#like A* in using the medium. D or whatever in exploring their subject matter

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

hang on are cougars like panthers

[not-xpr-art]

Art Advice #2 - How to beat art block!

Hi again everyone!

This is the second instalment to my Art Advice tag offering hints and tips for artists of any skill level! 

This time I’ll be going into ways I’ve found that help me to combat art block or creative ruts. Of course, these may not work for you, and a big part of art is learning about what things do and do not work for you, but I hope it at least offers some advice to anyone who struggles with art blocks!

How to beat art block. 

Getting into an art block can be one of the most frustrating things as an artist. Especially if you’ve tried to dedicate a window of time to drawing something, only for your brain to ‘nope’ out and give you no motivation. I’ve found it can often make you feel worthless as an artist, particularly when you see fellow artists continuing to produce countless amazing artworks, and this kind of self depreciation only adds to your inability to produce anything. 

And I’m not about to suggest some magical cure of art block, since I don’t believe there is one, but I hope that my advice can at least help lead you towards getting out of these vicious circles of art block & self deprecation!

Tip #1 - Explore other mediums 

I feel like as artists we get incredibly ‘comfortable’ in the mediums we’re familiar with. For me, that’s digital and pencil drawing. I’ve been doing pencil drawing for as long as I can remember, and digital for a little over 7 years, so I’ve become very comfortable in using them. 

However, I think that a good way to not only help combat art block, but also to expand your art horizons, is to step out of that comfort zone into a new field of art. 

Of course, I’m not saying that I expect every artist to go from pencil drawing for 10 years to suddenly picking up a paint brush and doing some oil painting. But instead that every so often maybe just try and dabble in mediums you’ve not used as much, or haven’t used before at all. A lot of shops sell pretty inexpensive paints, pens or pastels nowadays, not to mention a quick Google search will give you tips on how to use the particular medium if you’re not sure how to start. 

A thing I want to mention here, too, is that I think it’s important to not to expect yourself to be automatically ‘great’ at a particular medium. For example, last year I did my first embroidery piece. I had wanted to do embroidery for a long time, and did actually enjoy it a lot (even if it was incredibly time consuming lol). But I found myself dissatisfied with the finale result. 

And in a way this is because I expected myself to be perfect at embroidery after just one attempt, which is ridiculous of course, since any kind of art takes years and years to ‘master’. And when I look back, I can’t help but think ‘why does it have to be good in the first place’? Why did I put this pressure on myself to be a sudden Master of Embroidery, when surely the main goal of any kind of art is to some extent the enjoyment of the process? 

This is still a mindset I think a lot of artists will relate to, and is something I’m trying to combat myself. 

Recently I painted some fake plastic eggs inspired by the Polish folk art tradition ‘Pisanki’. They took a long time, and my neck hurt a lot from being hunched over and painting little dots, but honestly I really loved the whole process of them! Painting on 3D objects isn’t something I do a lot, and I also rarely do purely pattern-based work like this, so it was a real deviation from my comfort zone.

In a way, exploring other mediums is like a creative respite. Giving yourself a break from what you’re familiar with not only helps you to be inspired by a wide range or arts, but when you return to the mediums you enjoy the most, I’ve actually found you appreciate them even more!

(Really, nothing makes me more appreciative for digital art than painting a wrong dot on the surface of an egg and not being able to rub it out...)

Tip #2 - Try different styles

Another tip, similar in many ways to the first one, is to try different styles of art every once and a while. 

Like with materials, I think we as artists can get overly caught up in ‘our style’ of doing things. Whether this is a particular stylised or cartoonish way of drawing, or doing realistic art, or even sticking to a particular colour scheme. And I think especially in the world we live in, where artists have to make themselves as ‘consumer friendly’ as possible, which often means having a ‘recognisable brand’, it can feel like we have to do our art in a particular way, otherwise people will lose interest in it. 

I think this is harmful for a lot of reasons. Partly, I feel it stifles artists creativity to force themselves to do one style and one style only. I also feel it assumes that non-artists are so single-track minded that if an artist were to post works of art that involve different styles, then they would immediately lose interest. 

So my advice to any artist who has a particular style is to once in a while try out some different styles. It doesn’t have to be big pieces, and it also doesn’t have to be the polar opposite of what your style actually is. But instead if can be as simple as doing a ‘style challenge’ (something I’ve done in the past), or even just trying a different way of drawing or painting! 

In a way, changing your medium and changing your style occasionally go hand in hand. I particularly find that how I draw people will change with the kinds of mediums I use, or even when I start using a new brush with digital art.

For example, I recently did this super quick sketch of Kiki Layne, because I really loved the reference image, and it came out a lot more stylised than my art usually is. And this is almost entirely down to the brush I used (which was an ‘ink’ style brush, in comparison to the ‘pencil’ or ‘pen’ brushes I usually use for sketching). 

This isn’t a drastic change in style for me, but I do think even trying to do rougher or messier styles of art like this can allow you to see your art in a new light! 

(A side note here, but I already pretty much change up my style with every piece because I have no interest in being ‘marketable’ lol... But I’m definitely not suggesting everyone should be like me, just every so often changing up your style I believe can be really beneficial!)

Tip #3 - Changing subject matters

This one is essentially the same as the other two, and I’m sorry if this comes across as repetitive, but I think another great way to help beat art block is by changing up the kinds of things you draw!

Being predominantly a portrait artist, I rarely go out of my way to draw things like trees or birds or cups or whatever. But I know that often when I feel myself entering a kind of creative rut or art block, it’s because I’ve been drawing too many people & my brain is sort of all people-d out lol... 

(this is a tree I drew in oil paints midway through last year because I was feeling particular people-d out at that point)

So I think occasionally drawing other things, and going out of your art comfort zone, can help to improve your creativity. And hey, who knows, maybe you’ll end up incorporating something you drew randomly into a new artwork!

TL;DR (/conclusion)

So, remember that exploring other mediums, changing up your regular style and choosing other subject matters can all help in beating art block! Of course, you don’t have to do them all at the same time, but instead just dipping in and out of them as you produce your regular work can be highly beneficial! 

I mainly wanted to make this post not to say that by doing all three of these things, you’ll magically be free of art block forever, because that’s just not true. (I’m someone who does a lot of these things pretty regularly, but still gets into art blocks every now and then). I instead wanted to inspire you to deviate from what you are usually drawn to as an artist. 

The world is your creative oyster, so don’t be afraid to explore it! 

~

I hope you enjoyed this post about ways to beat art block! I may make a part two if people are interested since there are a lot of other things that I think can help in improving creativity!

[kob131]

New "So This is Basically X" video from Jello Apocalypse is on RWBY, and it's a bunch of pretty much crapping on the show.

(Note: read the Edit section for my recollected thoughts. I’d jus rewrite the post but that’d be like covering my mistakes)

… You know what? My dog just died so I am in no mood to tolerate this bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3vYbF3_TAk

A. ‘Added into the show at the last minute’ he says as his own fucking image directly states that the ‘last minute’ was the fucking Red Trailer. AKA the fucking psuedo-pilot. He had so many other chances like Neo or ABRN or the fucking Maidens but nope decided to do the ONE wrong thing.

B. ‘Hoitty Toitty Princess’ Yeah, because she was abused by her dad for years as well as watched her mother degrade into a lifeless husk. Again, could have made an actual point but decided to just spew out the most basic shit ever.

C. ‘Lose every fight she’s been in.’

*cough* WHITE TRAILER *cough*

Also: Fucking Missed Oppritunity: 3 *ding*

D. ‘Weiss hates Ruby’

That stopped in Volume 1, try again

E. ‘How many ears do they have?’

2 or 4

‘Human ears?’

Always

‘Animal ears?’

Sometimes

‘Neither?’

That’s you

‘BOTH?’

Sometimes

‘Why do some of them only have tails?’

Genetics

‘Humans are racist against the Lagoos’

Says the man who tried guilt tripping half the population through racism accusations.

Missed Fucking Opportunity: 4 *ding*

E. What couldn’t find say bullshit to spew about Yang? Missed Fucking Opportunity: 5 *ding*

F. Those are fucking one offs characters. Homer’s Vegas wife isn’t referred to as a side character, why should most of these be any different?

Also: ‘Never explores any of these!’ *shows team CFVY who are getting their own fucking book*

Good to see you still suck at making a point.

G. ‘Show isn’t about the characters!’

We get it, you’re slurping the anti-RWBY crowd’s cock. Make a valid point that not everyone and their grandmother’s grandmother made years ago.

H. *tries citing Neptune, a character that had about twenty minutes of screentime total as ‘eating up’*

Are you gonna do SOMETHING worthwhile? Because these jokes fall flat with a basic knowledge of the show.

I. ‘It’s about the over the top spectacle fights!’

Which not only were far less frequent in other ‘similar’ shows but they sometimes just #ate up screentime.

Missed Fucking Oppritunity: 6 *ding*

J. *butt metal!*

*cites Flynt, a fucking JAZZ musician*

What’s next? ‘Durr, marvel movie orchestra? BAD1′

K. ‘durr, clipping issues!’

*Slaps Fist Of The Blue Sky: Re:Genesis onscreen*

Come back when you make a point.

L. Jello, at the 2:10 mark you’ve done nothing but either say the same standard bullshit (which gets disproven within a minute of research*) or make shitty Take That! jokes.

About fucking RWBY. Egoraptor’s Ocarina of Time and ScottFalco’s Pokemon videos are mocking the shit out of you because you somehow made a worse version of both, about a less subjective medium with a fucking barrel full of fish. Guess that ‘Vote’ video must’ve fried them braincells huh?

M. Dust is elemental gunpowder, how is such a basic concept too complex for you to handle?

N. ‘Steal Dust and never bring it up again!’

Probably because the ending of Volume 2 was the END GOAL of stealing the dust you dumbass.

O. The magic comes straight from the fucking gods, Semblance and Dust have been used in Remnant science. Or is my cheap ass phone magic because someone from the 17th century doesn’t know how it works.

P. *points behind Jello at the massive burly man with the title ‘Lord of the Rings’ on it’s chest*

Have fun with him.

Missed Fucking Opportunity: 7 *ding*

Q. Wanna bet if the RWBY haters didn’t slurp Chibi’s cock he’d be bashing hibi instead of praising it.

R. *join the plot*

Ruby is the fucking plot.

S. So I’m guessing you’d call Hercules’ rage against Olympus and Hera ‘him getting a little mad?’

That’s okay, just like how you’d say your little ‘vote’ video was just ‘you having a little brainfart; amirite?

T. Ah yes, Volumes 1 and 2, which had the least defined characters, the most wasted screentime, the least plot, the least likablke versions of the heroes, the most side characters (INCLUDING NEPTUNE WHO YOU MOCK)-

Literally EVERYTHING you’ve spewed out your mouth was in the first two Volumes and 4 and 5 are the worst ones. Sure.

Missed Fucking Opportunity: 8 *ding* (Should actually be about 8001)

U. ‘Speaking of garbage *which is a segway I could put anywhere in this video’-

Good to know you’re aware of the piss poor quality of the video. Now if only you’d learn to keep your trap shut.

V. Ozpin was never suppose to be morally grey, next.

W. …

*pulls out Qrow and Ruby and replaces it with Yang and Liar Bitch McMass Murd-I mean Raven.*

Wow, context kicks your ass.

X. Jello.

What is the plot of RWBY?

No ‘Well there IS no plot’ bullshit. Tell me. What. The plot. Is.

… You can’t can you? This is the fucking Vote video all over again. You’re talking about a subject you have no clue about, spouting off whatever you think will get you the most positive PR and did no research whatsoever, Except with the video so infamous you had to DELETE it, politics is an inherently difficult subject matter that is easy to screw up (well, not to your extent.)

This is a web show.

Made by two drunk interns and an animator who took inspiration from BLAZBLUE.

And you have NOT made a SINGLE valid point.

The closest you got was the lip movements but you CLEARLY weren’t talking about the Volumes where it mattered so fucking credit.

Y. Blah blah blah ‘Bumbleby bullshit because pander’

Z. Qrow: ‘Oh ad my sister sold me and the daughter she abandoned twice before to the literal devil. Also why I am saying the bird thing is a curse? I defended Ozpin. My sister is the one claiming it to be a curse. Because she wanted to get away from the immortal pseudo-Greek villian which is a common feeling most people would think to do since it appeals to the inherent pragmatism in humanity but I overcame it through my niece’s determination to do the right thing in the end because just being pragmatic and doing what is most likely to succeed goes against one of the few things that make human beings what we are!

… Now I’m gonna go say my political opinions like I’m an important figure and not a walking punchline only known for mildly entertaining content that has suffered such a drop the Simpsons are looking at me in pity because I have a massive ego. And then when people call me out, I’ll delete the video and mock them like the child I am.’

*cracks open a beer* I don’t care if that’s cruel. He wants to talk like he knows shit? He can take it.

Edit:

https://twitter.com/alle1304/status/1137340212315643904

Well I owe him an apology. Over thinking he was pandering to the hate mob as well as my stupid attitude.

However I still stand by a lot of what I said: He missed a LOT of opportunities to make a good point and instead went with the lowest common denominator stuff. Like with making the joke about Weiss hating Ruby. It’s not funny because the joke is based on heavily outdated information and is just blatantly untrue.

There’s a reason why his ‘Welcome to *Website*’ videos are funny. Because while it is an exaggeration of what happens on the websites, it’s still basically true. Humor works when it strikes hard, either by throwing something so absurd at you that you’re forced to laugh because you don’t understand it, so raunchy that you laugh at the absurdity in which something so wrong was said so earnestly or by saying something so true that you’re forced to laugh to make light of the situation.

Jello’s video doesn’t do any of that. It either says a bunch of basic stuff that doesn’t work with knowledge or is saying things in a satricial way that people , EARNESTLY say, basically invoking Poe’s Law on himself. (The law of ‘Without a clear indication, a satire of X can easily been taken as an earnest belief in X.’)

This isn’t to say I was justified in what I did: it’s just even in a rational state of mind, the video is too flawed to be funny.

(Also no, I don’t regret what I said about the Vote video.)

[abundantchewtoys]

Homestuck Epilogues: Prologue, reaction post part 1

So me and Blaperile have decided to start reading it now. I kind of hope the format & art style stays true to form, but then again, change could be interesting. In any case, if this epilogue were to include the already posted snaps, that would be a break from format in image size (not including the credits, of course).

I guess if there is immediately an [S] page, it'll be the second one, not the first, to give use aheads up in the command.

Okay, so the first is a title page.

The link to the next page says... homestuck.com/epilogues/proglogue. Andrew, NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

(Yeah okay, so it has begun. Again.)

I could see the snaps being the prologue, since they kind of set the stage for what's to come. Jane taking control over The Felt being a major development, for one. Also, the noted absence of Davepetasprite^2 & Arquiusprite on Earth C. Or, perhaps rather, the noted presence of all the other sprites, they didn't stop being spirit guides after the game ended. And in the credits of course, there was John's being aggravated by Caliborn to the point this all would lead presumably to the clay doll scene Caliborn showed us, taking place further into the future than any of us had business viewing at the time.

---

> Start

AAAAAAHHHHH, Homestuck's a fanfic now!!! Yes, this is the Archive of Our Own format, including tags and... Andrew is no longer sole author of this story!!!

We have achieved MAXIMUM FANDOM (or should I say FANON).

Characters: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-h... Barack Obama?! :P I guess maybe John switched to a Baracktop in light of out-of-story events, plus of course Dave's idolization of the man. :P And Aranea returns!! And Davepeta too, cool! ... Wait, there's gonna be new OCs?? :P ... In before Joey & Jude & troll friends join the Homestuck madness. Well, if we can rely on this list of course. This IS Andrew Hussie we're talking about, of course.

Hmmm, Blaperile has a good point that Davepeta & Arquius are mentioned but not their component A2 trolls, since the "main" versions of them (post-retcon) are inside the sprites! And that all these characters except maybe for Caliborn (pre-LE, I mean) MIGHT just end up in the Furthest Ring together to do... whatever there needs to be done with the black hole aftermath of the standoff between Vriska & LE. And Calliope seems to be joining them, which is a nice thing to look forward too, main Calliope doing a plot thing. ... No mention of carapaces, but again, that doesn't have to mean anything.

Caliborn's entry seems to me to imply we might see the claydoll fight animated (or at least drawn) properly! :D

Barack is probably an Easter Egg just, nothing more. Which is funny because Easter is coming.

Content warnings: ... All these things (well not all of them, but) just refer to things mentioned in Homestuck proper. :P Quite the list we racked up, eh? Also, Gamzee hath invaded the list: clowns, honk... Hahah. Surprised "horses" didn't make it on here. And puppets. So I know I was saying I don't really believe these tags to truthfully warn about things to come in this epic, but I'm kind of scared by the mention of Trickster Mode. :P ... Oh yeah, hahah, that WAS something that happened at the wedding, didn't it, Calliope bringing the sucker & transforming John & the B2 kids? So that thing survived the end of the session we know.

Another thing making me uncomfortable is all the illicit subjects the warnings are about, but yeah, that's what a lot of fanfics contain.

Summary: ... Ooooh, so John DIDN'T immediately take off to fight Caliborn! That's... I actually had wagered the epilogue to start on April 13th, 2019 thinking about it over the weekend. It would just seem so fitting, but I thought it might have been so that the B2 kids would have aged a relative 2 years during the time the B1 kids were stuck in the house. So that they could go back to filling that big brother/sister relationship that was kind of always there, first & foremost shown in the Strider Bros, later when we didn't know yet that the kids would be the same age when they'd meet up, during Act 6 Act 1.

Blaperile has a good point, this means Terezi has been exploring the Furthest Ring for 7 years (or almost 4 sweeps).

Contents: This looks like it could grow into a list. Since, well, this is the prologue just yet for the epilogue hahah. Then again, maybe we 'return' to this page after the prologue is done, only for the list to have grown with the next... "act".

> Prologue

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH WALL OF TEXT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH HOMESTUCK IS A FANFIC NOWWWWWWWWWWWWW for real. ... Oh dear god.

Well, it's definitely a medium Andrew didn't touch on yet, the "picture this for yourselves" type of fiction. Kind of incentive for people to draw this for themselves.

And then Homestuck became a serialized novel. :D

Okay that entire first sentence. I'm definitely on the same page here as everyone when I say this must be about the Furthest Ring cracking. ... I think Andrew's propensity for dragging out a story comes over quite well in fanfic prose form.

Hmm... So, "eternity" is being filled by the black hole, and continuity is buckling up? Seems like the entirety of Homestuck proper might be at risk of being undone in something more damaging than a mere retcon.

Wow, nice vivid description of the dreambubbles being shattered. "Hypothetical futures", does that suggest that the ghosts of alternate timelines were more like... mirages? That's a harsh thing to swallow, and not something any of them would have been happy hearing stated as fact. Well, except the Aradiabots, maybe. "Double-death" mention!

... So there's a symphony at the center of the black hole. Does that mean Alternate Calliope still lives (or well, "exists"), as the conductor of the havoc? It's super black at the center, apparently. Like, Vantablack?

Wait, "> Wake up"? Did John dream about the Furthest Ring? ... What DO the kids dream, after they won the game? Or rather, where do they dream?

"You've been dreaming in anime again." Ah yes, there's the first real meme of the evening. So, John rejects this dramatic dream and will rather substitute his own fantasies? :P

"> Look outside just to make absolutely sure the world is not ending." --> Why does it feel like we've started this adventure anew? Why are command prompts working out so well in this format?

'The only sound you can hear for miles is the wind skimming the hollows of your neighbors’ pipe homes.' Well, if that isn't a reference to his atmospheric page! And oh yeah, that was his new neighbourhood! Or, after 7 years, not 'new' anymore, I guess.

'It’s a normal day in the salamander village, which you refer to as Salamander Village because the damned salamanders never bothered to give this village a name, you guess.' Perfection. So, it appears the consort species remain the same, no matter how many millenia may pass. I wouldn't like to be a mail person in the Consort Kingdom, if all packages are to be delivered at Salamander Village. Then again, the Breeze might still be on mail duty on Earth C.

'Beside your pillow, your phone is vibrating. Rose is calling. The screen of your phone reads 9:30 a.m. April 13, and also the number forty-six, which is how many text messages your friend left you while you were sleeping. A bit excessive, even for her.' Ahahahah, so even in texts Rose is wordy!! Good to see they kept in contact, then. Not as much in-person contact, seeing the credits, but then again, the kids always used to live apart, didn't they? (I can still call them 'the kids', even if we're no longer a decade apart in age. Get of my lawn!)

"> Answer the phone." Yessssss, coloured text logs!! In the absence of drawings, it would've really sucked a little and be bland if we'd lacked this.

Aww, April 13th is still a solemn day for John. :/ Rose is calling it "April Thirteenth" as if it's a holiday, which it might just be. Blaperile has a good point that John has called Rose directly, and isn't texting. The immediate assumption for what Rose said, was that they don't talk a lot, but maybe they don't CALL each other a lot, just trade messages!

"You wander to the window and watch the salamanders go about their day. All over the neighborhood, the little dad-salamanders are putting on their little rumpled hats and picking up their little suitcases and kissing their little families goodbye for the day. You’ve always been confused about what, exactly, they contribute to the global economy. But it’s pretty cute how much they love playing at being suburban businessmen."

Pfff, the rumple hats are still a thing, guess the kids really did shape this universe in much the same way as the session! (Okay yeah, so, consorts came over from the session too, so the fact that the custom remains to the current day might just be another showcase for the status quo that consorts live under when not interacting with PCs...) Of course, this is going to sting for John, all this dadly business going around.

"The silence over the phone is growing awkward. You’ve stalled long enough. You decide to just come out and say it.

JOHN: i’ve been dreaming in anime again lately."

Aaaaaand meme number two is here. Blaperile mentioned Act 7, and yeah, John DID dream about the Furthest Ring & the blackhole, both centerpice in the Act 7 animated video. :P

"ROSE: i see." Therapist mode, engaged. Next, ask him how he feels about the dream, Rose.

"JOHN: whenever i have these dreams, everything’s breaking apart.

JOHN: millions of people are screaming and dying." Huh, is it that John didn't recognize the ghosts (being the oblivous bloke he is), or is there something more to the danger of the black hole? After all, after all of the Furthest Rings is swallowed, what's left is sessions and the universes they spawned...

"A couple yards over, a salamander blows an astounding spit bubble. Truly one for the books." Meanwhile...

"ROSE: I don’t have the slightest idea what it means that you’ve been dreaming in anime, John.

ROSE: To be honest, I...

You wait for Rose to finish her thought. She doesn’t, which is troubling because you have never known Rose to leave a thought unfinished in over ten years of acquaintance." ... Did she have a Light vision, or is someone pulling her sleeve about this or other with the troll grubs? It just hit me, we might be in for some new venues in the relationships between the humans & trolls, since yeah, they're all adults now.

"JOHN: rose... are you ok?

ROSE: Not exactly.

JOHN: what’s wrong?

ROSE: I think my condition’s been getting worse lately.

JOHN: condition?

ROSE: It’s why my message probably sounded urgent.

JOHN: you left 46 messages.

ROSE: Yes. They were all urgent.

JOHN: oh.

ROSE: I don’t think I can wait much longer before telling you."

So, Blaperile was theorizing Kanaya or Rose might be pregnant based on her trailing off. I dismissed it out of hand, but now... It would be just something for Rose to designate a pregnancy as a "condition". ... And to see contractions as a worsening of that condition. If John just talked about anime over Rose trying to tell him the baby is coming, I might just scream. And it's on HIS birthday, too!

"ROSE: I held out for as long as I could. I figured your birthday was as good a time as any to let you know.

JOHN: let me know what?

ROSE: It’s crept up on me, these last couple of years.

ROSE: Gradually enough to ignore as it was happening, but I can’t anymore." Okay, so this seems to dismiss that. I'm actually somewhere halfway between "Rose is suffering from some sort of aspect-driven migraine/dementia due to the black hole", or secondly "Rose is realizing she loves John (platonically)". I mean, the latter would be standard-issue Lalonde fuckery.

"ROSE: Lately the visions have been overwhelming.

JOHN: visions??

ROSE: John, I have terrible headaches these days. Talking on the phone doesn’t help at all.

ROSE: Would you mind flying to my apartment, so we can continue this in person?

JOHN: oh, yeah. you mean...

JOHN: now?

ROSE: Yes, now is the time.

ROSE: I’ve put it off long enough." ... Oh. So, I guess Rose was ignoring these visions because she was like "fuck you, multiverse, I earned my happy ending", which I get, but... What visions does she have, do they match what John was describing? (I don't think she wants to get him over for a surprise birthday party, in any case.)

Wow, okay, so whatever drove them to go fight Caliborn, it wasn't just John convincing the rest of them. Should've known, he was never that kind of leader.

"As you hang up the phone, a familiar feeling settles over you. A feeling of...standing? Standing, and being alone. In your bedroom. As a young man. On your birthday. You swear you’ve felt this feeling before. It’s almost like...

A young man stands alone in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man���s birthday. Though it was twenty-three years ago when he was given life, and ten years ago when he was given a name, it feels like it is only today that he will begin to understand what all that means.

That young man is YOU, John Egbert.

What will you do?"

Oh HELL yes. That first shoutout was glorious, but the actual word for word callback? Priceless. And the fact that the narration gives John the initiative for what happens now? Glorious. Because it sure as hell ain't gonna be US giving him prompts, this time around. And what in the high hills is there for John to find out about what it all means! I mean, is he going to discover the nature of his existence as a fictional character? Because that might just crush his widdle brains.

Okay, this is as good a place as any to cut off this liveblog. Since I'm not sure how long this prologue might continue after this!

Cooooool though, we've started this journey anew. For however long it's going to last. Which, given the fact the epilogues get their own entry on the Homestuck site... Might be a very, very long time. It's three years since the ending of Homestuck, and I wonder how reading up is going to be. For now, everything kind of fell back into the old pattern between me and Blaperile. We'll see what we'll do next.

I'm equal parts exhilarated and anxious about getting on Mr. Hussie's wild rollercoaster again, so I'm going to try and quarantine the anxious part and cultivate the exhilarated part.

[t-oresama]

"A Celebration in Animation: The 100 Greatest Cartoon Characters in Television History" by Marty Gitlin and Joe Wos

Synopsis: Few morose thoughts permeate the brain when Yosemite Sam calls Bugs Bunny a "long-eared galoot"or a frustrated Homer Simpson blurts out his famous catchphrase "D'oh!". A Celebration in Animation explores the best-of-the-best cartoon characters from the 1920s to the twenty-first century. Casting a wide net, it includes characters both serious and humorous and ranging from silly to malevolent. But all the greats gracing this book are sure to trigger nostalgic memories of care-free Saturday mornings or after-school hours with family and friends in front of the TV set. 

Published: 2018 (Lyons Press) Genre: Non-fiction, pop culture, ranked list Rating: 3.5 out of 5

WARNING: There are some spoilers in this review (they don't mention the ranking of the shows I'll mention, just the shows themselves). The cover of the book already spoils things in this regard, but just in case you want to read this yourselves, you may want to skip reading this review until then! :D

Reader Review: Okay, so at this point, I'm literally going to start making a new tag/sub-series of reviews called "judging a book by its cover", because yet again, that's what I did. Heck, I'll even go back to my old reviews and tag them as such I went back to my old reviews and tagged them as such. Working at a library is a blessing and a curse in this regard... Anyway, my allure to this book's cover came from Teen Titans' Beast Boy being smack-dab on it. And with my undying love for the original Teen Titans series, I was instantly curious as to what ranking he'd been awarded (THAT, I will spoil; it'll be in the tags). And I've always had a love of both cartoon history and countdown lists, so this book was right up my alley anyway. 

Now, as much as the internet likes to make fun of WatchMojo on Youtube ("Top Ten Anime Betrayals" memes, anyone?), you have to admit that you yourself have watched at least one of their countdown lists, or a countdown list from someone else (ScreenRant, Looper, etc). There's something inherently interesting about putting things, specifically things we see in pop culture, in a ranked order, and the possibilities of the subjects of these lists are limitless so there's something for everyone. That being said, it drives me crazy when people get so mad or defensive about the entry order of a top 10/ top whatever number list, whether it's "How could THIS be #1???", "How could this NOT be #1???", "What about ___???", you get it. So going into reading this list of the top 100 cartoon characters in all of cartoon history, you really have to understand that these are the, albeit well-thought-out and industry-knowledgeable, OPINIONS of two people. This is not the Mayan calendar, the end-all be-all of lists. If anything, it prompts a dialogue, inviting you to hop on discussion train and talk about cartoons yourself. 

Both Marty Gitlin, a pop culture author, and Joe Wos, a cartoon illustrator, have both the professional and personal insight of the vast history of cartoons. What is very apparent, though, is that these two have come together for more of their personal love of cartoons than anything else. This didn't bother me personally, because no matter how unbiased a ranking list claims to be, there's always a little bit of bias. The two authors try to base their rankings in fact more than personal preference, and for the most part they do stay unbiased, in both obvious and non-obvious ways (for example: there is one Disney character that ranks decently higher on the list than another Disney character, which was backed by reasonings both personal and professional by the authors, since the initial reaction from anyone would probably be "...Wait, really?"). Their choices do a great job in ranging from the dawn of cartoon history with "Crusader Rabbit" and "Astro Boy" to much more recent cartoons like Archer from "Archer", Tina from "Bob's Burgers" and Korra from "The Legend of Korra", all with the same logic applied to each for why they deserved to be recognized in this book, and not necessarily why they deserve spot number whatever (although they do emphasize the rankings DO matter, but it didn't really matter a whole lot outside of the top 20). I genuinely enjoyed learning about cartoons I wasn't too familiar with, getting little blurbs and fun facts out of it, and just generally getting into the heads of Gitlin and Wos. It's clear they did their research and really applied a lot of thought to this list. After all, it's hard with ALL the cartoons characters that have existed since the early 1900s to simply pick 100. Some liberties are taken for duos, like Sylvester and Tweety and Cosmo and Wanda, but it makes sense because some exist as foils of the other to play off of each other, and their partnership is what made them stand out individually in the first place. In that regard, it's more like a top 125-ish list, but again, the authors take care in making the reasonings make sense. Plus there's a foreword from SpongeBob voice and overall voice-acting marvel Tom Kenny, which is a nice treat that whets our appetite for what this book will unveil.

That being said, this book is very much a first draft that should have had some more time to be edited before release. It's enough sometimes to be overlooked; in the beginning of each new ranking, there's a bio for each character (Created by:____ Debuted in: ___ Voiced by: ____), but rather than a new blurb starting on a new line, there are sometimes two blurbs that exist on the same line. Again, not the worst thing ever. But then there are some that are just impossible to let go; there's literally a ranking (within the ranking) of Pinky and the Brain's most ridiculous "Take over the world" schemes, and there's randomly a line about Racer X of "Speed Racer" fame that is clearly not supposed to be in this ranking, let alone in this ranking's ranking. Consistency is also an issue. For a book about cartoons, there's a big lack of them in this book. Every ranked character, I assumed, would have its own picture to visually show the reader who the character is in a "show, don't tell" kind of way, but that was very much not the case for a large amount of characters. The most logical answer to this could've been that there were copyright issues where the authors couldn't obtain permission to use their images, but several Disney characters appear visually in the book, despite Disney being notoriously stingy about sharing their characters in mediums they don't helm themselves. And where we get a cartoon character visually for #1-45, we don't get any pictures at all for a straight 15 rankings afterwards. For a ranked list about a visual medium, I would've loved to have seen who they were talking about, instead of Google image searching who certain characters were (like I had no idea who Beany and Cecil were before this book, and had to provide my own visual representation). It's just an odd choice for a cartoon book to exclude... cartoons. Though what's more odd are some images they did include. There are a couple of weird choices of photos, like the French TV poster for "Pokemon" that says "Le Film" under a screenshot of Pikachu, and the tiniest picture ever of "Crusader Mouse" obscured by the title sequence. Again, Googling these characters myself showed me better results than the book did. 

Finally and most importantly, character information is straight-up wrong. I know I said they do their research-- and they do-- and the authors are obviously not expected to know everything about every character offhand, but where they get tiny details and industry notes spot-on, they get the absolute simplest character information so unusually incorrect. There are two notable examples in my copy of the book. The first one is in Fat Albert's entry, where it states "Cosby Kid Tito is killed by a stray bullet intended for his older brother, who had joined a gang" (Uh... Fat Albert spoilers?). But it's actually Tito's younger brother Fernando who is shot and killed because the older brother who joins a gang is "Cosby Kid Tito". I know the piece is about Fat Albert the character and not Tito, but why bring this up if you don't even use the correct character to mention how progressive the show was to justify Fat Albert's place on the list? The second one is for the Powerpuff Girls regarding Blossom's physical description. It reads: "Blossom boasted light brown hair with a large blow and featured a short cape tied behind her pink dress and black belt." UMMMMMMM. I was so absolutely confused by this one line I had to look up various shots of her character model in case I somehow forgot that she had a cape, and to clarify, she absolutely does not have a cape (unless for specific episodes where's she dressing up outside of her normal attire). Did the authors think her hair was a cape? Did they mistake one episode where she wore a cape for the entirety of the series where she doesn't wear one? NO CAPES (CHECK OUT INCREDIBLES 2 IN THEATRES JUNE 15TH). Also... light brown hair? What adds insult to injury, besides the well-established fact that she has RED hair, is that this character description is written RIGHT NEXT TO A PICTURE OF THE POWERPUFF GIRLS TO PROVE THAT THAT IS NOT TRUE. Honestly, I'll give leniency where it's due for taking on the task of ranking and going in-depth on the origins and noteworthy points of a character, but no one prompted them to make this list. If you're going to talk in-depth about a character, fact-checking is your best friend. This is simple research, or simple picture-looking.

Overall, it's a fun book that helps you brush up on your cartoon history and send you into a state of nostalgia. I do wish there were more than the ten or so characters from Japan, Canada or the UK that appear on this list, but again, it's a book written in America that tends to look at the influence of said cartoons in American history, and asking someone to examine every cartoon character in the WORLD is a daunting, if not impossible task. I do also disagree with the fact that the list starts with #1 and descends from there. I find it more fun to build up to that #1 spot, because who really wants to read who #100 is when you know who #1 is already? I actually read this book backwards because of this, and found it much more satisfying to see the #1 spot by the "end". But I don't think there will be any dispute with who the top 30 or so cartoons are, but even if there are, that's the fun of ranked lists like this: if you disagree, just make your own list! It's all in good cartoon fun.

[47pictures]

“Dandelion” [PT. I]

Link to original r/nosleep story here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/libraryofshadows/comments/o7tj7w/dandelion_part_1/

I’d never participated in a group study of any kind before, so for it being my first, I felt like I was actually contributing something useful to the world of science. Some students around campus said there may even be some money involved, mainly just mentioned as an incentive to join in the first place, of course. I volunteered specifically for this one due to the subject matter that its research was geared towards, one that I found a bit fascinating.

Dreams… or, so they advertised. More so the study of how the subconscious works in correlation to our deep-rooted memories.

Dr. Ramirez, young and beautiful, and probably in her mid to late-twenties, explained it all just perfectly, and perhaps in the easiest way it could be.

In the room just ahead of the lab, she gave me a quick rundown of how exactly the machine was going to work. On a dry-erase board, she drew one big near-perfect circle, and inside of it drew another smaller circle. She then pointed at the smaller circle with her marker.

“Let’s say this is the Earth,” she started. I nodded, following along. “And this,” she went on, as she motioned around the bigger circle, “is space and beyond. Everything outside of here is full of endless possibilities, right? You’ve got your other planets, asteroids, comets, satellites, stars, and so on.”

I nodded again, a bit amused with her analogy, wherever it was pointing to.

She continued. “Now, can you imagine where I might be going with this?” she asked with a skittish smile.

I know she didn’t expect me to give her an even remotely correct answer.

“You’re gonna send me to space?” I dryly remarked.

She laughed. “Not quite, but I like your sense of humor.” At least she had one, I thought to myself.

Dr. Ramirez went on to further explain as she drew words over the top rim of each circle, labeling them. She started with the smaller circle.

“This is you, essentially,” she explained while simultaneously writing the word “conscious” over the top rim. She then moved over to the bigger circle. “And this is also you, but the vaster and more mysterious ‘you’, if that makes sense.”

She proceeded to write the word “Subconscious” on top of the larger one.

Thankfully she was a visual demonstrator and I was a visual learner. I remembered a decent bit of this when I took AP Psych back in high school, but then again, I barely passed AP Psych. Had a great teacher, though.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘as above, so below’?” she asked me.

I suggestively tilted my head. “Here or there, maybe once or twice,” I answered.

“Well, the reason I ask is because I like to compare that exact same expression to how the subconscious and conscious works,” the doctor went on as she pointed at both words with her marker appropriately. “They are both one and the same, however, they like to work in different ways. As you may already know or at least have some sort of grasp on the topic, your subconscious stores most of your long-term data, you know, those memories that can go further back, or even some as recent as yesterday that your brain just decided to lock away in the back. These things don’t require your ‘conscious awareness’ or immediate focus, right?”

From what I noticed about her so far, Dr. Ramirez liked to talk with her hands, but I must say, she made it work for her. It was rather intriguing.

“Whether it’s driving a car, riding a bike, or playing the piano,” she continued. “Or heck, even learning a new language. At some point, you had to learn these things for the first time, and they required a great deal of conscious effort, yes?” I nodded. “So, thankfully, our brains have been blessed with the ability to ‘learn’.” She let out a short laugh. “And so, these memories are stored in our subconscious, where it basically becomes second nature to do these sorts of tasks. You with me so far?”

I nodded again to reassure her. My sandpaper-dry personality probably wasn’t helping, but she really did have my full attention whether she realized it or not. I hope she knew that I wouldn’t have volunteered otherwise.

“Now,” she started again, but this time drew another medium-sized circle just around the “Conscious”-labeled one, “Our understanding of dreams has always been sort of a mystery to science. Many say they’re just random jumbles that our brain picks from our subconscious, whereas some say they’re a state of mind that acts independently on its own. Well now, we’ve learned that both of those answers are… well, sort of correct.” She then labeled the circle that surrounded “Consciousness” under the name of “Dream State”. The entire diagram was starting to look like a big target, with “Consciousness” in the center, “Dream State” being the inner rim, and “Subconscious” as the outer rim.

“Think of our dreams as the Earth’s atmosphere,” she said. “Any sort of debris that enters the atmosphere at high speed, such as a meteor or fallen satellite, gets broken up into little pieces before it can cause some serious damage to all of us down below, right? I’m assuming you were awake for science class in middle school?”

“Eh,” I joked. She took it with a laugh, but if only she knew I used to have an issue falling asleep in school as a kid. “So, our dreams protect us from our subconscious, is that what I’m hearing?”

“Ooh, I like the way you think,” the doctor remarked. “I’d like to think of it more like, in a less catastrophic example, that our dreams ‘filter’ what our subconscious throws at us. Now, there’s still debate on whether or not our subconscious actively tries to communicate with us or our dreams are the ones pulling from our subconscious, but that’s beside the point. What we’ve come to learn, in the midst of all the chaos in our dream state, from being able to fly, seeing the sky turn a different color, seeing giant chickens cross the road, and whatever other crazy things people have mustered from their imagination is that dreams are no longer the barrier that stands between understanding our subconscious. We’ve now developed a way to essentially enter our subconscious state, unfiltered and uninterrupted.”

And that was where she threw me for a loop. I stammered to try and find the words to even begin questioning something so bizarre, but with no luck. I could tell she was amused by my bewilderment from the smile on her face. We'd come so far in technology and scientific advances - was this it? Is this what the future held all this time?

“So, Mr. Thompson,” Dr. Ramirez spoke. “Are you ready to explore space?”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

She led me to the lab room where we would be doing our first session of the experiment. I was expecting something more intricate or complex. In reality, the setup was quite minimal. An operating stool sat in the center as expected, and next to it stood a monitor that I assumed was for checking my pulse. Along the wall was the real sight to behold. Large screens displaying all sorts of numbers and diagrams in which I couldn’t even comprehend their meaning. Though, from what I could probably guess, it looked like some sort of EEG setup. I’d seen it in movies and documentaries (and back in AP Psych class), but never in person.

“Now before we start, I have to ask if you’ve eaten in the past 8 hours?” Dr. Ramirez asked. “It’s a precaution we take for all of our test subjects due to the side effect of leaving the hub.”

“Uh, just a protein bar,” I said. “Did you say ‘hub’?”

“Oh, yes, that’s sort of the nickname we came up with for what’s basically the ‘subconscious state’.”

“Oh…”

“So that’s good that you’ve had some form of sugar and carbs at least today. Sometimes people report feeling a bit lightheaded or lethargic after the session, and the first thing they’ll usually want is a coffee or a soda. We have a vending machine for soda, snacks, or coffee - whichever you prefer - across the hall if you need them afterwards.”

All this time we had discussed going from point A to B, but not how. Looking around the room, seeing all the tech being used, I couldn’t imagine the funding that must’ve been poured into this project.

“I’m sure you’ll get to it soon enough, but how exactly does this work?” I finally asked, doing my best not to sound impatient. Dr. Ramirez, however, seemed more than happy to explain.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she replied. “Well let me just give you a basic rundown of what this all does and how it’s going to affect you.”

She picked up a small lightweight device from the table that clearly looked like some sort of headset, much akin to a VR one. However, it had a sort of synthetic material cap attached to it, with multiple white dot-like pieces carefully placed. It certainly looked like an EEG device for scanning the brain, as I'd guessed earlier.

“This is why we’re here today,” said Ramirez, pointing at the device with her free hand. “This little guy here is called the Cadacus.”

I cocked a brow.

“Supposedly it’s derivative of Hermes’ staff, you know, in mythology, the symbol used for ambulances and medical-related stuff?”

“Mmm,” I understandingly nodded.

“I tried to tell them that one, it’s spelled wrong, and two, it’s not even pronounced correctly,” she said, rather annoyed. “It’s supposed to be ‘Ca-doo-she-us’, but, then again, I’m not the one who invented it, so Dr. Lockhardt gets the final say on that.”

She then handed me the set for me to get a feel for it and analyze it for myself. Nifty, needless to say. As she had explained, the device was capable of not (and she greatly stressed) recording your dreams, per se, but instead taking you into your ‘subconscious’ world. Dreams are merely the barrier blocking us from seeing our subconscious thoughts and memories uninterrupted. In dreams, situations and objects might change sporadically at any given time without warning. One of the greatest struggles, she explained, when testing the Cadacus was trying to find the breakthrough in how exactly to bypass the REM cycle, which is when most of our dreaming occurs. But she explained that as well…

“In the world of science and medicine, or rather human innovation as a whole, we’ve learned how to basically pick certain parts of our brain and utilize them how we see fit, and not the other way around,” she preached. “Not have them decide for us. Essentially, Cadacus allows us to hack certain parts of the brain that are responsible for letting us take a peek inside our deepest embedded memories. I like to tell people the closest thing we have to a time machine is our own brain. In it lies a whole world of events and moments that you may have forgotten, or choose to have forgotten.”

“So what’s to stop it from peeking into memories that are… I don’t know, better left forgotten?” I proposed. Of course, she had an answer for that as well.

“Great question. So the beauty of Cadacus is that just like I mentioned, you now have the utmost control over what you decide to see… or, at least we’re testing to make sure things stay that way.”

And there it was. That was the catch. After all, nothing was ever perfect.

“I’m sorry, I just have to ask, how many people have you tested this thing on?” I boldly inquired. Ramirez seemed unbothered by the question, though. In fact, nothing seemed to bother her with everything I asked. To me, it conveyed confidence in the things she spoke on, which I hoped also equated to her being sincere.

She chuckled. “Honest answer? About twenty-four so far. Now I’m sure the real reason you’re asking is because you want to know how many of those tests turned out successful or not, yeah?”

I answered with a guilty smirk. Absolutely that’s why I asked.

“Well you have nothing to worry about, Mr. Thompson,” she reassured. “All of the people who’ve participated so far haven’t reported any negative side effects, other than the low energy blunder right after the exiting the hub. So you're not gonna have to worry about spazzing out or going 'mental' in any sort of fashion. And keep in mind, these tests were done over the course of weeks, and some even months, depending on whether or not we came across more interesting findings during the sessions.”

She really didn't back down from a fight. Ramirez stuck to her facts, despite how truthful or not they were, unbeknownst to me. I took in a short tense breath, then exhaled.

“All right, but you have to promise me one thing,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Call me Travis. If I’m supposed to trust you with handling my brain, we oughta start getting to know each other a little better, don’t you agree?”

She smiled and nodded. “Fair enough,” she replied. “In that case, you may call me Jennifer.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Cadacus was now all set, and we were ready to start. The headset over my eyes, electrodes covering my scalp, and the HRM hooked to my wrist and chest were all properly configured. Jennifer also had everything she needed set up on her giant monitor, where she could now see my full brain, able to pinpoint any changes in activity. From my perspective, the Cadacus headset made everything in the room look like I was peering through a fish-eye lens scope. It was all blurred and a bit disorienting, but it wouldn’t be for long once I entered the hub, Jennifer informed me.

“You ready?” she asked, sounding more excited than I was.

“Sure,” I answered, lying through my teeth.

“Oh yeah? ‘Cause from the looks of it, you seem pretty nervous.”

I knew she had to be looking at my heartbeat to know that.

“It’s okay, everyone experiences the same thing,” she added before I could say anything. “Just try to relax. Remember, it’s not like a dream where you have no sort of control over what happens to you. You’ll have control over the things you experience just like you would in the comfort of your own home, based on the words that I give you. You don’t have to see something scary if you won’t want to. Remember that, okay?”

I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I complied.

“Good.” She gave me a pat on the shoulder and walked back over to her desk by her computer and giant monitor. “Alright, so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna have you count down to 'one', starting from 'five' when I say so. Sound good?”

“Ready when you are,” I answered.

“Alright…”

I couldn’t see her really from the corner of my goggles, but I could hear her hit a few keys on her computer, along with two clicks of her mouse.

“Okay...” she started.

And with one final click of her mouse, a high-pitched whirring sound began to emit from the Cadacus and straight into both of my ears. It reminded me of the times I had to get a hearing test done, and all those high-frequency noises sounding from left to right.

“Go ahead and countdown for me,” she said.

“Five,” I began. “Four. Three. Two-”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’m not sure how quickly it all happened, but the next thing I knew, I was suddenly standing alone in the center of some vast blackness of space, as I opened my eyes. The only light came from above in the form of what looked to be a stage spotlight, which shined down on me. I didn’t have the sensation that I was dreaming, though. I felt fully present and aware of the fact that I didn’t even finish my countdown. Just moments ago, I thought, the last number I was on was ‘two’. And now this is where I was. Not laying in the chair of the lab room, no headset or goggles covering my face...

Then a faint, echoey voice sounded from no particular direction. It seemed to come from everywhere.

“Travis, can you hear me?” it spoke. “This is Jennifer. If you can hear me, just go ahead and say something.”

Amazing. She wasn’t kidding. It’s as if she were God herself.

“Yeah…” I answered unsurely. “Can you hear me?”

“Perfect, I hear you just fine,” Jennifer spoke back from the ‘beyond’.

This was a bit too trippy for me. I really didn’t know what to expect, but this exceeded anything I could’ve possibly rehearsed prior in my head.

“You never did count to one,” she joked.

“Oh yeah, um… one,” I remarked. I could even hear her laugh just the same as if she were right next to me. Her voice began to sound more and more clear as she kept talking.

“There we go. Now tell me, right now, what is it that you see?”

Not a damn thing, I wanted to say. But I gave her what I could.

“Well…” I began, looking all around me, still under the spotlight, “I’m standing in… what I think is a stage, and there’s like…” I looked directly up, “... a spotlight right over me.”

“Interesting,” I heard Jennifer say. “That’s a new one for me.”

“Where am I?” I asked.

“So, you’re actually in ‘the hub’ as we speak. This is just your interpretation of it.”

“My interpretation?”

“Uh-huh. So what happens is that basically, our own subconscious mind presents itself to us through its own unique layout, or environment, if you will. For instance, every time I went through it, I was always standing in a giant ocean of shallow water, and a bright blue sky with no sun in sight. Others see a never-ending field of grass, a barren desert, or maybe even an empty warehouse, in some cases.”

“Huh…” I quietly mumbled.

“So for you, your subconscious presents itself in the form of an unlit stage, probably waiting to be filled.”

I expected to be more afraid, given that there was basically a never-ending plain of darkness beyond the spotlight, but to my own surprise, I found it a bit peaceful. It also helped that Jennifer was still with me.

“Your vitals appear to be in great shape, which is good. Means your body is responding well to the Cadacus so far. And on that note, I’m gonna begin going down our list of ‘sensory triggers’.

I wish she had picked a less threatening word than ‘triggers’, especially when I’m in a place so foreign to me (ironic, given that it is me).

“How this is going to work is that I’m going to give you a word, and with that word, I want you to close your eyes and concentrate as much as you can on connecting that word to a specific thought or memory, okay? It sounds odd, I know, but trust me, you’ll see pretty soon. Don't overthink it.”

“Well, I trusted you this far, haven’t I?” I remarked.

“Yes, indeed you have, and I’m thankful for that. Okay, so the first word I’m going to give you is… golf.”

“Okay,” I spoke under my breath, as I began to close my eyes.

I visualized everything that I possibly could relating to golf, all the way from a golf ball, to Tiger Woods, to a golf club, then to a field of low-cut grass, to a golf cart, and so on…

I did this for about five seconds before opening my eyes again. When I opened them, I was met with what I could only describe as the piece of a house set design. It truly was like I was on the stage for a film studio or theater. The set design only showed an open door and small portions of the perimeters of the walls of the structure. It was as if someone cut a portion of the house like a slice of cake, particularly the front door, and placed it in front of me.

“Do you see anything?” Jennifer’s voice asked.

I saw something, alright. The problem was, I didn’t exactly know what. Obviously, it was a house, but an incomplete one.

“Uh, I see… a part of a house,” I said. “Like, it sorts of looks like those half-built set houses that you see on film sets, you know, like for shows or movies?”

“Oh, I see. Interesting… Your subconscious mind must be very, hmm… imaginative? Or strongly connected to the cinematic or theatrical.”

“Hmmm... it's a theory.”

“Hey, no one knows you better than yourself, right?"

I shrugged. "I guess."

"I'm not trying to intrude or anything, this is just me taking notes to see if there’s perhaps a correlation between your own personal awareness and how your subconscious views itself, does that make sense?”

“Yep.” Sort of, anyway.

“Okay, so go ahead and do me a favor and try to describe the house to me. Or what you can of it, at least.”

“Well, the door is open,” I started.

“What’s the door look like?”

I shrugged. “I mean… it’s just a regular door. Brown, wooden, has a peephole and everything. Nothing too unordinary.”

“Okay… what else?”

From the brief pauses in between her sentences, I could tell she was taking notes.

“Um, from the portion of the house that I can see,” I continued, “it’s made out of wood instead of brick. Light-blue wood, to be exact. I can see a small little porch light perched in the corner, like just before the wall cut off.”

There was a brief awkward silence in between, which I assumed was my cue to keep talking while Jennifer kept taking notes.

“And…” I started again, this time trying to peer into the house through the open door. Oddly, I could see that there was an abundant amount of space between the open ‘stage’ and the inside of the set design house. From where I was standing just several feet away, there appeared to be stairs leading up to a second floor, and a bit to the right was a living room with a couch and perhaps other furniture hidden from view, and beyond, a small hallway leading to what looked to be a kitchen, and maybe even a backyard door and other rooms.

Physically, it didn’t actually make sense. There was no way for there to be all that space in between here and there. It was like looking through a portal, essentially, where the space in which I stood didn’t proportionally match the one in which I was viewing. I liked to call it the ‘small house, big space’ phenomenon. But this was something else entirely...

“It looks like I can go inside the house,” I finished.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Jennifer replied. “Do you want to?”

I didn’t seem to have anywhere else to go, so it seemed to be my only real option. I went ahead and walked towards the open door, my view of the inside space growing more and more visible. Once I made it inside, an overwhelming sensation that I couldn’t quite put my finger on began to overtake me. It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t joy, it wasn’t sadness… yet, in a strange way, it was almost all three of those things at once.

The house was well-lit in all spaces and corners, quite impossibly, given that there wasn’t enough light on the ceilings to emit such radiance. In fact, there didn’t seem to be a real source for light at all, as the one on the ceiling wasn’t even on. The house just emitted a sort of white luminescence, the kind I’d normally see from white plasma beam lights in bathrooms at gas station stops, and I could practically hear that low endless buzzing noise that filled the space.

But this time, I didn’t hear a noise at all. Silence filled the house instead. Pure silence. That was the only unnerving thing. Even odder, I couldn’t even hear my own heartbeat or breathing. Only the sound of my footsteps emerged here and there whenever I made a move across the wooden floor, leaving behind a faint echo, but that was it.

Taking in the overall atmosphere and setup of the house, for some reason, I felt as though I could guess, or even most certainly knew the time period in which the interior currently reflected. Perhaps late nineties to early 2000s. Maybe even pre-9/11. I wasn’t exactly sure on the year, but I just had that strange certitude of that particular era. Beige walls, carpeted flooring, and brown wooden kitchen cabinets all in a very particular layout that just seemed 'dated'.

“See anything interesting?” Jennifer asked.

“Well, if that’s the word you wanna use to describe this,” I muttered.

“Just say the first thing that’s on your mind.”

I looked around, trying to find the first thing I could to catch my eye. But something was extremely off about the house apart from its age. It’s as if I knew this place, but yet I couldn’t understand how. The smell even brought about a strange sense of familiarity. A faint scent of-

“Lavender,” I said. “It smells like lavender.”

There was a brief pause. Then Jennifer finally spoke. “Tell me, does the lavender scent mean anything to you? Maybe, bring you back to a certain time or place?”

“I… I think so. I’m not sure how, though.”

“What else can you tell me about the house?”

I glanced about again.

“There’s a corded phone sitting on a stand, next to a lamp and a recliner,” I said.

“Corded, huh?”

“Yeah, corded.”

“Does the house seem a bit… outdated? Or from a different time than present-day?”

Now it was as if she could read my mind.

“Yeah, that’s about right,” I concurred. “You know how some houses just look old? Like houses they just don't make anymore?”

I heard Jennifer let out a small chortle. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I shook my head confusingly. “But it’s like I know this place somehow,” I added.

“Well Travis, even though you nor myself know exactly where it is you are, I can tell you this. What you’re standing in right now is likely an old memory you’ve long forgotten, stored into the far reaches of your subconscious. You have been to this place before. This is your subconscious’s best replication and rendering - if you will - of the memory in a way that makes sense to you.” And yet, it didn’t make sense at the same time. “Can you see any pictures posted along the walls or perhaps over a fireplace anywhere?”

There actually was a fireplace in the living room, and plenty of picture frames. But there were no pictures. Not a single one in any of the big, small, and portrait-sized frames set throughout the house. Yet, they were all carefully positioned as though there were supposed to be photos within the frames for people to see.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” I answered, puzzled.

“I see,” Jennifer responded. “So as odd as that may seem, it’s actually a common thing people who’ve used the Cadacus report about seeing in ‘the hub’, or I guess I should say ‘not see’, in this case. Faces and actual people are a bit more difficult to render and replicate from stored memory banks. Over time, you forget exactly how someone’s face actually looks. You have an idea of how they appear, but you can’t actually remember all the fine details, such as exact facial structure, moles, size between the eyes, you name it. That’s why dreams tend to do a better job at showing you people you’ve seen more recently in your everyday life.”

It was a bit uncanny, if I’m being honest. The least my imagination could do was make up some pictures, I would think, at least just to fill the void. This was just flat out strange…

“Why can’t my subconscious substitute something, like how my dreams do?” I asked.

“Great question. This is where I have to break it to most people. Your imagination is practically meaningless in the hub. Scientists, psychologists and other researchers all over have started to come to the understanding that dreams and the imagination have more in common with each other than our subconscious and the imagination. The subconscious is more concrete and based on what actually happened, whereas dreams and the imagination focus on what could be, and possibly what can happen. So if the subconscious can’t actually remember something, it won’t be able to render it in the hub. That’s often why most subjects just see places and certain structures rather than actual people. Those things are easier for the mind to pick up on and remember to the best of detail.”

The longer I stood in this place, the more it gradually began feeling as though I were standing in a vacuum of space, with no real sense of time or reality. Where was I? How did this all come to be just from the word ‘golf’?

“Try exploring the house a bit more,” Jennifer suggested. “See if that does anything.”

I headed upstairs. Plastered along the walls leading up the stairs and beyond was a fully encompassing floral-design wallpaper. It was a very particular floral design, enough to bring back that sensation I felt earlier when I first stepped in the house...

“I’ve seen this wallpaper before,” I whispered, as I dragged my palm across the walls going up the stairs.

When I got to the top, I saw that the upstairs room was set up to be used for a gameroom. Oddly, the contrast in this room stood out from the downstairs. Small and ever-so-dim corners and shadows placed about the room reminded me of old photos that people used to take on those polaroid cameras from the 80s and 90s. It had a grainy look to it, as well as an uneven exposure. This time, though, it seemed as if I were in one of those pictures.

The space was almost entirely bare, except for a small entertainment system which stood against the wall (this one not being covered in floral design), accompanied by a bulky 30 to 35-inch CRT TV, and a Nintendo 64, with a game cartridge sticking up from inside that I couldn’t distinguish from this far. My mouth dropped open, astonished, and that excited feeling of electricity, the kind you get when you experience an ‘ah-ha’ moment, now replaced any other notion of uncertainty that I may have had before.

“Oh my god,” I spoke under my breath.

“Travis?” Jennifer’s voice sounded.

I let out a short, scoff-like chuckle as I clasped my hands over my head.

“This is my aunt’s old house,” I exclaimed. “My Aunt Deborah - this is her old house.”

"Now we're getting somewhere," Jennifer spoke in a proud tone.

I let out another laugh. “This is insane,” I commented. “I remember we visited here one time. A long time ago. And…”

I stepped towards the entertainment center, and bent over to get a closer peak at the N64. I now clearly saw what cartridge was inserted into the console, and a smile drew over my face.

“Good ol’ country club golf,” I finished. “Wow…”

“Country club golf?” Jennifer asked.

“One of the games we used to play on the ‘64 was Waialae Country Club. ‘True Classics’, to be exact.”

“Ah…”

“That’s insane...” I whispered under my breath.

“I told you you’d see where I was going with this, huh?” Jennifer teased.

I stammered, shaking my head, trying to contemplate what I was experiencing. This was something beyond any other thing I’ve done before. This was bigger than VR or AR. This was something else entirely. It knew my deepest memories and had made a place inside my own brain.

Jennifer continued. “You see, these words that I’m giving you is just a small example of what your subconscious can act with, based on just a single word that can trace back to countless other thoughts stored in your memory bank. We now are starting to understand why we dream something related to a conversation we might’ve had earlier that same day, and why our brains decided to cling onto that specific conversation or even a single word that was said. Cadacus allows us to do that exact same thing but on our own terms.”

Jennifer allowed me to explore the house a bit more. I tried checking out the other rooms, but each time I was met with nearly empty spaces. I’m not sure how my subconscious mind was trying to interpret the house, but it was the equivalent to a bad buffer, or loading bar that never quite finished. Some rooms had little furniture, and for the furniture that did exist, they were weirdly vague.

In different parts of the rooms, it was like a Picasso drawing come to life, just a little neater and more organized. At least I could tell it was furniture and decor for different sections of the house, yet, I couldn’t exactly describe what I was looking at. Some things looked like a chair, others like a lamp, maybe even some jewelry lying about, and other sorts of bathroom accessories like a towel or soap made sense here and there, but overall, when you looked at them altogether, the house was a huge enigma.

“Jennifer, why is everything so…” I began, trying to find the word.

“Disorganized? Jumbled?” she finished for me.

“Exactly.”

“So, remember what I told you, just like with the pictures, the hub can only render and replicate what it knows, or the best idea of what it ‘thinks’ it knows. What is it in your dream - I’m sorry, subconscious state - that looks disorienting to you?”

I let out a short burst laugh. “I wouldn’t exactly know how to describe it, you know? It’s so confusing to me.”

“Do things sort of look like, for example, like they’re pieces of furniture or specific objects, yet, they somehow don’t at the same time?”

Bingo. “Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like. I don’t understand it, though.”

“Well, that’s what these studies are for, right? What you’re doing right now is a huge help to getting us to better understand how our subconscious minds continue to work in mysterious ways. It seems a common testimony in all the people who’ve participated report the same thing of not being able to completely interpret specific objects. It’s a known fact that over time, our brains will remember things much differently than how they actually occurred, and certain memories will slowly fade over the years.”

“So I can still remember the basic layout of the house, but not what was in it specifically?” I said.

“Mm-hmm. You got it. So… would you like to continue on to a different word?” I obliged. “Very well then. Just like before, when I say the word, you’re gonna close your eyes and just focus on every single thing you can related to that word alone. Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Okay… ‘summer’.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I opened my eyes and was no longer inside. I was outdoors, the sky was clear blue, and it was bright and warm out. Looking down at my feet, I saw that I was standing on grass, and when I looked back up around me, in the distance there were fields of trees that led to deep woods. Not too far to my left lied a small timber bridge just over a tiny creek with a bed full of rocks. It had to be in some sort of park. A summer camp, maybe? Or just perhaps a regular community park I may have visited some time ago.

I walked around to try and see what other things might pop up to spark something inside. As I turned a corner around a field of tall bushes, the scene beyond abruptly changed to that of what looked to be the grounds of a fare or some sort of carnival. A carousel, stuffed prizes, empty concessions, and other sorts of festivities lined up. I remembered a place like this once, I thought.

I told Jennifer all of this, and we both began trying to dig for clues as to what this particular memory was about. However, this one was a lot easier than my Aunt Deborah’s house, since I actually can recall this day. Or, at least the fact that we showed up. The only other moments I can maybe remember having on this day were playing tag with some friends, strangers, or even cousins, and us throwing this small toy shovel at a couple of wasp nests just under the timber bridge I’d seen earlier, then running like hell later to escape their fury. Funny how that thought decided to resurface the longer I stayed here, just goes to show how big of assholes kids could be, and I was no exception. I could never imagine doing something so cruel nowadays.

“Hmm, looks like your mood changed a bit,” Jennifer pointed out, more than likely reading my vitals again from where she was. “You seem relaxed. And the parts of your brain that are lighting up more seem to indicate a sense of joy and happiness. Sounds about right?”

“I miss my childhood,” I replied. “Sometimes it’d be great to just relive a time where I didn’t have to be an adult, you know?”

“Oh, I hear you. Why don’t you say it louder for the people in the back.”

I chuckled. But then I stopped as a thought occurred to me.

“Speaking of which, is it normal to not see anybody at all?” I questioned. “In the hub, I mean?”

“Yes, it’s very normal. In very few cases, we’ve had some people report seeing long-lost family members or even some friends of theirs. When we talked about it after, all of them said that the people they saw in the hub had a strong relationship with them, which tells us that the stronger the bond we share with people in our lives, the longer we hold onto those memories, allowing us to paint a better picture of how they looked through the Cadacus.”

“I guess I don’t love anyone as much as I thought,” I dryly remarked.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Jennifer said, knowing good and well that I was joking. “It’s gonna be different for everyone else. The words that another host or myself gives to you or others won’t come up with the same results, obviously because you all have different life experiences and memories unique to you.”

It was time to move on to a different ‘trigger word’, as Jennifer called them. Still wish she would’ve picked a different name for it, but I digress.

“Alright, you ready?” she started as usual.

“Ready when you are,” I replied.

“Good. Okay… ‘dandelion’.”

As before, I closed, then opened my eyes.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I found myself standing in a vast lobby of some sort. There was some light, but very little to illuminate the entire space. The floor was a red-colored carpet, the same one you’d see in some movie theaters still. As I looked around at the barely visible walls, an artificial tree standing in a pot in the corner, and another obscure, jumbled rendering of an object that looked gold, I was beginning to think that I actually was in a theater.

I walked forward to explore, and found myself feeling, for the first time since I initially started, rather uneasy. But I didn’t know why…

The area was spacious, and from my perspective, the theater felt as if it could fit hundreds of people. I couldn’t tell if I had shrunk a little or if the design of the place was just that large, but everything felt so gigantic. Unnecessarily gigantic, I should add.

As I kept walking, in the distance I saw a faint shimmer of light grow more and more visible. With each step, I began to realize that it was an overlight, or a sort of spotlight, rather. Underneath the light was a random dinner table, perfectly arranged and set up for guests. But why here? It was so strange and out of place. Yet, I began to notice something else even stranger that I didn’t acknowledge until now. I didn’t hear Jennifer’s voice this time.

“Jennifer?” I called out.

No response. There was no hiding it now. I was nervous. Not just nervous that the Cadacus might have malfunctioned, but nervous because I was alone…

“Jennifer?” I called again.

Still nothing. That uncomfortable silence that filled the hub was louder than anything. I could hear my own heartbeat frantically pounding between my ears.

“Yes?” Jennifer’s voice called back to me. “Travis, can you hear me?”

It was an out-of-body experience to feel much-needed relief after nearly losing it, like being thrown in an icy pool of water just to be pulled back out and doused in warm water. Whether it was a simple mishap in the machine or not, it was fucked up.

“You had me worried there for a sec, Jennifer,” I spoke as I let out a breathy chuckle of relief.

“Yeah, that was kinda strange. Nothing seemed to show interference on my end… I’m not sure what happened. I was calling to you but I couldn’t hear anything back.”

And let’s add that to the list of ‘mistakes’ this test run was supposed to catch while we’re at it.

“Do you see anything interesting - well, I guess I should ask what do you see*?”*

I told her about the theater, at least it was what I thought to be a theater, as well as the obscurity of the dinner table. She of course tried to tie this back with the ‘theatrical’ theme I had going on in my subconscious mind, which I still thought might be a bit of a stretch. For now, she insisted that I kept exploring to see what else I could find that may explain things.

Near the end of the hallway, a door remained a jar, and a bit of a light projected from the room in a wedge shape. I’d have to keep walking further to see what was inside, but I couldn’t help but feel slightly more uneased. Something didn’t feel right about this place. None of the other ones gave me this same sensation.

I carefully stepped into the room with the open door, and was confused by what I saw. The scene had changed yet again, this time to what looked to be a party room of some sort. Long tables were aligned with chairs pushed in and spaced apart from each other. Plastic colored cups, paper plates, napkins, and birthday party hats were neatly stacked and perfectly organized along each row. The floor also had a retro-patterned carpet design like the ones I’d see in other theaters or arcades, making me feel like I was going to space.

The lighting in here was different as well. It was a dimly-lit blue ambiance, almost like a night light. I found it rather calming compared to the outside in the theater lobby.

Then from behind me, the deafening sound of the door slamming shut filled the room, and filled me with dread as I jumped.

“Travis, are you okay?” Jennifer’s voice sounded. “Your heartbeat’s escalating really fast. Is everything all right?”

I almost forgot how to breathe.

“I-I don’t know what just happened,” I stammered. “The door shut.”

“The door? What door?”

“The one to the party room. I’m inside the party room and the door just slammed. Am I alone? I-Is someone here with me?” I was panicking.

“Travis, remember what we discussed. You do not have to see anything scary if you don’t want to. You hear me? You do not have to be afraid. Just take a deep breath, close your eyes, and count to three, okay?”

That was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to yell at her to get me out of the damn thing. I was now getting the feeling that I maybe wasn’t alone after all in the hub. I hadn’t seen a single figure yet, and the first signs of anyone else being here with me began to seem more alarming than I once thought.

I closed my eyes and did what she said. I counted.

“1… 2… 3.”

I opened my eyes again, and this time, I was still in the party room, but the calming blue luminescence was now replaced with an unsettling crimson color instead. The place had turned into a red room. I didn’t tell Jennifer, but I hated the color red. It was a lot of people’s favorite color, but I never liked it. It made me feel sick, and now I was drowned by it.

I looked around and noticed other horrifying features of the room. Streaks of what I could only assume was blood were randomly plastered across different parts of the room. What kind of memory was this?

Anxiety returned. I found it hard to breathe yet again. I needed to get out of here.

“Jennifer, get me out!” I yelled. “You hear me? Jennifer, please get me out!”

This time, she didn’t respond. Fuck. It was malfunctioning again. This was not a good time to start fucking up now.

“Shit,” I muttered. “Shit, shit, shit…”

Panicked, I stood huddled in a corner of the room, not sure where to go, but definitely not wanting to leave myself exposed to whatever may be out there. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be stuck here, maybe forever for all I knew. But right now wasn’t the time to think of any of that. I had to get the fuck away from this place. Whatever positive mental tricks Jennifer tried to preach clearly wasn’t working. I had to be brave, I told myself. It was just my own subconscious. I tried to tell myself that to give me some sort of comfort.

I crept over to the door with nothing to defend myself with. Jennifer wasn’t here to accompany me now. I was alone.

When I got to the door, I hesitated to place my hand on the knob. But I slowly raised and positioned it over, and was just about to grasp the knob until I realized something. There was now a window framed onto this door, unlike the first time…

I looked up, and right before my eyes, a child, a small boy, slammed his hands onto the window from the other side, screaming at the top of his lungs. To this day, I have yet to witness something as bone-chilling and hair-raising, and something so fear-inducing as to make me feel as if my own soul left my body.

I jumped back, so frightened that I fell to the floor. I kept my eyes fixed on the child, though, and he continued beating on the window, screaming for help. He was the first person I’d seen in the hub, and he was so real. So vivid. The fear in his eyes, the franticness… I wanted to help him.

But before I could do anything, something, or someone snatched him away and disappeared from the other side of the door.

“No!” I gasped.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Before I knew it, I was back in the lab room with Jennifer right next to me, frantically removing the Cadacus from off of me. The sterile whiteness of the room blinded me as she removed the headset from my eyes.

[networkingdefinition]

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By focusing so much on my exterior, I also robbed myself of the opportunity to feel good about myself and my body, simply because I didn’t meet a cultural standard of beauty that is obsessed with thinness. That created stress that interfered with my weight loss and with my own happiness. – Jessica Ortner • It’s easier to stay in shape if you never let yourself get out of shape in the first place. – Bill Loguidice • I’ve been on a diet for two weeks and all I’ve lost is two weeks. – Totie Fields • Keeping off a large weight loss is a phenomenon about as common in American medicine as an impoverished dermatologist. – Calvin Trillin • Little changes over time are the secret to long term weight loss success! – Chris Powell • My recipes aren’t geared towards women; my books are marketed towards women because women are the biggest market for weight loss, weight management and weight maintenance and for cooking. – Bethenny Frankel • My success has been something I’ve worked a long time at and it’s been a gradual process. I compare it to the idea of someone losing a lot of weight over a period of a few years. You don’t really notice the weight loss overall but if you compare photos from then and now there’s a big difference. – Ray William Johnson • My temptation is emotional, and resisting will further my needed weight loss and strengthen my character. Furthermore, nothing tastes as good as thin feels. – Stephen Covey • No, as it turns out, I really like being congratulated on my weight loss. I like it so much, it’s tragic. – Carrie Fisher • Not only weight loss surgery is unnecessary but also it deprives human being a normal life. People after surgery would never be able to enjoy their food ever for the rest of their life whether it is Christmas or they are on their holidays or their child birthday or any other festival. List of problems and complications after the weight loss surgery operation are endless as one may get additional problems such as Hernia, Internal Bleeding, Swelling of the skin around the wounds, etc. I wonder how many weight loss surgeons advice about weight loss surgery to their own family members. – Subodh Gupta • Oh. No wonder I’d been sick. I hadn’t eaten anything since then. I’m a girl who likes her meals, so it hadn’t been a weight-loss tactic. I’d just been too busy bumping from crisis to crisis. Go on the Sookie Stackhouse Narrow Avoidance of Death Diet! Run for your life, and miss meals, too! Exercise plus starvation. – Charlaine Harris • Overweight and obesity is the second leading cause of death, killing 300,000 people a year, There is not a miracle pill that will lead to weight loss. – Richard Carmona • Pay more attention to losing inches than losing pounds. – Jane Fonda • Perhaps by sharing my personal weight-loss journey on television, I can help others confront the truth and lies behind obesity. – Ruby Gettinger • Permanent weight loss doesn’t come with an on and off switch. It is not something you do for a little while and think it is going to change your body. – Jennifer Hudson • Permanent weight loss means making small, manageable changes and sticking with them for life. – Michael Adam Hamilton • Place a picture of someone that looks like what you want to look like when you reach your weight loss and fitness goal somewhere nearby. However, be sure to keep it realistic to your own body type. This is a visual reminder of what the end result of your fitness and weight loss program will be, helping to keep you motivated. – Jackie Warner • Rather than strive to ‘lose weight,’ most people would be better off striving to lose only fat and to build or maintain muscle. – Mark Sisson • Reality check: you can never, ever, use weight loss to solve problems that are not related to your weight. At your goal weight or not, you still have to live with yourself and deal with your problems. You will still have the same husband, the same job, the same kids, and the same life. Losing weight is not a cure for life. – Phil McGraw • Some people’s weight loss is impeded by an impaired thyroid. So I think it’s worth testing that at your next physical exam. If it’s off, sometimes, that can be caused by excess metals, such as mercury or cadmium. A qualified M.D. can help you cleanse your body of those. – Tony Robbins • Successful weight loss takes programming, not willpower. – Phil McGraw • Sudden total weight loss. – George Carlin • Thank you for calling the Weight Loss Hotline. If you’d like to lose a half pound right now, press 1 eighteen thousand times. – Randy Glasbergen • The bottom line is that you will not lose fat effectively with exercise-driven weight-loss efforts unless your eating habits moderate insulin production. – Mark Sisson • The Glycemic Index is one the best tools for fat loss. It measures how quickly foods breakdown into sugar in your bloodstream. – Al Sears • The hardest thing was going through different stages of weight loss. At the beginning, it was easy to take off the weight with exercise and eating less but then you reach a point where 90 per cent of the weight loss is achieved purely through reducing your calorie intake. My goal was to lose four pounds per week. That worked well for the first few months but then things got tricky. – Matthew McConaughey • The most important thing I want to get across is that maintaining weight loss is just hard. It takes a dedication to exercise and eating right most of the time. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the days that I’m not eating chocolate cake. But I do particularly like those days when I am eating chocolate cake. – Trisha Yearwood • The real pride, the real present, is your health and your longevity. My whole career, I have never done anything where competition was involved with weight loss. – Richard Simmons • The secret of losing weight is patience. – Jane Fonda • The surest way to identify those who won’t succeed at weight loss is that they tend to say things like “My goal is to lose ten pounds.” Weight targets often work in the short run. But if you need willpower to keep the weight off, you’re doomed in the long run. The only way to succeed in the long run is by using a system that bypasses your need for willpower. – Scott Adams • The usual justification for eating extra meals is that it keeps the metabolism “revved up” so that weight loss is easier. There is, however, very little hard evidence that supports this idea, and a fair amount that disputes it. – Andrew Weil • The weight loss has been a secondary change to the mental changes I have made. Weight loss does not fix problems; how you view yourself does. – Erin Willett • There is no lasting glory in rapid weight loss. – Mireille Guiliano • There’s a huge emotional component to weight loss. – Carnie Wilson • This country is so urbanized we think low-fat milk comes from cows on Nutri/System weight-loss plans. – P. J. O’Rourke • We compliment weight loss, monitor our appetites, and shrink ourselves to fit some kind of standard. I wish we could all be the size we actually are. One size doesn’t fit all because there are as many sizes as there are women. Let’s look closer at the size of our hearts, the width of our souls, and the length of our spirits. – Sark • We talk a lot on ‘Biggest Loser’ about how fitness is a natural antidepressant, how it burns off stress. What I like about running is that it gives me time alone. I’m always busy, with people at work, with my kids. I love getting out for a run by myself and just listening to my music. – Alison Sweeney • Weight loss after pregnancy is safe but requires attention and guidelines – Debbie Meyer • Weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same sinking heart. – Geneen Roth • Weight loss programs and health clubs have an ethical and legal obligation to adequately disclose details about program costs before customers sign a contract. They should also clearly explain how the program works and what is expected so that consumers can make an informed choice whether to join. – Bill Vaughan • We’ve got a recipe for disaster. It’s huge — this combination of body image issues and the drug’s weight loss appeal. – Robert Hughes • What some name well being, if bought by perpetual nervousness about weight loss plan, is not a lot better than tedious illness. – George D. Prentice • When followed correctly, the Dukan Diet is both a safe and effective method of weight loss. – Pierre Dukan • When food becomes the enemy, every time we lose the fight we not only gain weight, but lose our self-esteem as well. – Jane Fonda • When I hear health professionals suggesting that you shouldn’t worry about the balance of calories in versus calories out, but rather eat clean and follow your hunger instincts, well, I really just want to pinch their heads off. That’s like a millionaire suggesting that instead of worrying about that’s in your bank account, just listen to your shopping instincts and buy high-quality goods . . . weight loss is not magic. To a great extent, it’s accounting. – Chalene Johnson • When we lose twenty pounds… we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty. – Woody Allen • When weight loss becomes a goal in your life, eating right and exercising are just two pieces of the puzzle. Figuring out why you’ve put on the extra weight is the hardest part. – Ali Vincent • When you’re the spokeswoman for a weight-loss program, everything is witnessed. I weigh in once a week with a witness. I have to sign an affidavit saying I cannot have any surgeries. – Kirstie Alley • While weight loss is important, what’s more important is the quality of food you put in your body – food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes. – Mark Hyman, M.D. • You can think of the Health Impact Fund as a mechanism that would keep the benefits and burdens of pharmaceutical innovation for the affluent roughly as they are while massively reducing the burdens presently imposed upon the poor. This sounds like magic. But it really works because the current system is not Pareto efficient. It’s a system that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in litigation costs and deadweight losses that HIF-registered medicines would sidestep. By avoiding these losses, the HIF reform can bring improvements all around – including for pharmaceutical innovators. – Thomas Pogge • You don’t need to worry any more or punish yourself about food. It is totally counterproducti ve to stress yourself out about weight loss because that same stress causes you to put weight on. – Marc David • You have to want weight-loss success so badly that no mountain, river, or ocean could keep you from reaching your goals. If you have that drive, passion, and commitment, there is no way you won’t get there. – Jennifer Hudson • You know what the secret to weight loss is? Don’t eat much. – Simon Cowell

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

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Weight Loss Quotes

Official Website: Weight Loss Quotes

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• A great mix of tips, tricks, and anecdotes, All is Forgiven, Move On has excellent ideas for your weight loss journey and for improving your life along the way! – Judith S. Beck • After a lifetime of losing and gaining weight, I get it. No matter how you slice it, weight loss comes down to the simple formula of calories in, calories out. – Valerie Bertinelli • Almost everything inside was filled with sugar, cheese, and weight-loss tips. – Adam Rex • Another good reducing exercise consists in placing both hands against the table edge and pushing back. – Robert Quillen • As far as dieting and weight loss go, diet and exercise actually works. Lots of running and healthy eating. – Emile Hirsch • As you experience success in applying kaizen to clear goals like weight loss or career advancement, remember to hold onto its essence: an optimistic belief in our potential for continuous improvement. – Robert D. Maurer

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Weight+Los', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_weight-los').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_weight-los img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Balanced, sensible nutrition: eat food, not too much, mostly plants, a healthy diet ala Michael Pollan, modern physical activity on a daily basis, modest weight loss – translated into a 58% reduction in the occurrence of diabetes. A clear indication of the power of lifestyle over health. The challenge now is the development of the community-based programs that will translate what we learned in the diabetes prevention program and put it to work in every town in America. – David Katz • Behind weight gain are the larger hurts and questions that have to be explored, probed, and understood before weight loss and maintenance is a possibility. It’s a bigger issue than just calories in, calories out. – Ali Vincent • Coconut oil contains the most concentrated natural source of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA) available. Substituting coconut oil for other vegetable oils in your diet will help promote weight loss. – Bruce Fife • Despite what many nutritionists have preached for years, rapid weight-loss diets can be healthy if done correctly and can work wonders on reducing pounds and inches in just days. – Mike Moreno • Dieting is long-haul. Many rapid weight loss programs actually only squeeze the water out of you. Just like a wet sponge. But a good dieter maintains his or her grip on that sponge, not letting it soak up water again. – Owen Jones • Dieting is the only game where you win when you lose! – Karl Lagerfeld • Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections. – Saint Francis de Sales • Don’t even wait until you’ve lost a pound. The minute you can push the plate away with food still on it, give yourself a pat on the back. – Tony Robbins • Every study on chocolate is pointing to the same conclusion: there is something in chocolate that is really good for us. That something is the raw cacao bean, the nut that all chocolate is made from. The cacao bean has always been and will always be Nature’s #1 weight loss and high-energy food. Cacao beans are probably the best kept secret in the entire history of food. – David Wolfe • Everything we’ve been taught about health, weight loss and aging is wrong. – Jorge Cruise • Fitness and proper nutrition truly go hand-in-hand. Focus on eating clean and filling your plate with veggies, fruits, whole grains and lean proteins. And, everyone hates to do it, but calorie counting is crucial to weight loss as well as maintaining a healthy physique. – Jillian Michaels • For both optimal health and weight loss, you must consume a diet with a high nutrient-per-calorie ratiothere are no shortcuts. – Joel Fuhrman • Frequently, visualization is the key to lose weight. Imagine yourself with your desired body, and work for it. At some point in the future, this wish will come true. – David Viscott • Here’s the secret to weight loss: It’s all about crowding out, not cutting out. – Kathy Freston • High protein diets make you sick in the long and short term. Expect kidney disease, heart disease and more strokes and cancer. Plus the weight loss is temporary because you can’t stay sick for long. Look at the creators of these diets – many are fat themselves. – John A. McDougall • I could not bounce back from my divorce – emotionally – I just could not bounce back. With any bad situations I’d experienced before – a bad game or my two previous divorces – I got over them. This time I just could not get out of the hole. The anxiety attacks were frequent and extensive. I had weight loss, which I’d never had before. I couldn’t stop crying. And if I wasn’t crying, I was angry, bitter, hateful and mean-spirited. I couldn’t sleep – couldn’t concentrate. It just got crazy. – Terry Bradshaw • I didn’t get excited by weight loss, and since I was already happy being fat, I couldn’t see the point of it all. I’m 6 ft. and weigh about 18 st. or 19 st., but weighing myself is not something I do with much pleasure. – Maeve Binchy • I didn’t start out about weight loss. I was very tired and my energy was low. This is my second go-around in love, so I want to make sure I’ll be around to enjoy it. – Niecy Nash • I found that people like rules, and I love to tell people what to do. It’s not rocket science when it comes to weight loss. It’s about eating a little less and moving a little bit more. – Bob Harper • I freak out if I go a little too long without being in the gym. For a long time it was all about getting the weight off because I was 240 pounds at my heaviest, and now I’m around 175, so the majority of that weight loss was due to diet and exercise. – Nick Carter • I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive. People love to read stories. They like to know you as a real person who has your struggle, pain, success and failure, etc. One well-known example is Jared Fogle’s weight loss story which made millions of dollars for Subway. Start to collect your stories from today and use them in your ad campaigns. – David Ogilvy • I have gained and lost the same 10 pounds so many times over and over again my cellulite must have deja vu! – Jane Wagner • I have more energy to run after our four children. Weight loss and great skin were a bonus! – Niecy Nash • I thought a lot about how so many memoirs about fatness focus on weight loss; they don’t focus on living with weight in a world that is rather inhospitable to it. So I knew that was the idea that was going to be most interesting and most challenging, and I like to be challenged as a writer. – Roxane Gay • I used to define success as being able to produce any result you wanted, whether it was a relationship, weight-loss, being a millionaire, impacting the culture, changing society, whatever it might be, it might be homelessness, whatever, but lately I’ve realized that success is “fulfilling your soul’s purpose.” – Jack Canfield • I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I had lost exactly two weeks. – Joe E. Lewis • If you believe that weight loss requires self-deprivation, Im going to teach you otherwise. – Robert Atkins • If you find you require willpower, you aren’t ready to lose weight. – Augusten Burroughs • If you keep on eating unhealthy food than no matter how many weight loss tips you follow, you are likely to retain weight and become obese. If only you start eating healthy food, you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to lose weight. – Subodh Gupta • If you’re going to solve a weight-loss problem – or smoking problem for that matter – you must address both the psychological and physiological. – Tony Robbins • If you’re not doing what is best for your body, you are the one who lose. – Julius Erving • I’m a girl who enjoys a great meal with great friends, so I’m not really that concerned about weight loss. – Jill Scott • I’m not against working out. It’s just not effective for weight loss. I like strength training to tone and firm the body so you look tight. But working out just makes you hungrier. – Jorge Cruise • I’m prouder of my weight loss than my Oscar! I hope it has inspired people. – Jennifer Hudson • Imagine a weight-loss program at the end of which, instead of better health, good looks, and hot romantic prospects, you die. Somalia had become just this kind of spa. – P. J. O’Rourke • In India, we kind of concentrate only on weight loss. I want to teach people that it is very important to be strong and fit, rather than just thin. – Bipasha Basu • In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet. – Erma Bombeck • Instead it seems that business – like weight loss – is a subject wherein hope and fear inspire limitless gullibility. – Paul Krugman • It seems that researchers at Colorado University say wine may help people lose weight. It’s not the wine directly that causes the weight loss, it’s all the walking around you do trying to find your car. – Jay Leno • It suddenly hit me—it was nearly impossible to take good care of something I hated. I’d spent so long hating my body that I didn’t know how to respect and nurture myself or my body. By focusing so much on my exterior, I also robbed myself of the opportunity to feel good about myself and my body, simply because I didn’t meet a cultural standard of beauty that is obsessed with thinness. That created stress that interfered with my weight loss and with my own happiness. – Jessica Ortner • It’s easier to stay in shape if you never let yourself get out of shape in the first place. – Bill Loguidice • I’ve been on a diet for two weeks and all I’ve lost is two weeks. – Totie Fields • Keeping off a large weight loss is a phenomenon about as common in American medicine as an impoverished dermatologist. – Calvin Trillin • Little changes over time are the secret to long term weight loss success! – Chris Powell • My recipes aren’t geared towards women; my books are marketed towards women because women are the biggest market for weight loss, weight management and weight maintenance and for cooking. – Bethenny Frankel • My success has been something I’ve worked a long time at and it’s been a gradual process. I compare it to the idea of someone losing a lot of weight over a period of a few years. You don’t really notice the weight loss overall but if you compare photos from then and now there’s a big difference. – Ray William Johnson • My temptation is emotional, and resisting will further my needed weight loss and strengthen my character. Furthermore, nothing tastes as good as thin feels. – Stephen Covey • No, as it turns out, I really like being congratulated on my weight loss. I like it so much, it’s tragic. – Carrie Fisher • Not only weight loss surgery is unnecessary but also it deprives human being a normal life. People after surgery would never be able to enjoy their food ever for the rest of their life whether it is Christmas or they are on their holidays or their child birthday or any other festival. List of problems and complications after the weight loss surgery operation are endless as one may get additional problems such as Hernia, Internal Bleeding, Swelling of the skin around the wounds, etc. I wonder how many weight loss surgeons advice about weight loss surgery to their own family members. – Subodh Gupta • Oh. No wonder I’d been sick. I hadn’t eaten anything since then. I’m a girl who likes her meals, so it hadn’t been a weight-loss tactic. I’d just been too busy bumping from crisis to crisis. Go on the Sookie Stackhouse Narrow Avoidance of Death Diet! Run for your life, and miss meals, too! Exercise plus starvation. – Charlaine Harris • Overweight and obesity is the second leading cause of death, killing 300,000 people a year, There is not a miracle pill that will lead to weight loss. – Richard Carmona • Pay more attention to losing inches than losing pounds. – Jane Fonda • Perhaps by sharing my personal weight-loss journey on television, I can help others confront the truth and lies behind obesity. – Ruby Gettinger • Permanent weight loss doesn’t come with an on and off switch. It is not something you do for a little while and think it is going to change your body. – Jennifer Hudson • Permanent weight loss means making small, manageable changes and sticking with them for life. – Michael Adam Hamilton • Place a picture of someone that looks like what you want to look like when you reach your weight loss and fitness goal somewhere nearby. However, be sure to keep it realistic to your own body type. This is a visual reminder of what the end result of your fitness and weight loss program will be, helping to keep you motivated. – Jackie Warner • Rather than strive to ‘lose weight,’ most people would be better off striving to lose only fat and to build or maintain muscle. – Mark Sisson • Reality check: you can never, ever, use weight loss to solve problems that are not related to your weight. At your goal weight or not, you still have to live with yourself and deal with your problems. You will still have the same husband, the same job, the same kids, and the same life. Losing weight is not a cure for life. – Phil McGraw • Some people’s weight loss is impeded by an impaired thyroid. So I think it’s worth testing that at your next physical exam. If it’s off, sometimes, that can be caused by excess metals, such as mercury or cadmium. A qualified M.D. can help you cleanse your body of those. – Tony Robbins • Successful weight loss takes programming, not willpower. – Phil McGraw • Sudden total weight loss. – George Carlin • Thank you for calling the Weight Loss Hotline. If you’d like to lose a half pound right now, press 1 eighteen thousand times. – Randy Glasbergen • The bottom line is that you will not lose fat effectively with exercise-driven weight-loss efforts unless your eating habits moderate insulin production. – Mark Sisson • The Glycemic Index is one the best tools for fat loss. It measures how quickly foods breakdown into sugar in your bloodstream. – Al Sears • The hardest thing was going through different stages of weight loss. At the beginning, it was easy to take off the weight with exercise and eating less but then you reach a point where 90 per cent of the weight loss is achieved purely through reducing your calorie intake. My goal was to lose four pounds per week. That worked well for the first few months but then things got tricky. – Matthew McConaughey • The most important thing I want to get across is that maintaining weight loss is just hard. It takes a dedication to exercise and eating right most of the time. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the days that I’m not eating chocolate cake. But I do particularly like those days when I am eating chocolate cake. – Trisha Yearwood • The real pride, the real present, is your health and your longevity. My whole career, I have never done anything where competition was involved with weight loss. – Richard Simmons • The secret of losing weight is patience. – Jane Fonda • The surest way to identify those who won’t succeed at weight loss is that they tend to say things like “My goal is to lose ten pounds.” Weight targets often work in the short run. But if you need willpower to keep the weight off, you’re doomed in the long run. The only way to succeed in the long run is by using a system that bypasses your need for willpower. – Scott Adams • The usual justification for eating extra meals is that it keeps the metabolism “revved up” so that weight loss is easier. There is, however, very little hard evidence that supports this idea, and a fair amount that disputes it. – Andrew Weil • The weight loss has been a secondary change to the mental changes I have made. Weight loss does not fix problems; how you view yourself does. – Erin Willett • There is no lasting glory in rapid weight loss. – Mireille Guiliano • There’s a huge emotional component to weight loss. – Carnie Wilson • This country is so urbanized we think low-fat milk comes from cows on Nutri/System weight-loss plans. – P. J. O’Rourke • We compliment weight loss, monitor our appetites, and shrink ourselves to fit some kind of standard. I wish we could all be the size we actually are. One size doesn’t fit all because there are as many sizes as there are women. Let’s look closer at the size of our hearts, the width of our souls, and the length of our spirits. – Sark • We talk a lot on ‘Biggest Loser’ about how fitness is a natural antidepressant, how it burns off stress. What I like about running is that it gives me time alone. I’m always busy, with people at work, with my kids. I love getting out for a run by myself and just listening to my music. – Alison Sweeney • Weight loss after pregnancy is safe but requires attention and guidelines – Debbie Meyer • Weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same sinking heart. – Geneen Roth • Weight loss programs and health clubs have an ethical and legal obligation to adequately disclose details about program costs before customers sign a contract. They should also clearly explain how the program works and what is expected so that consumers can make an informed choice whether to join. – Bill Vaughan • We’ve got a recipe for disaster. It’s huge — this combination of body image issues and the drug’s weight loss appeal. – Robert Hughes • What some name well being, if bought by perpetual nervousness about weight loss plan, is not a lot better than tedious illness. – George D. Prentice • When followed correctly, the Dukan Diet is both a safe and effective method of weight loss. – Pierre Dukan • When food becomes the enemy, every time we lose the fight we not only gain weight, but lose our self-esteem as well. – Jane Fonda • When I hear health professionals suggesting that you shouldn’t worry about the balance of calories in versus calories out, but rather eat clean and follow your hunger instincts, well, I really just want to pinch their heads off. That’s like a millionaire suggesting that instead of worrying about that’s in your bank account, just listen to your shopping instincts and buy high-quality goods . . . weight loss is not magic. To a great extent, it’s accounting. – Chalene Johnson • When we lose twenty pounds… we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty. – Woody Allen • When weight loss becomes a goal in your life, eating right and exercising are just two pieces of the puzzle. Figuring out why you’ve put on the extra weight is the hardest part. – Ali Vincent • When you’re the spokeswoman for a weight-loss program, everything is witnessed. I weigh in once a week with a witness. I have to sign an affidavit saying I cannot have any surgeries. – Kirstie Alley • While weight loss is important, what’s more important is the quality of food you put in your body – food is information that quickly changes your metabolism and genes. – Mark Hyman, M.D. • You can think of the Health Impact Fund as a mechanism that would keep the benefits and burdens of pharmaceutical innovation for the affluent roughly as they are while massively reducing the burdens presently imposed upon the poor. This sounds like magic. But it really works because the current system is not Pareto efficient. It’s a system that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in litigation costs and deadweight losses that HIF-registered medicines would sidestep. By avoiding these losses, the HIF reform can bring improvements all around – including for pharmaceutical innovators. – Thomas Pogge • You don’t need to worry any more or punish yourself about food. It is totally counterproducti ve to stress yourself out about weight loss because that same stress causes you to put weight on. – Marc David • You have to want weight-loss success so badly that no mountain, river, or ocean could keep you from reaching your goals. If you have that drive, passion, and commitment, there is no way you won’t get there. – Jennifer Hudson • You know what the secret to weight loss is? Don’t eat much. – Simon Cowell

///

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

[deniscollins]

Jeff Bezos Accuses National Enquirer of ‘Extortion and Blackmail’

If you were Jeff  Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post, what would you do if the National Enquirer threatened to publish graphic photographs of Mr. Bezos, including a “below-the-belt selfie,” if he did not publicly affirm that The Enquirer’s reporting on his affair was not motivated by political concerns: (1) admit that it was not politically motivated, (2) report the threat to your employees and the media, (3) initiate your own investigation on how the National Enquirer obtain the material, and/or (4) something else (if so, what?)? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

The richest man on earth accused the nation’s leading supermarket tabloid publisher of “extortion and blackmail” on Thursday, laying out a theory that brought together international intrigue, White House politics, nude photos and amorous text messages.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post, made his accusations against American Media Inc., the company behind The National Enquirer, in a lengthy post on the online platform Medium. Last month, The Enquirer published an exposé of Mr. Bezos’ extramarital affair with Lauren Sanchez, a former host of the Fox show “So You Think You Can Dance.”

The headline of Mr. Bezos’ post — “No thank you, Mr. Pecker” — targeted David J. Pecker, the head of the tabloid company. In the sometimes digressive text that followed, he accused American Media of threatening to publish graphic photographs of Mr. Bezos, including a “below-the-belt selfie,” if he did not publicly affirm that The Enquirer’s reporting on his affair was not motivated by political concerns.

“Well, that got my attention,” Mr. Bezos wrote of the threat. “But not in the way they likely hoped.”

The inciting event in this battle of American titans was the Jan. 28 edition of The Enquirer, which hit supermarket racks on Jan. 10, one day after Mr. Bezos and his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie, announced that they would be getting a divorce. The tabloid devoted 11 pages to the story of Mr. Bezos’ affair with Ms. Sanchez, calling it “the biggest investigation in Enquirer history!”

The Enquirer boasted that it had tracked the couple “across five states and 40,000 miles,” furtively observing them as they boarded private jets, rode in limousines and repaired to “five-star hotel hideaways.” The article was illustrated with paparazzi shots of the unwitting couple as they stepped onto a tarmac and arrived together at what the tabloid called “their beachfront love nest in Santa Monica.”

The tabloid also published amorous text messages that Mr. Bezos had sent to Ms. Sanchez. “I am crazy about you,” he wrote, according to The Enquirer. “All of you.”

Tech executives are not the usual subjects of Enquirer covers, and the story set off speculation in Washington and New York media circles that the tabloid’s aggressive coverage of Mr. Bezos was tied to the closeness of Mr. Pecker, The Enquirer’s chief, and the White House. That alliance came fully to light last year in the legal drama involving hush payments to women alleging affairs with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Pecker were longtime friends — but the relationship between the two was said to be frayed in recent months, when American Media’s leadership entered into a deal with federal prosecutors looking into the company’s role in the hush payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Pecker and his associates had helped orchestrate the deals involving two women who alleged past affairs with Mr. Trump in “catch and kill” deals: the former Playboy model Karen McDougal and the porn star Stormy Daniels.

After The Enquirer made his private life public, giving Twitter wags and late-night hosts the chance to weigh in on his high-flown texting style, Mr. Bezos sprang into action, starting his own investigation of the tabloid’s motives and how it had come to possess his texts to Ms. Sanchez.

The Amazon founder, who at last count was worth $136 billion, suggested that he would spare no expense in taking the fight to the tabloid publisher. Leading the investigation was Gavin de Becker, Mr. Bezos’ longtime security chief, whom Mr. Bezos said he had instructed “to proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter.”

It was a bold move for someone who has often tried to evade the spotlight, even amid the frequent insults hurled his way by Mr. Trump, who has labeled the newspaper that Mr. Bezos purchased in 2013 as “The Amazon Post” and recently called him “Jeff Bozo” in a tweet.

Mr. de Becker confirmed to The Daily Beast on Jan. 31 that he was leading the investigation into the matter of how the Enquirer had obtained the text messages. Not long afterward, The Post prepared an article exploring competing theories about the motivation behind the publication of the tawdry tale.

American Media made the next move, offering Mr. Bezos an offer that it wrongly assumed he could not refuse. And if he did say no? A future issue of The Enquirer would make him very unhappy, with the selfies and more of the steamy texts it had apparently obtained.

“Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks and corruption,” Mr. Bezos wrote. “I prefer to stand up, roll this log over and see what crawls out.”

Amazon declined to comment.

Mr. Bezos’ allegations placed new pressure on American Media, which narrowly emerged from the campaign finance prosecution without being charged.

On Friday morning, the company said in a statement that although it stood by its actions, for now, its board was starting an investigation into the matter.

“American Media believes fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr. Bezos,” the statement said. “Nonetheless, in light of the nature of the allegations published by Mr. Bezos, the Board has convened and determined that it should promptly and thoroughly investigate the claims. Upon completion of that investigation, the Board will take whatever appropriate action is necessary.”

The statement was certain to intensify speculation around the future of Mr. Pecker and his top news executive, Dylan Howard.

But American Media is privately held, and its board has been steadfast in its loyalty to Mr. Pecker through the most tumultuous year of his tenure with the company. The board made no statements and took no action to investigate American Media’s role in acting as an arm of Mr. Trump’s campaign, even after the company signed a non-prosecution agreement with the authorities.

The board consists of two partners from Chatham Asset Management, a financial backer of the company, and David R. Hughes, the former chief financial officer of Trump Entertainment Resorts.

By using Medium to reveal The Enquirer’s backstage maneuvers, Mr. Bezos — one of the world’s most powerful tech titans and the owner of one of the country’s most influential newspapers — showed the best means of communications can be a simple blog post.

Sometimes rambling — while also showing the occasional flair of tabloid columnists of yore — the Bezos post pulled together random strands of the yearlong legal drama involving the president, American Media and the allegedly illegal payments to women.

That federal inquiry resulted in a guilty plea from Mr. Trump’s former attorney and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who said he had paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 and asked American Media to pay Ms. McDougal $150,000 at the president’s direction, to protect his election prospects.

Federal prosecutors with the Southern District of New York determined that the American Media payment was an illegal corporate contribution. Because the company cooperated with prosecutors, the authorities did not bring charges. But they made American Media sign onto a non-prosecution agreement, in which it affirmed that it had made the payment to “influence the election.”

That agreement, signed in September, stipulated that A.M.I. “shall commit no crimes whatsoever” for three years, and that if it did, “A.M.I. shall thereafter be subject to prosecution for any federal criminal violation of which this office has knowledge.”

If American Media’s threat to publish the personal photos of Mr. Bezos is determined to have been criminal, it would find its deal with federal prosecutors in jeopardy.

“One thing we can be certain of is these allegations will be looked at hard by the federal prosecutors,” said Jeff Tsai, a former federal prosecutor. “The nature of that non-prosecution agreement — to not commit any crimes — was to give A.M.I. the opportunity to really think hard about the nature of its practices.”

He added, “You can sometimes get a pass from federal prosecutors; it’s much harder to get two passes.”

The agreement put American Media, Mr. Pecker and Mr. Howard at odds with Mr. Trump, which served to tamp down speculation that the Enquirer had somehow pursued the Bezos story in alliance with the president and his allies.

On Feb. 5, though, that possibility surfaced in The Post. Mr. de Becker told the paper that the Enquirer story had begun with a “politically motivated’’ leak. Mr. de Becker has served as a protector to Olivia Newton-John, Michael J. Fox and friends and family of Ronald Reagan. He declined to comment.

American Media appeared to warn Mr. Bezos away from raising any political speculation in an email to Mr. de Becker’s attorney, which he shared on Medium. In the letter, which he quoted in full, a lawyer for the company, Jon Fine, demanded that Mr. Bezos state publicly that he had “no knowledge or basis for suggesting that” American Media’s “coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.” Mr. Fine has worked as a lawyer at Amazon.

In his post Mr. Bezos also appeared to imply that the tabloid company was doing the bidding of Saudi Arabia, quoting from a New York Times report last year: “After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions.”

The Post has been reporting determinedly on intelligence assessments that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the grisly murder of the Saudi dissident — and Post global opinion contributor — Jamal Khashoggi.

[superanimationthingba3a]

Research Report, Research

Websites:

“As a specific group, writers, were twice as likely to suffer from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as the controls. They were also more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and to commit suicide. First-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa and siblings of patients with autism, were more likely to be in creative professions.”- https://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/10October/Pages/the-price-of-genius–creativity-linked-to-mental-illness.aspx , Bazian, NHS Choices, October 17 2012, Study looks at creativity link with mental illness, 30th July 2018

“With creativity you often make creative or intuitive leaps between ideas. And this often happens in mental disorders as well – when you’re forming a delusion, for example by adding 2 and 2 and making 5 and coming up with some creative theory,” Dr MacCabe (this is his quote) - https://inews.co.uk/news/health/scientists-breakthrough-mental-health-creativity/ , Tom Bawden, 6th May 2018, I news The Essential Daily Briefing, Brilliant, creative people really are more vulnerable to mental illness, study finds, 30th July 2018

“It cannot be denied that a number of well-known creative people, primarily in the arts, have been mentally ill—for example, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Robert Schumann, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath.” - https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/creative-explorations/201503/creativity-and-mental-illness , Albert Rothenberg, M.D., 8th March 2015, Psychology Today, Creativity and Mental Illness, 30th July 2018

“You can also use it to establish the mood, or change it. Deep, sinister tones tell us that something scary is about to happen, or that a character who seems friendly is actually dangerous.” Barrance, T. (2016), Learn About Film: Using Sound In Your Film, Available At: http://learnaboutfilm.com/film-language/sound/ (Assessed On: 30th July 2018), website

“Long shots (also commonly called Wide shots) show the subject from a distance, emphasizing place and location, while Close shots reveal details of the subject and highlight emotions of a character. Medium shots fall somewhere in between, putting emphasis on the subject while still showing some of the surrounding environment.” Dise, J (2016), Film Making 101: Camera Shot Types, Available At: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/video/tips-and-solutions/filmmaking-101-camera-shot-types (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), Website

“Internalizing all of these concepts allows us to build a toolkit that we can easily apply to whatever we're working on.” Hardy, R. (2017),Composition & Framing Can Help You Tell Great Stories with Your Cinematography. Here's How, Available At: https://nofilmschool.com/2015/02/composition-framing-help-tell-great-stories-cinematography (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), Website

“Music is used to heighten the emotion and drama of a scene. Audiences are experienced in decoding the style of music to interpret mood or genre, eg scary music when a villain appears.” Johnston, J (Unknown), Into Film: Film Language Sound, Available At: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-language-sound-jennifer-johnston-into-film-2016-07.pdf (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), PDF

“There is a convention in the video, film and television industries which assigns names and guidelines to common types of shots, framing and picture composition.” Owen, D. (Unknown), Shot Types, Available At: http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/ (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), Website

“Therefore a Shade can range from slightly darker than your original color, all the way to nearly Black with barely any of the colour mixed in.” Williams, S. (Unknown), The Ultimate Guide to Understanding Hue, Tint, Tone and Shade, Available At: https://color-wheel-artist.com/hue/ (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), Website

“When describing different cinematic shots, different terms are used to indicate the amount of subject matter contained within a frame, how far away the camera is from the subject, and the perspective of the viewer.” Wilson, K. (Unknown), Media Know All, Available At: http://www.mediaknowall.com/camangles.html (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), website

“The feng shui or atmosphere which is hence created, can either build or crumble your vitality and thinking.” Unknown, (2011),Colour Psychology Discover the meanings of colours, Available At: http://www.feng-shui-and-beyond.com/feng-shui-question-and-answer.html, (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), Website

“For instance, high-pitched sounds, including screams or squealing tires, help to create a sense of anxiety, while low-pitched sounds, including the sounds of waves or the swinging of a door, can be used to create a sense of calm or mystery.” Unknown, (2017), Sound In Film Making, Available At: http://thecinematheque.ca/education/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/LanguageofFilm07.pdf (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), Website

Blogs:

Klkzema, A., [reply] (2014), 2D Animation: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fundamentals [Internet Blog] Available From: https://blog.udemy.com/2d-animation-2/  [Accessed On: 30th July 2018], Blog  

Clum, L. (Unknown), Using Colour Theory To Create A Better Colour Palette, Available At: https://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/design/color-theory (Accessed On: 30th July 2018), Blog

Books:

‘To make a strong emphasis in composition, it is often the colour that brings out the point being made.’ Barber, B. (2006), The Fundamentals of Drawing Colour, London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, Pg 189- 206 (30th July 2018)

‘A good establishing shot doesn’t have to be on screen for long, but does need to convey enough information for your viewers’ - Barrett, C. (2006), Need To Know? Digital Video, London: Collins, Pg 74- 75 (30th July 2018)

‘For every composition rule, you can find an incredible image that proves the exception’ King, A, J. (2012), Digital Photography For Dummies, 7th Edition, Hoboken: John Wiley & Son, Inc., Pg 104- 105 (30th July 2018)

This is all the research I was able to accomplish today, some of it is from passed essays I have done but the research is still relevant to what I am researching so I want back and checked that all the internet based research was still active and looked for the books I had used. I also tried to look for a range of research know that I have a clear plan of what I am doing I know what I need to research more and what areas I need to focus on for a better range of information so I am not just research the same topics all the time.  

[samanthamafineart-blog]

Artist statement-Sept-Dec 2017

 Drastic changes to life will inevitably impact the creative process. This is what I was faced with upon returning to my second year of the course. Early on I knew that I wanted to explore the impacts of the unspoken, mental illness. Past pieces that I have created have always stemmed from a self-narrative, but I found that whatever the subject matter, I`d always touched upon it many years later. So this time I decided that this wouldn't be the case anymore. I knew that when starting this chapter of work that it may be tough. And it has been, I found researching into BP(Bipolar Disorder) to be more than disturbing as each piece of text I would read would instantly take me back to a situation that I can never relive nor can I go back and correct. This being said I don't regret taking this step in my practice, but I do hope that the process of creating picks up to pace sooner rather than later.

 During the three-week residency at Make studios, I used the experience to toy around with how I would create work around what had been happening in reflection of recent weeks/months of my life. This I found to be the hardest part of the whole semester. I hadn't considered what I would be like to explain my work to the group. And having the text projected there on the wall for all of my fellow artists to see soon made me realize that I wasn't as strong as I thought I was. I felt ashamed. Not by the work, or even because they thought they were my words on the wall, I felt that by reading those words that they knew everything they had happened, but of course they didn't. It was only me that read each image and instantly went back to the moment of receiving those words. It was then that I knew I would spend the next weeks rethinking everything that I thought I had already figured out.

 I`d thought about how I wanted to display my work for the December exhibition for a while. I knew that I wanted to try painting on a much larger scale, but I knew this wouldn't`t be achievable for the show due to the lighting and space we where using. Alternatively I thought about using projections of my paintings, mainly to see how they worked on different scales . Had it of not been for this being a complete disaster when experimenting with the projector testing the scale of my work, I believe my work would have failed as a piece otherwise. Before I knew it I wasn't viewing my work as my own, I was seeing where it would fit best for the show, and how I could make it suitable for not only myself but for the show altogether. Considering how I could use the space creatively rather than just making a piece to fit pretty on a wall. I believe that up until this point on the course, that day has been the most valuable in terms of my practice and for myself as an artist. I have always tried to make sure that my work worked well alongside others in the past but having a clear picture in my mind of how my work would look, then for something such as lighting to throw my whole idea out of the window, for sure changed my thinking on installing for an exhibition.

 As well as that lesson above being valuable to my practice I found it eye opening just how much I enjoyed figuring out where my piece would fit best. This with helping other guys who didn`t have as much spare time as I did to install I found I really enjoyed this aspect of building an exhibition. Almost as much as actually creating the work in the first place, if not a little more!

Photography and painting have been the main mediums that support my practice. Moving back and forth from colour to black and grey. For a while this bothered me a immensely as I felt I couldn't`t decide, which was making doubt myself and my work, but admittedly I`m enjoying not having to control everything in my practice too much. I`m learning to move with the work I produce, and even bringing abandoned pieces back into play through new works. I no long disregard any piece of work, which is something I've had trouble with for many years. 

 I hope to continue to explore mental illness, and perhaps other issues that many avoid speaking about through my art work. I feel that my work may have a purpose now, and through this platform I`d like to raise awareness about mental illness and perhaps other topics in the future. I've found that my work has changed a lot since starting the course, and changed even more so in the past three months.

[sheikhzohairuddin]

Education; How far we are and how close we should have been?

“Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.”

                                                -Nelson Mandela  

Introduction:  

We have affiliated the word education to just go to school, college or institute, although it is something beyond that. It is basically learning from anyone, from anywhere and from any experience which results in developing yourself. Education is the name of awareness which let us to distinguish between good and bad. Any permanent change in behaviour through experience is learning and anything which we learn is education. It’s been years we’ve enrolled into the 21st century where education is a requirement in this fast developing world; it’s not confined to schools or colleges but to memorize from the factors that influences us in the environment; furthermore, reading and writing is itself an education. Those who’ve not been to school must require accentuating on that. Education in Pakistan has never been the top priority to any regime who ruled on the federal level. Especially in the last 30-35 years no political regime who formed the government centrally has emphasized in this area. It seems that the political leadership has kept people by-intentionally uneducated to prolong their fake political agendas and sham democracy so that their corruption could not expose and because of lack of awareness people keep voting them.

Structure: 

Pakistan’s literacy rate always has been a big concern. Currently standing on a 60% literacy rate is a huge sign of embarrassment for the country established 70 years back. We can judge the attitude of government by looking at budget allocation on educational sectors which is just 4% in which only around 2.5% is used to spend of the total GDP. KPK is looking a bit serious in this vital department because they have raised 15% than last year’s budget. Our syllabus, especially Urdu is very old and has not been updated according to the modern world requirement. Like, whatever I’ve studied in matric, my father had gone through the same outline. The world is changing, lots of new developments and researches discovering on a daily basis. We must need to imbibe that in our studies. Pakistan’s education system is a huge complex with many diversifications in the system. At least 30 education systems, including boards have been circulating around the country, like Karachi board, Punjab board, KPK board, federal board, matric systems, Cambridge, other private sectors, Cadet College, American schools, Taj schools, Madrassas and many more, consequently, we’re moving towards no specific direction. These diverse forms a wide gap in nation building process that is why it creates an unbreakable conflict which resists us to have one foresight as a state that is why we couldn’t become a genuine nation so far. Let’s study this case in further deep. A person who has 5 children, A studies in the matric system, B in Cambridge, C at Cadet College, D in American type schools and E in Madrassa who also have their curriculum other than Islamic studies. They all 5 brothers and sisters are going diametrically in the opposite direction and can’t even build a consensus if there is such a huge difference in their grooming. So, how can you build a one nation with such diversity in your system? This shows that how many frictions exist in our system. On the other side, in western countries, there exists a single system.

Moreover People lives in a same street or building are divided by region, background, language or sects. We couldn’t even build a consensus on the sight of the moon on our festivals; some people are still engaged in the matter that whether there should be a Friday holiday or Sunday, English medium schools or Urdu medium? Even political differences, should we need to form more provinces or not? Should we get to the building of Kalabagh Dam or not?  These are the minor aspects which have brought us so far aside from third world countries simply because of lack of awareness.

The education budget has not given priority over development budget. We have not upgraded and invested in our people, but rather prefer to focus on metros and bullet trains. 60% of the people are living on the poverty line, according to the government statistics. Who should be held responsible for that? So, that’s what the headline of this article explains; how far we are and how close we should have been?

Some other characteristic of this study is to emphasize on two matters; “Quality of Education” and “Character building.” The reason for emphasis on ‘Quality’ is, that’s what we’re missing in our studies. Our focal point is quantity of books, especially if you look at primary school students; they carry a lot of syllabus which ultimately build pressure not training of mind. Character building is another most important part of grooming and the most ultimate thing of this world. It’s a long procedure, not a switch on or switch off case. We cannot expect to see the changes happen overnight, but an individual needs to go through the mill. Let’s have a look few months back, we heard of Safoora Goth incident, Karachi, in which around 50 people were dead; mastermind was a graduate of top university of Karachi. A Lahore blast at a public place last year in which around 70 people were dead, that was planned by a graduate of top university of Pakistan; we’ve so many of such examples, why these people chosen that path? Because they lack character building, yes, there could be more possible dimensions as well, but this is one of the most significant ones. There are many institutions in Pakistan who just focus on the course outline to be finished shortly, but they omit this most important component of an education. When quality of education and character building simultaneously carry together, then it makes a well-developed person and that’s how we can transform ourselves from an “unorganized crowd” to “one nation.”

Importance of Reading and Writing:

To gain some knowledge and to improve in any language one must need to concentrate on reading and writing because it enhances our imagination and improve our creativity. We lean to imagine big, different and generate unique ideas. It allows us to think out of the box.

Recommendations:

1) Foremost of all, we need to establish a consensus here by bringing all the responsibles of the state that we should organize a single curriculum and minimized the number of boards flowing in the country, and then we can go in a specific way.

2) Respect for the teachers should be in the heart because they’re the one who transforming you into a valuable individual and preparing you for the future. Mustafa Kamal Ataturk once said, “Teachers are the one and only people who can save nations.”

3) Government needs to focus on up gradation of the teacher’s skills, invest money in their training, give target to them and pay them a handsome amount of money.

4) Every responsible of his own province must upgrade government schools.

5) The federal government must increase budget on education to 8% at least.

6)  Institutions and their teachers should focus on practical learning rather on theory which results in experiencing of new things and explore new ideas.

7) Examination pattern should be based on MCQ’s rather than subjective like in western countries. By this amendment, students won’t go for rattafication but indeed clear their concepts.

8) Government must take measures to raise education awareness.

Conclusion:

The intellect to write on this topic is to highlight the meaning of education and bring people’s attention to have a look at how far we are and how close we should have been? We must need to infer the importance of learning. “It’s a part of a human nature that we don’t give importance to a thing until and unless it has been snatched from our hands.” So are we waiting for something like that to happen? Every bit I cited above that education is not restrained to simply belong to school alone, but we can learn or develop ourselves from even environment but it takes will and purpose.

“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.”  Brian Herbert

[izaakkiddba3research]

Draft for Ba2b

Transcending storytelling through interactivity and collaboration Research report By Izaak Kidd

Table of contents Introduction   Chapter 1 historical overview of interactive stories and why interactive art forms exist Chapter 2 virtual realities and limitations of immersive storytelling Looking to art for future of interactivity Chapter 3 Social impact through use of collaborative media Chapter 4 audience as maker of content (music etc.) Conclusion Bibliography

Chapter One It is intrinsically human to tell stories, a form of communication in which we learn and understand things. Cave paintings are the oldest known record of storytelling, commonly they were a sequence of events that reflected the daily routine of hunting for survival. Stories evolved, as did our communication abilities, from simple concepts to narratives that could teach lessons. The power of moral codes within Aesop’s Fables resonated so strongly they could be passed through generations without the use of notation. Lessons coded within spiritual texts caused worldwide social movements that has impacted society the most.   Today’s stories owe a lot to Greek Tragedies, where the emphasis is on entertainment. Greek pioneering thinkers saw beauty in storytelling as an art form and transcended the fable into epic emotional rollercoasters. Aristotle regarded stories as not just a mimicking of reality but unlike history, stories address the “possible” in which you must make audiences understand emotionally. His analysis of tragedy in Poetics had been the first utterance of audience immersion and set the tempo for conventional storytelling today. Plato however suggests in Republic X the emotions tragedy evokes lead audience members astray from moral judgement.   “Art is not a mirror with which to reflect reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”  German Playwright Bertolt Brecht opposed immersion and focused on creating personal engagement through an active audience- actively involved, often unconsciously, in making sense of the message within their personal and social contexts. One technique he employed was breaking the illusory fourth wall between story and audience dissolves boundaries. This achieved alienation but can be used to great effect. In recent media, the fourth wall hammer can be seen wielded by Frank Underwood in Netflix’s House of Cards where the writers of the show demonstrate depth within the format through an understanding of the fourth wall. The character can communicate to the audience separately, dissecting the realism of the scene as an alternate emotional narrative of power becomes central focus. Whilst Shakespeare would employ the technique of monologuing to the audience, the writers of the show transform breakage of immersion to a simple knock on a table; which audiences have an unconsciously learned engagement with. Alpha Auer on his blog contrasts an Aristotelian spectator experience of being caught up in the drama to “a Brecht audience member is to be stimulated and encouraged to be a thinking agent.”   Theatre has since translated into modern cinema: the two aren’t all that different, both having a select audience experience in an auditorium. These storytelling mediums utilise the audience’s attention in a passive manor - a being told to and only allowing an inactive absorption of information. Douglas Adams recognises the loss of interactivity with audiences and to why we need the term “interactivity” in the first place in his book How to Stop worrying and Love the internet. “Cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport—the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for.” With everchanging technology, we have vaster opportunities to connect with audiences. But to do so creators must understand the format as traditional storytelling is not so easily applied. “digital storytelling is ecology of narrative in which narrative flourishes in the hands of carefully designed agency.” (Fencott)   Spotlight Stories from google presents animated 360 degree stories that are adapted for interactive use on smartphones. The 360 space provides opportunity to explore, which the storytellers have facilitated by pausing the main story arc until you decide to return to it. The stories made from google follow Brecht’s theory allowing audiences to engage at their own pace however a reliance on linear storytelling and a one level interactive involvement leaves more to be desired. The focus can be shifted to implicit creation opposed to creators explicitly detail story. “new metaphors are needed to explain the main difference constituted by this indirect form of design.” (Spierling) Where Spotlight fails is not allowing an emergent narrative from the input of the audience.   An understanding of the potential of the internet can lead to fascinating outcomes within art. “The art challenges the technology, the technology inspires the art”, (Lasseter) With greater pushes of the power of social connection this can be used as another tool in the storyteller’s toolkit. In interactive documentary A journal of Insomnia, It asks audiences to input their experiences with insomnia to create a non-linear map within a wider factual story. This collaborative device is in use to help others understand the emotion and scope of subject matter. A blurring of the line between creator and consumer enables a transcendence that’s evolution is an altogether new thing.   It is important to not disregard Aristotle’s elements for story in interactive medium but rather apply them organically.  With a greater understanding of character motivations and choice storytellers can keep narratives relevant. “As long as users can feel like they make a meaningful contribution to that shared drama they can also feel a sense of participatory agency” (Patrickson) The decisions audience members make in live performance Choose Your Own Documentary are designed to allow empathy grow with each choice until the power feels completely within the audience. This manipulation of emotion is vital in creating meaningful interactive stories.

Bibliography Adams, D (1999) How To Stop Worrying And Learn to Love The Internet, The Sunday Times. (article) Auer, A. (2015) “Interactive Digital Storytelling” snippetsquotesandideas.wordpress.com, last accessed 16 May 2017. Curran, A. (Spring 2001) Brecht's Criticisms of Aristotle's Aesthetics of Tragedy The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 59, No. 2. pp. 167-184 Fencott, C. (2003). “Agencies of interactive digital storytelling”. In Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment Conference (pp. 152-163). Fencott, C. (2003). “Agencies of interactive digital storytelling”. In Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment Conference (pp. 152-163). Hudson, D.M. and Zimmermann, P.R. (2015) Thinking through digital media : transnational environments and locative places. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hoguet, R (2014) "What Is Interactive Storytelling?". Medium.com, last accessed 15 May 2017. Hoguet, R (2015) “A short history of interactivity” medium.com last accessed 16 May 2017 Patrickson, B (2011) “Multi-user Interactive Drama” Interactive Storytelling: 4th International  Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, pp.319 Ryan, M. (2015) Narrative as virtual reality 2 : revisiting immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media.Second edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

FEEDBACK

Small additions will make your work more credible academically, e.g. adding citations to credit all sources in the Harvard (author, date) style, and dates of release (in brackets) for films, games, etc. the first time you mention them. You need to ensure that your final report contains a strong enough focus on animation: at present, it seems as if chapter 2 might be the natural home for this. You may want to bridge the large chronological gap between Aristotle and Brecht, but I can see that you’re still working out your ideas and I think the fine detail will come naturally next year.

[designweekportland]

5 Questions with Mike Clave and Jake Pooler of ThoughtCrime Tattoo

Tattoos and Portland. For those not from here, rarely can words be spoken about one without the other. Thanks, Portlandia. With more tattoo studios per capita than any other city in the entire U.S., there’s no denying their contribution to defining our unique culture here in the Rose City.

And that’s a good thing for artists and ThoughtCrime Tattoo studio owners Mike Clave and Jake Pooler, who threw caution to the wind and abandoned their previous posts in 2010 to open their own business together, with less than $10,000 between them to do so with. The result? They’ve never been happier.

We were curious to hear about their thoughts on design and its impact and implications in their daily work. Here’s our 5 questions interview with Jake and Mike!

DWP: Tell us a little about your background and story. Why tattooing? And why Portland?

Jake: I guess everybody draws when they are a little kid, but it was something that I really gravitated towards as a child and I have always had an affinity for it. I started tracing the illustrations from “Where The Sidewalk Ends”, then I started replicating them by eye before moving on to progressively more complex reproductions. I learned the fundamentals of drawing and design that way, and it helped me to start creating my own work and style as I got older.

Tattooing really began to pique my interests when I was about 16, I was a pretty rebellious kid and the idea of giving people tattoos was pretty much the most badass thing I could imagine. I’m not proud of it in retrospect, but I started tattooing my friends when I was in high school. I tattooed when I could for about a year or so before realizing that this was not a medium that I could teach myself without any guidance. I put tattooing aside and started to focus on fine art. I did a couple years of community college before transferring to the Rhode Island School of Design for painting.

After leaving college, I felt like it was really time for me to relocate from the East Coast. My younger brother had been living in Portland for a couple years at that point. I had been out here to visit several times and I really liked it so I decided to venture out here. Portland was the first place that I have ever lived that I really felt at home. I actively began to pursue tattooing as a career, I got licensed and I haven’t looked back since. Tattooing is something that has really made me feel whole, the friendships and relationships that I have cultivated through being in this industry have been profoundly fulfilling, and I will always owe Portland that debt of gratitude. I am proud to call this place my home.

Mike: I grew up in Montana, where I was surrounded by beautiful scenery and an array of wildlife unique to the Pacific Northwest. At 14 years old, I knew I wanted to become a tattoo artist, and spent most of my days drawing in notebooks, and creating on commission and in-kind art for classmates. I became a hunting and fishing guide, and when not in class, could often be found exploring Montana’s great outdoors, with a fishing pole in hand, discovering and capturing nature at its finest. This explains a lot about my art today, as wildlife imagery continues to be my favorite subject matter, and where I draw my greatest inspiration from to create my best work. I honestly don’t know what I would be in this life if not a tattoo artist.

Why Portland? My dad was a General Foreman for the iron workers union. We traveled often, never staying in one place for very long. Portland was the last stop in the itinerary and where we ultimately planted roots. Having traveled all over, tattooing in Portland offers something that other cities don’t. For one, Portland, more so than other cities, is an endless pool of creative talent, which is not dominated or defined by any one creative discipline. We are the makers and doers. Portland is a city where defining people by what they do is challenging because most of us do not stop at our day jobs, but rigorously pursue side hustles that commonly circle back to creative interests. The people of Portland are thereby very supportive and encouraging of the promotion of art in all forms. So much so, in fact, that most of us choose to proudly wear it for permanent display. There is no other city on the planet where you will find more tattooed people!

*In progress tattoo by Mike Clave.

DWP: In a city inundated with tattoo artists, how do you set yourselves apart, on an individual level and as ThoughtCrime Tattoo?

Mike: We are a custom shop. Markers and freehand design are part of our MO. We study art every day, and as a shop, we actually invest in one another as artists, by sharing tools and insights learned with one another as we go from our collective experiences. In my experience, this is unique. A lot of artists can be guarded about their personal insights and trade secrets. We don’t believe in that. We support the growth and development of one another, so that as a shop, and as individuals, each of us is capable of delivering and creating an experience and final product that is memorable, respected and appreciated by our clients. We are artists first and foremost, but our legacy is not only reflected by our art, but also in our delivery of client service. Every artist brings something unique to the table, be it style, approach, or bedside manner. The devil is in the details. As much as each client’s tattoo means to them personally, we take pride in each piece as a reflection of ourselves and of our capabilities. Your tattoo is our name. 

Jake: There are a lot of things that I feel set us apart from a lot of other shops. First off, we aren’t a street shop, our location is on the sixth floor of a historic building so we are kind of hidden. Our shop has a very unique aesthetic, it’s got a character that is very much its own. This isn’t just the place that we have to come to every day to make the doughnuts for a paycheck, we really love this studio and enjoy being here.  

Apart from all of the aspects of ThoughtCrime that Mike mentioned, I think it is equally important to acknowledge the things that we don’t do that really make us who we are as a shop. We have always approached the growth of our shop and ourselves as artists organically. We have never done any paid advertising and we don’t market ourselves in any capacity aside from the work that we put out for people to see. We have always relied on word of mouth, we do right by our clients and they have always done right by us. We don’t treat our clients as a commodity, and that is how we have cultivated and maintained the solid reputation that we have. We don’t have a gimmick and there aren’t any catches.

Despite how popular and de-stigmatized tattooing has become in recent years, we have always looked at it as a somewhat counter-culture endeavor, and that’s what makes it so attractive to artists. That’s something that we have always tried to stay true to. We don’t operate as some corporate bureaucracy, we are friends and family here and we take care of each other. I think that’s a big part of our success. We created a space where a bunch of creative shitheads can do what they are passionate about and make cool shit. It makes for a great shop environment and I think that really shows in the work that we put out and the experience that people have when they come here.    

DWP: How do design applications and processes differ in tattoo design from other forms of artistry and creative?

Jake: I would say that tattooing is unique in that it is a two dimensional design on a three dimensional living canvas that bends and stretches and contracts. It adds a laundry list of other considerations that need to be taken into account when creating a 2-D design. As opposed to mediums like painting and drawing, the surface itself needs to be considered and becomes an integral part of how the design is composed. Placement and flow on the body are elemental when designing a tattoo. Beyond that, I would say that the stakes are really high when it comes to tattoos. These things are permanent, so when you are designing a piece for a client you have to take the time to really understand what it is that they want and what they are looking to put on their bodies for the rest of their lives. You will always be attached to that piece, so your name and reputation is hinged on creating something that they are proud to display. It isn’t a business that allows you to have a bad day, it requires you to always be giving it your all and to keep pushing yourself to progress artistically.

*Tattoo by Jake Pooler

DWP: What do the next six months look like for you?

Jake: Busy. We are looking forward to celebrating our 7 year anniversary on April 27th, we have some conventions coming up and we have always got traffic coming in through the doors. Aside from the normal day to day stuff, we have a bunch of cool projects in the works for the shop. You’re going to have to stop by and check it out!

DWP: What are you looking forward to with regard to DWP this year?

Jake: We are really just interested in any and all forms of design that can inform our work and progression. DWP and events like this provide opportunities to network with people in the community involved in different design disciplines. Inspiration can really come from anywhere, so it’s always beneficial for any artist to look beyond the scope of what they normally do and see what other people are making and creating. It can be really easy to get pigeonholed by your routine or by whatever it is you are focused on artistically, so I think DWP is a great way for artists and designers to step back and look outside of your own field of vision. 

ThoughtCrime Tattoo will host their Open House on Wednesday, April 26, from 4–7 p.m. Be sure to drop in to check out the shop and see what they are working on! To see more of ThoughtCrime’s work, follow their shop page on Facebook. 

[onlineblogs83-blog]

4 Homeless Potential Update

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