#like yippee hooray and things of that sort

[iknowwhereyousnoozeatnight]

he’s just a silly funny guy to me (and i need him in a skirt)

flat colors for flat color enjoyers idk

[daz4i]

i love and agree with every mental illness or neurodivergency or physical disability hc anyone has abt any character btw. ESPECIALLY if they're projecting. unironically more ppl should do it

[m3llowm1sh]

Ok im finally dumping all of these on here !!!! Hooray

first off a lil vid of loghail in @sirwow’s rd connections converged au heehee

then some shipping stuff

and finally some internsona shenanigans again ft @emo-hermit’s river and also wally again cuz i love their dynamic sm 🤧🤧

this time theres an actual arc i made for her (under the cut bcuz wall of text) yeaa

-

ok so when she first arrives at the hospital, she doesnt really talk to any of the people there (except ada and the kids occasionally) and focuses more on working for the rd program. she does her job well and edega notices her quietness/general insecure behaviour, therefore leading him to decide to take advantage of her and try to mold her mind into one thats willing to always take his side and do any sort of work for him.

as time goes on, this definitely takes a toll on her, and the other people notice this. she gets closer with them and like a while later thanks to their conversations and persuading she realizes that her "mentor" relationship with edega is definitely not healthy at all (she realizes this probably like a few months later? idk i still need to refine this whole thing)

eventually when she does snap out of their unhealthy relationship with the reassurance of others she pulls a knives chau and dyes her hair w that classic red color, flips edega off and realizes that "hey its ok to defy others its ok to be myself and not someone others want me to be" and everyone is happy yippee💥💥💥

[sangoqueenkoko]

beautiful day to you, i come here with a writing request if you so wish to take on it :] i was thinking about kaeya training a recent-vision-user reader to be part of the knights of favonius but they have an inexplicable rivalry, cue annoying kaeya making smug remarks about being reader's boss despite the fact that reader could probably beat him up with enough training. ( also if you're okay writing gendered readers, i think male reader could be very neat ^_^ ) ty !

Ouuuuuu great idea, and good evening/morning/day/afternoon to you! And I have no problem with gendered readers :D

Hope you like it, I’m a little rusty after motivation block.

:)

KAEYA

oh, ho, this should be interesting

Fluff, or something like that

MAIN MASTERLIST | CRYO MASTERLIST

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Summary: So you recently got a vision! Hooray! But... Kaeya, the reader's boss, teaches you how to use the newly founded power for your Knights of Favonius training. Snarky remarks ensue.

Warnings? Male reader! (L/N) - Last Name. He may be OOC, but I don't use him enough to know what he's like. apologise.

[here is the information I used about vision personalities!]

Contains a mention of Jean, and Kaeya of course!

I AM SO SO SO SO SO SORRY FOR THE WAIT. mental slump and no motivation 🙃 And it is shorter than I had originally planned for it to be. again.

SO SORRY.

You got your vision! Yippee!

And the gods have granted you a vision of Pyro!

Fire personalities are the most passionate people you could find, they do every single thing with huge amounts of willpower, energy, and love, amongst other things. They are very optimistic and will usually see the good side of things. Pyro vision holders are most extroverted, but they dislike being alone. They are very VERY easy to read as well, in contrast to Cryo for instance. Opposites attract.

Such as Kaeya, whom since you gaining your vision, promised to teach you how to use it. But him being your boss.. he sort of has to help.

They share being hard to read, with electro and hydro. Why? Because many of them are pretty much immune to emotions, being unaffected by them, or totally ignorant of what they are, and so on.

Ahem!

“Okay, so you finally got your vision. Hope it’s what you wanted” Kaeya smirked as you both walked out of the city gates to start training. Because neither of you would want to damage anything in the city. You’ll have to withstand Jean’s wrath.

“Pyro, right? It matches that fiery attitude of yours”

“Uh-huh sure” you mused, “at least I can melt your hatred with my desires. I can’t believe Jean made you train me.”

He walked in front of you, and stood still, stopping you from walking. You looked up at him. There was a notable height difference between you both. He lifted your chin up with his index finger, a cocky smirk on his face, “now listen here, Mister (L/N), we’re out here to train, not give each other snide remarks, got it?”

You only hummed in reaponse, “got it?” He repeated.

“Yeah, I gue-” he cut you off with a clearing of the throat, you knew what that meant, “yes, Captain Kaeya.”

Kaeya chose your training for today to be in Starfell Valley, seeing as it has different types of terrains to work on, and you wanted to show him what you can really do, without his speculation clouding reality. You have a vision of Pyro after all, you like to be active in fights and show people what you can really do.

Time to shine.

Your first experience with fighting with Kaeya felt like a warm-up, but to you, it also felt... childish. No adrenaline pumping, no nearly losing breath while running after the target, and no obstacle avoidance. Just.. some light touches. And this went on for a little while, which you didn't like.

"Ugh!" you sighed, "This is so haphazard! Please Kaeya, can we do something that's more entertaining? Like, I don't know, actual training?" You hated standing still, not being able to burn some energy. You always noticed when you're around Kaeya that he likes to be slow and take his time, and you assumed that he did this just to annoy you. And it did annoy you.

"Oh-ho" Kaeya mused with a light chuckle as he strode to your side, it was like he teleported to your side, you didn't realise straight away that he was so close to you because you may or may not have been mindlessly gazing at him, "dearest (Y/N), does one not realise that good things come to those that wait? Trust me when I say I know what I am doing, and you will get there eventually."

You grumbled to yourself before saying confidently, "I bet with enough training, I could easily beat you up. Maybe even to a pulp!"

He lightly scoffed at the thought, "Oh-ho, this should be interesting. Dearest (Y/N), I would love to see you try."

Let's just say you did manage to get to the point where you could easily fight him and beat him a few times, and when Jean came to review how the training was going, she picked up on the sly remarks between the both of you. Even a certain type of tension.

And that also went on for such a while longer.

...

Jean eventually had to split you both up for a while so you could calm down and cool off.

[hqmillioncorn]

Girls take initiative! ( For true love they believe in!)

Babycorn made her way down the hall, Cherrypit walking right behind her. When Cherrypit caught sight of Pancake and Linnet his eyes lit up, he tugged on Babycorn's dress. "Huh?" Babycorn looked down, "What's up Cherry?" Cherrypit waddled ahead and Babycorn watched as he talked to both girls for a brief moment then he waddled back. "Bebe like Butter?" Cherrypit asked almost as if someone had asked him to ask that. What a weird question. "Of course I like butter." It went great on bread. Babycorn didn't notice both girls giggling to themselves as they ran off.

Lalapril 4/6: Mark Starring : @windupnamazu's Pancake and Cinnamon . Pancake asks Cinnamon to review her writing

“Cinnamon!!!”

Cinnamon turned onto her side, ignoring the very loud yell calling for her. It was her afternoon nap and she didn’t want to be disturbed just yet. Especially not after such a hectic morning. Having spent a large majority of it flying away from Cherrypit who decided he wanted to chase her around for fun.

It really was a curse to be so irresistibly shiny sometimes….

“Cinnamooooon! Wake up!!” 

Cinnamon knew that was Pancake’s voice calling her name. If she was lucky then maybe she would decide to pester her some other time.

“Cinnamooooon! I know you’re awake!!” 

Cinnamon felt Pancake poking her hammock, it rocked her from side to side, sort of having the opposite effect that Pancake intended for it to have. After hearing Cinnamon let out a loud snore Pancake quickly realized her mistake and instead just decided to skip a couple of steps, grabbing Cinnamon by her wings. 

Cinnamon yelped out loud and her eyes flew open. “Hey! Come on now-! That's not fair!” She flapped her wings and Pancake quickly let her go. Cinnamon flew back down onto her designated drawer and crossed her arms, she tapped her foot impatiently. 

“I know that stuff was okay when you were little but now…” 

Who was she kidding? Even with all the complaining Cinnamon did, she really didn't mind, deep down. It was a good thing she was used to it by now. Except for the dress-up games. Cinnamon would trade all the nap times in the world for that to stop. 

Pancake was rhythmically tapping the top of the drawer in anticipation, “Cinnaaamoooon~! My favorite fairy ever in the woooorld! Can I ask you a favooor?” She blinked her eyes repeatedly and brought her hands together, making sure to emphasize just how cute and squishy her face was.

Lunya, whether she meant to or not, had taught her well. 

Cinnamon knew exactly what was happening. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion but Pancake’s eyes just kept glittering at her. She was playing right into her hands and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. 

“Fine! Fine! Fricking fine!” Cinnamon shrugged, “What the hells do you want?” 

Once Pancake recognized Cinnamon’s bell jingles of resignation she jumped back with a loud squeeee!!!!!! “Yippee!! Really?! Hooray!!” Pancake hopped around in place and cheered to herself. “It’s gonna be really quick Cinnamon! I just need your thoughts on something!” As quickly as she could, Pancake twirled on her heel and ran out of their room, “I’ll be right back! Right right back!!” 

Cinnamon sat down and pouted. “Sure. Take your tiiiime!” She waved her sleeve covered arm at the door that Pancake had danced out of.

As luck would have it Butter was out today on an ‘Important Errand.’  

Which considering that by complete coincidence that Babycorn was also out meant that Butter wouldn’t be back anything soon. So there was a zero chance of him saving her from whatever Cinnamon wanted her to do. 

Hopefully it wasn’t another mission of stealing something from Lunya. 

If there was anyone that Cinnamon didn’t want to get on the bad side of, it was Lunya Lanya. 

Pancake came running back holding a large stack of papers in her hands and a red pen in her mouth. “Mpphmhphpmhhpp!!” She excitedly explained. Pancake dropped the stack of papers on the desk. The force of the impact was enough to make Cinnamon air-bound for a few seconds.

Cinnamon looked up at Pancake. “Um, Pancake? Sweetie…you sorta…” She gestured her large sleeves to her mouth to try and at least signal to Pancake that she couldn’t understand her. 

“Mpphmh?” Pancake had run across the room to grab a desk chair and carried over to where Cinnamon was. She sat down and grabbed the pen from her mouth. “Okay! Okay! Okay!” Pancake was practically bouncing from her seat as she grabbed a piece of paper from the stack. “I’m gonna read you something and you need to tell me if you like it Cinnamon!”

“Oh…kay?” Was that it?

Pancake cleared her throat and began reading. 

“Once upon a time there was a small village that was in the middle of the forest. The forest was big and dangerous and very very filled with monsters. Monsters that really liked to attack the people living in the village and the people that even got near the village. Because the kingdom of the village belonged to was taken over by an evil empire they were getting no help!”

Cinnamon flew up and took a seat on her custom sized hammock. It sounded like this was going to take a while. 

“So then the village put together its own people to fight the monsters instead! The super cool and very cute Pancake was going to be apart of it! The leader of the monster hunters was Lunya too! There were a bunch of strong and cool people that were apart of it! This was the way they could fight and keep themselves safe!”

So far Cinnamon didn’t know why she was here. Pancake had asked her for her ‘thoughts’ as she put it but what thoughts could she even offer if they couldn’t really communicate with each other. 

Was she just supposed to wave her arms at Pancake if she didn’t like something?

“Butter lived with Pancake (that’s me!!!! :D) in a house in the village. They had parents and they had their own restaurant and Butter loved his sister and cheered her on as she protected the village. One day a lot of monsters suddenly attacked the village! The brave and very cool Pancake defeated as many as she could but even she could not defeat them all! While Cinnamon was fighting outside her brother Butter stayed to defend their home.”

Cinnamon didn’t know whether to wiggle her arms in the air or not. She knew in her little fairy cookie heart that Butter would go out and fight alongside Pancake if this whole thing was real and not just an imaginary scenario in Pancake’s head. 

Oh well, Pancake wasn’t going for realism anyway. Probably.

“Everything was going good but then Butter heard a loud noise outside his home! Butter grabbed a big spoon and went outside to investigate.”

Cinnamon furrowed her brow, “Why did he grab a big spoon?” I mean, sure Pancake said that they lived in a restaurant but surely a knife would have been a smarter decision then? 

Then again, Butter was the type of person to grab the wrong thing under stress. But it wasn’t something like this had happened before, so how could she really tell.

...Why was she overthinking this?

“When Butter stepped outside he saw a monster right in front of him! It was really scary! Butter tried to attack it but he saw that she was hurt! There was a cut on her tail that looked like it really hurt! Butter couldn’t just leave her like that so he went inside and got some stuff to help her. The monster was really confused at why Butter was helping her but she was glad that he was helping her.”

Cinnamon sighed, that did sound like something Butter would definitely do. No matter how much she would be yelling into his ear that it was a bad idea. 

“But then Butter remembered that the monster hunters were still outside and protecting the village. He decided to bring the monster inside she was just almost too big to hide but Butter decided to hide her in a shed that his family almost never used. He ran inside to grab a big blanket too. That was enough to protect her from the monster hunters.”

Cinnamon took the time that Pancake normally used to switch sheets of paper to stretch for a second. Her relaxing stretch was rudely interrupted when Pancake placed her elbows on the drawer, it made Cinnamon jump a little.

“That’s all I got written for now but let me tell you what my plan is for the rest!” Pancake very excitedly explained. 

Cinnamon waved her large sleeve to try and gesture for Pancake to continue. Having already accepted that she probably wouldn’t be going anymore anything soon. 

“Sooooo! I bet you already guessed who the monster that Butter saved iiiis~?”

Cinnamon looked confused. She actually never thought to ask about that. “Uh…Is it a really spiky cactuar?” she chimed. Cinnamon waited to see if Pancake would tell her if she was right or wrong but when that didn’t happen she tried her best to draw out a shape of a cactuar in the air using her sleeves.

Now Pancake was the one looking confused. Instead of trying to guess what Cinnamon was saying she decided to just go ahead and tell her. “Hehe…! You guessed right! It’s Babycoooorn! Of course its Babycorn! Duhduh!!” Pancake tapped the top of the drawer now more excited than ever. 

“Ah. Of course.” Cinnamon really should have seen this coming.

It made far too much sense, seeing as Pancake seemed to be the number one self-proclaimed fan of Butter marrying Babycorn one day. Everyday Pancake would start the morning by asking Butter if today was going to be the day he was going to ask Babycorn to be his girlfriend and then Butter would respond by simply saying’ maybe.’ 

Then when it was bedtime Pancake would ask if Butter was going to ask Babycorn out the next day and so on and so on…

Hell, Pancake had even begun periodically styling her hair to look almost exactly like Babycorn’s.  

“Babycorn is the coolest! She’s gonna be the coolest sister-in-law ever!!” Pancake cheered, “That’s why I’m writing this story for them!” 

“Sure Pancake.” Personally Cinnamon couldn’t see it happening if things kept going as they did. Either Butter would decide to grow a backbone or that Hildibrand guy would finally clue in that Babycorn desperately desired him. It could go either way. 

Of course her full support was in Butter’s corner, but there was only so much she and Pancake could do to have Butter confess his feelings. Then again, it looked like Pancake had been very hard at work on it. From cursing Hildibrand to arranging special dinners between the two, and now she was writing stories about them? Cinnamon had her work cut out for her. 

Pancake picked up another piece of paper and turned it to show Cinnamon. There was a drawing on it, a picture of Butter, Pancake, and something that resembled Babycorn. The pom on the head was a dead giveaway. “So then I think that Butter and Babycorn get to talking and know each other and they get less scared of the other! Cause you know Babycorn’s a monster in this so she’s scared of Butter too!” Pancake giggled to herself and stretched the paper in her hands.

“Oh that’s nice.” Dare Cinnamon even call it…cute???? 

“But then I find out that Butter has been hiding a monster in our house!!”

“Oh shit!” 

Pancake nodded solemnly. “Of course since I’m super nice and cool and cute I understand and I promise to protect Babycorn too! And Cherrypit! He’s here too and he’s really small and totally alive!” 

Cinnamon smiled, Babycorn would probably have liked to have heard that last part. 

At this point Pancake was now pacing from one side of the room to the other. “And then-! Then-! Me and Butter find out that Babycorn is actually the long lost princess of the kingdom that got taken over because the prince had managed to escape! And he fell in love with a monster!”

“Woah! No way!” Cinnamon fluttered into the air. “Then what happens?!”

Pancake had no idea what Cinnamon had asked but she looked surprised and that was to make her happy. “So then me and Butter and Babycorn and Cherrypit are gonna team up with everyone to defeat the evil kingdom and the scary monsters too! Everyones gonna help and also Butter and Babycorn fall in love and get married and I get to be a princess too and-! And-! And they have a lot of babies too!” 

“That’s…pretty fast!” 

Pancake bounced herself off of a wall, and just kept pacing around. “I haven’t worked out a lot of the stuff that happens yet but I do know that Babycorn and Butter get married and also I’m the flower girl cause Butter promised it to me when I was little. Remember?”

“Oh I remember.” There’s no way Cinnamon could ever forget the time that Pancake had asked the question right in front of Babycorn herself. She could have sworn that Butter would have died on the spot had Babycorn not been so….Babycorn. 

The energy inside Pancake had run its course and she had decided to just sit on the side of her bed. “So what do you think Cinnamon? I’ve been working really hard on it! I’ve mostly been writing it in my head but I started writing it down yesterday and I think it's really good so far but what do you think?” Pancake decided not to mention that the times she was writing it down in her head had mostly been during times when Sirius had been lecturing her about things.

Cinnamon struggled to find a way to answer. Simply saying ‘I love it!’ wouldn’t be enough since Pancake couldn’t understand a word of it. There had to be something else she could do. That’s when Cinnamon had a great idea. 

She flew almost right up to Pancake and gave her the biggest thumbs-up she could, even with her large sleeves it was crystal clear to Pancake what Cinnamon was saying.

“YAAAAAAAY!” Pancake cheered, jumping up and down. “I knew I did a good job!” She grabbed Cinnamon in both her hands and gave her a tight hug. “Thanks for the help Cinnamon! I knew I could count on you!” As Cinnamon tried to break out of the suffocating hug, at some point she decided it would be better just to go with it.

“You’re welcome!” Cinnamon jingled.

Pancake gently set the very dizzy fairy back down on her hammock. “You can go back to napping now!” She grabbed the stack of papers from the drawer and walked over to the door, forgetting the red pen that she hadn’t even used. “I’ll see you later! Don’t tell Butter about this cause it's gonna be a surprise!” 

Cinnamon gave Pancake another thumbs-up and Pancake giggled. 

As Pancake struggled to get the door open Cinnamon wondered if she should fly over to help. Thankfully Pancake managed to open the door with the power of balancing a stack of papers on her knee. Something she looked very proud of doing. 

“Aww. They grow up so fast…” Cinnamon said to herself. It felt like just yesterday she was helping Butter change Pancake’s diapers and now here she was writing fanfiction about her brother and this weird girl that lived with them. It almost brought a tear to her eye. 

That’s when Cinnamon realized one crucial thing. 

“Hey! Wait a minute! Where was I in that story?!”

Cinnamon flew to follow Pancake out the door, “Why can’t I be a cool monster hunter too?! Pancake?! Hey Pancake!!” Unfortunately Cinnamon’s jingles fell on deaf ears, as Pancake was already out and about, racing to find Linnet to tell her all about what she had written.

[talonpaw]

fine ya got me. what los campansinos (?? is that how you spell it. i forgot[tm]) songs do you reccomend.

YAY!!!!! YIPPEE!!!!!!!! HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

los campesinos! is a band i am SO deeply normal about ❤️

if you enjoy lovejoy, you’ll almost certainly enjoy los campesinos! los camp! is lovejoy’s primary influence. from the perspective of someone who was into los camp! LONG before i heard of lovejoy, listening to lovejoy almost feels like a Los Campesinos! Easter Egg Challenge. sometimes these are overt lyrical references but also just in the way that he performs/carries himself… he subscribes to many gareth-isms….

anyways! one thing about los camp’s sound is that it has changed a LOT over the years. i remember when i was first listening to them, i felt disoriented going from the “twee” sound of hold on now, youngster to the dark melodrama of hello sadness. for this reason, i’d recommend starting with their first album and listening chronologically, if you can!

anyways, here are (some of) my top picks (VERY CONDENSED) sorted by album. this is still a lot of songs so absolute essentials are orange. (i am SO normal) (i am so sorry)

hold on now, youngster: death to los campesinos! , drop it doe eyes , my year in lists , you! me! dancing! (<- their most popular track by virtue of being featured in a beer commercial) , we throw parties, you throw knives

we are beautiful, we are doomed: miserabilia , we are beautiful, we are doomed

romance is boring (my personal favorite!!!): romance is boring , straight in at 101 , a heat rash in the shape of the show me state , the sea is a good place to think of the future (THE fan favorite track)

hello sadness: by your hand , baby i got the death rattle

no blues: what death leaves behind , glue me , avocado, baby (another fan favorite track)

sick scenes: renato dall’ara (2008) , 5 fluoxacillin , here’s to the fourth time!

if you’re interested, i have an essential los camp! spotify playlist with all of my favorite tracks, album by album! HOWEVER, this is NOT a definitive list, by any means!

[ladydragonkiller]

Good evening, Liz! For monikers, I've been thinking between pirate or dragon. Pirate fits the person-archetype theme, but I would be remiss to ignore your URL. Perhaps you can choose between the two, or even pick both?

I've had cornbread muffins, which might count, but no good plain bread freshly homemade. Comes with living poor and disabled in a city, I suppose. The custard is frozen, yes, the ice cream type. I find I prefer custard ice creams over the regular kind, for some reason. There's little discernible difference, but the places I get my frozen custard must have better options, I suppose. I enjoy sorbets quite a bit as well.

Thank you for the hoorahs in return! I'll save them for a rainy day, perhaps once I've gotten some sewing done, or if I need motivation to get started on it.

Eclectic fashion is my favorite, honestly. Though, less eclectic where nothing fits together, and more the kind where you get one really loud piece and build something around it. I've a few choice items I've found at thrift shops that are just delightfully horrid, and I love the challenge of making them presentable. I especially enjoy "owning" the tackiness and being proud in it.

For scents... Perhaps a compromise between your two poles of options? A fresh apple, perhaps. Food-based but light, and it brings to mind images of late spring to early autumn, where everything's green and loud. Makes me think, also, of noisy, shameless laughs with your close friends. It seems to fit you quite well.

My favorite baked good... I'm quite partial to danishes, usually with cream cheese. I've been meaning to try the varieties with fruit topping, though. You also can't go wrong with cake, though.

For your question: if you could have any animal as a magical familiar, which animal would it be?

- With love, the Knight

Jereliz the pirate-dragon certainly has an air of whimsy about it, and let it never be said that I don't appreciate a good portmanteau (even if neither of those is technically a portmanteau. shhhh)

Cornbread muffins are good! But yeah, a nice loaf of fresh baked bread with chewy and soft insides and a crispy crust, still steaming from the oven, is irreplaceable. I hope you get to experience it someday!

Custard ice creams are often a bit richer than their egg-free counterparts, as they're made with egg yolks (which have a fair amount of fat) along with the usual cream/milk mixture. You might be detecting that difference without realizing, or it might just be a matter of flavor choices like you'd said. Maybe it's the subtle egginess! In which case I imagine you would really like eclairs, souffles, and popovers.

here's a few more for you to stockpile: Hooray! Yippee! Wahoo!

That's an excellent way to go about fashion, I think. I tend to not invest a lot of energy in my outfits, so I go more for pieces that bring me joy individually and that aren't super off the wall, so I can mix and match fairly easily.

I like that! Or maybe some ripe strawberries, fitting the same categories (i have had strawberry based nicknames in the past because of how much i like them <3) I'm honored to be compared to the boisterous laughter of friends, that's one of my favorite things to both hear and do.

Danishes of all sorts are lovely. In specific, are you referring to the breadier/cakier type, like you usually find in stores, or the flakier, almost croissant-like type? I've made both, and they're both delicious, but notably different.

Oooh, that's a tricky one. Believe it or not, I'm not going to immediately go for an owl (though it's tempting). Though I love them dearly and admire them aesthetically, they're maybe not the best match for my personal vibe. they're also dumb as rocks

Maybe a prairie dog. They're unassuming at first sight, relatively small, and very cute. I definitely wouldn't want to go for an extremely large predator-type animal, as I'd be a cottage-core type of magic user. Prairie dogs are also quite social (and though i do appreciate my quiet time irl, I also very much enjoy talking with friends, both irl and digitally)

also, they love to hug and kiss, and i'd love to snuggle them

If you don't mind, I'd like to borrow the same question for you! What would your magical familiar be?

[bieofvegas]

Thankfulness

Today, the day before Thanksgiving in 2020 is a much better day than the day before Thanksgiving back in 2008.  On that date, I started off, on a rainy and dark morning, to get to my first bus stop so I could go to work.  Getting to the bus stop, on my “short cut” involved a set of concrete steps down to ground level from a parking lot.  Once, many years before, there had been a handrail along the steps.  It had been removed at some point in the intervening years.  I had used that short cut across the parking lot and down the steps many times since 1996.  I was quite familiar with them, and the previous handrail.  I had also become adept at going down the stairs when the rail was removed.  I had even gone down those blinkin’ stairs in the rain.  But, this day....for whatever reason, I stood at the top of the stairs and wondered...what? Why?  No idea what caused the hesitation, but I started down them.  About half-way down, my right foot slipped and I fell backwards...onto my left leg and foot.  After struggling to a sitting position, I managed to move my leg out from under me.  As I looked at it, noticing the crookedness of it, I thought, “well, I’m not getting up and walking on THAT!”  So, there I sat, in the dark, in the rain, hidden from passing cars by two large mailboxes below me, and at 5:20 in the mornings, there were very few people walking past.  As I was crossing the parking lot (before I reached the stairs) I had noticed a LVMPD car and an ambulance crew near the cross street.  But there was no way I could reach them.  My phone was dead.  I had planned to re-charge the battery once I got to work.   Well, I sat there and suddenly an answer to my prayers appeared.  A man was walking below me.  I hollered at him and he stopped and then came partway up the steps.  I asked him if he would go on up to the police officer and ask for help.  He kindly agreed to do just that, and a few minutes later the police officer pulled to a stop below me.  He called for an ambulance to come help.  They appeared in short order, and while they were checking my ankle, the bus I would have getting on drove past.  Bye guys!  The ambulance crew got me up and then down the remaining steps and into the ambulance.  “Which hospital do you want us to take you to?” they asked.  Hey, we were right across the street from the hospital I used to work in.  Of course I wanted to go there.  I knew people there.  The driver asked if I wanted lights and the siren.  I managed to laugh and said it wasn’t necessary.  A quick U-turn and we were in the ER drop-off area.  By then, my leg was trying to resemble an elephant’s leg and it was painful.  The ER orderly took me to the X-ray department where I was greeted with gasps of surprise from the gals I used to work with.  “What happened?”   The x-rays showed a severely fractured ankle...the ends of both leg bones were shoved out of place.  Since I had eaten breakfast, it was decided to schedule surgery for later in the afternoon.  I was pushed into a “waiting room” and given another shot of a pain-killer.  Sure enough, later in the afternoon, I was wheeled up to the surgery suite.  I came to quite awhile after as I was being taken to a patient room.  I was “in and out” for the rest of the evening and most of the next day.  My Thanksgiving “dinner” was Jell-o and some sort of soup.  Yippee!   12 years later, I’m looking forward to a Thanksgiving dinner of popcorn, pretzels, pumpkin spice flavored granola bark (which is really good) and lots of movies.  I wish I had some Hawaiian beer or Macallan Single-Malt Scotch to go with all that.  It’s a good thing I like water!   Yes, I’m thankful, that the busted ankle wasn’t worse, I’m thankful that I have recovered with no problems, I’m thankful that I HAVE lots of movies to watch, I’m thankful that I have wonderful friends who care enough to send me birthday presents with pretzels and granola bark (and a beautiful warm poncho) and that I have a roof over my head.  As strange as it sounds, I’m also sort of thankful that the broken ankle kept me from being laid-off right before Christmas.  Because I was on disability leave, my date of “termination” was delayed for a couple of months.  The best part....I don’t have to be out in the rain and the dark to catch two buses any longer.  Hooray for that!      By the way, as you’ve noticed, I have added some pictures of the injured ankle and those freakin’ steps.

[woodentrain]

The Boyfriend Experience- can this line get any blurrier?

Chapter 9 is called ‘Blurring the line’.  Ha! When you read the title for this chapter I bet you thought ‘hmm, well I know what line that’s talking about and it’s pretty damn blurry already.  I’m not sure it can get much blurrier’.  Oh how wrong we were.  Those poor grown adult men boys. They’re just so oblivious.  

(Here’s a random thought: does Yuuri offer a loyalty card? You know, you get your Eros card stamped with every visit and your 10th one is free?  Someone should suggest this.)

Anyway back to the topic at hand- I figured I’d best put a cut in case anybody hasn’t read this chapter yet because, you know, spoilers!

I reeeeeeeally loved this chapter.  The first thing that strikes me is that it was not at all what I expected.  It’s 20,000 words so I figured it would be a little bit of Victor and Yuuri interacting at the party, then they’d go their separate ways and there’d be a lot of other stuff (Yuuri and Phichit, Victor and Yakov, Victor pining on a plane, Victor pining on a rink, Yuuri doing other clients stuff, Meredith appearing on the scene, JJ being a dick, anything really). And I really did think their meeting at the party was going to go disastrously wrong (because that was kind of my worry #6 back in this post about all my worries- and yes, Yuuri doesn’t remember much about that night but it’s not an utter disaster, they kind of work with it).  So it’s a real treat because they’re together for more or less The Whole Chapter (hooray!). Once Victor left for Russia I figured ‘well this is it now, he’s gone, it would be too good to be true to see them together again in this chapter’… but yippee!  There he is again!  Then they hang out (I say hang out… you know what they’re getting up to) for the rest of the chapter, there’s quite a bit of relationship building and some smut and no sign of anything too nasty, so it’s all good.

Pretty much all good anyway. I mean, it is a bit too good to be true.  Which gives me such a bad feeling about the next chapter (or chapters.  There’s a lot of this story still to come).  That Meredith woman isn’t going to just disappear, for one thing. That’s just one thing but it’s a pretty big one because she spells Trouble.  I have a feeling she was out taking photos of Victor and Yuuri holding hands when they were out and about in Detroit.  Are we going to see some blackmail here?  (Yes, yes we are.  I mean, we have been warned.  I’m not sure if it will be in this context but…)  Let’s face it, as Victor and Yuuri fall deeper and deeper for one another it only leaves them more vulnerable to potential blackmailers because they’re each going to want to protect the other from the fallout.

And vulnerable is a pretty good description of where they both are now.  Not to blackmail (although that too), just to general angst and broken hearted misery.  Worry #5 was that Victor is not great with words and keeps saying the wrong thing. And that was more low-key in this chapter but it’s still there.  That and him just being a bit dense and although he tries sooooooo hard, he just not doesn’t always get things.  Mostly during the drunk scene.  Ooh so let’s talk about the drunk scene a bit more:

So, Yuuri is drunk and he’s super cute (Honestly, how is he so cute?  I’d totally hire him to have him to myself for a whole weekend just so I could look at him and go awwwwww, you’re so cute).  And the conversation goes surprisingly well, all things considered. Most importantly, afterwards Yuuri doesn’t remember much, and Viktor was sober, and they both know this.  So less misunderstandings than there might have been.  Phew.   Anyway- Yuuri pretty much lays all his feelings on the line, and couldn’t be much more obvious about it, and Victor is a bit dense.  There’s only so many ways you can interpret ‘I really, really liked you,’ and ‘I feel things’.  And you know what, Victor?  ‘Eros was a fan!  That’s what he meant, right?  It had to be!’ is not the way to interpret it.  At all.  

(Here’s an interesting bit in the drunk scene:  Yuuri says ‘Just things.  I leave things after me all the time’.  Does this mean something else that I’m missing? Hmmmmm…?)

My biggest overall worry (AKA worry #8) was that they are both in too deep.  Well, after this chapter they’re both in so much deeper (i.e. hopelessly in love).  There’s a ton of evidence for this: ‘Victor knew he was lost’; ‘Yuuri was frightened he had just fallen in love.  Just the smallest bit’; ‘It was obvious to anyone that Victor was quite smitten with Yuuri’; ‘It was dangerous.  Victor knew that’.  Mostly it’s about Victor, because he’s the one who’s actually acknowledging his feelings, and mostly he expresses this is a positive way but boy does he get possessive.  Understandable given the circumstances, but still a worry.  How will they move forward with Victor’s possessiveness and Yuuri’s career choice?  

He’s not just possessive, though.  He’s so sweet and caring.  When Yuuri’s drunk Victor is so attuned to his fear and the very real possibility that he will bolt for the door and not come back- so he’s really careful with him- ‘Victor reached out again, slowly so Eros could see him coming and stop him if he wanted to’.  Then when Yuuri’s hungover/still drunk and feeling pretty ropey Victor just holds him and looks after him.  He’s gentle and loving because Yuuri feels really rough, and he’s careful and sensitive with what he says because he knows what a big deal it is for Yuuri to wake up in his own bed with Victor, a client.  

Obviously the bit we were all waiting for was Viktor finding out Yuuri’s name.  I thought he’d find out from Mila, or from Phichit slipping up, or something… but we got something so much better.  When Yuuri tells Viktor his name I was holding my breath and I swear I nearly died.  Seriously. It was the sweetest scene and I could not have imagined it would go like that.  Aaaarghh, so cute!  (I’m saying aaaarghh because I have run out of words so I’m just sort of screaming.)

So… where do they think this whole ‘thing’ is going?  Yuuri, true to character, thinks he’s not good enough or attractive enough or interesting enough for Victor and I suspect he thinks that Victor will get bored and move on.  On some level they both know that this isn’t a client/escort relationship any more. The last bit of that was gone when Yuuri gave Victor his personal phone number.  I mean, there was no practical reason whatsoever for him to do that- it really doesn’t matter which phone Victor contacts him on- the only purpose this serves is to say to Victor ‘you’re not my client any more, this is something different’.  

Somehow, though, they just can’t seem to break down that last barrier- the money.  Phichit, bless him, hits the nail on the head- ‘If Yuuri liked Victor so much, surely he didn’t need to accept the payment for it?’.  And therein lies the difficulty.  Because both of them are probably kind of worried that if they suggest dropping the whole escort/payment façade, the other will say ‘hang on a minute, I only really see you as an escort/my client’.  They know it’s not true, they must know it by now, but they just can’t quite take that step and get it out in the open.  I think Victor knows how he feels and what he wants- for example ‘Victor wanted to be… inside of his life in a way Yuuri had never let anyone before’.  But Yuuri? He’s still sort of in denial and very afraid of what it might mean to be with Victor (or anyone, probably) outside the boundaries of his profession.  He finds having quantifiable, monetary worth very comforting, because outside of being an escort he’s still really not convinced he’s worth very much at all.  When he says he’s never thought about settling down, I don’t think he’s just saying that- I think he’s scared to even think about what that might mean.  So he just doesn’t think about it.  Those walls he’s built (Phichit tells us all about this) have got to come down before they can sort this mess out.  And it’s starting to happen- ‘Setting Yuuri’s soul on fire, burning down his walls,’ but he’s not there yet.  

If you’ve got this far then well done!  Because seriously, how did this get so long?  So my final point- this chapter made me laugh.  At poor, shocked, hungover Yuuri when he wakes up and finds Victor in his bed.  At Yuuri teasing Victor about the state of his home and Victor explaining about the towel swans.  And at this awesome line- ‘He’d pretty much burned the entire handbook and apparently slept with Victor Nikiforov in its mortal remains’.  Genius.

And a note for cryingoverspilledvodka / @victorsporosya : thanks again for another brilliant chapter!  Good luck with your dissertation and we’ll all be looking forward to the next update.

[wishesram3345-blog]

Best Christmas Wishes

In the event that you need to send some amazing Funny christmas wishes to your extras and friends and family this Christmas, you've come at the perfect spot. Here we have a format of keen, silly and pulling in Christmas messages and jokes that will make them grin, if not laugh. Look down and investigate our Christmas jokes and sharp christmas wishes pictures underneath.

Individuals send Christmas gives and cards boggling Christmas messages to their relatives and pals Add please and chuckling this season with associating with christmas recommends, Christmas wordings, Christmas Gifts, Funny Christmas wishes and Funny Christmas Messages that will empower your companions' overwhelming bones. Offer the satisfaction of this season and be a not all that dreadful gift to all.

Interesting Christmas Wishes and Messages for Friends

interesting christmas-pictures

The standard present you can show Jesus amidst his birthday is unprecedented lead. you can attempt to be remarkable today by then returned to standard after Christmas.

I am sending love, care and unprecedented cheer, your way amidst this Christmas. I trust you audit this message in the event that we don't wrap up get-together amidst this Christmas.

Confirmation you have the greater part of the young people in the family playing together with a total spotlight on that they are as a rule included, and you and most of the adults can get together, drink senseless and see Christmas.

With all the snow amidst Christmas, essentially promise you set up a great deal of indoor fun improvement so Christmas does not wrap up being incapacitating. Satisfy thing Christmas.

A normal Christmas present is the proprietor swearing off the December lease with the target that you can discover more cash to drink and make energetic. Have a fantastic time and welcome this Christmas.

With the vast majority of the bills of the Christmas and new year, I comprehend you don't have the foggiest thought how you will deal with this season. I wish you the best of need with the arranging and endeavor to make Christmas fun.

May you pardon your enemies and those that have treated you terribly. Essentially, I am surrendering you a heads to excuse me for the vast majority of the occasions I treated you terribly and keep up the Christmas soul all through.

May without solicitation you limit your adolescents' Christmas presents since you are the individual will's character paying for them so reevaluate and happy a spending inviting Christmas.

Including Christmas Wishes

Here are some of pulling in Christmas messages and Christmas card wordings that you can use for your Christmas cards. You can in like way utilize these messages as Christmas SMS and Christmas Text messages. You can send these Christmas Wishes adjacent some momentous Christmas presents to show your veneration and warmth to someone

Christmas is the celebration of warmth and soul

So enabled us to drink the soul to feel love

Happy Christmas to You

Man will live for ever

In light of Christmas

(In light of Christmas Day drinking)

Happy Christmas to you

Christmas is the day for favors and love

So enabled us to don't over-load serve

Compliment the Christmas here with get-together

Vivacious Christmas to you

May on this Christmas

Shimmer of flourishing and pleasure of Happiness

Fill in you body close to Christmas wine

Happy Christmas to you

Enable us to cheer and appreciate

Has ace has given this day

to drink as much you need

Happy Christmas

Santa+s+sexual+harassment+trial

Do whatever it takes not to anticipate Santa

They all are Drunk and level

Euphoric Christmas without presents

I am wishing you Christmas wishes around you.

Have two refreshments and look

Euphoric Christmas

Christmas isn't just for begging and loving

In any case, for drinking and messing around what's more

Euphoric Christmas

In the event that its start and end the equivalent to you associate with Jesus to Come and

Strengthen individuals in Church on Christmas,

In the event that he sees you there he may not.

So come here and host gathering with me

Happy Christmas to you

I have Kept a few photographs in my home

So come here instead of Church

you can drink and supplicate,

In like manner, no all the all the all the all the more crippling talk from the minister

Stunning Christmas and Happy New year

Interesting Christmas Messages and Funny Christmas Greetings

Interesting Christmas-Wishes

Christmas is for minister, He cheers

Over and over while passing on the exchange

To feeble Church swarm.

(Father, excuse them, for they don't have the foggiest idea what they are doing)

So engaged us to adore the Christmas here

Happy Christmas to you

Christmas is truly stacked with heavenly events.

It makes a large portion of my speculation resources disperse!

That is the Christmas intrigue

Happy Christmas

They express that Christmas is in each rational sense around the turn

By what methodology may it be the point at which the world is round?

Anyone understand where may I have the choice to purchase love?

They revealed to me that it is the best thing to give this Christmas.

I believe Santa's yearning for this Christmas ought to be to shed pounds.

Rudolph has a red nose since he is squashed.

I figure Santa ought to use savages rather than surprising animals with the target that he can have a snappier course of action of presents.

Beginning at now, kids are the choralists.

These days, I wonder why ways are field with grown-up choralists.

Mother offers coins to adolescents warblers, and offers bills to grown-up ones.

For what reason is that so?

Is it positive to express that it isn't Christmas is for young people?

I am so on edge to wear my new dress today just to see that my Godparents were out of their home.

Partner with Christmas Card Messages Funny Christmas Text Messages

Partner with Christmas-messages

I figure Santa must ride a plane instead of sleigh with the target that he can interface with me quicker.

I an uncommon bit of the time nodded off watching things for him.

Is Santa so clamoring that he can't discover time to set himself up?

I think he needs to shave his facial hair.

Individuals went to midnight mass not to hear mass, yet to let their seatmates hear their wheezes.

I would express all I requirement for Christmas is YOU,

Regardless, I genuinely would love another Mastercard also!

Since I brought the presents,

I've referenced that Santa bring you worship and satisfaction!

Hold congruity, love and need in your heart dependably

In like way, Christmas will bring you what you wish for.

I comprehend your family is silly.

In any case, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

In the event that you channel for me at Christmas,

Attempt to check the flanking bar!

Pulling in Funny Christmas Wishes Greetings

christmas-welcome 4a

I offer to see Santa likewise as the Three Kings this Christmas.

This is the point at which I can kiss the individual I need to close to a Christmas welcoming without being slapped on my face.You are all I requirement for Christmas.

Unmistakably I would correspondingly observe much on the off chance that I will get vehicles, house, money and significant stones perhaps.

I wonder how old Santa Claus is.

Hooray! One more day again to get, get, and get!

Christmas makes me feel nervous and settled in light of the way in which that I will see again my godchildren.

They state Christmas is a period for grins.

How may I grin if my wallet has come up short on money?

Partner with Christmas Messages, Funny Christmas Jokes

Yippee! Its Christmas occasion, time to expulsion work and school hustle for God sees to what degree just to debilitate the total of our cash and survey why we even quit sitting idle in any case.

I don't what number of turkeys will lose their lives amidst this Christmas season, at any rate I am so certain, one of them will kick the bucket for you. I trust that makes you feel everything thought about dependably worshiped this Christmas.

The Christmas season is basically expected to complete off our homes with all the basic stuff coming about to abusing the inspirations driving confinement and the wearisome shopping offers. Everything considered, watch Christmas and shop till you drop.

Validation you pay for security at your doorstep in light of the path that as much as Santa goes with presents, he comes around evening time. Attempt to watch out of phony Santa.

Christmas season is the spot uncommon acts are evaluated, and staggering acts are reproached. I don't who thought of that verbalization since Santa brings everybody presents.

Christmas season is the standard time when you ought not consider yourself but instead give all the more understanding as for your loved ones. I check you to make my Christmas fundamental.

These tales about Santa Claus we have heard amidst the time makes me wonder how old Santa really is. May this Christmas soul continue making in you like Santa age.

Occupying Christmas Wishes Quotes

Christmas is about happiness, stunning cheer, fun and all grins. Need you will at present acknowledge how to grin after the whole of your pockets run dry.

Christmas is connected with getting a charge out of good relationship from loved ones. As such, ensure when you make a snowman at the bit of your home, make a snow lady in like manner in light of the manner in which that no one ought to be along amidst Christmas.

All the sustenance that will be in our homes amidst Christmas makes ought to be a dash of Santa's astounding animals. May Santa present to you the sort of prepared merchandise that makes up his staggering people diet with the target that you try to remain fit as a fiddle yet in the meantime have a standard time.

[omginstantpaperbouquetblr]

By Andrew Levine / Counterpunch.

Photo by Steve Bott | CC BY 2.0

Election Day 2017 went spectacularly well for Democrats.  Usually, not much is at stake off-year elections; outside Virginia and New Jersey, the election this year was no exception.  But Democrats did win by a landslide.  Yippee!

“Yippee,” that is, more in the sense of “so what?” than “hooray.”

The problem is not that the election could have turned out better. It turned out as well as it could have; in almost all cases, the better candidates won.  More importantly, Trump lost.  He lost because the consensus view within the chattering classes was that the vote, in Virginia especially, was a referendum on him.  Saying so made it so.

The danger now is that saying so will also vindicate an idea that might as well be hard-wired into the minds of leading Democrats: that the way forward in 2018 and beyond is to reconstitute the Democratic Party as it was before its 2016 defeat, allowing only for cosmetic changes in the party bureaucracy

With Trump being Trump, it is possible, even likely, that, by going that route, Democrats will do as well next year.  They might even do well enough to regain control of the House and Senate, and of many State Houses.  If that happens, it will be a victory of sorts; a victory that will warrant a cynical so what?, not a heartfelt hooray.

Genuinely progressive down ticket victories could change the calculus somewhat.  At this point, it is difficult to determine how much of that there was last Tuesday.  It is clear as can be, however, that as long as the Democratic Party exists in anything like its present state, the chances that progressive insurgencies will be coopted by the “center” are greater than that they will capture the center and move the party in a better direction.

This being so, the task now is damage control.  Flipping seats matters, of course; but less for putting better people in office than for constraining Trump and keeping him hamstrung.

It is the same with efforts to remove him from office.  They can do a world of good – by keeping him from doing as much harm as he otherwise would.  How much good they would do if they were to succeed is another question.

If and when Trump goes, a soporific but bona fide reactionary, Mike Pence, will take his place — effectively demobilizing the groundswell of opposition Trump generates just by being there.  Pence is less likely than Trump to do irrevocably awful things with the nuclear codes that accompany presidents wherever they go.  But, unlike Trump’s, his “conservatism” is heartfelt.  For that reason alone, he is as bad or worse.

Were Pence not less likely than Trump to unleash Armageddon, it would plainly be better to keep the threat of impeachment alive and growing than actually to see it through.

Having made it through the past year, my view still is that, all things considered, going slowly, subjecting the Trump presidency to a painful death by a thousand cuts, would be better than getting rid of him more quickly.  There is a case to be made, however, for the other side.  It all depends on what one thinks the probabilities are, and on one’s degree of aversion to risk.

If there were thriving social movements demanding political representation or third party or independent electoral forces working to reconfigure the political landscape, the consequences of one or another course of action on these movements and parties would have to be taken into account.

Unfortunately, at the present time, that is not necessary.  We do not have a genuine left of any political significance; and, though creating one is, or ought to be, Job Number One, this is not going to happen in time for 2018.

For the time being, therefore, a hamstrung Trump is as good as it gets.

Helping Democrats flip House and Senate seats can sometimes be worth doing.  But, with Democrats there is the possibility, even the likelihood, that the cure will be worse, or not much better, than the disease.

The last thing the country needs is a refurbished, but fundamentally unchanged, Democratic Party, back to its old ways — serving Wall Street, stewarding the empire, and maintaining the ruinous perpetual war regime that generations of Democrats have helped to fashion.

Neither do we need Democrats who take from, but give little back, to organized labor; and who, following the lead of the Clintons and Barack Obama, consign the working class — black, brown and white — to the malign neglect of self-righteous do-gooders.

If we must have Democrats, then at least let them only be ones who do not raise questions about which party actually is worse.  Being a greater evil than the GOP, or even coming close, is no mean feat.  But a revived Democratic Party in the Clinton-Obama mold just might be up to the task.  A genuine left opposition would hardly want to encourage that — even to discomfit Trump and the party he leads.

*          *         *

Even now, it is far from obvious that Democrats are less noxious than their rivals in all pertinent respects.

For one thing, unlike their Democratic counterparts, the House and Senate leaders of the Republican Party are not as stupid or cowardly as they seem.  This is far from obvious, however.

Republican honchos despise Donald Trump, just as normal people do; they don’t trust him either.  Nobody does, except perhaps his children, the fruit of the poison tree.  Who knows but, at this point, maybe even the fashionista entrepreneur is wavering as Robert Mueller’s noose closes in on the father of her children and, please God, on her and her feckless brothers as well.

They understand too that they would be better off with one of their own in the White House.

They could hardly have failed to notice that someone who fits that description is next in line for the job.

Mike Pence was born without a personality, but it would take a first-rate talent scout to find someone who looks more like a president.  No doubt, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell would prefer a more formidable personage, but they have him, and he will do.

He is easily as odious as they are, and as retrograde as they come.  With Pence in charge, the party leaders’ chances of getting their agendas through would be a lot better than they are with the opportunistic, self-aggrandizing chameleon they are stuck with now.

But when they do the reckoning, they figure that, unless Trump’s legal circumstances change dramatically for the worse, or unless his incompetence and dangerousness become so palpable that even the morons who still stand by him catch on, they are better off keeping him than they would be letting him go.

They fear that the Sturm und Drang that impeachment would bring would benefit Democrats, and they expect, not unreasonably, that Trump may still be able to get them some of what they want.

Inasmuch as it doesn’t faze them that he is gung ho for fossil fuels – after all, they are too – or that he could start a nuclear war in a fit of pique, or that he demeans his office and embarrasses the human race, their calculations make sense.  Therefore, as long as the plutocrats they work for can live with the Donald, so can they.

A bleak but inescapable conclusion follows: that, unless Trump “self-impeaches” or has a heart attack or stroke, we are stuck with the man for at least the next year, and maybe until Inauguration Day 2021.

Uncoerced “retirement,” self-impeachment, would make excellent sense for the Donald, but the chances that Trump will go that route are slim.  This is not because quitting is beneath him.  Quite to the contrary, Trump is an inveterate quitter.  Quitting was the cornerstone of his business model in Atlantic City, where he would buy and build hotels and casinos on leveraged credit, milk his properties dry, and then use bankruptcy laws to walk away from them, leaving workers and creditors in the lurch, as he enriched himself.

The presidency is different.  Trump’s capacious vanity prevents him from displaying his failures and inadequacies as plainly as he would have to if he bowed out of the presidency before his time.  Also, there is the incontrovertible fact that, as his Secretary of State so aptly said, he is a “fucking moron.”

And although he exercises by sitting in a golf cart and his tastes run to fast food which he consumes in copious quantities, his health will probably hold too.  God or the gods will see to it that he stays alive and functional; that’s how malevolent they are.

If the menace is to be removed from the scene, it is therefore up to the likes of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and others of their ilk to do the job.  With our less than (small-d) democratic Constitution, and the House and Senate in Republican hands, there is no other way.

Therefore, for now, Trump is safe.  Nervous House and Senate Republicans could still force their leaders to turn against him.  But, even after last Tuesday, we are a long way from that, and we are not likely to get much closer soon.

Most House and Senate Republicans no doubt figure, with good reason, that, thanks to gerrymandering, their seats are safe.  This may be wishful thinking, but it is how they think.

And even the ones who do fear losing to Democrats, challenges in next year’s primaries from Republicans more odious than themselves scare them more.

House and Senate leaders may also fear that the worst of the worst who crawled out from under the rocks Trump turned over would turn on them, Second Amendment rights in hand, were they to initiate efforts to dump the Orange Menace.  There are already plenty of vulnerable communities living in fear of Trump besotted lowlifes and maniacs.  The last thing comparatively levelheaded Republicans want is to join their ranks.

Their fears are rational and their calculations make sense.  To make the world safe for the vileness they favor, Trump may indeed be the Republicans’ best bet.

This is why it would be fair to say that insofar as prudence and shrewdness are relevant metrics, Republicans are better than Democrats.  Their party is the more noxious of the two; there is no doubt about that.  But, in the ways that matter in electoral politics, they are not nearly as dumb.

Republicans are less hypocritical too.  Hypocrisy flows through the veins of House and Senate Democrats and their media flacks to a degree that Republicans could never hope to match.

Does this make the Democratic Party the greater evil?  I would say No, but, by making Democrats worthy of contempt, it does bring them down almost to the Republican level.

See a Republican and despair for the human race.  But what William Blake wrote some two and a quarter centuries ago applies more to the Democratic Party than to the GOP: “as the air [is] to a bird and the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.”

*     *    *

“Insanity,” it is said, “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  This adage has been repeated so many times that it has, by now, become a cliché.

It is widely, but probably incorrectly, attributed to Albert Einstein.  If he did indeed say it first, his mind must have been distracted at the time, because it plainly applies less to insanity, in any of that term’s colloquial senses, than to the kind of stupidity that Democrats exhibit as they market their brand by tracking the GOP’s rightward drift, taking care always to remain never more than a tad to their rival’s left.

To be sure, if everything pertinent to voters’ choices could be laid out unambiguously on a left-right spectrum, Democrats would have a point; there would be a defensible method underwriting their madness or, should we say, their pusillanimity.

Years ago, there were political scientists and economists who would take it upon themselves to spell out the simple-minded, intuitively plausible, but empirically hollow idea behind that method.  They would concoct stylized models, replete with mathematical embellishments, purporting to justify the rationality of aiming for the dead center.

It would be misleading, though, to say that any of this trickled down from the Halls of Ivy into the national committees of our political parties.  If anything, the causal arrow pointed the other way.  For Democrats especially, pusillanimity comes naturally.

A penchant for centrism is unavoidable in officially non-ideological, broad tent political parties, but there can be different degrees of commitment to the ideal.  Democrats have always been more ardent centrists than Republicans.  It is as if they feel driven to be wherever the center is.

The high (or low?) point came in the mid-nineties, when the Clintons deployed the “triangulation” strategy, contrived by the villainous Dick Morris, to launch a full-scale assault on what remained of the Democratic left.  The goal was not just to diffuse opposition to Clintonism (neoliberalism, “humanitarian” imperialism, unflinching deference to the military-industrial complex), but also to insure that a genuine left would never rise again within that wretched party’s ranks.

The party’s leaders are still at it.  They must think that, this time around, the same old same old will produce a different result.

Even before the nomination process got underway last year, it was plain that the fix was in; 2016 would be Clinton’s year.  Nevertheless, for a few springtime months, it did look like Bernie Sanders had a chance.  He was doing much better than expected in the primaries and caucuses, and he was drawing enormous crowds of enthusiastic supporters everywhere he went.  In in the end, though, the Clinton juggernaut held its ground; and Sanders, along with many of his supporters, acquiesced in defeat.

A few did strike out on their own, neutering words like “resistance” and “revolution” in the process. This did keep a sliver of hope alive in some circles, but it left the party’s leaders unperturbed.  For them, milquetoast opposition from Sanders supporters is nothing more than a tolerable nuisance.

Had Sanders taken the lead in “resisting” the Clintonites last year – either by running on the Green Party ticket, as he could have, or by setting up an independent political organization on his own — events might have taken a different and better course.  But Sanders did neither.  This came as no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention.

Someday somebody will write a tell-all book that will clarify what the Sanders campaign was about – not so much to those who were swept up into it, that is already clear, but to Sanders himself and the people closest to him.  To what extent, if any, had he been working for Clinton all along?

Thanks to Donna Brazile, we know a little more than we used to about how “rigged” the 2016 primaries and caucuses were.  Her book, Hacks, does more than just offer confirmation from an authoritative source of what was already obvious.  It also lays out why the rigging was so devastating for down ticket Democrats.

Sanders’ loss and Democratic losses down the line had a common cause; the perfidy of Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s DNC and the Clinton campaign with which it colluded.  Long before the campaign season got underway, the DNC effectively put itself and its resources at the service of Hillary Clinton.  Everything and everybody else be damned.

Thus the Democrats betrayed Sanders and his supporters.  I would venture, though, that, their party’s losses in state and local elections will seem, in time, to have been an even more deleterious consequence of the DNC’s shenanigans.  By giving their all to Hillary, they deprived voters of opportunities to elect palatable candidates.  Had they done otherwise, the Democratic Party would be in a better place than it now is.

There is no reason to think that this is about to change.  Quite to the contrary, the DNC has lately gone back to purging itself and the party it leads of an emerging progressive wing comprised of militants who believe, not without reason, that, at least in the short run, they have nowhere else to go.

“Our Revolution” notwithstanding, the ancien régime is once again as firmly in place as it was when the 2016 election season was getting underway.

This will only change when what many voters intuitively understand finally penetrates the thick skulls of Democratic Party bigwigs and their media flacks: that given a choice between two neoliberal, pro-imperialist, war mongering corporate ass-kissers, the mere fact that the one that corporate assholes love less is nicer than the other is not a compelling reason for voters to bother to support it.

* * *

The party’s leaders are too invested in the past to grasp that simple point; being under the sway of Clintonites for so long has made them stupid.

However their stupidity pales in comparison with their hypocrisy – or, rather, their hypocrisy cum chutzpah cum their penchant for concocting silly narratives that they then believe.  There is no single word that captures all of it, so “hypocrisy” will have to do.

Ever since Clinton and her people decided to blame Vladimir Putin for the shortcomings of her campaign, and ultimately for her ignominious loss to a seventy-something adolescent bully with the skills of a confidence man and the gravitas of a carnival buffoon, they have given themselves over completely to their Jeffersonian side.  In his day, opponents of our venerated third president justifiably deemed him “the patron saint of hypocrisy.”

Democratic hypocrisy is in full display in what pundits nowadays call “Russiagate.”

Aided by Republicans of the John McCain variety, Democrats have turned what they would not have deigned even to mention, had Clinton not flubbed so badly, into a tempest in a teapot, distinguished only for its recklessness and for the self-righteousness it has brought out in its proponents.

Before Russiagate, who would have thought that Democrats would outdo Republicans in their support for the institutions of the National Security State!

Republican Russophobia may be milder than the Democrats’ because they are still standing by their man, a man whose Russian connections may ultimately lead to his downfall.

But even if they are doing the right thing for bad reasons, at least they have not entirely thrown common sense and their own sense of proportion aside.  That is precisely what DNC propagandists at ostensibly progressive media outlets have done.  To hear them tell it, whatever the CIA and the other intelligence agencies tell us is gospel truth.

To anyone who knows anything about the CIA, this is preposterous on its face.

Even so, it doesn’t follow that everything they tell us is wrong.  For a long time, they have been saying that Russia interfered with the 2016 election in order to get Donald Trump elected.  For most of that time, they offered no evidence.  But they repeated the claim so often that it became hard not to think that it must be at least partly true.

Thanks to what journalists and Congressional investigators have learned, it turns out that it is.  It seems that some Russians did do some hacking into servers used by the DNC and the Clinton campaign.  Russians also posted ads on social media sites.

What, if anything, any of this accomplished remains a mystery.  But to Democratic propagandists, that hardly matters.  If anything, the fact that it all seems harmless only testifies to how fiendishly clever those Russians are.

It also remains unclear what the degree, if any, of involvement of the Russian intelligence services was or what Vladimir Putin, the devil incarnate, had to do with any of it.

What is clear is that when it comes to interfering with the political affairs of other countries, the USA really is Number One.  The Russians don’t even come close.

It is also clear that even if interfering in one way or another with American elections has become something of an international pastime, the efforts of foreigners, Russian and otherwise, pale in comparison with our homegrown hucksters.

Democracy in America these days is about marketing candidates and policies to voters.  Political campaigns are sales campaigns.   The reasoned deliberation and debate that democratic theorists talk about is of little or no consequence.

This, not actual or imagined Russian interference, is the real scandal.

It is scandalous that the public, or rather the manufacturers of public opinion, don’t care when the hucksters are capitalists throwing their money around.  Neither do they mind when, for example, “non-adversarial” states — Israel is the most flagrant example, Saudi Arabia is another – join in the fray.  Meddling and colluding, it seems, are only problems when those pesky Ruskies do it.

And even then, it only becomes a problem when it suits the purposes of one or another mainstream political party or media outlet to make it one.

When that happens, the hypocrisy (cum chutzpah and silliness) is flagrant enough to defy credulity.

Witness the Democratic Party and its media flacks today!  Do they ever bother to mention American meddling in the political affairs of Russia and other former Soviet republics, or how the CIA and the others try never to miss an opportunity to collude with dissidents and otherwise to manipulate public opinion in any way they can?

For that matter, is there anywhere in the world where elections showed any signs of resulting in outcomes disfavored by the stewards of the American empire where American meddlers and colluders have not been johnnys-on-the-spot?

The short answer is: No; not since the end of World War II in Europe and Asia, and in Latin America not since even before that.

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”  Bipartisan American left that behind long ago.

Even if we stipulate that everything Democratic propagandists are now insinuating is true, how much better off the world would have been, even back in the day when “America First” was nothing more than a slogan of pre-war proto-fascists, had we only done unto others what the Russians last year did unto us.

The elections Democrats won last Tuesday had nothing directly to do with this hypocrisy; in that sense, it played no role in the night’s events.  And it looks like at least some of the victors down ticket were Democrats only because there is nothing else they could have been.  Charges of hypocrisy therefore do not apply to them.

It is their party that is culpable, their party that merits contempt.  Unless and until it changes beyond recognition, there will be no reason to celebrate its victories with more than just a cynical “yippee.”

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More articles by:Andrew Levine

ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park.  He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

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[loganisanobody]

I’ve posted this already

So you don’t have to re read it

I just realized it works for my bad things happen bingo card, and I can’t find it in my tumblr because tumblr’s search system sucks

Prompt: Pinned to the Wall

Fandom: Sanders Sides

@badthingshappenbingo

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Virgil woke up stiff and on something stiffer. He shot up to a sitting position, eyes going wide and looking around wildly even as his back and joints screamed at him for the sudden movement against what was apparently pavement.

He was not in his room. He tried to sink out, but nothing happened.

He calmed down only slightly as he realized he was in the Imagination. So it was probably just a prank, but whose prank remained to be seen.

He stood slowly, taking in his surroundings more carefully. He seemed to be in a downtown part of some city, in an abandoned alley. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He did not like alleys. He took quick, light steps toward the nearest edge of the buildings… to another alley?

Odd…

He began a light jog. Maybe this was the prank, just an assortment of connected alleyways to scare him a little until he could find his way out. Remus might think of that sort of thing, and he’d probably find the Duke laughing at the end of this.

After a few twists and turns, he seemed to be on the correct path in one sense: each alley was connected to just another alley, never connecting to an actual road. He tried turning back a couple times to try different paths, but each time he turned around, a wall had closed behind him.

So he kept moving forward.

Until he finally ran into someone, and his heart rate spiked all over again.

Because it wasn’t the Duke, or even Roman.

He had no idea who this man was, but he didn’t like how he turned to Virgil and a slow grin spread across his face.

“Well, well, what’s a handsome young face like yours doing here?”

Virgil backpedaled as the man stepped toward him. The man gave an exaggerated pout at this. “Aw, don’t be like that, dove. I won’t hurt’cha.”

The man was bigger than he was, and way more muscular. Virgil glanced behind him. Shit. The wall had already closed, and was too fast approaching with Virgil’s backwards steps.

He spun forward again at the man’s, “Tut, tut, dove. Don’tcha trust me? I said I won’t hurt’cha. I’m only here for a good time.”

Virgil’s breath was coming more rapidly, the panic starting to settle in. He had to find a way out, and he had to find it now.

He glanced around, but there were no fire escapes, no windows, no jutting ledges. It was almost as if as he looked at the walls, they became smoother and less helpful. He looked at the man, leering at him still.

The walls were closing in, but there was still just the tiniest chance of a gap. If he was fast enough, if he could surprise him, if he could shake him off if he happened to catch him, if, if, if…

But if was all he had. He had to take it.

He ran.

Bursting past the man, for a split second, he thought he might make it, then he felt the hand on his arm jerking him back, too strong for him to fight, then another hand taking hold of his other side. He struggled, he screamed, but it was no use. The man pushed him against the wall, which had become rough again, and started kissing him on the neck just as roughly, his breath hot on his skin.

The man’s hands slid slowly down his arms, but he was pinned by the man’s chest against his back. Virgil became aware of hot tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Hush, dove. Enjoy it. Just relax.”

Virgil realized he was begging, pleading for the man to stop, to let him go.

But then his attention was on the man’s hands again as they reached the top of his jeans and his fingers hooked over the fabric and started to pull down.

“No! Please! Let me go!”

A tiny part of Virgil was surprised his thunder voice hadn’t kicked in by now. He felt so small and helpless.

But the man continued, pulling off Virgil’s clothes and then his own. And Virgil became less and less aware of it all.

“That’s it, dove, relax.”

Then all he could pay attention to was the light drizzle that had started, his eyes staring blankly ahead at the drops of water collecting in the empty alley, empty besides him and his rapist.

Then, after what felt like eons of numbly watching the rain, a red and white blur came around the far corner of the alley. He heard a shout that made him flinch, though he couldn’t make out what was said. The blur came quickly toward him and, suddenly, he was falling. But it lasted only a moment and then he was looking up at the sky. He blinked as the rain came down on his face.

He couldn’t tell how long he laid there before something blurry appeared above him. Part of it was red and white like before, but now that it was closer, there were more colors, like tan and brown and green.

It was saying something.

It moved, and something warm covered his body. That felt nice.

But then it was back above him, still saying things.

Should he be trying to understand it?

He tried. The figure slowly became less blurry and more familiar, and the voice did, too.

Roman?

He must have spoken, because Roman smiled through his tears. Wait, he was crying. Roman wasn’t supposed to cry.

He tried to reach up to Roman’s face, but there was something over his hand. Oh yeah, the warm thing. For some reason, now it felt terribly constricting, and he started breathing faster.

“It’s okay, Stormcloud,” Roman said. “It’s okay, you’re safe.”

No, he wasn’t. He was still trapped.

Still?

Suddenly, everything came back, and the air rushed from his lungs.

Virgil pulled his arm out of the blanket, because of course that’s what it was, and reached for Roman’s hand. “Roman… I…” There were tears gathering in his eyes as his mind replayed the whole of the night over and over again.

“Roman…”

“I’ve got you, Stormcloud. You’re safe. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“I know, Stormcloud. I’m so sorry. Let’s get you home, okay?”

*****

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For those of you who want some modicom of resolution, this is all I have to offer you.....

Virgil nodded, no longer trusting his voice.

Roman picked him up, careful to keep the blanket covering him. They sank out and appeared in Virgil’s room.

Roman carefully set Virgil on the bed. “Do you want me to get you some clothes, Emo? Or some water?”

“S-some clothes?” Virgil asked, his voice still terribly small.

Roman didn’t seem to care, though, as he nodded and set about picking out a few outfits for Virgil to choose from.

Virgil chose a comfortable one, shying away from his jeans, and Roman helped him to the bathroom to change.

Once done, Roman convinced him not to spend the day alone but to head downstairs to be with friends, even if he didn’t admit what happened.

Not that that worked for long.

Janus and Logan noticed something was up almost immediately, though Janus was a little more pushy about it.

Virgil was sure Patton would have noticed eventually, too, but once Janus confronted the two of them, he decided to just tell everyone and get it over with.

Of course they are all appalled. Remus smashes a few things. Patton cries. Logan and Janus are in a state of shock.

Roman and Remus explain that the Imagination and the subconscious have been going a little haywire recently but nothing ever remotely close to this has happened before. They’ve been working on resolving it and thought they had been making progress but apparently not. (So of course they blame themselves but they don’t admit that.)

And so of course everyone is on board with helping fix that and helping Virgil recover.

Yippee hooray the end