#my inventory or journal and it drives me insane

[fingertipsmp3]

Local woman downloads favourite game onto computer only to realise she likes it much better on switch, 15 dead 73 injured

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Fourth Coming

Fandom: The Wilds Rating: T Word Count: 2157

Summary: And on the twenty-third day, Nora ate goat and thought about love.

Nora sees the experiment through two lenses, like the red and blue acetate in those cheap 3D glasses. One lens is the scientific, the other is the brutal. When she puts these metaphorical glasses on, she’s just there, in the middle of it, but when she’s feeling particularly tired (understandably often) or just relaxed (inexplicably often—a fact to be concealed from the others), she shifts between the two views. Each is sharper alone than they are combined.

Scientific: counting the days; subtly taking her own inventory of the rations; monitoring Fatin’s dehydration, the commensurate level of distrust the rest of the group have for her.

Brutal: cold fingers in wet, black sand, disinterring Jeanette’s grave; Dot’s tumbling, shivering recount of spearing and battering a snake; ralphing, ralphing, ralphing bad mussels.

It isn’t until the goat that these contrary perspectives finally attain a kind of beautiful balance in Nora’s brain. And it isn’t her thoughts, or rereading one of her journal entries, that has her mental clouds clearing. Actually, it’s what Leah says. About barbecues and normalcy and the Fourth of July. Leah’s remark—possibly offhand, certainly poisonous, even if Nora can’t see how yet—gracelessly and unselfconsciously reveals the barbarism of order. A social gathering on the same day each year, centered around fire (fireworks, sure, but Nora is amazed by how dazzled people are by something not so very far advanced from what had the cavepeople oohing and awwing) and the cooking of meat. Ritual is the summit at which the scientific and the brutal join hands.

The day doesn’t matter. (Every day could have been June 29th and what difference would that have made for them on this island?) The conditions of their environment haven’t changed. (No major shift in the seasons or significant weather patterns, just the single freakish high tide.) The slaughter of the goat and the subsequent cookout should be put down to chance, Nora knows. Toni, Martha, and Shelby decided to look for food. Martha happened to find the goat. She happened to lay her hands on a tool that could do the job. She happened to be successful. And now, miraculous barbecue in honour of… what?

Nora’s sure that most of the girls would say the feast is in honour of themselves, their power, their survival. All of that would really put a spit-shine on Gretchen’s mission statement, but Nora’s not just an agent, a plant, a spy, a wolf in castaway’s clothing. She seeks to understand as much as she always has. She wonders if Shelby thanks god for the goat, or eats it as a form of praise. Nora constantly spots her toying with the cross on her necklace, frequently in a way that holds it far from her throat, almost like she’s thinking about ripping the necklace off and hurling it into the ocean. That would be going a bit far, but then, so is hacking your hair off because a brush got stuck.

Their ritual could be the sacrifice of another creature in the hopes of sparing themselves—a kind of desperate, gasping celebration. Privately, Nora decides they’re celebrating love. Leah’s persistent aura of tragic romance is part of the inspiration for that, but she isn’t part of either of the two developing relationships Nora’s been observing.

Martha’s picking at her goat meat glumly, so Nora rises and goes over to her. Her gait is unsteady on this sand and on these legs, weakened over the past two days of starvation, but it’s enough to carry her until she can slump down next to Martha. Sweet and strong, vulnerable and clearly capable (judging by the sizzle of fat dripping from the roasting goat leg and hitting the fire), Martha smiles when Nora joins her. Nora smiles back and that’s enough between them for a few minutes.

Nora watches the browned meat, nearly allowing herself to be hypnotized by the texture that urges her to sink her teeth in, the crispy spots she knows would taste incredible. But she can’t gorge herself; her stomach needs to be cool about what she’s already eaten or the chewed up goat goes the way of the slurped mussels Rachel found.

Carefully, Nora turns her head to study Martha. She decides that what this girl needs is the same thing Leah needed on Day 12 when she was sitting alone on the beach: some kind of dirty joke. Since she’s fresh out of filthy material of the Christmas variety, Nora tells Martha, “One second,” and heaves herself up again. She comes back dragging Marcus. He’ll be her muse, but it’s also a reunion of lovers.

“You two could get married,” Nora tells Martha. “Shelby said she was an ordained youth minister, remember?”

They laugh and it’s softer than the crackle of the fire. Nora likes that. The steady, rolling sound of their laughs together. How they taper off, unlike the ceaseless noise of breaking waves that drives Nora insane whenever she surfaces from her numbness to the sound. Like becoming conscious of your breathing and working like hell to stop noticing it, because having to purposefully regulate every breath is exhausting and terrifying.

Martha frowns a little in consideration, then half-smiles.

“Nah. I don’t know if I’m ready to commit like that. I think this could just be a fling. All those abs and he didn’t come help me haul that goat.”

“That’s true.” When Martha gazes at the mannequin, Nora assesses Marcus as well. “And it’s not like you’d want to keep him around because he gives great head.”

“He might’ve once,” Martha defends, brushing hair out of her face when a breeze kicks up, “but he gave so much head that there’s none left for me.”

They catch each other staring at the clean line where Marcus’s neck ends and nothing rests above it and trip into laughter again. Though Nora feels like she accomplished her dirty joke, Martha made it even better. People have underestimated her. Nora’s noted it from the start. It’s probably because Martha was injured. Group dynamics were established quickly and have formed and reformed in the days and weeks since, but Day 1 showed them the rawest version of who they are together and, before they knew about Jeanette, Martha was the weak one. Have the others seen her role evolve like Nora has? Are Nora’s observations anything special, really?

“This is totally not a judgement thing or anything,” Nora says, meaning it. “I was just wondering if you were maybe going to wash your clothes. Or change them.”

“Oh.”

Martha looks down at herself and now Nora’s glad she said something; it doesn’t seem like Martha was really aware that she’s been sitting here crusted in drying blood. Nora weighs the acceptability of a period joke and decides against it.

“You don’t have to,” she assures Martha, raising a gentle hand. “It just seemed like maybe the, uh, the slaughtering process? Was kind of a mindfuck?”

“Yeah.” Martha stares straight ahead and lets out a short laugh that Nora doesn’t join her in. “I’m glad Marcus wasn’t there to see. He might not’ve come back the same.”

Nora peers at her a moment, then resolves to just say what she’s thinking.

“Did you?”

Turning her head, Martha looks at Nora and her smile’s the same, but her eyes are different. No, Nora would write in the journal. The answer is plain. Maybe she’ll record it on paper later and maybe she won’t. Looking into Martha’s eyes, Nora knows she won’t need help remembering this.

“I’m just living my best life,” Martha tells her, batting the ends of her hair with her hand.

It sounds like something Fatin would say in this moment, or at least have printed on a t-shirt or something—it’s flip and glib—and for the very reason that it reminds Nora of Fatin, she’s certain that Martha not only means the silly words sincerely but that she feels the kind of truth in the trope, the mindfulness in the meme, that Fatin fights so hard to experience herself. Fatin is deeper than that ocean over there and Martha is a girl scooping out the sand in front of her mannequin boyfriend, digging him a sturdy trench to rest in so she can lean back against his factory-sculpted physique, painted in the blood of her first kill.

For whatever reason, Marcus is the man Martha wants. Nora can’t imagine him becoming anyone else’s property after all this is over.

“Do you want a lychee instead?” she offers. Martha’s flat-out ignoring her leaf-plate of meat now.

“Maybe in a minute.”

She turns her dreamy eyes away from where she’s rubbing a streak of dirt off Marcus’s bicep. Nora follows her gaze to Shelby, who seems to be counting out and partitioning the lychee haul, looking to Dot from time to time. Dot isn’t interfering, just giving encouraging nods when Shelby seeks them out. And of course Toni’s watching too.

“You think they’re telling the truth?” Nora inquires bluntly. “That whole ‘wrong turn in the woods’ story?”

Martha shrugs and says, “Yeah,” but Fatin scootches towards them, evidently drawn by the hum of gossip in the air.

“Are you talking about Toni and Shelby?” she asks, but it’s more of a demand. Her eyes are bright and excited, her mouth grinning, and Nora knows that a lot of that effect is thanks to their first meal in days, but it astounds her how socializing lights Fatin up as much as it used to shut Nora down.

“No,” Martha says quickly, but no faster than Nora’s flat, “Yes.”

“Dope. Yeah, those two are a hundred percent lying.”

“Are you sure?” Nora asks.

She’s not, but the cameras will be. Seeing the footage afterwards isn’t something she negotiated on when Gretchen made her part of the team. Speculation, though less scientific, is much more fun.

Fatin rolls her eyes like Nora’s questioning the laws of gravity. (She blinks and sees the poster of Newton. Sees Newton seeing the apple. Her throat closes up until she softly coughs it clear.)

“Definitely,” Fatin says. “Even if they were just out there all day picking fruit, it’s still the most sapphic thing I’ve ever heard. It’s, like, biblically sapphic.”

Martha laughs.

“Uhhh, sorry, which version of the Bible did you read?”

Nora smiles broadly and looks from Martha’s expression of brimming joy to Fatin’s concentrated delight. Like she’s on to something and whether or not she’s right is beside the point. That kind of approach makes Nora pleasantly dizzy. She remembers being little, standing at a department store perfume counter she couldn’t see over while her mom spritzed scents on her wrists that floated down to Nora’s nose. Fruit and flowers and anything and everything that could make the air beautiful when a woman walked into a room.

“None, but come on, there’s the garden, right? I know some shit. The marketing for this retreat was super Christian-centric anyway. We’re out here representing the fucking Dawn of Eve!” Fatin gestures triumphantly around at their dismal (except for the goat) camp. “If those two bitches weren’t getting their freak on under a fruit tree last night, I’ll eat my gold watch.”

Nora scrutinizes the girls in question.

“Shelby does look especially glowy today.”

“Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s chronic sun damage,” Martha singsongs.

“Maybe it’s what Toni did to those mussels with her tongue,” Fatin acknowledges frankly, “because Shelby sure as hell didn’t borrow my hundred-dollar highlighter. That shit got swept out to sea.”

Fatin trains her eyes on Shelby while Martha watches Toni, and Nora watches both of them watch the others. When they switch subjects in a moment of unvoiced agreement, Toni jerks her head up and spots Fatin staring at her. The tender gazes she’s been throwing Shelby’s way over the low mound of red fruit tighten into suspicion.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” Toni barks, and a laugh sputters from Fatin as she raises her hands to show she means no harm.

“Ok,” Martha says to Fatin and Nora, giggling. “I see it now. Something happened between Shelby and Toni yesterday. Some kind of hunter-gatherer romance.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve taken the ‘hunter’ title away from Shelby,” Nora points out.

“Well, whatever. Gatherer-gatherer then.”

“With an island colony of all women, it was only a matter of time,” is Fatin’s pragmatic take. “Another couple weeks without an orgasm and I would’ve fucked Toni myself.”

“It wasn’t just time,” Martha scoffs, tipping her head to the side. “It’s love.”

“It’s both,” Nora says. She could prove it to them, flourish the statistics she’s been tracking in her journal. How those bald numbers lie there next to the drawings that spill to the edge of the page. She’s made bedfellows of data and emotions. She just sits there and grins at them. “It’s the aphrodisiacal influence of the Fourth of July.”

[justxaxstory]

OOC Note: Okay so I thought this one up while seeing all these animal transports and trailers on the highway during my road trip. It is weird, even for me, so I really debated whether to write it out. So here goes nothing. You’ve all been warned. 

Trigger Warnings: All the trigger warnings and throw on the one for super weird shit.

Double Warning: This is stupidly long.

Finally: If anyone wants to write this out, there is a set up for three different interactions within, one for each of my bad men.

It had been a strange day to say the least, Bear mused as he lifted his little hucow up to settle on his lap. The week had started simply enough. His heifer had taken been seeded well enough. He cupped her belly, firm and round under his hand, as he mused, but she was not carrying well.  She seemed very poorly to him and finally unable to determine what the trouble could be, he made an appointment with the hucow breeding specialist in the nearby city to their small farming town. It was a three-day drive but they all tended to be a bit overly fond of their cattle. He didn’t remember the time when the hucows were considered to be the same species. That time had come to an end several generations ago. To his knowledge there was no one currently living who remembered this time period. It seemed insane to Bear. 

He looked down at the small heifer on his lap and smiled at her indulgently. The day’s events had distressed her and he disliked that intensely. However she seemed to have calmed and eaten some of her dinner, so that was promising. She needed to sit out with him a bit, getting some fresh air before he put her to bed in her cage in the trailer. They didn’t keep much in the way of stock so it was a small trailer. There was one cage running the width of the trailer at the end furtherest from the entrance. It was big enough for two and she had spent most of her day in there with one of their other hucows. There were three other cages, each padded and long and wide enough for a heifer to turn over and half sit up but no more than that. The other space held their feed and other supplies.

He glanced over at Ubbe and the hucow receiving his attentions at the moment. They had owned her all their lives. Bear had even been present when she was born - the first he had seen. She had been a fat and happy little calf and grown into a pretty hucow. She had already rewarded their affectionate treatment and good training by producing one lovely calf of her own. They all followed the correct breeding protocols, not seeding a female until she had gone into heat at least four times in succession. This did not usually happen until she had reached physical maturity, sometime around twenty years. Sometimes a bit earlier, sometimes later. You couldn’t go by a general guideline. A hucow would become mature when she did so and not a second sooner. You couldn’t force it, although they had all heard stories. Disgusting really. Those breedings never went well and the milk produced by anyone too young was virtually undrinkable, or so it was said. Honestly Bear had no experience with such things. 

Bear had read an old book once that said human women would have monthly cycles. That sounded exhausting and messy to him. Four times a year was more than sufficient. On her fifth cycle she was available for breeding, although some owners would hold off a few more just to make sure or to optimize the season during which the calf would be born. Every now and then a hucow produced a human male, rare and extraordinary really. Most males had to be conceived in a facility. The three of them were rarities - natural males born of their father’s stock. So unusual that they were actually featured in a few medical journals when they were children. A fact that Bear kind of liked and Ubbe found personally horrifying. Ivar didn’t give a shit one way or the other. 

At that thought Bear’s gaze shifted to his other brother. At his feet was a young hucow that was the most extraordinary thing Bear had seen in his life - a wild cow. She was the reason for their strange day. While they had hand-raised the hiefer who was currently getting her long hair brushed out by Ubbe, practically making her purr, Bear had personally bought the hucow on his lap as a boy. It had been his first auction. She had been so very young and he had wanted one of his own to raise up as a 4H project. His father approved and took him to the auction, giving him his carefully saved money to spend. Bear had trained her himself, participating in all the shows, even when it made her cheeks turn a ruby-red. She would still try so hard for him and he had always been proud of her. She had slept in her cage in his room until she had been too big for it any longer and had to be moved out to the barns. 

But that’s how most cattle were obtained these days. You either bred them or you purchased them at auction. A wild cow was nearly fictional. He had never seen one until this morning. They hadn’t been driving long when his own dear hiefer had whimpered, the driving making her suffer. Since they had time to spare, they had pulled off the road and took their cattle for a walk before letting them rest in the sunshine. Ivar had wandered ahead, with no particular hucow to watch when he had spotted her. Picking berries, she was well out of sight of the road. She was wearing actual clothes and not just the soft tunic that most hucows wore on warm days. He messaged his brothers and the hunt was on. Wild cattle were subject to no legal protection. When they caught her, they would have to confirm she was not branded or tagged in some way. If so, they would have to release her immediately. Cattle rustling was strictly illegal and none of them wanted to serve time for a mistake. 

However, the odds of any male allowing a hucow to wear clothes and go somewhere alone was so unlikely that they could only conclude that she was a wild cow. The chase had been long. She was small and crafty but Ivar had been quite determined. Once caught they stripped her easily to confirm there wasn’t a mark on her. She was clean. Unable to resist, each of them had cupped the round curve of her unmarked ass, marvelling at the absence of a brand. To their astonishment she tried to use human words with them. Screaming and yelling and making a fuss. Ivar had to warm her bottom until she grew silent and was placed in a cage in the trailer. Their other females had required assurance they were not also in trouble and meriting punishment. 

After some rest while they drove, the wild cow once again tried to use human language. Technically everyone knew hucows could do it but it was so strictly discouraged that to do so in front of humans merited strict punishment. However, they had all heard their cattle whispering to each other or their young. Males who were a fraction indulgent, as the Ragnarssons could be, would pretend not to hear so long as such foolishness was not directed at them. Educating a hucow in language was strictly forbidden after all so they all pretended they weren’t teaching each other how to speak. Only in rare cases were they allowed to speak to a human, such as to convey illness or injury or warn of some trouble. So when the wild cow tried it again, they had been amazed. They had found a place to pull off and this time the discipline didn’t end until the wild cow was not just quiet but sobbing. If so much as a fingertip touched her bottom or thighs now, the female would cry out. But it did seem to do the trick. She had settled at last. She had her back to the rest of the group, her head pillowed on one of Ivar’s feet as his other foot was tucked behind her knees. Both a protection and a sort of claiming. She wore nothing because Ivar hadn’t felt she merited a privilege yet. As soon as they reached the City, they would brand her and update their legal inventory to reflect the acquisition of the wild cow. 

He looked down at the small hiefer on his lap and brushed back a strand of hair from her cheek. “We’ll see the vet tomorrow little one.” He assured quietly, “We’ll make sure you and your calf are all right. I promise.” He was too soft by half but he had owned her since he was 12 years old and he wasn’t about to lose her now. Not if he could help it.

[sarahfama]

Theoretically, students can make it through all four-plus years of college without ever setting foot in the library. But why on earth would you want to do that?

Libraries are awesome, and the J. Paul Leonard Library at San Francisco State University has some particularly cool features that can significantly improve your student experience.

8. No Laptop? No worries.

Murphy’s Law says that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” I’ve had students lose laptops on buses and trains, and leave laptops hundreds of miles away while visiting family over breaks. I’ve had students whose homes and cars were broken into, their laptops stolen. I’ve had students whose computers unexpectedly crashed, bricked, and fried.

  Losing your laptop sucks. (Especially if you forgot to back up your work. Always back up your work. Use Google Drive or Dropbox or even just email your latest draft to yourself whenever you make major additions or alterations.)

When Murphy’s Law bites you in the hard drive, stay calm and library on. You can visit one of the library’s several computer labs or even check out a laptop for anywhere from four hours to thirty days, allowing you to retrieve all those assignments and keep going — because you backed up your work.

7. Google-fu failing you? Library research assistance to the rescue!

…And I mean literally failing you. If you aren’t using any sources for your college writing assignments beyond what you can scrounge up in basic web searches, you’re going to start having a very hard time very quickly.

At first, doing research in academic databases (much less the actual stacks of academic books and journals) may seem intimidating; it’s like trying to find your way in a country where you may not speak the language and you’re unfamiliar with the local customs.

Like the quaint British custom of “not being completely goddamn oblivious”

You know the stereotype of the “ugly American” tourist who just stomps around shouting louder in English at people who don’t speak it, and who complains that they don’t do things in Oslo/Cairo/Chiang Mai/La Paz the way they do in Muskogee? Using basic web searches when you should be doing academic research isn’t nearly as gauche, but it is a symptom of a cultural adjustment — to an important part of academic culture.

Happily, the world is a pretty friendly place, and when you ask for help politely (even if you “ask” mostly via gestures and a few badly mispronounced phrases), you’ll find that people are usually enthusiastic about introducing newcomers to their culture. At the library, they’re almost aggressively happy to help: you can instant message, call, text, email, watch videos, use web-based how-to guides, drop in, or even make an appointment to work with a subject librarian to get in-depth research consultation.

It’s like a personal tour guide, a butler, and a concierge got together and had a magical library baby who lives to help you. Start seeing the sights — you’ve got the intellectual world at your fingertips.

6. Find some Silence in the Library

No, Whovians, not that Silence in the Library.

  Which is a good thing, because I would be less excited about sending you to the library if I felt there was a chance you’d be eaten by invisible microscopic alien piranhas hiding in the shadows.

  But did you know that the SFSU library has multiple spaces set aside for quiet study? Because sometimes you’re trying to study with friends or at home, but the noise starts to drive you crazy until you just can’t take the yapping and the snapping and the tapping and you just want to leap up and shout —

But you can escape those distractions in a quiet study space.

Thanks, library!

    5. Get your group project going full steam in a group meeting space.

I know a great joke about group projects (and by “great” I mean terrible):

At my funeral, I want everyone who I’ve ever been in a group project with to be a pallbearer, so they can let me down one last time.

Group projects can be…challenging. The library doesn’t check out cattle prods (as far as I know) so there may be very little you can do if your group members aren’t very motivated; nor do they offer drones mounted with tracking devices and tranquilizer darts (again, as far as I know — you’re welcome to inquire further), so if a group member goes totally AWOL there’s not much you can do to pull them back into a productive orbit.

What the library does offer are a number of handy meeting spaces, including reservable group study rooms with whiteboards, wifi connections, and everything you need to collaborate with two to twelve of your favorite people.

4. Ran out of ink at home? J. Paul Leonard has your back.

It’s the moment every college student dreads: you’re printing out a major assignment worth what feels like 160% of your grade, and page one prints out looking…faded. Page two? Barely legible. At page three, your printer hacks out a final consumptive cough and the ink dies completely, leaving you with a dozen blank pages that should have been filled with your scintillating argument about the causes of the Boer War.

In this moment, you hate your printer. You want to destroy your printer and all that it represents!

But don’t go full Office Space on it yet. You’ve got a deadline to meet!

Hurry — grab your laptop or email/upload your final draft where you can easily access it, and run, don’t walk, to the library. You can print there.

One caveat: don’t expect to be able to waltz in and out in minutes, at least not during peak times of year such as midterms and finals. You will not be the only person whose printer gave up the ghost, and there are also plenty of people who use the library printers as their regular printing method.

Plan ahead and give yourself plenty of time to print before assignments are due — and if Murphy’s Law kicks in and literally everything goes wrong, contact your instructor as soon as things start to go pear-shaped, attach the assignment to an email to show them you completed it before the deadline, and ask if you can get an extension on the paper copy.

3. Fuel up on coffee at Peet’s.

Some of us need our coffee in the morning. By which I mean throughout the morning, in a continuous infusion. And then again in the afternoon, as a pick-me-up. None in the evening, of course, unless it’s a shot of espresso over ice cream — or unless we need to be up late working on a project.

I could really use a coffee right now.

Because it would have been silly to ask people to walk the hundred or so yards to the nearest coffee shop in the student center, there’s a Peet’s inside the Library, in a kiosk in the middle of the first floor.

In theory, this makes getting coffee incredibly quick and convenient. In practice? Give yourself plenty of time to get your fix delicious beverage, since at peak times the line at Peet’s can extend most of the way through the lobby.

Pictured: The line at Peet’s during finals.

2. Snag great deals at the used bookstore.

Channel your inner Belle and pick up your next book at the booksale room on the first floor (in room 120 A, near the book drop). Although small, the Friends of the Library bookstore seems to turn over its inventory frequently — and the books are so cheap, it’s easy to splurge without hurting your pocketbook.

If you’re trying to stock up more texts relevant to your major or intended major, this is the bookstore for you; I suspect a lot of the donations here come from professors cleaning out their offices, as you can frequently spot insane deals on older editions of textbooks and scholarly works.

1. Oh yeah, and the library is also a library!

So you can also find articles and check out books. For free!

You aren’t even limited to the SFSU library’s collection. If you need a book and it’s not available at SFSU, you can almost certainly get it through the inter-library loan service CSU+ or iLLiad.

Once you’ve followed the advice above and learned how to use some of the library’s research tools, you can search for articles from the comfort of your own home using the online databases.

The library also has an amazing collection of films, music, theses written by former students, and archival materials. Heck, the library even contains another library. The Sutro Library, on the fifth and sixth floors, is a California State Library and has a massive genealogy collection, as well as a massive selection of rare items (including a selection of Shakespeare Folios) and publications.

So what are you waiting for? Go live it up at the library.

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  Level up your SFSU Library game with these 8 tips Theoretically, students can make it through all four-plus years of college without ever setting foot in the library.