies and the printed notes is the valuation. On September 14, 1914, the valuation of the 10 pesos read ORO MEXICANO. The 5 pesos bromide displays a similar valuation stating VALOR ORO MEXICANO, but by October 1, 1914, this was changed to VALOR ORO NACIONAL, as seen on the rest of the bromides as well as the finished printed notes.

Although the notes were printed and delivered in early 1915, El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua would not exist much longer. Prendergast notes that “because of the depreciation of Villa’s currency after his defeat at Celaya (April 6-15, 1915), within a year the bank found it could no longer operate.” By November 23, the bank had closed, having never issued the notes both the ABNCo and bank officials had worked hard on. Instead, the series found new life, first as advertising and novelty items and now as numismatic pieces to be bought, sold and researched.

Acknowledgements

A full history of El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua written by Simon Prendergast can be found online at www.papermoneyofchihuahua.com. His work has been invaluable to my interest and research on this bank note series.

Mexican Paper Money by Cory Frampton, Duane Douglas, Alberto Hidalgo, and Elmer Powell is an invaluable tool for both El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua specialists as well as Mexican bank notes in general.

 Collecting Resources

• When it comes to specialized world paper money issues, nothing can top the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money, Specialized Issues .

• Any coin collector can tell you that a close look is necessary for accurate grading. Check out this USB microscope today!

The post Making a Bank Note: A study of El Banco del Estado de Chihuahua bromide proofs appeared first on Numismatic News.