#paul mccarthy imagine

[thebeatles-world]

A Different Path

Summary: It’s 2023. Y/N and her boyfriend get into an argument and y/n wishes that she got to go back in time and meet the Beatles…And her wish comes true.

You and your boyfriend got into an argument. You both been getting frustrated with each other for the past few days and you knew that it wasn’t going to work out no matter how much he loved you. You were ready to either break up with him or either take a break from the relationship.

“Whatever. I’ll give you some space.” Your boyfriend scolded, getting his phone and jacket from your bed.

“I don’t bloody care what you do.” You said as you rolled your eyes at him in frustration.

“You are not even British anyways so stop acting like you are British.” Your boyfriend said in an annoyed voice.

“Just get out!” You pointed at your door as you breathed in frustration.

“You listen way too much to the Beatles I swear.” Your boyfriend said before slamming your door.

“I don’t care what you think.” You screamed but it was too late. He already left your room.

With a groan, you slammed your drawers shut.

“Oh, I wish… I wish I went back in time and met the Beatles.” You said out loud.

You looked at your Beatles poster in sadness.

“Why… oh why… must I been born in the wrong generation.” You said softly.

You had tons of the Beatles songs on your Spotify playlist. You had thousands of photos saved of the Beatles from your gallery on your phone.

“Boys in this generation aren’t even that cute.” You said disgustedly.

You sighed as you looked at the Beatles poster on your wall once again.

They were sitting down together while smiling in black and white.

“Oh, how I wish I went back in time and met the Beatles.” You said hopefully as you closed your eyes.

Suddenly you felt dizzy. You felt as if everything in the room was spinning around you.

What’s happening?” You said in confusion as you could barely see due to the dizziness around you.

You lay down on your bed and tried not to get nauseous from the dizziness.

You closed your eyes and all you remembered is blacking out from the dizziness.

…

You felt yourself lying down on cold pavement ground. You slowly opened your eyes and noticed that you weren’t in your room anymore. You were lying down on a sidewalk and in a strange place.

“Where am I? What’s going on?.” You exclaimed in fear as you looked around you. This wasn’t your room or the town you lived in. This was a different place and a different kind of town that you didn’t recognize.

“Oh my, are you okay?” A male voice said behind you.

Before you could speak, you turned around to see who was speaking to you and you were in shock when you saw who it was.

It was George Harrison.

You felt too stunned to speak.

“I..I..” you managed to say but you couldn’t find the right words to say.

“Did you bump your head, love? You look pale.” George asked you as he put his hand on your forehead.

You felt your face turn bright red.

“Oh my gosh, I can’t believe he’s touching my forehead right now. I can’t believe he’s here in person.” You thought.

You tried your best not to fangirl in front of him. Even though you wanted to scream in excitement because George Harrison was here in person. Right in front of you.

You just nodded as you stared at him.

“I know who you are. You are George Harrison… From The Beatles.” You said weakly as you continued to stare at him.

“That’s right love.” He chucked.

“Where are your parents? I’m sure we can call them. There’s a pay phone not too far away or I can take you to your house?” George said.

You quickly panicked and tried to think fast of a way to make up a lie.

How crazy would it sound to tell George that you made a wish to meet the Beatles and it came true?

Well, you met one of them. Besides you honestly had a crush on all the Beatles and couldn’t decide which one was your favorite.

“I uh don’t have any parents. I’m an orphan here? I.. um… unfortunately my parents abandoned me here and went back to America.” You tried your best to make sure your lie made sense.

“Oh no love. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.” George sadly said, feeling sorry for you.

You nodded sadly even though you were pretending to give a sob story to make George feel sorry for you.

“I’m all alone here. I know nothing about living here in England.” You continue to say, acting dramatic.

“Don’t worry darling, how about you come with me? So that’s why you won’t be alone here. I would hate for some creep to snatch you away. What do you say?” George offers you his hand to help you off the ground.

Your face turned bright red.

Oh my gosh… was this happening??

“Why yes of course.” You took George’s hand as he helped you off the ground.

[picspammer]

So they say you're troubled, boy, just because you like to destroy all the things that bring the idiots joy, well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

[uh-mozzaza]

araki could have been so much more annoying about the Beatles we're not thankful enough for that

[shelbgrey]

Twilight Imagines: The untold Stories of Forks

Request are CLOSED

If I write for the girls it's gonna be family or Platonic, I'm not good at writing romances with girls

I don't do 'shared mate' content, sorry.

Cullens:

Cullen family:

Fire safety

Going to the zoo Headcanons

Cats in the cradle

4th of July Headcanons with my favorite boys

Being Carlisle and Esme's youngest daughter and having the Volturi wrap around your finger

Emmett McCarthy Cullen:

Next to me Series

Forever Now

Being Emmett's and Rose's daughter HCs

Aesthetic Board

Jasper Whitlock Hale:

Jasper dating Bella's sister HCs

Aesthetic Board

Rosalie Lillian Hale:

Being Emmett and Rose's daughter HCs

Aesthetic board

Carlisle Cullen:

Aesthetic board

Being Carlisle and Esme's youngest daughter HCs

Edward Anthony Mason Cullen:

Dating Edward Cullen Headcanons

Aesthetic Board

Having a crush on Edward Cullen Headcanons

Esme Ann Platt Cullen:

Aesthetic Board

Mary Alice Brandon Cullen:

Aesthetic Board

Denalis:

Eleazar Denali:

Glory of love series

Aesthetic board

Dating Eleazar Denali Headcanons

Garrett:

Voice of an Angel

Being Carlisle and Esme's youngest daughter and dating Garrett HCs

Tayna Denali:

Aesthetic Board

Wolf pack:

Seth Clearwater:

Aesthetic board

Perfect

Jacob Black:

Aesthetic Board

Paul Lahote:

Aesthetic Board

Leah Clearwater:

Aesthetic Board

The Volturi:

-I don't write for them much

The Volturi:

Being Carlisle and Esme's youngest daughter and having the Volturi wrap around your finger

[mariacallous]

Sherwood Eddy was a prominent American missionary as well as that now rare thing, a Christian socialist. In the 1920s and ’30s, he made more than a dozen trips to the Soviet Union. He was not blind to the problems of the U.S.S.R., but he also found much to like. In place of squabbling, corrupt democratic politicians, he wrote in one of his books on the country, “Stalin rules … by his sagacity, his honesty, his rugged courage, his indomitable will and titanic energy.” Instead of the greed he found so pervasive in America, Russians seemed to him to be working for the joy of working.

Above all, though, he thought he had found in Russia something that his own individualistic society lacked: a “unified philosophy of life.” In Russia, he wrote, “all life is focused in a central purpose. It is directed to a single high end and energized by such powerful and glowing motivation that life seems to have supreme significance.”

Eddy was wrong about much of what he saw. Joseph Stalin was a liar and a mass murderer; Russians worked because they were hungry and afraid. The “unified philosophy of life” was a chimera, and the reality was a totalitarian state that used terror and propaganda to maintain that unity. But Eddy, like others in his era, was predisposed to admire the Soviet Union precisely because he was so critical of the economics and politics of his own country, Depression-era America. In this, he was not alone.

In his landmark 1981 book, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, Paul Hollander wrote of the hospitality showered on sympathetic Western visitors to the Communist world: the banquets in Moscow thrown for George Bernard Shaw, the feasts laid out for Mary McCarthy and Susan Sontag in North Vietnam. But his conclusion was that these performances were not the key to explaining why some Western intellectuals became enamored of communism. Far more important was their estrangement and alienation from their own cultures: “Intellectuals critical of their own society proved highly susceptible to the claims put forward by the leaders and spokesmen of the societies they inspected in the course of these travels.”

Hollander was writing about left-wing intellectuals in the 20th century, and many such people are still around, paying court to left-wing dictators in Venezuela or Bolivia who dislike America. There are also, in our society as in most others, quite a few people who are paid to help America’s enemies, or to spread their propaganda. There always have been.

But in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America. And their motives are curiously familiar. All around them, they see degeneracy, racial mixing, demographic change, “political correctness,��� same-sex marriage, religious decline. The America that they actually inhabit no longer matches the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America that they remember, or think they remember. And so they have begun to look abroad, seeking to find the spiritually unified, ethnically pure nations that, they imagine, are morally stronger than their own. Nations, for example, such as Russia.

The pioneer of this search was Patrick Buchanan, the godfather of the modern so-called alt-right, whose feelings about foreign authoritarians shifted right about the time he started writing books with titles such as The Death of the West and Suicide of a Superpower. His columns pour scorn on modern America, a place he once described, with disgust, as a “multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, multilingual ‘universal nation’ whose avatar is Barack Obama.” Buchanan’s America is in demographic decline, has been swamped by beige and brown people, and has lost its virtue. The West, he has written, has succumbed to “a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide—the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.”

This litany of horrors isn’t much different from what can be heard most nights on Fox News. Listen to Tucker Carlson. “The American dream is dying,” Carlson declared one recent evening, in a monologue that also referred to “the dark age that we are living through.” Carlson has also spent a lot of time on air reminiscing about how the United States “was a better country than it is now in a lot of ways,” back when it was “more cohesive.” And no wonder: Immigrants have “plundered” America, thanks to “decadent and narcissistic” politicians who refuse to “defend the nation.” You can read worse on the white-supremacist websites of the alt-right—do pick up a copy of Ann Coulter’s Adios America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole—or hear more extreme sentiments in some evangelical churches. Franklin Graham has declared, for example, that America “is in deep trouble and on the verge of total moral and spiritual collapse.”

What a terrible place all of these people are describing. Who would want to live in a country like that? Or, to put it differently: Who wouldn’t sympathize with the enemies of a country like that? As it turns out, many do. Certainly Buchanan does. Russian cyberwarriors work with daily determination to undermine American utilities and electricity grids. Russian information warriors are trying to deform American political debate. Russian contract killers are murdering people on the streets of Western countries. Russian nuclear weapons are pointed at us and our allies.

Nevertheless, Buchanan has come to admire the Russian president because he is “standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites.” Once again, he feels the shimmering lure of that elusive sense of “unity” and purpose that complicated, diverse, quarrelsome America always lacks. Impressed with the Russian president’s use of Orthodox pageantry at public events, Buchanan even believes that “Putin is trying to re-establish the Orthodox Church as the moral compass of the nation it had been for 1,000 years before Russia fell captive to the atheistic and pagan ideology of Marxism.”

He is not alone. The belief that Russia is on our side in the war against secularism and sexual decadence is shared by a host of American Christian leaders, as well as their colleagues on the European far right. Among them, for example, are the movers and shakers behind the World Congress of Families, an American evangelical and anti-gay-rights organization that Buchanan has explicitly praised. One of the WCF’s former leaders, Larry Jacobs, once declared that “the Russians might be the Christian saviors of the world.” The WCF even has a Russian branch, which is run by Alexey Komov, a man in turn linked to Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who has hosted far-right meetings all across Europe. At the WCF’s most recent meeting, in Verona, senior Russian priests mingled with leaders of the Italian far right, the Austrian far right, and their comrades from the American heartland.

Carlson’s support for Russia, by contrast, takes the form of snarling sarcasm rather than open admiration. Much as Jane Fonda once posed, just for the provocative kick of it, with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, Carlson has started teasing his viewers and his critics with his amusingly contrarian views on Russia. “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia?” he asked recently. A couple of days later, he tried it again: “I think we should probably take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine.”

Ironically, during the Reagan administration, Carlson’s father ran Voice of America, the radio station that broadcast American values into the U.S.S.R. Or maybe this is not an irony, but rather an explanation. In his book, Hollander described the prestige that Albanian communism once enjoyed in Sweden and Norway. Few Scandinavians had ever been there, but that didn’t matter: “Albania is picked up simply because it seems to be a club with a particularly sharp nail at the end of it with which to beat one’s own society, one’s own traditions, one’s own parents.” Now Carlson is using Russia as a club with which to beat his own society and his own traditions.

Fortunately for all such critics, they don’t have to spend much time in the country they are “rooting” for, because there is no greater fantasy than the idea that Russia is a country of Christian values. In reality, Russia has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, nearly double that of the United States. It has an extremely low record of church attendance, though the numbers are difficult to measure, not least because any form of Christianity outside of the state-controlled Orthodox Church is liable to be considered a cult. A 2012 survey showed that religion plays an important role in the lives of only 15 percent of Russians. Only 5 percent have read the Bible.

If American Christians would find little to cheer for in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, American white nationalists would be disappointed too. Carlson has wondered aloud about America’s racial mix, asking, “How precisely is diversity our strength?” He would have a real dilemma in Russia. Nearly 20 percent of Russian citizens do not even identify as Russian, telling pollsters that they belong to different nationalities, ranging from Tartar and Azeri to Ukrainian and Moldovan; more than 6 percent of Russians are Muslims, as opposed to 1.1 percent of the U.S. population. And that might be a gross underestimate of the actual number of Russian Muslims, since in some parts of the country, Muslims are off-limits to census takers. Remember all those phony stories about Swedish and British neighborhoods that are supposedly no-go zones ruled by Sharia law? Russia has an actual province, Chechnya, that is officially ruled by Sharia law. The local regime tolerates polygamy, requires women to be veiled in public places, and tortures gay men. It is a no-go zone, right inside Russia.

As for Putin himself, there is no evidence that this former KGB officer has actually converted, but plenty of evidence that Putin’s recent public displays of Christianity are just as cynical as Stalin’s vaunted love for the working classes. Among other things, they are useful precisely because they can hoodwink naive foreigners. But you don’t need to listen to me say so. Listen, instead, to the words of a young Russian, Yegor Zhukov, who was put on trial for publishing videos critical of the regime. In an extraordinary courtroom speech, he addressed the loud support for “the institutions of the family” that Putin often offers in Russia, and contrasted it with reality:

An impenetrable barrier divides our society in two. All the money is concentrated at the top and no one up there is going to let it go. All that’s left at the bottom—and this is no exaggeration—is despair. Knowing that they have nothing to hope for, that no matter how hard they try, they cannot bring happiness to themselves or their families, Russian men take their aggression out on their wives, or drink themselves to death, or hang themselves. Russia has the world’s [second] highest rate of suicide among men. As a result, a third of all Russian families are single mothers with their kids. I would like to know: Is this how we are protecting the institution of the family?

The reality of Russia isn’t the point, just as the reality of Stalinism wasn’t the point, not for Sherwood Eddy and not for George Bernard Shaw. The American intellectuals who now find themselves alienated from the country that they inhabit aren’t interested in reality. They are interested in a fantasy nation, different and distinct from their own hateful country. America, with its complicated social and political as well as ethnic diversity, with its Constitution that ensures we will never, ever all be forced to feel as if “all life is focused in a central purpose”—this America no longer appeals to them at all.

Most of them know that this fantasy foreign nation they admire seeks to put an end to all of that. It seeks to undermine American democracy, beat back American influence, and curtail American power. But to those who dislike American democracy, despair of American influence, and are angered by American power? That, truly, is the point.

[qqueenofhades]

I was wondering if you had any ideas/thoughts on who you think the next speaker will be? I have a hard time imagining enough republicans will be able to agree on someone. Also, I was wondering if that rule that they only need 1 person to oust a speaker continues without McCarthy or will the new speaker make their own rules?

Various people have thrown in their names, i.e. Steve Scalise, Byron Donalds, Jim Jordan. They are Republicans and therefore all of them are terrible. Scalise is probably the most viable contender as he is the current majority whip. He will probably also draw the most "mainstream" Republican votes, but the crazies will probably go for Jordan (some of the nuts have also threatened to try to make Trump Speaker, which: LOLOLOLOL). Let the poo-flinging begin!

Yes, they will also have to agree on a new rules package, which will be the same shitshow as before and probably even worse; I have no idea why any new Speaker would agree to the same idea of one person being able to vacate them, considering the just-concluded Defenestration of KevKev, and the crazies will dig their heels in even harder. The Democrats will vote for Jeffries again. We have no idea how long any of this will take, especially since McCarthy is just the latest in a long line of Republican speakers to get tossed or otherwise forced out by his own caucus for not being crazy enough. Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Paul Ryan etc would all like a word.

[asurrogateblog]

Cannibals, Pirates, and PhDs: How Did I Get Here?

I mentioned in some tags earlier that I’ve only actually been a real fan of Pink Floyd for under a year, and that the confluence of events that led up to it is pretty absurd. Some interest seemed to be taken in this, so I though I’d elaborate.

I didn’t know how to shorten this timeline and have it make any sense, so it’s... long. But idk, I think it’s pretty funny. If you’re nosy like I am this is for you.

My Backstory Timeline:

early childhood: my parents essentially mainline me and my little sister with The Beatles. I know almost no songs written past the 70’s until at least sixth grade. I develop a childhood crush on Paul McCartney, a joke that the universe really decides to play the long game on.

2014: my dad calls me over one night, and gravely tells me he’s been waiting to share something until I’m old enough. I brace myself to be told about sex or secret half-siblings. Instead, he tells me I need to listen to The Wall. Irritated at the idea of wasting an hour and half of my night, I nevertheless comply and go up to my room and put it on. I do not come back from this, clearly having inherited some sort of generational curse.

Around the same time, I am also secretly watching Hannibal every time my parents send me upstairs because Game of Thrones is “too gory”. This will trigger three important things: an interest in psychology, a love of horror media, and a classical music phase will train my attention span to last well past the three minute mark.

2014-2023: Over the intervening years, I become a casual fan of Pink Floyd, but make a deliberate point not to learn anything about the band. I like being able to imagine my own meanings for the songs. Also, I am motivated against this by a childhood memory of being deeply frightening by a picture of old Paul McCartney (LOL). I do not want that to ever happen again, so no learning.

Cut to April of 2023: I am finishing up my first year of my PhD program studying media psychology. I am in a bad place mentally, and am going through another horror movie phase to fill the hole. As a result, I get very into American Psycho. The main character, Patrick Bateman, is a fan of superficial 80’s pop music, particularly Genesis. I decide to start listening to Genesis to see if I agree with his tastes. While researching “best Genesis albums”, I come across The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I listen to it, and am blown away. I had no idea that the Phil Collins band made music like that. This sends me down the prog-rock rabbit hole. I still won't learn any lore.

Summer of 2023: MEANWHILE, I am also going through another pirate phase. I have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of 18th century piracy (and am still quite active in the Black Sails fan community). Around this time, I get really obsessed with this one random guy named Dennis McCarthy who was hanged in 1718.

I decide to work poor Dennis into a science fiction story I’ve been working on. The premise is essentially that the universe is an abandoned simulation, and a ‘glitch in the matrix’ starts to, among other things, bring people from the wrong time periods back to life. The format of the story is vaguely monster-of-the-week, in which the characters have to solve various problems caused by mistakes in the code. I think, “hey, you know what would be perfect for this? that fanfic I wrote about The Wall in high school.” Said fic (which that stupid fucking beatles movie stole from me) is about a world in which Pink Floyd never existed, but a wannabe rock-star discovers a box full of their records and decides to copy them. While he is touring his plagiarized version of The Wall, he realizes that the events of the album are starting to happen to him in real life. By working this concept into my new story, I go through another one of my periodical The Wall phases. It's in full swing when fall rolls around.

September of 2023: This semester, I take a grad-level narrative theory class in the English department. I decide it would be helpful to follow along with a specific example, so I choose The Wall. Using the terminology I am learning in the class, I start to realize that The Wall is…. incredibly narratologically fucked up. To help orient me, I watch the bootleg concert recordings, and the trick with the surrogate band sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore.

This is where the two plot-lines converge. I don’t remember which came first, but around this same time, I think to myself “hey, if Genesis was hiding such an incredible album under the 80’s pop, what must Pink Floyd be hiding?” On that whim, I put on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which equally sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore. I needed to know what the fuck happened to get them from Piper to The Wall.

September-November: In the two months between the onset of this and finally making another sideblog, I dedicate all of my free time to learning as much about Pink Floyd as humanely possible (and writing a 20 page essay for that narrative theory class). As you can imagine, this is a lot to unpack all at once for someone who didn’t even know who Roger or Syd or any of the rest of them were. Luckily, I am over-educated enough to be a very fast learner. Aside from the band lore itself, I of course also fall in love with the rest of Pink Floyd's discography musically-speaking. Having this interest to latch onto genuinely pulls me out of my depression.

Cut to February 2024: I am really enjoying myself, and want to keep this going as long as possible, but I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel on Pink Floyd lore. I decide I need to feed the fire by supplementing with lore from another band. The Beatles seem to have a strong fan presence on tumblr, why not revisit a childhood favorite? The universe laughs at my expense.

That about brings us up to date. I have gone through so much character development over the last eight months, it’s crazy. Pink Floyd is definitely one of those things that is less of a “phase” and more of a permanent part of my mindscape. Weirdly enough, since I am studying media psychology, all of this has also been really good for my career? I never took an interest in -real- media figures (as opposed to fictional characters) before, and I feel like I have a much clearer sense of things now. It's definitely influenced my research, so whatever domino effect this has on my future is bound to get even funnier.

Anyway, that’s my backstory!

[linc-karo-27]

I've read many people's speculation that hawk will betray tim by outing him deliberately, but if he did, would tim bw able to join the military? bc there are photos of him in the uniform, and synopsis for ep 5 I think implies he makes a life changing decision. I haven't read the book, but I don't mind any spoilers.

Hey Anon! (first one to this account since I rejoined tumblr back in 2021) - right this is where we need to consult the book (and spoilers for Ep1 and 2). SPOILER FOR THE SHOWTIME DESCRIPTIONS/TRAILER.

Sorry this is kinda long but its like the last half of the book. Its messy.

TLDR; According to Showtime we have to wait for it (if it happens) until the last episode.

In the book, a lot of the 1950s happen in a different order. Mary is Hawks Faux GF for longer and Tim running off to the army happens around the time Lucy comes into the picture (there four "sections" in the book, and we have the army life in section 3/4).

The show has already played around with the timeline a bit with a major event of the book that has not happened yet: The Lie Detector Test. This happens about 2-3 months into T&H's relationship. By the looks of it its in episode 4 (and now it could be the reason Tim enlists. If he is not around, he can't get them caught). Then the roadtrip; then Lucy comes along; then Tim enlists; the last few months of him and Hawk; Tim leaves.

right: this is a summary of the book events re: army and onwards to the end of the book.

The night Tim Enlists its after a fight with Hawk over some petty thing (his birthday). This is after someone (whose not present in the show but actions have been merged basically into Hawk and Marcus) phones Tim to snitch on McCarthy and winds Tim up to the point he basically is a mess. When he's in the army Hawk courts Lucy; marries her and gets her pregnant. So when he returns its near the end of Lucy's pregnancy (two years later). He goes to Paris in this time as well (Hawk messes with his enlistment to get him away from any fighting).

During the time he is still in the US he sees Mary a fair bit (and her dad) and she is the one who tells him about Hawk and the wedding, which upsets him so much it basically makes him start to starve himself ("fasting for 36 hours") and into full religious zealotry. Basically most of the time in the army he's kinda depressed imo. Its not a very nice part of the book and i hope the showrunners edited it to make him less.... idk unhappy?

When he returns in 1957 (he leaves in 1955) hawk has found them a secret house (owned by Mary's ex, a brewer called Paul but that isn't important) which is abandoned and falling apart. They move their meet ups to this house and Tim falls basically into worshipping Hawk. At the same time, a job helping the refugees fleeing the Hungarian Revolution comes up and Hawk gets him the job (its basically something he becomes fixated on in the army) and the eve of them about to give it to Tim (and his kid born) Hawk imagines Tim's life post this when Tim mentions he will finally have the money to own his own house (he is living in another character's loft and that character has basically become more fleshed out as Marcus in the show) so after Hawk leaves him for the night he goes to the M Unit and tells them Tim has "security considerations". Tim looses the job (but isnt investigated) and he flees DC; and never sees Hawk again (there's more to the ending told via Mary in the epilogue that is basically Tim has a breakdown and is sent to a place that is basically a mental hospital by his sister and just moves on with his life.

this paragraph from the book summaries this easily (Hawk's reason for dibbing him in)

IN THE SHOW

So Showtime is hinting that Episode 5 ends on Tim being in the army but Episode 6 opens in 1968. So in the show its likely 4 Tim enlists; 5 is his time in the army (so not much of him maybe on screen, but the other 2 stories play out) , ending on him going back to DC OR 5 he enlists and it ends on that. We then have the 1960s and 1970s episodes, with Showtime telling us Episode 8 is 1957 and 1986 (like how the others have gone but a timeskip in the 1950s maybe)

Episode 8 (ignoring the 1986 stuff because rn I have no idea how we are doing that last episode stuff) is the messing with Hawk in the abandon house, but Hawk dibs him in over something (basically close to the book), he leaves and the 1950s end on that.

So yeah......... Hawk being a dick in the 1950s is likely saved until the last episode. Added with the "life changing" of the 1980s (which imo is Tim wanting him and Marcus/Frankie to not be present for those last days and tells Hawk to give him up because he isn't the best person). It would also make sense why every review seems to say ep6 feels weird - its been set up to mirror the 1980s: there is something we the audience don't know that is making everything awkward.

[kp777]

By Robert Reich

The Guardian

Nov. 6, 2022

Coming into the home stretch before the 2022 midterm elections, I feel different than I’ve felt in the days before every election I’ve witnessed or participated in over the last three-quarters of a century.

In elections before this one, I’ve worried about Republicans taking over and implementing their policy preferences – against political rights in the dark days of Senator Joe McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt in the early 1950s, against civil rights in the late 1950s and early 1960s, against Medicare in the mid-1960s, for smaller government in the 1970s, for tax cuts for the rich in the 1980s, for a balanced budget in the early 1990s, against universal health care in the late 1990s and early 2000s, against LGBTQ rights in the 2010s.

Today I’m not particularly worried about Republicans’ policy preferences. Today I’m worried about the survival of our democracy.

I’m worried that a majority of Republican candidates are telling voters, without any basis in fact, that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

I’m worried that if elected, many of these Republicans will make it harder to conduct elections in the future, allow or encourage endless audits of election results, and even refuse to sign off on them.

I’m worried that Republicans have been spending millions to recruit partisan poll workers and watchers in the upcoming election, who could disrupt the counting process or raise false claims about it.

I’m worried that thousands of Trump supporters have been calling their local election offices requesting all kinds of public records, often using suspiciously similar wording, leading officials to believe this is a coordinated effort to prevent them from holding an election.

I’m worried that violent thugs are on the prowl, and that Republican leaders – starting with Trump – have been quietly encouraging them.

Speaking on a conservative radio talkshow on Tuesday, Trump amplified a conspiracy theory about the grisly attack on US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, saying: “Weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks.”

I’m worried that Americans are losing the trust that a democracy needs in order to function

Other Republican candidates are joining in this cruel, baseless, disgusting taunt.

Most of all, I’m worried that Americans are losing the trust that a democracy needs in order to function – trust that even though we may not like the outcomes of particular elections, we feel bound by them because we trust the democratic process.

It is this trust that is the basis for all else. Without it, elections become free-for-alls in which voters’ preferences are subordinated to power plays.

The biggest question hanging over the 2022 midterm election is not a policy. It’s not even an issue.

The biggest question is analogous to the question we as a nation faced in 1860 as we slid into the tragic civil war.

It is whether American democracy can endure.

The extraordinary, abominable challenge we now face – one that I frankly never imagined we would face – is that the Republican party and its enablers in the media and among the moneyed interests appear not to want American democracy to endure.

As Joe Biden said last week, “democracy itself” is at stake in the upcoming election, as the president appealed “to all Americans, regardless of party, to meet this moment of national and generational importance”.

Indeed.

I believe we owe it to generations before us who fought and died for democracy and the rule of law, and to generations after us who will live with the legacy we leave them, to vote out the traitors and liars, to renounce those who have forsaken the precious ideal of self-government and to vote in people who are dedicated to making American democracy stronger and better.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

[med582-mollycrawford]

Blog Assignment 1

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory 

Synopsis:

Willy Wonka faces the rise of Veganism with a brand new vegan version of his beloved chocolate bar. To promote sales he puts five golden tickets inside random chocolate bars, earning you a ticket inside his mysterious chocolate factory. 

​Five teens receive the tickets and are whisked away to a world of pure imagination. One by one the children's morals are put to the test, ultimately leaving one child, Charlie Buckets to make it out. Charlie inherits the factory and learns the importance of staying true to yourself. 

​Logline: 

Charlie Buckets, along with five other hopeful teens, go inside Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, they soon find out chocolate is not all he is in the business for. 

​Genre:

Comedy 

​Targeted Demographic:

Young Adults 

Casting:

Willy Wonka: Jeremy Allen White 

​Charlie Bucket: Jacob Tremblay

​Grandpa Bucket: Harrison Ford

​Veruca Salt: Sunny Sandler

​Mrs. Salt: Idina Menzel

​Violet Beauregarde: Quvenzhané Wallis

​Mrs. Beauregarde: Issa Ray

​Mike Teevee: Noah Scnapp

​Mr. Teevee: Patrick Dempsey 

​Augustus Gloop: Joseph Paul Kennedy 

​Mrs Gloop: Melissa McCarthy

Locations:

California: Giving a new and refreshed feel compared to the industrial city of the original film. California also offering a 20%-25% tax credit for qualified productions. 

​Romania: The Country has a number of historic villages and towns, as well of beaches off the coast of the black sea, giving diversity in filming locations. They offer a tax credit of 35% for qualified productions. 

​Australia: They offer lower productions costs than most more developed countries. They present a number of cosmopolitan cities along with historic sites. They come in with a tax rebate of 30% for qualified productions. 

​Why?

These locations offer less responsibility for taxes, and will remove a portion of the income tax owed to the state, making it more budget friendly for the low cost budget working currently. 

​

SAG Day Rate:

$781-$2,710 per week.

[t-jfh]

Prophet Song a novel by Paul Lynch has won the 2023 Booker Prize.

Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song

(Photo: Joel Saget)

Booker Prize winner Prophet Song is a prophetic masterpiece

Paul Lynch’s novel is a terrifying story about the ascent of modern-day fascism.

Book review by Ron Charles

The Washington Post - November 27, 2023

Shared from Apple News

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Paul Lynch, the author of Prophet Song, won the Booker Prize on Sunday.

(Photo: David Cliff/EPA, via Shutterstock)

Paul Lynch Wins Booker Prize for Prophet Song

Prophet Song imagines a near-future Ireland descending into totalitarianism, then a civil war that leads to families’ fleeing the country.

Esi Edugyan, the chair of this year’s Booker Prize judging panel, said that Prophet Song resonated with contemporary crises including the Israel-Hamas war, but that the novel had won solely on its literary merits. “This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave,” Edugyan said in a news conference. While the judges were not unanimous in their decision, Edugyan said Prophet Song was a worthy winner that “captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment.”

Book review by Alex Marshall

The New York Times - November 26, 2023

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The author Paul Lynch, who won the 2023 Booker Prize for his novel Prophet Song.

(Photo: Tolga Akmen/EPA, via Shutterstock)

Life Descends Into Chaos in This Year's Booker Prize Winner

Prophet Song, a novel by Paul Lynch, is set in Dublin during a political crisis.

Prophet Song promises some degree of timeliness, and comes at a moment when the fear it addresses is daily in the news: that the social contract is about to break, that what we think of as ordinary life is about to be transformed into a constant existential struggle, which will be played out not in a state of nature but in something arguably worse, at the fault line between opposing ideologies.

Book review by Benjamin Markovits

The New York Times - December 1, 2023

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Writer Paul Lynch evokes dark visions of a fascist dystopia, in his novel Prophet Song.

(Photo: Gary Doak/Alamy)

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch review – Ireland under fascism

This Booker Prize-winning dystopia with shades of Cormac McCarthy is nightmarish yet horribly convincing.

The Irish offspring of The Handmaid’s Tale and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Paul Lynch’s novel Prophet Song is as nightmarish a story as you’ll come across: powerful, claustrophobic and horribly real. From its opening pages it exerts a grim kind of grip; even when approached cautiously and read in short bursts it somehow lingers, its world leaking out from its pages like black ink into clear water.

Book review by Melissa Harrison

The Guardian - 31 August 2023

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Paul Lynch’s novel Prophet Song, set in an imagined Dublin descending into far-right tyranny, wins the 2023 Booker Prize.

‘Soul-shattering’ Prophet Song by Paul Lynch wins 2023 Booker prize

Irish author Paul Lynch has won the 2023 Booker prize for his fifth novel Prophet Song, set in an imagined Ireland that is descending into tyranny. It was described as a “soul-shattering and true” novel that “captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment” by the judging chair, Esi Edugyan.

By Ella Creamer

The Guardian - 27 November 2023

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'I'm a state-of-the-soul writer' … Paul Lynch.

(Photo: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian)

Paul Lynch’s timely Booker winner is a novel written to jolt the reader awake

Prophet Song imagines an Ireland under fascist control, breaking through the it-couldn’t-happen-here complacency of western societies.

With Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, the judges have chosen perhaps the most timely and urgent book on the shortlist – a novel explicitly plugged into global strife and political tectonic forces. But it’s also the very intimate, elemental story of one woman’s love for her family, and her desperate attempts to hold on to the immediate world around her in the face of rising chaos.

By Justine Jordan

The Guardian - 27 November 2023

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Writer, Paul Lynch: 'I'm sort of finding out again who I am now.'

(Photo: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian)

‘This is a wake-up call’: Booker winner Paul Lynch on his novel about a fascist Ireland

The writer of Prophet Song, Paul Lynch, was on the operating table for cancer, then exactly a year later he found out his nightmarish vision had made the shortlist. He reveals why the words for Prophet Song came out with such urgency, there was no time for paragraph breaks.

‘The universal trickster has been at work on my life in all sorts of wild ways,” Irish novelist Paul Lynch tells me the morning after he was awarded the Booker Prize for his novel Prophet Song, which imagines Ireland taken over by a fascist regime. It has been a dramatic few years since he started writing the novel in 2018: his son had just been born; he had long Covid, which made writing an impossibility some days; he has had cancer and separated from his wife. And now he has landed the biggest prize in contemporary fiction. “There’s a general sense of unreality,” he says of winning. “I’ve stepped into my own ‘Sliding Doors’ counterfactual narrative.”

By Lisa Alladice

The Guardian - 28 November 2023

•

[thebeatles-world]

Feelings: Part 2 ( A love triangle)

“I’m so stupid. I’m so stupid. I should have known!” You cursed yourself under your breath.

You kicked the stall door in anger. You knew that nobody was in the bathroom except for you. You were the only one in there.

You continued to cuss yourself as the scene between you and George came back to your mind. How he didn’t say anything to you when you confessed your feelings to him.

You felt really stupid to even confess your feelings like that to George.

You couldn’t help but let him know the truth. Well now he knows and he didn’t know what to say from what you saw outside.

“Hey, is everything okay?” You heard a female voice coming into the bathroom.

You recognize that voice. It was Pattie.

Oh great.

“Yeah, I’m okay, just feeling a bit off.” You said to Pattie in a weak voice.

“Yeah no, I’m not okay. I just confessed my feelings to your boyfriend and now he probably doesn’t want anything to do with me.” You thought in your mind.



You wanted to say it out loud but you knew you couldn’t. You didn’t want to ruin George’s relationship with her. Plus you didn’t want to ruin your relationship with Paul either.

“Paul sent me to check up on you. I’m so sorry to hear that you are feeling ill. I’ll let him know. He’s been quite worried about you since you left the table.” Pattie explained this to you.

“Oh okay. Um please tell him that I’ll be out there in a couple of minutes.” You said as you bit your fingernails.

“Will do. George and I are going to head out now. It was lovely to meet you once again Y/N.” Pattie said.

“It was very lovely to meet you.” You said and then you heard her walk out of the bathroom.

“I’m still such an idiot for telling George how I felt about him.” You ran your fingers over your hair as you replay the scene in your head over and over again.

“What on earth was I thinking??” You said out loud. With a groan, you hid your face in your hands.

“He’s never going to talk to me ever again? Is he?” You told yourself.

“How on earth am I going to face him ever again?”

You manage to get yourself up from the bathroom floor and head to the sink to wash your face.

You had to pretend that you didn’t confess your feelings to George or that the reason why you felt ill was that you felt like an idiot for confessing your feelings to George while he just sat there and said nothing to you.

You cleared your voice and exited the women's restroom.

“Hey darling, are you okay? I was worried about you.” Paul said when you came out of the women’s bathroom. He was standing right there waiting for you outside the women’s bathroom, looking very concerned and worried.

“Yes, I’m okay my love. I was just feeling quite ill that’s all.” You faked a smile as you kissed Paul on the cheek.

“Well, George and Pattie already left. Why don’t we go on home shall we?” Paul said, kissing you on the head and putting his arm around your waist.

“Yes, I’m ready to go home.” You agreed with Paul as you shook your head yes.

What a night… you thought to yourself.

….

A few days passed.

You kept on replaying one of your favorite songs called “Hats off to Larry by Del Shannon.

It made you feel much better just replaying that song over and over again.

This was your comfort song for your broken heart that George caused.

Paul had no idea that you were heartbroken over George or even played Hats off to Larry over and over again to heal your broken heart.

One evening Paul had to go down to the studio to record a new song with the rest of his bandmates.

You knew he would see George there. Just thinking about that, made your stomach drop again.

You hope that George wouldn’t tell Paul about that night when you confessed your feelings to him. You felt embarrassed and foolish yet again for doing that.

“Have a good evening at the studio, I love you.” You said as you kissed Paul on the lips.

“Thank you, I love you too Y/N.” Paul kissed you back and he headed out the door.

After he left, you sighed and made your way to play “Hats off to Larry.” on the record player.

Not even 30 minutes have passed, and you heard a knock on the door.

“Did Paul forget something?” You mumbled to yourself in confusion. You got up from the couch to answer the door.

“He must have.” You chuckle to yourself as you unlock the door.

You open the door wide open and saw George standing there.

Your heart almost stopped beating just seeing him stand outside your doorway.

“George? What on earth are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be recording a song with Paul, John, and Ringo?” You asked in confusion.

“Y/N Can I come in? I need to talk to you please.” George pleaded, looking into your eyes.

You looked down at the ground, trying to avoid eye contact with him.

“There’s nothing to talk about George.” You said coldly, still looking at the ground.

“It’s about that night, please let me explain.” George pleaded once again.

“Fine, you got ten minutes. Paul wouldn’t like it if you were here.” You said, letting George inside the house.

You closed the door behind you as George sat down on the couch. He stared at you as you walked over to sit down next to him.

“What is it, George? What is so important that you have to tell me?” You raised an eyebrow at him.

“Listen Y/N … about the other night, I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know what to say.” George scratches his head nervously.

“Okay?..” You said, looking at him curiously.

“I guess I’m not good with words. I was just speechless when you confessed your feelings to me. I didn’t know that you felt the same way too.” George continued.

“Wait what?” You were taken aback by what he said.

“What I’m trying to say Y/N… I have the same feelings for you too. I always have. I didn’t know if you felt the same way toward me. I know that Paul beat me to it. He always fancy you way before you knew. I wasn’t going to make him think that I was going steal you away from him.” George said, rubbing his fingers on your hands.

“I.. I.” You stammered. You felt shocked. But happy and relieved at the same time. George felt the same way towards you. But you knew that it wasn’t right. You were trying to push back those feelings away.

“I’m sorry George but I can’t do this to Paul. You can’t do this to Pattie. You can’t have feelings for me. I’m trying to move on from you.” You pointed it out to him.

As much as you were crushing on George you just knew that this was wrong. You were trying hard to move on from George. You were with Paul, not George.

“I understand love,” George said softly, looking down at his hands.

“I’m sorry Geo. I wish things were different. I do.” You said softly.

George slowly looked up and stared into your eyes which made your face turn bright red. But you couldn’t help but stare back at his beautiful eyes.

He slowly leaned in and so did you. You weren’t thinking straight at all. Your mind was focused on George and his beautiful eyes. He was the guy you fell head over heels for and there was no other guy that made you feel this way except for George.

Before you could think straight or pull away, you and George kissed each other on the lips.

You felt yours and George’s lips move in sync and without a worry, you and George started making out.

You two hungrily made out, not stopping. You and George craved each other kiss and touch. It felt like a bliss for you.

“George, I’m sorry I can’t do this.” Before things went too far, you suddenly pulled away, gasping for air.

You realized you had your hand grabbed ahold of his hair while he had his hands on your waist.

You pulled your hand away from his hair.

“I understand Y/N. I’ll leave now.” George nodded.

You watched him get up from the couch and walk towards the front door without saying a word to you.

“Please stay George don’t leave.” You wanted to say but it was too late. He had already left.

To be continued…

[recentlyheardcom]

You know that feeling when you ~technically~ know something is true, but it feels so out of your scope of understanding, you never really think too hard about it? And when you do...you feel like you're on the verge of a full-blown existential crisis because WHAT?? Is that just me??? NBCRecently, redditor u/BubblegumCrocodile inquired about those exact kinds of things, asking "What’s something you know is real/proven but still can’t wrap your head around it?" Here are 19 of the most popular, mind-boggling things they shared:1."How thin Earth's crust and atmosphere are. That we are so relatively close to plunging into a fiery hell of molten rock or being sucked into the vacuum of space." Tumeggy / Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF / Roberto Machado Noa / Getty Images2."Bluetooth. You're telling me we start out with rocks and shit and somehow I can hear music from my phone on my headphones without them being connected?" Justin Lambert / Getty Images3."That I’m closer to being a millionaire than Jeff Bezos!" Alberto Rodriguez / NBCUniversal / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images4."That we are closer to when the Tyrannosaurus Rex lived than it is to the Stegosaurus. The concept of millions upon millions of years is just unfathomable to me."—u/Same_old_xAccording to Discovery, the T-rex lived around 67–65 million years ago, whereas the Stegosaurus lived around 156 and 144 million years ago. The time between 144 million years and 67 million years is 77 million years, which is greater than the 65 million years that separates the T-rex from us. Science Photo Library - Leonello / Getty Images5."That there are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way."—u/zeekoesThere are an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy and an estimated 3 trillion trees on Earth. You can read more about this here. Paul Souders / Getty Images6."How vinyl records work. Not only do they work, but somehow, someone figured out how to do it. What do you mean you pressed some squiggles into plastic and now it makes music when you run a needle across it? Makes absolutely no sense." Susumu Yoshioka / Getty Images7."That our bodies are made up of trillions of cells and microbes that replicate and build the construction that is 'us.' We do not control them directly in any capacity, but they are a part of us without being us. Yet, they live their own 'life' in there, ever tirelessly building, repairing, and filtering." Sebastian Condrea / Getty Images8."That airplanes can fly. I've been in one and everything lots of times, but they're just so big and heavy. I feel like it should take a rocket engine or something."9."That sharks are older than trees, the rings of Saturn, and Polaris." Nautilus Creative / Getty Images/iStockphoto10."That we've cloned a sheep. I barely have a solid internet connection, and yet we've cloned a sheep. Make it make sense, people!" Mathieu Polak / Getty Images11."That the tides are due to the moon."12."Dark matter and dark energy. It encompasses 95% of the universe, and we have no idea what it is. We can't even see it. We just know it’s there." William Attard Mccarthy - Mccart / Getty Images13."It's pretty wild that the light you see from the sun is around eight minutes younger than the sun actually is."—u/Obligatory_DRZ_rider"Take this a step further. Imagine other beings millions of light years away, observing the light omitted from Earth. They could be seeing a version of Earth many, many years ago that shows zero signs of life, let alone intelligent life. They take one look and think, 'Yup, nothing there, let’s cross it off our list.' Even if our planet has been discovered by other forms of intelligent life, it’s almost impossible that they would know we exist without being much closer to our solar system."—u/brstrz Nasa / Getty Images14."The feeling of déjà vu."—u/Hugh-Jass24If you're not familiar, déjà vu means "already seen" in French and is a phenomenon in which a person feels like they've already lived the situation they're currently in, even though they know they haven't.

Interscope Records15."That gravity impacts the flow of time." Randy Faris / Getty Images16."Wi-Fi. It's everywhere all of the time, and data is all over the place, but things don't get jumbled up. WTF? At any given time, there are about 10 devices using Wi-Fi in my house and probably every house on the street, and it all just works. My stuff isn't accidentally appearing elsewhere, but if I want to, I can make a bunch of different devices immediately start playing the same song at the same time." Catherine Falls Commercial / Getty Images17."The number of people in the world. You’re telling me there’s almost EIGHT BILLION people?? And they all have their own lives, names, birthdays, friends, feelings, language, looks, inside jokes, problems, victories, challenges, etc?? I have a hard time with realizing the person I see walking on the street has a life just as complex as mine, if not more so...now times that by eight billion??" Tomml / Getty Images/iStockphoto18."Death. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that I will be gone forever one day." Peopleimages / Getty Images/iStockphoto19.And finally, "The fact that everything we've made today was always possible to make. The same rules of the universe have always applied, and we have the same materials as people before us did. Gets me wondering what's still possible with the stuff we have that we don't have the slightest idea about."Now it's your turn! Is there something you know for a fact is real/true but simply cannot make your brain comprehend? If so, tell us about it in the comments below!Note: Submissions have been edited for length and clarity.

[suchananewsblog]

Melissa McCarthy Is Game For A ‘Bridesmaids’ Sequel & Imagines What Her Character Would Be Doing Now

Melissa McCarthy is game for a Bridesmaids sequel, the 2011 comedy that also starred Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudulph and directed by Paul Feig. “I would do a Bridesmaids sequel this afternoon, right now,” McCarthy told People in an interview. “That group of women was the most magical thing ever. Almost all of us were really good friends already. I think it was such a magical time.” The Little…

[oldgooddaysoldgooddays]

LA 252 pt 1

My last full day of the trip and I spend it in part with my family at lunch (quinoa salad, triple espresso, fielding questions about the art market), and at a storage unit in Monterey Park where Paul McCarthy's storied WHITE SNOW installation is housed for the week. Many have seen it before, and we run into K who says she took her mom to it once and her mom walked out. McCarthy himself, bearded and wearing a cap, is wandering around his own show, looking at the giant Disney trees he had made, the replica of his childhood home, the video. The video! Imagine 2 girls 1 cup meets Snow White meets an alcoholic's rock bottom. I tell C I think I saw it all the way through, she tells me "it's a 7 hour video". And she's right, what I witnessed was the delirium and disorienting sameness of being on camera for 30 days, drinking liquor and pretending to shit on each other's prosthetic noses. C, ever the hustler, had followed McCarthy around the show charming him and asking questions with the speed and relentlessness of a machine gun, as is her wont. She got the inside scoop. I noticed the UCLA hoodies. I saw rape-adjacent close-ups, and flaccid penises peeking at me from under the hems of shirts. C's boyfriend saw a couple making out in front of the video. And K, after the abject bacchanal, tells us that she is in the mood for a snack. I think about how feasible having intimacy with R feels after witnessing this video. The night before, we sat down in his two person shower, my legs hugging his, and talking about how small the world is and how ethnically ambiguous his looks are. Now all I can think about is tea-bagging and Hershey's syrup I try to relay what I saw to R and his British friend back at the house. I decide I don't like the friend, traumatised as I am by British men who live in east London. It's not this guy's fault, though he is quick to name drop Pixie Geldof when we are talking schooling. My favourite part of the exchange is when he tells me he just had a baby, and I ask how fatherhood is, and he says "I recommend it".