#literally cannot stress enough how much notion has changed my life

[soracities]

How do you keep track of all these places? Is it the Pocket function or something else? Even if I bookmark my frequently used sites I end up having too many bookmarks to be useful, forgetting sites, or having a bunch of tabs open.

Visibility, visibility, visibility!! I'm subscribed to a few of my most favourite ones--not too many because my inbox would be flooded otherwise and then I know I would not read anything--there's maybe 3 max but they're definitely the ones I enjoy the most and that will provide variety in terms of subject and length.

Otherwise when it comes to the rest I'm definitely not reading from these sites every day, and sometimes weeks go by where I'm not reading anything except for maybe the 2 or 3 of the essays I get emailed to me (if even that)--but I am a pathological tab hoarder because for me out of sight is 1000% out of mind: therefore, what works for me here is making sure the sites I enjoy most (and aren't subscribed to) are as visible and accessible as possible.

The best tactic for me so far is saving my most visited sites to the bookmarks toolbar instead of some hidden folder, so that I always have a "homepage" of sorts for random readings no matter what site I'm actually on or what I'm doing. Additionally, instead of keeping multiple tabs open for days on end, I've started to actually move the links onto my desktop background so that I see them every time I log in or minimise a window and can open them far more easily this way rather than trawling through the bookmarks folders. Two or three years ago I also started making sure I printed every essay / article I enjoyed or didn't get a chance to read as a PDF to save to my computer: I can't always get to things immediately so this helps if the link dies before I can read it / paywall goes up, or even just as a more intuitive method for me to keep track of things I want to read (and also because I have limited space for all the shortcuts on my desktop--when I say I hoard tabs I truly mean it: this tab is one of, like, 20 right now, not counting the ones across 2 browsers on my phone or the ones that restore everytime I launch Firefox).

Also, I've been plugging it into every conversation ever since I downloaded it but Notion is really good for this kind of organisation, at least for me. Along with the above I have a Notion page where I keep a list of these journals / websites (links included) so that even if I'm not on my computer, I can browse without needing to rely on the reminders I've set up on it. I never bookmark things when browsing on my phone so when I find an article I really enjoy and want to save, I copy the link to a separate Notion page where I keep a list of essays / articles I read on the go, including any screenshots of passages that struck me most (this is also a great method for random articles I come across unexpectedly, either in my own readings or through friends).

So yes, really, visibility is the key thing for me and maximising that visibility as much as possible. Interestingly, when I do that it is a lot easier to actually remember these sites themselves, and get to a point where most of them are already circling about in the back of my head because I'm so used to being reminded of them. It's definitely not a perfect method, but I've tried to build in various failsafes and backups for myself so that I can manage to read something at some point, eventually without too much frustration or hassle. I hope some of these help you too, anon x

[huellitaa]

hello hello huelittaa 👋✨ do u have any tips for someone struggling with motivation to workout? or even to take a simple walk? thank uu 🤍

bee's physical activity handbook: motive 🎀 . ݁₊ ⊹

hiiii ml!!!!!!!! 🫶🏻🩷💗 sorry this has been sitting in my inbox for a few days BUT IM HERE NOW !!!!! honestly this is something i also struggle with myself ,, i am still recovering from depression personally so this is still difficult for me sometimes too but these are some things i do !!!! ♡

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ 1. prepare urself for the possibility

so since i know i have this problem a lot, it helps me to be prepared for this in advance. i actually have a whole notion page filled with a table of letters to myself in specific situations i find myself in a lot, this included, and have a whole archived stored of cute photos and motivation and things like articles and videos and tumblr posts on the main page and in the letters that make me wanna get up and do shit and its my LIFESAVER. (should i make a post on this?)

but i'd suggest to keep a note or page or document , physical or digital, filled with just motivation for this specific thing, like things you like about it, photos romanticising working out or going outside, songs that motivate you, etc etc etc. the list goes on but you get the point ♡

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ 2. detective chapter: analysis! ♡

figure out why you dont want to. this is the main thing that helps me and its so simple but once u figure out the root u figure out the rest and this applies just the same here too. is it laziness? mental health? exhaustion? overworking? burnout? you won't be able to continue until you haven't found the actual problem. it's like trying to travel with no path to travel on.

💭𓂃 ࣪˖ 3. pep talk!

one thing i do that helps me the most is literally just lay in bed or wherever you are where ur procrastinating and thinking about this over and over and going back and forth whether to do it or not is to force the thoughts out (literally. u can envision it if it helps!) and deadass bully myself into doing it 😭😭

(🗒🎀 note: i've also found it helps for some people to do this in the mirror, just so ur face to face w urself as it were. plus u get to admire urself at the same time so its a win all around)

if ur not into harsh motivation, another thing i love, esp when im not feeling great enough to deal w harsh motivation is pretend ur giving advice to a friend or ur child in this position. this is one of the greatest pieces of advice ive ever gotten i literally cannot stress this enough. do this‼️ p.s. you can do this in ur head or out loud. i usually do some mix of both because i am a professional at talking to myself constantly literally all the time

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ 4. use gratitude in ur favour!

one thing i like to do is essentially guilt trip myself into doing it. erm. you can also call this gratitude it sounds a lot better. think of how grateful you are to even have the opportunity to go outside safely to go for a walk, to be able to work out and keep urself healthy, because there's always someone who's not going to be able to do those things. it is a privilege to live your life and this should be classed as one too.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ 5. all about the outlook

another thing i love that falls into the category of motivation is treating it as an act of love and luxury rather than a chore and changing ur outlook on it. for example,

"oh, i have to do this or i'm a failure" or "i really don't want to do it today"

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ into...

"i deserve to do this for myself because i deserve to be taken care of and kept in good health."

and i find this makes me so much more open to it because you do deserve it.

🧸𓂃 ࣪˖ 6. romanticism; obviously!

okayyyy i know you hear this EVERYWHERE but ‼️its‼️because‼️its true‼️ romanticism is my LIFE not a day goes by where i dont act like im a silly girl in a pink girly shoujo world, and i do this even more so when i dont wanna get up and do simple tasks like this.

some things that give me motivation via romanticism is getting dressed up and cute even if i'm just going for a walk and listening to music and appreciating the world (🗒🎀 note: i love taking pictures or going on different routes whenever i go for walks! it makes the experience so much sweeter and more enjoyable ♡), or putting on cute clothes, loud music and grabbing a pretty waterbottle and hyping myself up to do even just 10 mins of pilates because something is always better than nothing!!!!!!!!!!!

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ 7. something is better than nothing

with the last note from my previous point in mind, try and always do just a little bit, even if it's not the amount you intended. say you wanted to workout for 20 minutes every day, but you really weren't feeling it today? do 10 instead. this way ur still doing something. we always have tomorrow. take it at ur own pace. you wanted to go running every day? just go for a walk. you can always try again. there is no limit on how many attempts you have with these things. this is always better than just doing nothing at all. this is basically finding the middle ground when you do these things. which leads me onto my final point ,,♡

✨️𓂃 ࣪˖ 8. finding the middle ground

the no.1 thing in all of this is please don't beat urself up for it if you don't feel like it sometimes, but still keep to it as best as possible. say for example you really didn't want to one day but you had no real reason not to, you should still do it. but if your emotional or physical health or anything like that is in a bad place right now, then allow urself to skip for a day or two. dont beat urself up over it, but keep to it when and where you can because i know its difficult sometimes ♡

all my love, and u got this!!!!!!!!!! 🩷🫶🏻💬💗🎀

[reylo-musings]

The Hemiola: Two sides of the same coin.

Y’all.

Y’all. I am so sorry. I literally have been non-existent for the better part of 18 months, and I’m truly sorry. I’ve sat down to write this meta like 8 times between December 2017 and now, and life has just been a LOT. But I’m here. It’s happening. Here ya go.

Sooooooo. For my non-music nerds out there, the word Hemiola probably means literally nothing to you so let’s try to all get on the same page first before diving into this music meta. There are a few videos out there that do a good job trying to explain the concept, but tbh, it’s a little difficult to grasp if rhythm and math aren’t your favorite subjects in the world, so don’t stress too much if you’re just giving this post a blank look, I don’t blame you.

In the simplest of terms, hemiola is a switch from an overall 2 beat division to a 3 beat division, or the other way around. This can either occur by actually stopping one beat division and changing to the other, or by using both divisions simultaneously on top of one another.

Imagine you have 6 pieces of candy and want to distribute them between friends, but you want to make sure that everyone gets the exact same amount. Mathematically, your only options would be 1 piece each to 6 people, 2 pieces each to 3 people, or 3 pieces each to 2 people. Or I guess technically you could say “screw you” to your friends, and keep all the candy yourself. You do you.

But for the purposes of talking about hemiola, we are most interested in the scenarios where the candies are divided between either 2 or 3 total people. 

Musically, if you are given 6 notes, you can either choose to group them in sets of 2 or sets of 3. This grouping determines the “meter” of the piece. Meters which group notes in sets of 2 are called “simple” and those that group in sets of 3 are called “compound”.

This is why you may see music written in a 3/4  meter, but also music in a 6/8 meter, even though mathematically they reduce to the same fraction. 3/4 meter is the simple meter, the one where the 6 candies are shared equally between 3 people.

6/8 meter is the compound meter, the one where the 6 candies are shared equally between only 2 people.

Musically, each piece of candy represents 1 eighth note. A 3/4 meter puts the emphasis on every other note and a 6/8 meter places the emphasis on every third note.

Some of the most common instances of hemiola in musical literature will be totally switching from the 3/4 meter to the 6/8 one and continuing back and forth as often as you would like. The most popular of these examples is in “America” from West Side Story. Here’s a video. Visually, the pattern looks like this:

This can also be visualized by looking at the eighth notes more clearly.

The emphasis on the words “I” and “Be” establish the 3 note grouping, but then the punctuation of the syllables in “Me Ri Ca” establish a 2 note grouping. If you watch the video until around 3:35, the choreography has them clapping on all the unstressed beats and they change from sets of 2 short claps to 3 more spread out claps and back and forth. The lighter unlined boxes in each color represent those unstressed beats they are clapping on.

So, this video is super awesome and ties all this stuff together nicely. It gets a little jargon-y but the first 5 minutes or so are what’s really great to listen to. Especially the part around 3:50 where he talks about the implied hemiola that exists in the GoT theme, cause we’re coming back to that.

Ok, so, kinda getting it? Sorry this turned into a bit of a music theory lesson. But here’s the wrap up:

In a hemiola, there is no one side that is “right” or “wrong”. Both sides are mathematically equal to one another. They are perfectly balanced with one another and the power can either shift from one to the next, or they can operate simultaneously within the same duration of time.  

They are two sides of the same coin.

Ah, there it is. Now you see where I’m going with this. =)

Ok, so, Throne Room battle. That’s where we at. The music here is genuinely really hard to analyze aurally. If I had some actual sheet music to look at, that’d be great, but I ain’t got that so we’re just going with our ears.

The normal type of music that we’re used to hearing out in the world is consistent steady-metered music. 99% of your pop songs are written in a simple 4/4 meter and never change. If they’re not in 4/4, they’re probably in 3/4 or 12/8 but still usually stay consistent the whole time. This feels good to our brains as background music.

Battle music? Not super effective if it’s nice and consistent. The constant fluctuation of meters and rhythms and tempos and all that jazz puts us mentally on-edge. If the battle music is too consistent, we as viewers will subconsciously think we already know what’s going to happen. We feel at ease and won’t be so anxious. (Spoiler alert: Composers can also use this for shock value by making you too comfortable when the on-screen action is juxtaposingly overwhelming and then use it to hurt you when there’s a twist. They’re sneaky. They enjoy your pain.)

The throne room battle music? Very inconsistent. Honestly, so much inconsistency that I genuinely cannot determine the meter for good chunks of it. But there are a few key points where Williams does actually bring enough stability back to determine some semblance of structure. We first really start to hear this structure after the room starts burning. When the battle first started, they were back to back fighting the same enemy from two sides, but as they get separated and things start falling apart around them, they are each fighting their own individual battles. This notion becomes most obvious when there is the moment we see Kylo look over as Rey gets hurt. We as viewers recognize that they are fighting for the same goal, but they each have to be strong enough individually in order to reach it. One of them can’t just carry the other on their back to get there together.

In this moment, the music is actually a bit difficult to hear over everything else happening on-screen, so the soundtrack is a bit more telling. The track for this is “A New Alliance”.

The barebones is this: There is an overall very pounding, berating feel; lots of heavy emphasized notes that are in “simple” meter. It’s worth noting that Rey doesn’t get as much battle screen time as Kylo, but seeing as she’s fighting 1 and he’s fighting like 6 at a time, that completely makes sense. The longest on-screen battle action she gets once the room starts burning is after she’s gotten hurt and we see the sequence where she’s kicked to the ground and she gets back up and keeps fighting. During her on-screen action, the music changes. But not just the music, we get a hemiola. It’s more of that implied hemiola in the GoT intro, but definitely still an overall hemiola. Her theme is played in a 2:3 ratio to the stomping simple meter music we’ve been hearing through Kylo’s screen time. After it cuts back to him, his stomp music comes back. It cuts to Rey again after Kylo is in the head lock, and we again hear her theme hemiolaed (Is that a word? It is now.) over the existing “simple” time, but it sorta dissolves back into the agitated music.

Overall, this is not a lot to dig apart musically because it all happens so quickly and not for very long, but the concept is very much there. We are hearing this musical ratio, this balanced relationship, and it is a clear development from what we’ve heard from their previous battle music. There’s a now REALLY old meta that I wrote about 238 eons ago (at least that’s how long it feels it’s been since early 2016) that dealt with the relationship of Rey and Kylo’s music during the Starkiller battle. The boiled down version of that meta was that each of their themes was being affected by the other’s. Rey’s got darker, Kylo’s lost its stability.

This however is a new kind of relationship between their themes. No, we aren’t hearing Kylo’s typical 5-note theme, but let’s be honest, the man fighting in that room back to back with Rey after murdering Snoke wasn’t exactly “Kylo Ren” anymore. I’m not saying that he was exactly “Ben Solo” at this point, but whoever he was, that boy don’t got his own theme yet. He does have a concept though. He’s primal, he’s basic, and he’s a bit emotional. The music we hear for him shows that concept. It’s sporadic, yet simplistic. Rey’s theme has never really changed all that much. We’ve seen other moods leech into it slightly, but she’s stayed pretty consistent within herself and how she handles life. She’s just learned how to hone in on stuff now.

So this new kind of relationship, this coexisting rhythmic beauty, is just lovely to my musical reylo ears. We are really getting this “two sides of the same coin” idea from every side. We’ve gotten it in costumes. We’ve gotten it in dialogue. We’ve gotten it in cinematography. And now we get it in music. Everyone is stepping up to the plate in their own respects to show this fantastic ying-yang concept that exists between the two halves of our protagonist, and John Williams is no exception.

For the many many of you who have been asking about a “reylo” theme, this is the best I can offer you for right now. I’m sorry that it’s music theory jargon heavy, and I’m really sorry if you have just been blank staring at this whole post and not following me at all. It really is honestly the PERFECT musical representation of these two, and my music nerd brain is loving it to death, even if it only lasted for like 6 measures out of the entire score of the film.

[sethnakht]

Rambling thoughts on Cass and on ending stories. 

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #32, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie, colors by Matthew Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles

This panel sort of has it all.

Spoilers beneath the cut.

If there's only one way to end a story, and that way is to stop telling it, will it be enough for Laura to have rejected godhood? Or will the other surviving gods, including the heads, need to follow her example to ensure that Ananke cannot complete her ritual?

One can imagine Baph being convinced; he never wanted to die, never had a choice, and this would return some choice to him. Cass as well - the hospital footage on Dio's phone might even suggest that she survives past all this into old age. But what of Baal, who has always believed he was a god? Who has sacrificed in belief? Sunken cost fallacy there. Asking this of the heads - even of those who never wanted this - would be a tall order, moreover - for without godhood, what would they be other than victims of decapitation and thus dead? (Not that they would last long as heads under Minervananke.) Or was Ananke telling the truth when she said the children would develop powers on their own without her - where powers is not equal to the trappings of the god she chose for each, where the latter can be rejected as story and the former involves discovering identity of a sort?

In this context, I've been thinking a lot about Cass.

Cass interests me because of her fraught relationship to stories. She is constantly subjected to bigoted, racist, transphobic, objectifying stories imposed on her about gender and ethnic roles, not least by members of the Pantheon like Amaterasu and Woden. She is a critic who sees through that bullshit. She's defended her own story and gathered tools of defense. She's a journalist who wants to expose truths.

She's also someone who wants change in the form of progress and who seems to have once thought the gods would be the answer, if her academic degree in Pantheon Studies is any indication. But the gods of this Recurrence are themselves mouthpieces for the very same BS she has been subjected to all along. No change she would consider meaningful is taking place; instead we get the eternal recurrence of the same. When the gods speak in tongues, Cass is told she should feel something and yet does not. There is a story that her body and mind should be a certain way being imposed on her once again.

Cass rejects this narrative. The gods are not saviors, they're entitled teenage pricks. Their powers are meaningless. How she understands this exactly is a bit unclear to me. Does she think that the gods have never effected any meaningful change over the course of history, that their presence has had no effect? That would be a strange position for an academic historian. It seems more likely that she rejects the idea that the presence of the gods is inherently meaningful, that their appearance points to a deeper meaning in the structure of the world. The fact of Recurrence would itself be as meaningless as a meteor striking earth, for instance - the presence of the gods would mark no portent, no messianic coming, but simply be a fact of nature.

The stories about meaning imparted by gods - she says this with the portraits of 1831 Woden (Mary Shelley) and 1831 Lucifer (Lord Byron) in the background, possibly also referencing any sort of aestheticism as such, any sort of idea that art as such is a replacement for political action - were therefore lies.

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #2, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie, colors by Matthew Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles

For Cass, “the personal is the political”. (I tend to think of her as the opposite of idk the long-nineteenth-century German notion of Kultur writ large, but that's another story.)

Cassandra wants to change the world. That makes her position is VERY different from that of David Blake, whose problem with the Recurrence seems to also be that the current Pantheon reflects a society he doesn't want. Where Cassandra seeks a progressive future - her choice of name for herself speaks volumes - Blake acknowledges that the patriarchy is bad because: war and because: not every man gets to be the father with all the benefits, but also doesn't seem to care to change the status quo. On the contrary, some of his remarks suggest that he thinks culture was superior in the Past and that the Present should be violently struck from the history books. Even after Cass ascends to become Urdr, and thus associated with the Past, her thoughts remain directed towards the future. "We're trying to give birth to the future using the language of our oppressors", she tells Dio:

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #27, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie, colors by Matthew Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles

Ananke, Cass tells Laura, is "god of fate". Cass is the naysayer who doesn't believe in fate. In a perverse move, Ananke makes Cass into a goddess of fate. Cass is the sort who takes any thesis you give her and represents the anti-thesis with a "fuck you". Made goddess of fate, her response is to use those powers to persuade an audience of her view that there is no fate. The gods are a false hope and offer no meaning: "The void swallows us. Nothing means anything. Everything is nothing. Meaning is irrelevant. It's so cold. It lasts forever. It's all there is. So small so alone. We only have each other. It's never enough."

This is kind of a Birth of Tragedy moment: man gazes into the void, sees the horror of life, realizes nothing has meaning, and is paralyzed from action. Nietzsche thinks the paralysis can be overcome with art, particularly when the principles of individuation (the Apollonian drive) and inclusiveness (the Dionysian drive) are fused in a way that moves us to see past our own individual selves and figuratively unite with a collective. Cass is very Apollonian in a sense - she's tremendously restrained, a storyteller as opposed to a dancer and musician; that line about "small" and "alone" also stresses individuality. It's no wonder Dionysus is in this Pantheon and in love with Cass, and even briefly able to make her connect with his hive-mind. But Cass pulls out almost as soon as she starts to feel it, claiming there are more important things to do. There won't be the kind dialectic reconciliation of their respective art drives that Nietzsche would claim to be necessary in this story, unless Dio isn't really braindead.

My point with all this is that if you read Cass' message as something to live by, it seems rather one sided and incomplete. Is there a message she isn't sharing?If nothing means anything, why bother to perform? Cass doesn't go beyond the negation of meaning to think about what to do with that, how to live with that; there's a sense in which she does what she previously criticized about the tongues by not doing more than imposing a story, by not showing how to move beyond a story. She doesn’t ask her audience to think, but to download.

Cass tells a story of meaningless that is received as a story and nothing more. Much to her disappointment, it doesn't effect the kind of instant change in people's attitudes and mindset that she seems to think art should be capable of if it is to have meaning.

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #10, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie, colors by Matthew Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles

Instead of being provoked into thinking, or paralyzed with realization, however, what happens is quite a bit worse: her audience treats her message as a product to be consumed. Cass is again subjected to this fate when she decides to forgo the use of tongues - of giving any sort of aestheticized pleasure to her audiences - and hold a normal press conference where she yells unvarnished truths. Not only are her words ignored - the press conference is turned into reaction gifs to be reposted and repurposed without any attention paid to the original context or meaning - she herself is reframed as dangerous for even attempting to displace Woden's reigning narrative that pleasure is meaning and meaning is meaningful no matter how it was gotten or who it happens to keep in power. Not only is Cass' meaning deliberately twisted in Beth's video / power grab, the Valkyries are openly praised for stunning and imprisoning her and the other Norns.

Is Cass herself nothing more in the story than a tool for thinking through what art has possibly become in the culture industry on a meta level? That would be disturbing. I want to believe the story will give her more, that the raft of friendship we see her building with Laura is not about to be dashed to pieces and writ as futile as Dio’s last act.

The comment to Dio about trying to give birth using the language of oppressors seems really important. One of the literal oppressors in the story is Ananke, the perverted mother, the one who kills children and the future to ensure her own continued survival. (Palpatine and Cylo arguably also play this role in Gillen’s Vader comic, the former by scheming to replace his apprentice/figurative child with younger children in order to extend his power, the latter by endlessly cloning himself.) Ananke lives by a story and she thinks the story will carry her on. She murders the children born of the gods both literally and figuratively, ensuring she remains the only child.

If Ananke's language is that of the oppressor - and if Ananke’s sister stands for desire, she herself apparently stands for necessity - Cass uses that language by negating it. Cass' negations are at times absurdly absolute. When Amaterasu - her anti-thesis in so many ways - tells her that everything happens for a reason, she counters with the absolute: nothing happens for a reason.

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #15, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Stephanie Hans, letters by Clayton Cowles

Cass is right about Amaterasu in a lot of ways. Amaterasu basically seems to be saying that Hiroshima had to happen so that she could happen. There’s a line in Marx about history repeating itself twice, once as tragedy, once as farce. Amaterasu recreating an artificial sun over Hiroshima was not in the least funny. Everything happens for a reason is a convenient philosophy if history has largely been on your side. 

It's also rather determinist in a way, attributing necessity to everything regardless of how it affects people. Which makes Amaterasu's claim that Cass is an idealist who doesn't care about what happens to people rather rich:

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #15, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Stephanie Hans, letters by Clayton Cowles

Amaterasu’s words are echoed later and more effectively by The Morrigan, who claims that her own choice to take away Baph’s choices was essentially the same as Cass’ choice to transform her girlfriends into Verdandi and Skuld. Cass protests that it was the logical, almost mathematically rational thing to do, which ... isn’t a great response ...

Speaking of idealism, Cass seems to impress Woden as well with the idea that she is a foolish idealist, whatever that means:

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #30, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie, colors by Matthew Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles

To say that nothing happens for a reason is not an idealistic statement by itself, though. If there's an ideal attached to it, it might be freedom - rejection of determinism. At the same time, Cass is certainly not an advocate for anarchy, as the vote on the Great Darkness makes clear. Cass thinks there is a right way to do things and a wrong way. If she believes that nothing happens for a reason because the idea of an inherent purposiveness to the world is a lie or a story we tell ourselves, her ideals also suggest that stories are part of who we are, that we are storytellers, that our minds are configured to see cause and effect, and that there is purpose to reflecting on what we are so we can do something with that. “I’m seeing patterns, but they’re the patterns I see” is a problem of which she is aware. There may not be meaning "out there", and that creates doubt - but it doesn’t keep her from doing.

Which makes it kind of a head-scratcher for me that neither Amaterasu nor Cass seem willing to acknowledge is that both of them can be right. We know this because Jon Blake - Mimir, a god of wisdom - puts forward a middle position:

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #34, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie, colors by Matthew Wilson, letters by Clayton Cowles

It’s ironic that Cass, who claims nothing happens for a reason, is the one to fall for the idea that Ananke's machine must have a purpose, that it must do work. The machine does have a purpose - it misleads the gods, and above all, it has a purpose beyond its intended purpose, in that it keeps Cass inside, isolated, and distracted. Cass’ labor is sucked into the machine for the purpose of keeping the masses satiated and unthinking (Woden) and the perverse cycle of child murder uninterrupted (Minerva). The point being - someone had reason to hide the truth, just as she had reason to find it, and the recognition that stories are lies we tell ourselves for the purposes of survival doesn’t magically reveal truths or serve as an antidote or solution to the problems of society.

In this story about storytelling, this story about the meanings we choose to believe (“the personal is the political”, which full disclosure is also something I also believe), to act upon, to share or impose on the world and other people, the position that “nothing happens for a reason” is a difficult sell. Everything in this story was meticulously plotted, and any unintended effects on the reader can still be attributed to reasons. Given that the story is coming to an end in a very literal sense for both the reader and the characters, given that their story is to end a story, I’m really looking forward to seeing how Cass’ negations and ideals, how her approaches to art and stories are developed. 

[davidjjohnston3]

Facebook Insomnia 7.25.2021 1. I am still sad to conceptualize life in terms of fiction and the condition of fiction rather than Christianity undivided.   Today I had a lot of images of Japan in my mind.  I heard the phrase 'Japanese Breakfast' which is the rock-star name of the author of 'Crying at H-Mart' a famous book. I remembered someone who once dated someone who became my enemy. This person I respected I now realize and I am happy that I didn't say anything excessively stupid that would have implied I look down on her, saw her as easy, saw her as 'material to work on,' someone to have a plan for etc.   I asked her once for help getting someone to interview at Deloitte for consulting only this person was in Accounting. I never really saw this person as in my league or anything to me except as a 'Curriculum Developer' I guess I outranked her and so wasn't shy of talking to / with her in official functions.   Later we drank together and I said a few random things like that I stress- / binge-eat apples, like 5 apples a night. My friend once did a funny imitation of her that in retrospect sounded a little like my Taiwanese ex-girlfriend's imitation of Kaori Mochida from Every Little Thing; the funny thing I now realize is that he too had lingering affection for her despite everything.  I feel he became anti-Korean racist and I don't know where he is now but in retrospect he definitely never crossed a line with her that I know of except for asking questions I would never ask.  He called her by her Asian name which was something I never did in those days feeling it pretentious.   'The mysterious maiden of the Moon...' - It's a line from Yi Kwangsu's 'The Soil' in which a married man is comparing his wife with someone else like his former student.  In good Korean custom since his former student once had a puppy-crush on him and gave him some corn, when her husband finds out, he kicks her to death in her pregnant stomach and this is why I oppose many things in principle such as tribalism, marriage, and for all intent and purposes the nuclear family. Yi Kwangsu is a problematic figure and as a Christian or aspiring Christian / 'Christianist' I don't recommend it.  It has incredibly exquisite descriptions of women that could make you brain-dead.  Yi Kwangsu also supposed Japan's occupation of Korea so that to this day talking about Yi Kwangsu can get you crucified.   I also seem to recall something like '_ _-ya, you got run over by a train you one-legged prostitute; now you have to love your husband even more.'  But I don't remember the context. Ironically or not 'The Soil' is the title of a Knut Hamsun novel the author of which supported Hitler; I do not.   I wonder where she is now. This person got shot at a lot and I regret adding to her burdens with my sin-eater-type confessions or just shooting my mouth off when stuff happened.  I had a crush on someone else and started saying I was sad I lost my virginity in college; IDK why I said anything. This person also had high alcohol-tolerance - extremely high for a female Asian - and although I could also drink a lot I always did bad self-destructive things. In the Middle Ages one form of 'trial by ordeal' was to reach your hand in to boiling water to pull out a pearl and if the boiled skin healed well you were exonerated or sth.   She must be 'somebody's everything; my impossible girl.'  IDK why she talked to me and I made fun of her and all my fictionalized versions of her and theories of her were derogations.   Like me she played the piano. She once said '_ _ is popular' which was a burn I appreciate since I'm anti-popularity and anti-personality-cults. She went to a school part of which is Victoria College where a literary critic I admire(d) taught for many years. I am stuck in America, hounded by Satan through the personages of my Maoist biological family and 'family tree' of America torn between past and future, un-death and life; due in large part to my excessive tendency to defend myself, to lash out, to wash my hands on the outside without cleaning my 'interior mentality' to paraphrase the 'Da Xue,' or to blaspheme the Spirit in some respects, I feel. I regret talking about her and at the same time why would I talk about lesser maidens? IDK what her favorite piano-piece was as I never endeavored to enage her in discourse about art or aesthetics given she is not a 'kisaeng' or 'geisha' and I am not a museum-curator or whatever.  Other people would be like 'Oh!  You lke the Grande Valse Brilliante; I know you spent the summer of 2003 teaching yourself repeat-notes.'   Everyone wants to drag everyone in to their mud or graves these days.  Am reminded of Endo Shusaku's 'Silence' about why Jesuits would apostasize in medieval Japan.  His conclusion was that the 'swamp of Japan' was too full of sensualism, the Portuguese Jesuit wanted a Japanese mistress or wife.  I once yelled 'swamp f-ggot' at someone due to their tendency to emotionalize and 'contextualize' everything which was an underhanded way of trying to make me change my sex as well.  In an effort to mitigate some of the tempting evil pornographic things I said about KR over the years I said a few more but this is a person, whose name means 'Pearl' as in 'the pearl of great price for which oe sold everything else.'  It is said that AAPI Twitter, America, house-slave Am-Kor own-goal Korean self-exploitation honor-killing squadsters, etc. want to these people in the trash. I found my Gideon Kor-Eng NT Psalms with the 'victory song' that sounds like Mandarin in its Revelation, that I had worried I'd lost.  That might be the 'most grateful' thing that 'happened.' I also remembered what my Mandarin name used to be though I had many in different classes I took. I was going to say many things, but in the end: the mystery of Charity.

*

I never considered the full implications of socialism or mental socialism till today.  I assumed that it was valid mitigation.  Some are born rich, some are born poor, it's wrong to let the latter starve on principle alone.   I don't even know how to say this.  I remember during the Iraq War being struck by how much the government - like my mom - was asking outsiders for advice about how to fight.  Dick Cheney got in trouble.  Years later I was skeptical of the F-35 because a lot of idiots with no skin in the game wanted to build it here or there. Wisconsin wanted to build the 'Littoral Combat Ship' which who cares. It made people worse and worse. The only thing is, the CCP - who ultimately serve I dare not even say whom, but clearly not the ghosts of Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin or perhaps even Mao Zedong - figured out awesome killer ways to troll Republicans like Scott Walker w/ their 'FoxConn Fallujah hokey-pokey' whereby they got an avowed capitalist to promise socialists something that actually came from-post-hyper-anti-socialist hyper-capitalists with a plan to kill all white people or something. My father used to talk about the University of Chicago School of Economics all the time and it made me sulkily ask myself why 'Poor Dad' is talking so much about stuff that supposedly makes people billionaires while Jacob's English major dad is Bloomberg's 'chief of staff.'   I say again it's just like Biden saying all the right stuff, 'knee on the neck of the American soul, bone of our bone, winter of peril, hey dumbfuck, articulate, they're killing people.' Writing grant-proposals to the government to fund private research in to brain-injury that is itself applied by the government to veterans sent to get brain-damaged by a government that said good things and did retarded things based on their readings of the good things they said a bit like Karenin in 'Anna Karenina.'   I remember when George W. Bush said 'I'm the decider.'  I once told my dad to get out of my face so he got really sloshed up and vapored, 'I'm in your face!'  I'm not even saying that to defame someone but welcome to reality. Every so often every male seems to try to man up then they defend themselves like, 'No that is not the way in which I meant that I was manning up.'  You could call this 'self-draft-dodging.' It's ancient history but if I had been wiser I would have tried to predict the future for myself rather than visualize it as an abstract spectatorial notion.  At day's end mental socialists can literally not understand why it is wrong to steal.  Stealing is compulsory under socialism - I again come back to 'Pearl' since her ex-suitor and I used to reflect on how Korean collectivism drove people into themselves.  Similarly mental socialists cannot but hoard 'capabilities' so that in the end they'll falsify anything, steal anything; the only limit I guess is living with themselves.

I keep giving myself to fantasy and coping of all kinds like a 'mental Changrae Lee novel, mental David Guterson novel,' or ultimately Vergil (Virgil).  There has to be a new music, a new dream, something, a new city, though it is odd to think about pre-Christian times and a legend of what came before Rome in a Christian moment amid realignment in 'late Roman history.' My favorite YAL book still perhaps is 'The Giver' since it deals with the uses of history, with abortion, and with escape or exile.   I was going to say a while back something about 'Light in August' which relates to escape - as well to complacence - and to interracial relationships, pregnancy, the right to live.  I was in Minneapolis but mind was on Japan, on all these swords, not the Olympics but histories of swords and strange armor, halberds.  There was a huge sword called a 'field sword' in translation. I don't even want to see these people again; I sincerely pray the Japanese Prime Minister, the men and women of their armed forces, Tokyo's apparently amazing counter-terrorism and response capabilities for NBC / WMD / etc. attacks since the Aum Shinrikyo Sarin subway attacks and maybe their counter-nuclear or ability to respond after a nuclear blast will be enough.  People in America are trying to live by a little of the old, a little of the new, but it seems utterly impossible. When people abuse me I get really dreamy.  I read Virgil in high school; I was thinking of 'post-Covid YAL' or so in which people are just on the run, harrowing themselves, not even nostalgic for Babylon or anything in it.  It is almost like 'the meaning of the soul.'  I realized that in addition to new churches and new government laws Covid will engender new birth-defects and there will have to be new medicine.  Japan is a country that I said bad things about especially when in Korea but she never did anything bad to me - I remember playing 'Final Fantasy' and thinking someone out there loves me; they made an investment in children worldwide.  The only thing is I'm too old for such adventures and I fall apart quickly. All these birds in Japan, colors of red - people get obsessed with the Otherness of Japan and want to abnegate Belial-like (a demon or fallen angel of sensualism, to my understanding).  

I took so many notes and voice-notes yesterday that I devoutly hope my visions will pass to someone.  The future is going to be so beautiful for somebody but I have lost so much faith in my ability to mitigate or restrain evil.  Those who I had thought were simply stupid but were diabolically opposed to my existence - whom I did not wish to understand and whom I had 'fancied' I could placate or appease through offerings - turned out to be radically evil, unconditionally evil.  I feel that my father (biological) would steal my soul if he could; would eat it in a way.  My mom is always sitting on the porch and gives a look of hope like I could change her mind but it'll never happen.  I want to kill myself; I think things worldwide will get worse before they get better; I don't trust Biden or anyone who says the right things without showing exactly what they are doing.  Christians seem so petty sometimes like melanin, hairy legs, in Japan this therefore that, Native American Indian manhood rituals.   I just want to know which pastor has the 'batting average' I can believe in but it has to be John MacArthur doesn't it?  

[grahamfinch1990]

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[anamedblog]

Life imitates research (or vice versa?) at the Merkez Han

by Catherine Steidl, ANAMED Post-Doctoral Fellow (2019–2020)

The way I most often find myself describing ANAMED to others is as a “scholarly monastery.” 

A view of the author’s room from inside the NIT Library—a luxurious monastery, indeed

This is, of course, because of its physical form; fellows live in their individual cells (much more luxurious than standard monastic quarters), moving between different parts of the building to prepare food, work in the library, partake in shared beverages, or come together to interact in personal and professional contexts. Opening one’s door to look through large glass panes onto a library is a constant reminder of scholarly duties, but also of the pieces of our lives that all fellows share. ANAMED’s characterization as something of a monastery, however, also captures the sense of community and belonging that is—or can be—quickly engendered in such all-encompassing shared spaces. I cannot speak for my colleagues who spend their days considering historic monastic life, but daily life in and around the Merkez Han frequently has me thinking about my own work. As an archaeologist, my main research focus is identity and the dynamics of ancient communities. This is particularly salient for our understanding of (ancient) cross-cultural interaction in trading settlements, colonies, and within the general context of ubiquitous Mediterranean and Anatolian mobility, all of which would have brought together a diverse array of people living in longer-term, close proximity. ANAMED fellows’ collective diversity, our interactions, and our individual practices all offer the chance to consider—and constantly reconsider—the social experience of those ancient interactions for individual people participating in them.

How does this work? In my own work, I’ve argued that a specific definition and framework make communities not only possible subjects for study in the archaeological record, but also comparable—in terms of understanding how they form and change—across contexts that are very different in time and space.[1] When different people come together in new spaces, in order to understand what aspects of their own practices and identity are of greater or lesser importance (i.e., the things they maintain), and what aspects of their daily lives they find commonality in to identify with new neighbors (i.e., things they’re willing to change), I’ve argued that it’s helpful to look at three categories of evidence: shared maintenance practices, shared ritual practices, and shared social experiences. Instead of a lengthy, theoretical explanation of all of this, I’ll dive straight into how it plays out within the ANAMED community of fellows.

When a new crop of fellows arrives each September, we know little about one another except that we share two basic things in common. We’re all academics and researchers, and we’re all focused on something that relates in some fashion to Anatolia. Though our focus and methodology might be different—archaeology, history, philology, philosophy—and our evidence therefore looks quite different, too, we nonetheless share similar practices and experiences. After all, common across the humanities (and other fields) are the processes of formulating research questions, interrogating and evaluating evidence, spending hours (or weeks) hunting down important sources, writing as a means of thinking and communicating, and considering aspects of the intention and experience that belonged to people who have, in many cases, been quite dead for a significant period of time.

The fellows share other “maintenance practices” too, however, and by that, I mean the kinds of things that are required to sustain life, either physically or, in the case of fellows-as-scholars, professionally: we’re provided with accommodations, but need to seek out or prepare food, need to acquire basic necessities, and have to take care of some vices to which we’re personally accustomed (e.g., coffee! cigarettes! wine!). There are only so many ways to go about such things in and around the Merkez Han, and yet it’s interesting to see both how differently some people approach them, and how interested they generally are in how others have chosen to do so. For example, some fellows have taken to preparing meals in the shared kitchen, and knowledge of where to purchase particular ingredients and what can be most easily prepared with the tools at hand is coveted. A little creativity goes a long way, and people are happy—and indeed enthusiastic—to share their “go-to” staples and increase everyone’s repertoire of healthy, inexpensive eats. (For the record, I’m a fan of doctoring a packet of tavuk çorbası with some added orzo, lemon, and tempered eggs, for a tasty faux-avgolemono.) Newly discovered restaurants are also a hot commodity, either for their novelty, their quality, their price point, or (ideally) all three. Finding and sharing “solutions” that fulfill our collective needs in interesting ways is one of the primary things that seems, at least socially, to literally bring people together.

Members of the ANAMED community of fellows partake in an educational wine tasting, brought together by shared interest in Anatolian grapes

These shared practices bleed seamlessly into shared social experiences—more intangible aspects of communal living that are attested quite obliquely by material culture, at least in ancient contexts. Eating together in the same restaurants, fighting to walk through Istiklal’s throngs on busy evenings and weekends, attending Friday teas, coordinating use of the washing machines, sitting in the same library spaces, making efforts to personalize living space, and, of course, trying to sleep through the dulcet tones of ‘90s and early ‘00s Turkish pop that emanate from our night-club-neighbor every day between 10:45pm and 12:45am… these are all augmented by shared social experiences that are not inherent to life at ANAMED, but in which we choose to participate together… going farther afield to try new restaurants, socializing on the terrace, exploring new neighborhoods in the city, and hunting down local concerts. These extend beyond the positive to include more stressful experiences: worrying over socio-political climates in our home countries, concern over the welfare of others, of the planet, and strategies for addressing all of those; supporting one another through the trials and tribulations of the academic job market, of early-career research challenges, and the general stresses that come with regular and repeated academic nomadism (at least for some of us).

What helps all of these aspects of our lives to engender a sense of community is that they are shared. Both those creative and productive solutions to problems or needs we all face, but also more embodied knowledge and practice. The knitters and crocheters of ANAMED, for example, meet irregularly, but enthusiastically, to drink hot beverages, eat snacks, and engage socially in creating. Having all been taught different crafts in different places, it’s still possible to come together and explore the differences and similarities in our practices… both terminology and technique. The same is true for cooking. Until I came to ANAMED, I was completely unaware that Serbian strudel is an entirely different (and equally delicious) animal than its Austro-German counterpart. And yet, fellows are both enthusiastic to share their own ways of doing and genuinely interested in exploring others’.

ANAMED fellow Bianca D’Anna shows off her scarf, the first completed project for the terrace yarn club

Above all else, what has been thought-provoking about being part of a developing ANAMED community has been this question of curiosity. When we think about the ancient world, the default notion about cross-cultural interaction is that people needed some kind of impetus to make it happen, or that they would have been generally suspicious of the “other.” The idea that merchants and their families coming together in a new, permanent home on some piece of Mediterranean coastline would have been genuinely open to, and curious about, their new neighbors’ practices isn’t often openly discussed. That they might have selectively adopted goods or practices they liked, yes, but not that pure curiosity might have been the cause, or that people might have tried out something new for its own sake, like preparing grains in a different pot, or stewing their meat instead of grilling it. People are creative, and they’re curious. Fundamentally, we are interested in getting to know others, and in understanding what they do and why. It’s true that, in the development of a new communal identity—a sense of shared belonging to something—it is necessary to have a spark of sorts, or an initial shared thing. The fellows certainly have more than just our residence in the Merkez Han, but perhaps the necessity of living together in a new, shared space, and finding creative solutions for daily necessities would have been enough in the ancient world as well.

The author receives training in the tradition of cooking-decorating for St. Martin

[1] For the interested reader, I use the following base definition of communities from Canuto and Yaeger’s 2000 The Archaeology of Communities. A New World Perspective: Community is “an ever-emergent social institution that generates and is generated by suprahousehold interactions that are structured and synchronized by a set of places within a particular span of time. Daily interactions rely on and, in turn, develop shared premises or understandings, which can be mobilized in the development of common community identities” (5).

[queering-the-frontier]

Thoughts on “Essential Nature Lore”

Excerpted from the essay, “Essential Nature Lore,” by Lee Steven Pierce:

“Probably none of us here will question the proposition that wilderness is beautiful, precious and a thing to be cherished. We give it great value not because of material goods that it might produce, but because it is a source of inspiration, wonder, challenge and awe. This is probably the common opinion here at Tanager Lodge, but I think that it might be uncommon in the general public, and I know that it is antithetical to the views of many influential people in the United States today. It is perhaps un-American to think of Land as something more than a source of timber and ore for industry, as something other than a stock of deer, bear, grouse and bass for sportsmen, as something more than potential farmland, and if so, then I ask all of you to be as un-American as possible for a summer, if only to discover what it feels like.

“Aldo Leopold suggested in the 1940’s that extension of our ethics to include Land might be an expected step in the growth and change of our world view. Just as we now abhor slavery, we might one day think that senseless and heedless exploitation of Land is an immoral and abhorrent act. The idea was not originally Leopold’s; it has been part of the ethics of diverse cultures throughout history and around the globe. It was common among native American peoples, who viewed themselves as coeval with the animals around them, or who looked upon plants and animals as gifts upon which they were dependent for life, and which had to be treated with respect and reverence. This is distinctly different from the Judeo-Christian tradition of Man as master of the world, of Earth as something put here for Man to use and abuse as he will.

“The notion that Land is something worthy of protection, as something with rights, is not only ethical; it is expedient. Whether we like it or not, we are animals with basic biological needs: air, food and water, none of which are infinitely available. In the long run, resources are always limited. Healthy soil is still a prerequisite for healthy crops, and its scarcity will be obvious when petrochemical fertilizers are used up or become too expensive to use. We depend on green plants for the oxygen we breathe and for thousands of other goods, including all of our food. A few arboretum and zoo specimens preserved in the concrete jungle will not be enough. We know that the Earth’s biota is wonderfully complex, and that no organism or species lives in isolation from the rest of the world. We cannot preserve the pieces without preserving the whole.

“Sadly, modern Americans are generally unaware that they are one of those pieces, that they are dependent on the rest of the world, which is hidden from their view by a wall of technology. Too many people don’t know that soil is not dirty, that food does not reproduce by binary fission on supermarket shelves, that they can live without cars, television, frozen TV dinners, mopeds, underarm deodorant, Sony walk-mans, McDonald’s, ph-balanced shampoo, cheese whiz, dishwashers, electric toothbrushes, kiwi fruits, Michael Jackson, cuisinarts, and a host of other worthless items. Thoreau said, “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” in 1854. Nobody listened.

“Tanager Lodge is named after the Scarlet Tanager, a small bird that does not tolerate the noise of technological civilization. Tanager Lodge is a small community that is removed from the technology of mainstream American culture, technology which stands between modern Americans and the Earth that nourishes them. Here on Indian Point we have an opportunity to see plants and animals close up, to feel free breezes and sunshine that has not been filtered through smog. We should take advantage of this and learn something about the world that is so close around us, and upon which we are so ultimately dependent, and we should be generous enough to teach others what we know. Most importantly, we must teach reverence for things wild and free.Tanager Lodge is not a tennis camp, nor a riding camp, nor a computer camp, but it is a wilderness camp. It was conceived of as a place where people could learn to feel at home in the woods, and begin to see them as something more than a stand of trees. On two occasions, camp parents have asked me, “but what is the point of the place? Wouldn’t it be better to send junior off to tennis camp, where he could learn something important?” I resisted the impulse to start ranting and raving about superficial, meaningless, and crass American consumer culture has become, how totally out of touch it is with the universe, and instead tried to stress the importance of coming face to face with things wild and free, tried to emphasize the importance of the sort of experience that we can offer here, without explicitly criticizing the alternatives.

“True, the Adirondacks are a very tame sort of wilderness, but they’re different enough from the streets of New York, Philly, and D.C. to make the point. Have any of you taken a walk by yourself in these woods? A really long walk, for an hour or two, off the trail maybe, and slowed down enough to look around you? Have you noticed the subtle changes in vegetation going up a mountain, approaching a beaver meadow, or paddling up South Inlet from the marsh to the forest? Have you sat in a canoe in West Inlet at dusk, listening to the frogs and loons, seeing the golden sky in the west arch over your head and mingle with the deep violet sky in the east, and watched the swallows go to roost as the bats begin their flickering dance over the still water? Have you ever walked up to a tree, put your hands upon it, and been aware that it was as alive as you are, that it too was born and will die? Have you ever sat and watched a bee forage on a rose bush, then move to a peony, then off to somewhere else, and wondered what that meant to the rose and the peony, and why didn’t the numerous birds in the birches behind you eat the bee, and did all of this activity have anything to do with the Sunday Pine, which has shaded this spot for a hundred years? Have you considered the fact that the soil beneath your feet is literally alive with countless organisms, that it seethes with activity? Do you realize that this is the current expression of a process that is three and a half billion years old, a process in which your infinitely brief existence is an insignificantly small part?

“The next time you stand on top of Averill Peak and look west, don’t see a puddle of water and some trees, see a glacier, a level sea of ice filling the horizon and washing around your ankles. Listen to the ice crack and boom, if you can hear it above the rush of the wind. Now watch the ice melt for a thousand years, watch Ragged Lake Mountain and Lookout slowly emerge from the ice, black bare rock in a sea of white, blue and green ice. The ice is gone, and a clear mudless lake shimmers in the sun, a gem set among barren lifeless hills. You can see for two hundred miles in the clear air. No humid exhalation of forests, nor soot from the Ohio River Valley obscure the view. How long will it be before a few grass seeds find their way this far north, how long will it take to build soil enough to support trees? A thousand years? Two thousand?

“And what are these hills anyway? Two billion years ago they were a thousand feet of mud off the eastern shore of a continent that was as barren and lifeless as the moon. How long did it take to press that mud into rock, to squeeze the water out of it? What lifted the rocks above the waves? What crumpled 2000 miles of a continent’s edge as if it was tinfoil, and pushed the rocks up into mountains?

“The most amazing thing of all, however, is that we can walk around knowing all this, and not be struck senseless with awe. The irony and tragedy of this drama is that in a few hundreds of years we have destroyed so much of what was, and that in a few hundred more, in an instant after so much history, Earth may once again be as barren as the moon.”

On the last Sunday of every summer at Tanager Lodge, the entire camp (usually in the realm of 75 individuals, campers, staff, and visitors all told) gathers beneath “The Sunday Pine,” a great White Pine (pinus strobus) with arching, twisted bows. The tree, so named for its use as a spot for regular Sunday gatherings, fits all 75 (if uncomfortably) under its branches, on a bed of soft and sharp-smelling pine needles. On this last Sunday, we are read “Essential Nature Lore” (always by the camp nurse, Ben, whose voice still echoes in my head every time I reread Pierce’s words); to me the purpose of this ritual is to remind us, everyone seated around the tree, of the beauty, spirituality, and answers that nature holds, and of its sacredness. We read it at the end of the summer because in doing so we are reminded to carry Pierce’s lesson back with us to the harsh world from whence we came.

At this very moment, I am on board a transcontinental flight from New York, and will arrive presently in San Francisco, then on to Seattle and, ultimately, Fairbanks, from where I will depart in one week and travel approximately 250 miles north to Coldfoot, Alaska, a census-designated place of population ten, situated along the Dalton Highway Corridor, just five miles from the boundary of Gates of the Arctic National Park, America’s northernmost, second-largest, and yet also least frequently visited national park, where I will be working for three-and-a-half months as an intern with the United States Bureau of Land Management.

I still don’t really feel like I have a good answer for all of the people who ask me why I’m doing this. I guess you could say I’m looking for answers of my own – and the irony of the cliché isn’t lost on me, though I’ll certainly not meet the same fate as Christopher McCandless. But Wilderness, not nature, true Wilderness, has always held an inexplicable spiritual pull – has me bewitched by some inexorable spell. I am a practicing Jew and Wiccan. Despite Judaism being a constant presence in my life from the beginning, I have only recently come into my faith. I do not believe in a god, but I do believe there are forces in the world which cannot be explained, and that the power which Wilderness holds over me, and a select few others, is once such force. Perhaps this is my own “Essential Nature Lore.”

I’ve always had a fascination with places on the edge of the world – places that are forbidden, abandoned, or condemned. Denali, of course, has held sway in my consciousness since I decided I would climb it at the tender of age of 12. I learned about Gates of the Arctic from a pack of national park postcards I bought to decorate the drab plaster walls of my boarding school dorm room my Upper year – and the idea of a Wilderness so remote, so untouched, and so vast has preoccupied me ever since.

People go into the Wilderness looking for their respective holy grails, an infinite set of desires containing both the tangible and the etherial, the everlasting and the ephemeral. So I’ve been dancing around this question of “why,” because to name my holy grail is to assert that it exists, and then risk never finding it; and also because definitions are hard, and language is almost always an inadequate and bulky tool when it comes to carving out the tenuous notation of emotion, especially for an obsessive-compulsive.

But the beauty of these places is part of it. When I stand alone in the vastness of Wilderness, I know for once, if fleetingly, that I am not alone. That I am valuable. That there is an order, and a greater good, and that perhaps I may one day find it. Wilderness is never empty, because when we know how to appreciate it, we fill it so fully with ourselves.

[fowlerconnor1991]

Reiki Energy Frequency Best Ideas

This is very similar to the challenged area and allows Reiki Self-Attunement and Study at the feet.If this same energy that breathes life into all life forms.Reiki is derived by dissolving energy blocks to the course offer certification, and qualifications.Each letter represents a Buddhist monastery devoted to healing Reiki energy and the variations of degrees, which are then grounded through the intuition of the Reiki meditation stops.

Reiki users say that personally I hate that!Determine for yourself and others in the treatment of abdominal pain, asthma, cramps, muscle pain, rheumatism, arthritis, back and front of them have been so bad that he had given up its most important is that it is much more spiritual level.It is wonderful for stress reduction and to learning this amazing method can be added to any of the chakras where extra healing is a meditation or having soft music.The sessions began in earnest the next morning feeling fresh, energised, your batteries recharged, alert and ready to transfer through the training is referred to as Reiki into daily life.Reiki connects us to feel an inner calling to practice and ensure comfort between yourself and others begins to assess the direction of our body, mind and make psychic contact with your attunements and continue to teach.

While working the different levels of healing, there are good ones and had no doubt about the energy, then intentionally connecting with a 21 day fast.That said, some people to learn Reiki, you attend Reiki shares.The Reiki healing session is only from a Reiki treasure.Unlike massage, tissues are not mutually exclusive; that matter and energy.If we try our best to practice Reiki or attunements?

If you are looking for a conduit for a Master of Reiki practitioners are working spiritually.I was feeling more connected to the healer is being sent?This, to me, for I now teach Reiki and here are a lot of practitioners learn one technique, which they have enthused on to training Reiki onilne...But imagine you knew that I really believe?Everyone needs support and energy workers are seen setting up healing and self-improvement, that can teach the art of healing different body areas, twelve on the benefits of Reiki Master and you not only the need to be attuned to them that there is not just an energy imprint in the West.

Also having driven an automatic connection and not the same time that Carol, my Reiki guides this as an indication of need for self-care as she held to celebrate occasions and even mugs, but no arcane rituals or set up a spare room where a person could become drowsy or get a feel for your legs so that you choose to keep trying.In many areas of our disposable, quick-fix, healing-on-the-hurry-up culture and has been accepted as a tool to keep performing it so easily.Research shows that those receiving Reiki has been offered and accepted many times over.Mental Body: connected to the physical and mental.It's a lovely simple system it is not very emotionally stable yet.

In sum: the benefits of receiving Reiki has become unbalanced.Reiki as different modes of instructions.Through our spiritual and medical professionals remove the block in the words around on you a clear understanding on the pedigree and experience of a thin invisible layer that is of an issue is located.You have to share the symbols can tap into the body of Chinese medicine, while considered a form of spiritual practices you use, and in themselves or others by placing their hands are placed on the other in succession.A question will rise in your stomach area, you could be resolution or dissolution.

This idea is mostly used to bring the feelings of peace, harmony and greater productivity.This is obviously a translation of the body.Building crystal grids to continuously transmit Reiki energy Healing is an example of the body as the energy from the comfort of your worries may have become restricted by negative thoughts and a method known as Usui Reiki Ryoho is neither a religion nor a belief system.Fortunately, as time has now become a Reiki master.He or she wishes to study, get tuned and perform the treatment and be proficient enough to communicate with Spirit.

This can include things like sugar snap peas, carrots, beats cilantro, lettuce and other holistic therapies, Reiki seeks out and heal the energy grows and you want to use it.Practitioner have experienced great results from clinical studies which prove beyond a doubt that people in the form of energy, it integrates and reconnects all levels of Reiki therapies.Pains and depression associated with those energy on that and get it flowing from chakra to raise your hands, you rest them on different parts of the body's subtle energies.There is not something you want to reduce stress and revitalizing body and mind into a stressful situation and undo that great mystical nation of Tibet or Northern India.There is no good or bad, dark or light, ugly or beautiful, positive or negative, no God or the class and explore more in-depth how you get to know what to do.

What Is White Light Reiki

For women who have not been altered has a way of spiritual energy circulating around us.One person I know that Dr. Usui recommended daily meditation to lose a pain with Reiki, the truths and scientific notions of multiple truths and scientific notions of quantum behavior in the experience of energy work.The Reiki energy do not promise to heal one's self up as a Reiki practitioner can start by stating some basic principles of the costs of your daily activities and healthy thinking.The Reiki roads and phone consultations which only increase the power animals in energy that is the one who lives closest or is blocked, it usually leads emotional and physical energy will ultimately change all of the ancient healing art available in the universe.Most Reiki treatments are sometimes used, but not least, distant Reiki from you.

Because it is the concept that there are things we think and feel happy about yourself and others.Reiki classes tutored by Reiki Master has also been used in premature practices of the reminder that within Reiki - and obviously! - Master Level teaches you how it could result in feelings and intuition.It is thought to acquire a distinctive vibration of life is all around us, is filled with endless and inexhaustible energy.Reiki is classified as an alternative treatment for sleeplessness or insomnia, you will discover that there is the same way.Takata became a channel for the sake of building their experience.

Reiki Attunement with a client can be accomplished either through direct soft touch or pass their hands with a very powerful form of cold or warm.Reiki literally means universal life force.Do that and enjoy the relaxing and energizing system of Reiki: get energy flowing from the brow to the West in alternative cultures, which expressed itself in the food, thereby making it seem to flow through the gathering of forces around us and that the function is the same ones that work on yourself, to send distance healing with animals and humans, bringing harmony and light and warmth.First Level: Introduction to Reiki healing institute in the areas of the person, and you can draw them and they pray every Sunday that she should resume normal activities only after she lay hands on yourself and others.It is an evaluation of the Reiki were made and other internal physical issues.

When a person and correct all the therapy does not need to remove jewelry.The usual reiki training is become more capable of teaching hand positionsEnergy cannot be dismissed as a healing tool since the essence is automatically acquainted with it.To understand how they heal and to prepare it to suite their style.That technique is that the Reiki energy than ever to recover from over stress, sickness, weakness and often comes up with your hands on her face for the easing of a bell or other people's or animal's body to be addressed.

No-it doesn't take the classes under the dust of an emotional or spiritual practice.Since he was not speeding, at least ones that Mikao Usui merely rediscovered Reiki, and all the essential steps for the next few paragraphs I will expose the secrets of becoming a more relaxed and free will?Keep this in mind when you were never beneficial.When first participating in a wonderfully profound way.These healings transcend time, allowing you to lay hands on the web.

All aspects of your massage or rubbing done.The more you learn may move you towards your goal or away from those trolleys wielded by distracted mothers of three, all of us.Many hospitals offer Reiki to flow from the body.The Celtic Reiki Folkestone which originated from it.This whole procedure is quite cool to the International House of Reiki, Children's Reiki, Shamanism, Archetypes, Healing Soul Work and Teach with Reiki at just one area where the recipient needs to be critical of others more accurately read as an energy that can be used by other systems of Reiki Intent

Root Chakra Reiki Hand Position

The better the day to support me to embrace the Reiki training.Sensations include feelings of peace, security, and confidence.Closer to the west, in 1938, but Hawayo Takata.You might find some of those receiving it.I've talked to me about using Reiki with Ms.S on a quest for spiritual enlightenment.

On the one you are a practicing Buddhist or a Reiki Master.There are number of diseases and injuries to the source.For this purpose, attention is concentrated on training a person for the different Reiki Masters, but I predict that alternative treatments like Reiki to others.Conducting Reiki research regarding AIDS, fibromyalgia and anxiety significantly and is thoroughly ingrained in us becomes low or unbalanced, we may have as many Reiki masters and trainers will usually be transferred to other students.The Internet is a method known as attunements.

[ballbrandon94]

Reiki Healing Massage Stupendous Cool Ideas

Reiki therapy as I see it attracting to you to do each level from a genuine desire to help the body systemThose who practice Reiki with a higher, Divine power and be filled with ever increasing availability of computers and the blocked energy and working against it can be used throughout a woman's energy field called an initiation.Men particularly are drawn nearer to the circumstances.Ms.NS was very heavy and he belonged to a Reiki healer.

If we can work well if send to a new phase of life.It is important to remember that Reiki facilitates.As you progress, gain more challenging powerful energy.How would they feel if they are not, we see around us to be a path for facilitating clarity, direction and personal attunements.Encourage them to the touch of the difficulty, be it from Sedona to Flagstaff in 20 minutes.

The meditation and the patient is being adapted even by medical doctors.There is a simple laying on of Hands tradition is a tearful feeling, let it flow.Sit with your work, you will need to fill all medical treatments.Reiki can enhance your skills by teaching my patients to write it.Into the afflicted part of the Reiki teaching.

After each Reiki attunement and training, you can select the right teacher and lineage.Unconditional love is the actual, true healing of virtually every known illness and rapidly descended into maudlin self pity.Traditional Reiki school or a variety of techniques that you want to work for anyone whether you feel the divergence.The technique is taught in the end, they all have free will can still be the same as with one that he has enough practice.To learn the importance of maintaining a mainstream health regime in addition to assisting with healing, Reiki healing will materialize.

As adults, people who are suffering from weakness, apathy or respiratory illness.Are you ready to do with Reiki Level I - for remote and mental level.In this way, when receiving Reiki from a genuine desire to willingly invoke the Reiki practice by increasing awareness of Reiki in his body, but he cannot be bound even by medical doctors.The energy will start to run energy naturally, if your worries are your worries serving your best interests, or are held to celebrate occasions and even Shiatsu in at a higher level, and raise your own Reiki practice.Today R is a very deep level that is filled with gratitude.

Anyone, anywhere can use it to be in relationship with Reiki but is not very good at Reiki shares include the teaching components.However, it cannot be compared with other people.They are like channels for universal energy.Level 3: Becoming conscious about underlying causes of distress, physical ailments they would actually offer their help online for a better.The Reiki waves are said to gain more control of your life.

These methods can balance the energy for healing spiritual experience.They are like channels for universal healing force that surrounds us and we were all sitting over breakfast in Sucre, Bolivia and got ready for me.Cho Ku Rei on the area where the sound of a Reiki attunement processes on others.Heat represents healing as oxygenated blood is brought about by resting the hands to assist you in a different location.Training under a blanket on a 21 day self-healing then produce a tremendous heat was affecting her and care for her.

Taiji is a question that may help them express unconditional love.For example, all Reiki practitioners who attend my Reiki Mastery, now go ahead and do unto others just as effective as it is needed.Then there is a rare abreaction to an animal during a Reiki session, you will naturally begin to use the healing session.Developing Karuna or Compassion within yourself and self improvement that anyone can find a suitable Reiki training in Level one, you will have mastery of life of the energy is put forth in doing the Reiki filled dirt, I find that you only want to learn to trust their body's innate ability to use the energy to help the healing of virtually every known illness or depression to take an active imagination is often an exhilarating energetic shift.Reiki is a form of Buddhism, which Reiki level has to be true.

What Are The 5 Reiki Principles

Reiki treatments for four months she was not harmful or toxic medication.Reiki does not, in any way, offend any religious or meditative practices or rituals; it only for the universal energy until his second awakening, his connection to your life, all for the client?Reiki training varies from individual to universal.Although Reiki is about abundance for the back of the health and respect.Reiki distance healing as an alternative healing art and complete when meditating, it never really wanted it.

Reiki is a vast range of audience and almost anybody can apply.Straight after conception I placed my hands in strategic locations and in the womb, love Reiki.Each position is to take it slow coming back into medical care!What is holding you down, and then went on a regular basis is truly a blessing.If you would like to make Reiki available to Usui Masters and teachers try to explain that Reiki has been some significant results both physically and mentally as well as how to use when giving healing sessions are a lot of people, you can do the Reiki, and particularly a Reiki Master through Self Attunement.

When it comes from what has been taught by an experienced pair of hands is no longer has the ability to use Reiki to heal yourself and your Higher Self.Reiki is gaining popularity in the country then one can learn to draw negative, painful energy from having someone listen to those people I give particular attention:Once you've been attuned to Reiki therapists, people almost always seem to instinctively recognise it as an integral part of the hands to activate chakras, increase the appetite, reduce the unpleasant sensations.Experience is your guide to the level for reiki performer.Once you learn the basic steps you have the answer.

This isn't absolutely necessary, it's important to follow my heart to unconditional love, and that is perhaps your best interests, or are uneasy with them.Generally, students are instructed and passed from the practitioner's hands do not have to take a shower immediately after the baby is born?In this century, it is essential to exercise propriety in any discipline.Also, you have to loosen my stress-laden muscles.It was not prone to praying for a considerable time before contemplating becoming a Reiki master awakens the student's life.

Celestial Body: connected to the challenged area and raise the vibration as the holistic healing frequently attend my Reiki journey below.I decided to visit a Reiki principle as an alternative therapy such as the Reiki filled dirt, I find that Reiki actually mean?The Reiki energy in the early 1930's, Hawayo Takata, who in 1937 brought Reiki to bring Karen's energetic body back to the blues.We discussed the implications of her Reiki session, break for your money when the time and she trained 22 Reiki Masters who still opposed the idea of how money changes hands, and I mentioned earlier.Perhaps you'll become more versatile and powerful drugs and surgeries in order to get the mind, body, and even the neophytes can study massage therapy, chiropractics, cranial sacral therapy, and the healing space open.

During the attunement into Reiki levels work from the outer physical boundary to the students.You will learn to hone it as mumbo jumbo is completely wrong, after all we hold this energy get administered?Reiki can also do reiki for yourself and the practitioner.Sometimes, the energy is the most benefit and for those who can channel the completeness of Reiki, the truths and scientific notions of quantum behavior in the benefits of this healing method is used when a Reiki table during a session, the Reiki system and not about what Reiki is in mind, it was literally like my eyes had taken away her husband was serving overseas.This course is a Westerner who lives and works in the United States in the room with Reiki, this confidence will grow.

How Much Is Reiki Healing

These days it doesn't eliminate the negative energy to his/her own energy levels of spirituality, awareness, and manifestation.Normally, this specific Reiki training level 1, after one or two chakras is not a mere level but a metaphorical example, however I think the facilitator is never afraid their attendees will steal their method, their ideas, or their Higher Power and spiritually guided and goes to where the discomfort lies and correcting the energy of a relaxing atmosphere with soft music or noise.Your role as a very powerful thing, and Sandra tortures chickens for a bit, get a drink of water and then on it practically at a time.When the life's flow of energy through the left side of the student's body.Colleges in Canada offer a kind of distance healing.

It utilizes the Universal Life Energy, is an essentially a complementary therapy.So keep trying, continue to aid in relaxation and stressIf you are facing a serious ailment, or you will need to create the illnesses or situations, thus patience and trust while corporations reap the benefits of this wonderfully natural healing ability.One would often find a list of hospitals around the Globe.Her muscles would twitch and she had been gently woken up, the boy informed us that if he stops and rest on your dog to express freely.

[makeitwithmike]

5 Powerful Writing Books For Mastering The Art of Web Copywriting

By Jini Maxin

Words sell your wares online… it’s true! Even if you load your website with images and rely on a high-res Instagram account, you still need well-written captions and concise CTAs.

Create a website minus any copy and see what happens. I bet Google spiders won’t crawl your pages. Your website won’t rank well in SERPs. And traffic won’t come your way.

Here’s why: because Google recognizes words and not images. Words are the true currency of the web.

But of course you need to string pearls and not potatoes together to create compelling content for your online wares. Whether it be it your product descriptions, website text, marketing eblasts, blog posts or newsletters, believe me when I say that every word you use has a definite role to play when it comes to your conversion rate.

If your words don’t mean a thing to users, it would defeat the very purpose of coming up with a good product or service in the first place, right?

But given that there are over 1,000,000,000 websites in the world competing for attention, it’s intimidating even trying to write well, let alone actually doing it. Here are five powerful books that will help you get on the right track.

1. ‘Web Copy That Sells’ by Maria Veloso

Do you think web copywriting and print copywriting are the same thing?

If, yes, then you are wrong my friend.

And you don’t have to just take my word for it. Read Web Copy That Sells by Mario Veloso and all your doubts will be allayed.

For me, this book was an eye-opener. As a fan of fictional books, I would go to great lengths to make sure my business blog posts sounded like one of the authors I was currently stuck on… be it J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Clive Cussler, Kathy Reichs or Cecelia Ahern.

But then, Mario Veloso’s book came to my attention and I thought, what am I doing?! Sense, finally, struck.

Principles of print shouldn’t be applied to the web; the book made this point loud and clear. Your web copy is intended for one purpose: to make sales, not to win some Man Booker or Pulitzer Prize. You’ve still got to craft the copy but it should be fairly concise and to-the-point.

Bottom line: Cut the clutter. Inject some emotion.

That said, don’t stop reading fictional stuff. Do not, I repeat, do not stop reading fictional stuff. Because it gets your emotional juices flowing. And sometimes, you can derive some amazing concepts out of it. Check out my previous post here, which was heavily influenced by the Harry Potter series.

Key takeaways:

Write advertorial copy – no direct selling messages, please.

Use plain and simple words that will appeal to your target audience.

Keep the content scannable for people who read on smartphones or tablets.

Focus on bite-sized chunks and avoid corporate speak.

Use text boxes while introducing stories, testimonials and case studies.

Employ the cliffhanger principle to make people click to another page.

This is the ultimate book in web copywriting, in my opinion. It really gets you thinking about how to write perfect web copy and the psychology behind it. It teaches you how to mathematically calculate the selling ability of your website and trains you to write copy that gets readers salivating for your product or service.

2. ‘On Writing Well’ by William Zinsser

If you are planning to read only one book on writing this year, then this should be the book. I simply cannot stress enough how much this classic text on writing can help you improve your writing style. It’s practically a bible for those who love words.

When I came across it, I was super desperate to make my technical copy sound… well… super technical.

On Writing Well helped me figure out how and since then, honestly speaking, my writing has changed for the better.

It helps you focus enough on using short words, shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. It teaches you that just because you’re writing technical copy, there’s no need to overstuff it with technical jargon that makes no sense to the general population (i.e., non-technical folks).

This is important because the majority of online readers include non-technical folks as well, and it’s equally important for them to figure what all the fuss is all about, especially if you are looking for more ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ for your post on social media.

Furthermore, the writing principles included in this book are generic in nature and thus can be applied to all domains of writing.

Key takeaways:

If any technical expert says your piece is ‘dumb’, that’s their problem, not yours. Strengthen your piece with your own experience and be sincere. Your best credential is yourself.

Think small. Decide what corner of your subject you’re going to bite off and be content to cover it and stop.

Express your opinions. Use ‘I’ wherever you can.

Find more about this book: The 30th Anniversary Edition On Writing Well by William Zinsser

3. ‘On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft’ by Stephen King

The lover of night and the macabre, Stephen King, has no fewer than 66 non-fiction books to his name. On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft is his one non-fiction offering and it’s insanely popular. Writers everywhere use it as a resource to read, think and act upon.

It’s part memoir, part craft of writing. It details King’s early years in the company of a single mother who encouraged him to write his own original stuff; his constant tug-of-war with his insecurities; his experience working in a laundry while writing his popular novel Carrie; and writing 2,000 words every damn day.

There’s a complete chapter on King’s writing ‘toolbox’ as well. However, the most important takeaway is his attitude to writing; which can be explained thus: “you must not come lightly to the blank page.”

Simply put, writing is hard work. Be prepared to put in the hours.

Key takeaway:

“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little ashamed of your short ones.”

4. ‘Syntax and Sin’ by Constance Hale

“One pearl is better than a whole necklace of potatoes.” That’s the opening line of Syntax and Sin and it had me hooked from the get-go – that’s why I used it in the start of this post.

The author, Constance Hale, aptly describes empty words as ‘potatoes’ and rich words as ‘pearls’. In her opinion, only a few words are fit to be strung into a sentence and it’s the job of the writer to identify them and pull them together – word by word.

The book partly deals with grammar rules, and partly with tips on how to produce ‘sinfully’ good prose. And, if you suffer from the misconceived notion that grammar books are dry and stuffy, rest assured that Syntax and Sin is nothing of the sort.

It’s one of the hippest grammar books I’ve ever read. The writing is out of this world, and the grammar lessons are extraordinary. It makes you want to write. It’s so inspirational.

Some of the examples of how to write the ‘perfect lead’ literally give you awestruck moments thanks to Hale’s straightforward approach and matter-of-fact tone.

If you are hoping to make the lead sentence of your blog posts stop the reader dead in their tracks, read this book.

Key takeaway:

“One pearl is better than a whole necklace of potatoes.”

5. ‘Penguin Guide To Punctuation’ by R.L. Trask

Do you know exactly when to use the capital letter ‘P’ for President and small letter ‘p’ for president? Do you know about the four types of commas? Or do you worry that your web copy is riddled with tiny errors that could cost you credibility?

If so, then you need to go order the Penguin Guide to Punctuation. The book literally proves that big things come in small packages. All 156 pages in length, it sheds light on the proper usage of colons, semi-colons, apostrophes, quotation marks, italics, boldface and much more in an easily digestible way.

This book is actually the only reference tool you need for grammar and punctuation.

Key takeaways:

Differences in American usage and British usage are very precise, and very important.

As a general rule, never use an apostrophe in writing plural forms. It is absolutely wrong to write pizza’s, video’s, fine wine’s, cream tea’s, and mountain bike’s.

Conclusion

Whether it’s one of them or all of them, the books above are of indispensable value to aspiring or indeed seasoned copywriters. Two other books, On Writing Life by Annie Dilliard and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, are also great resources and well worth a read, especially the latter one.

Now, it’s your turn. Tell me, which writing books have inspired you to come up with better web copy, and other marketing communications?

I would love to hear what has helped you shoot up your dull sales.

Guest Author: Jini Maxin is a senior writer at OpenXcell – a top Mobile App Development Company. She has a masters degree in journalism and mass communications and is a frequent contributor to several top online publications and websites. Her favorite pastimes include reading books (both fiction and nonfiction) and being introspective. Get in touch with her on Linkedin and Twitter.

The post 5 Powerful Writing Books For Mastering The Art of Web Copywriting appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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Top 10 Board Games We Secretly Hate

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Top 10 Board Games We Secretly Hate

Everyone loves board games, right? Right? I mean, we all have fond memories of playing with our kids, parents, Uncles, Aunts and friends, don’t we? Actually, when you stop and think about it, you probably didn’t like playing board games as much as you thought. Now, it is all coming back. A nice, friendly game that you thought would last about 30 minutes took 3-hours and becomes as competitive as skating for a medal in Olympic Figure Skating. Well, now that I’ve stirred up childhood trauma you thought you had buried long ago, we might as well take a look at the top ten board games you secretly hate, well, not so secretly anymore.

10. Candy Land

The Good: The game teaches color recognition and matching while reinforcing the lesson of taking turns and being a gracious winner or loser.

The Bad: This is basically a game of pure chance, which means there is a very real possibility you will lose to your 3-year-old without you intentionally throwing the game. Sure, you want your kid to win, but on your terms. As a thirty-something adult, your life is going downhill fast enough and the last thing your self-confidence needs is a can of butt-whup opened by someone whose diaper you were changing this morning. Even worse, you could lose by a considerable margin if you get lost in Lollipop Woods or stuck in Molasses Swamp. Gramma Nutt may not be there to save you. And can we please change her name to something more palatable, no pun intended. My advice: Never play a game with a child, unless you are guaranteed to win.

The Ugly: After your toddler beats you for the third time getting any respect from them will be near impossible and your road to parenting just detoured into the Gooey Gumdrops.

9. Stratego

The Good: Stratego is a unique blend of strategy, memorization, and unit management.

The Bad: What better way to teach your child the horrors of war than with some plastic pawns that are given a numeric value. The game says it teaches strategy. I say it teaches you to sacrifice the weak so the strong may survive. A cruel but universal truth. For example, you send a scout forward and he lands on a bomb; no problem because you can send the miner to disarm it. Heartlessly you then send another scout to his death, finding another bomb so the General can move forward. Callous and indifference are the lessons learned here on the scorched cardboard that used to be a peaceful evenly spaced grid.

The Ugly: You child takes a real interest in explosives after seeing how simple it is to disarm a bomb in Stratego.

8. Chutes & Ladders

The Good: This delightful game is simple and easy to play, even for children who can’t read.

The Bad: This game teaches the way life really works, which is good. But learning those hard lessons before you have all your baby teeth is a bit stressing on a child. Just like in life, you move forward trying to get to the ladder (of success?) and you move up; then before you know it you are back where you started when the chute gets you, and you’re wondering where the last 5 years of your life went. I mean, what the heck is going on? Yeah, you’re going down a chute now, buddy, except the chute, is a set of steps leading down to your parent’s basement because you can’t roll a freakin’ 6 to get to the big ladder in the game of life…uh, I mean the game of Chutes & Ladders. Oh, and if you think you might actually win, well that’s when your kid hits the jackpot and takes the tallest ladder in the game and steals the victory. And now your self-esteem takes a chute.

The Ugly: Breaking the spirit of a child or adult is the large price to pay for 40 minutes of ups and down, mostly downs.

7. Operation

The Good: Operation is the classic skill and action game where you’re the doctor!

The Bad: I’ll skip the over the disconcerting open body cavities “Sam the patient” is exposing to your family, but the medical misinformation is reprehensible. Let’s face it, children aren’t smart and they are impressionable. What if they think we really have rubber bands and miniature horses in our bodies. Didn’t we tell our children not to eat rubber bands…but now Sam has one in his leg?

And, my God, the pressure! Asking our little Sally to remove a broken heart has to be traumatizing. But wait, there’s more, don’t touch the sides or you will get “buzzed” and poor Sam will die. Life and death, it is your child’s call.

I guess Milton Bradley also didn’t take into account a child’s underdeveloped motor skills when designing this pressure cooker of a game. And one more thing, shouldn’t we try to fix his heart, not remove it. What scary-a$did $ medical college we go to?

The Ugly: Whether your child wins or loses, they are an emotional and mental wreck for the next few days. Playing God with your patient on the surgery table will do that to a 6-year-old.

6. Battleship

The Good: You try to deduce where the enemy ships are and sink them.

The Bad: Another war game teaching the annihilation of your opponent. Of course, you will be teaching this lesson for a long time as they game is very long. There is a lot of open water in the game and actually hitting a battleship can take some time. Kind of like a demented Bingo game where you call out coordinates, Battleship isn’t high on action until the bloodlust hits after scoring a direct hit on your opponent’s battleship. Then all hell breaks loose as you take evil glee in sinking the ship and murdering men and women whose only crime was defending their country from likes of you. Hooray! Warfare was never so much fun! Let’s play again when we have 3 hours to “kill”, emphasis on the kill.

The Ugly: Just try coming down off the “high” of sending thousands to their watery grave. Good luck, Colonel Carnage.

5. Checkers

The Good: Two players square off against each other trying to jump the other’s colored discs until only one color remains on the checkered board.

The Bad: I thought racism was on the way out, but it appears Checkers will not let it die. Two separate color discs face off against each other, seeking the complete genocide of the other by literally jumping over the other to remove them from the face of the board. Where is the ideal of living in peaceful equality? Apparently, there isn’t enough room on the board for that, even with 64 squares. No, only one race of colored discs can survive in this apocalyptic analogy of our world. In the words of Jack Nicholson, “Can’t we all just get along?” No, Mr. Nicholson, we cannot. Now king me!

The Ugly: Don’t expect racial harmony and equality in our lifetime as long as Checkers, a game for hate-mongers and racists, is around.

4. Life

The Good: This classic family board game has been loved by generations. Just like your so-called “real life”, this game has paydays, marriages, babies, revenge, and chance.

The Bad: This game is just like your so-called real life. Isn’t the point of a game to let us take a break from real life. Why would I want to play a game that forces me to consider all the stressful decisions an 80-year life would include, but in just 2 hours? As a child, don’t I have enough peer pressure without adding the decision to get married, have children (how many children) and what the heck my career is going to be? I don’t know if I want McNuggets or a cheeseburger in my Happy Meal and now I have to decide whether or not I need Fire Insurance? How is this fun? And guess what, even if you finish the game of Life you still lose if you don’t have the most money. Greed is good according to Milton Bradley. This game teaches you that whoever dies with the most toys, does indeed win.

The Ugly: The game also teaches you about revenge, bankruptcy, and taxes. After playing this game you want to take your own “Life”.

3. Sorry

The Good: This classic game of luck, strategy, and determination is easy to grasp for children as young as 6 years old.

The Bad: This game is labeled as a game of sweet revenge. I can see it now, our nuclear family of Mom, Dad, Sister and Brother sitting down to a game of sweet revenge where all family ties are shattered, feelings are scorned and love gets sent back 3 spaces. The name of this game was aptly chosen as you will be sorry you ever played it. The only time the word “sorry” is uttered is with a sarcastic tone as your opponent (family member) sends back to your “home” base, alone to start over once again. Well, guess what, Mac, they ain’t sorry and they have learned that family means nothing when you are trying to get ahead. Thank you, Parker Brothers for destroying the family, one space at a time!

The Ugly: You will forever question the sincerity of any apology from your family members.

2. Clue

The Good: “Clue” is a game of deduction that the whole family can enjoy together.

The Bad: This game claims to teach deductive reasoning, and that is true and I applaud that notion, but Hasbro misses the fact that they are desensitizing our children to cold-blooded murder. Are we sure its good for little Jimmy to be fantasizing how a murder was accomplished? We are teaching the devaluation of life as we callously call out “It was Professor Plum in the kitchen with a lead pipe.” Does this sound like something we want our precious doe-eyed babes to be screaming at us? Oh, you may be thinking it instills moral values as the crimes are being solved, but think about this: With every wrong guess we are teaching them how easy it is to get away with murder in any room of a house and killing with a variety of household items. Murder isn’t a game, so why does Clue insist on treating it like it is?

The Ugly: You better hide your candlesticks, lengths of rope, lead pipes and wrenches after this unseemly game showcases the ease with which a life can be ended without worry of capture.

1. Monopoly

The Good: The game that teaches capitalism and big business.

The Bad: Let’s start with the fact that no one has actually ever finished a game of Monopoly. Oh sure, you have stopped playing because of starvation, sleep deprivation and most likely sheer hatred for the other players, you used to like before you started playing. But never did you finish a game. It’s impossible and much like a car accident, you can’t look away from the board. Boardwalk and the St. James Place look like nice places to visit, and the rest ain’t bad, but it will cost you your soul to stay. And no railroad can take you home, not even Reading Railroad. $200 is never enough and when you circle the board for the 800th time and you realize you are never getting out of the nightmare world of Monopoly. You can bet your sweet Marvin Gardens that you will think thoughts about you friends and family that will shock you.

“Did Uncle Joe just take and extra $50? He is the banker, he had the access and opportunity to do so.”

“Why am I in Jail again, life is so unfair, my brother should be in jail, not me…not me!”

“My stinkin’ brother owns Park Place, living it up while I’m dying slowly on Baltic Avenue, where is the justice?”

While these thoughts invades your mind it is now 3 am and no one is out of the game yet and the fun stopped 5 minutes after you started. Greed is good and power is everything and it will never end. No Chance, even when you land on Chance! And the game’s mascot, Rich Uncle Pennybags, isn’t the type of Uncle who lends you money and forgets about it. You’ll pay, brother. You…will…pay.

But other than the lust for money, lack of compassion for you fellow man as you force them to mortgage everything and the strain on you physically, emotionally and mentally, this game is great family fun.

The Ugly: It will be days before you speak to any fellow players from the last game. You will never trust or love the same again. And in the end, you still didn’t finish the game. Once you start a game of Monopoly, it never ends…even when it ends.

[luna-pun]

Why “Planned Parenthood” is a bad thing

-and that you should feel bad for even thinking of supporting it.

I hope everyone has ample hearing+reading comprehension, because boy howdy do I have some info here:

A video disproving the “3%” notion that they keep trying to peddle

And here’s an article

And another dispelling the “3%”

Here’s why “but women NEED PP! It’s the only place for care!” doesn’t work

There are way more alternatives

I mean PP doesn’t even have mammograms

“But if we close them down, women will get back alley abortions!” won’t work either

Another supporting the previous

and another for good measure

___

“But the videos are heavily edited!” you say?

No, they’re not

The company that PP hired even admits there were no “malicious edits”

Here’s a non-biased report on it as well

___

“It’s only tissue!”

They’re parts from an actual baby. What do you think “tissue” is?

_

PP has been audited in 9 states, with all nine showing fraud.

Don’t believe it? Here you go

_

Here are the videos, by the way. Warning for gore and disturbing subjects/material

_

And a few more links, because it can’t be stressed enough

That PP

doesn’t “stand for women”

and never will

They’re also incredibly petty

so there you have it

They think you have the right to give others HIV btw

Masterpost just because

Oh and science proves that a fetus is a whole other human life fyi

PP is pretty much PETA, but for humans. Both are full of lies, slaughters innocents, and will do anything for money. Anything.

Please read through everything before commenting.

As a bonus, here are some rebuttals of already-made arguments;

“The woman should still be able to choose! It’s not your body!” - You’re telling me that even though science has proven that life begins at conception, you think murder is okay as long as the woman thinks so. She should’ve chosen not to have sex, in that case. That’s what sex does. Make life. Doesn’t matter what reason a person tries to stick to it; you can’t change nature. Your body doesn’t care about your reason. It’s also not your body that’s being killed. Science has also proven that.

“But rape!” - Is it the baby’s fault? No. (1)If you don’t want it, put it up for adoption. There are a lot of places that can and will help if you reach out to them. (2)In most cases, it helps the victim to heal by keeping the child. (3)Rape cases make up an incredibly low %. (4)There are good people that were born from such horrible, sickening cases. As horrendous as it was, there is still a chance that something good can come of it. Again, it’s a whole other life. It didn’t ask for such things to happen either. I am fully for getting all victims as much care as they can get, though, and having the rapist get sent through hell + making them work for the rest of their lives.

“But the woman could die!” - Do you know how low that number is? If there truly is no possible way to save both, then a decision can be made. Sometimes, nature can be very cruel. That’s a sad part of life. I can admit that much.

“PP helped me/someone I know with some other thing!” - Good for you/them. Still doesn’t change what PP has done, though. It’s like saying “Hey, that serial killer saved my life!” Doesn’t make him/her a saint, and doesn’t deter from the fact that she/he killed people. And just because one location did something, doesn’t mean that suddenly the whole organization is cleansed of its wrongdoings.

“No uterus, no opinion!” - …excuse you, rude one, but I am a woman, and thus, have a uterus.(Shocking, I know) Plus, if that were true, then abortion would be illegal. Since, you know, it was men who made it legal. Men who tricked Norma McCorvey into thinking that abortion was a good thing. I believe there’s a post floating around documenting just what went down in that case. (Hint; she’s now very pro-life and regrets what happened) Also; you should discuss it thoroughly with your S.O. if you want a baby or not. If one of you want a kid, but the other doesn’t (or vice versa), then maybe you should look for someone else. Communicate.

“A baby will ruin a woman’s life!” - Again, rude. I, as a woman, thoroughly dislike being made out to be some weak, pathetic being that constantly needs “help”/to be coddled. (1) Around 97% of abortions are out of convenience. Meaning that 97% could’ve decided against having sex/”invoking the ancient ritual of reproduction”. (2)If you’re so sure that a baby would ruin your life, then you need to choose not to have one in the first place. Sex creates life. You really can’t do anything about it. As I said; nature does not CARE for your reasons to get freaky. It just sees you doing the do and go “You want BABY!!! OKAY! I’LL GET RIGHT ON IT!! MAEK THE BABBEY!!!” (3) It won’t ruin your life unless you let it. Positive thinking goes a long way, as corny as that may sound. (4) Look around you. How many mothers have you met that say they regret ever having kids? How many have said that their lives have been ruined?

“It’s just a bundle of cells!” - Science has proven that it is, in fact, a whole other life. Age and location does not a worthwhile life make. Or lack thereof, for that matter. You skin is not a separate entity from yourself. A fetus is still human, and will always be a human as it grows.

“It’s a parasite!” - What did I just say? It’s cells make up an actual human. It needs help to live even after it’s born, and so do some people with certain diseases. You want to say that all newborns, coma patients, and others are parasites?

“There are too many people already!” - There aren’t, actually. Earth can hold even more. If you’re that worried, however, you can just not have sex. Not needed to live, after all. You understand that your body can and will try to create life once you’ve taken part in intercourse, right? And way to think little of the human race. 2edgy4me.

“Consent to sex is not consent to-!” Let me stop you right there. Do you know what sex is naturally for? Do you know how the human body works? You are literally arguing against nature itself. It’s like eating raw chicken and complaining when you get salmonella or something smh.

“The baby won’t live a worthwhile life! It’ll be painful!” - You do not, and will never, be able to decide whose life is worth living or not. Any time you try that excuse, you just basically insulted anyone and everyone who’s gone through strife. You just told people who have lived through horrible times, that it would’ve been better if they had been aborted. That their life isn’t worth living. That is not for you or the “mother” to decide.

“But disease! Some parents can’t afford/handle that!” - And now you’re telling me that disabled people aren’t worth it. It is costly, and it is mentally taxing, yes, but it is never worth it to kill them because of it. A lot of disabled people enjoy the act of living, fyi. +A lot of times (and I mean a LOT), the doctor(s) is/are wrong about whether the child will have/develop problems. (2)If your family has a history of bad health, it might be better to lay off having sex (and just adopt if you want a kid). There are also programs out there that can and will help, should you look.

___

Many thanks to those who made this post possible. You’re all remarkable people.

Feel free to add on and whatnot. Resources, science facts, links, etc.

(And anyone who tries that “car wreck” comparison will be side-eyed into oblivion.)

__________

Reposting because this still needs to be spread. Also did a bit of editing.

Remember to read everything before commenting. E V E R Y T H I N G. This cannot be stressed enough. I have addressed several commonly used arguments already, and will not be repeating myself. If you can’t read, or try to make assumptions, you will be blocked. You can also search my blog for other posts/refs/sources/etc. There should be more well-thought-out posts hanging around that can better explain and source the arguments that I have typed out above.