#recently went down the pm rabbit hole

[stardusteyes]

Library of Ruina was so based for making the Wizard of Oz a lady

[evilwickedme]

It's so clear to me that so many so called "anti Zionists" - especially the non Palestinian goyim - have no idea how the Israeli election system works, and how bibi remains in power, and why we had five elections in like, three years, despite elections supposedly being every four years - because he couldn't keep a government stable enough to stay in power. Bibi netanyahu is MASSIVELY unpopular, and his approval rate has tanked even more since the war started, even among likud voters, the people who vote for HIS party (although their approval rates ranked less than the rest of the population). He has an extreme right wing government because if he didn't cooperate with right wing extremists and haredim he straight up wouldn't have the majority he needs to be our prime minister in the first place. He's been on trial for corruption for years at this point, and tried to completely restructure the judicial system just to avoid prison - leading to nearly a full year of protests until Oct 7. Luckily it didn't end up passing.

If elections were held at any point in the last five months since this war started, not only would he not be PM, we'd straight up have a center-left government. My recent transformation into a Yair Golan stan account is a joke but also 100% real - according to polls from the last three months or so, if he does what he's campaigning to do, leading a combined avoda and meretz party, he'd get enough votes to have an actual influential left wing party in the government for the first time in decades. An unbelievable amount of Israelis are calling for bibi to resign, many of them not calling for it to happen after the war ends, but right now.

I am sourcing this information from polls conducted by channels 11 (kan), 12, and 13, as well as by the Israeli democracy foundation, all but one of our important news channels - channel 14, the last channel, is our equivalent of fox news, and despite their numbers often being extremely different due to what is in my opinion biased reporting and flawed methodology, even they at times have had to admit that gantz is currently leading in the polls.

(Disclaimer that I work for a company that provides subtitles for channel 13, but i do not directly work for channel 13. Channel 13 leans mostly center left, and employs several (self identified) Arab Israelis in front of the camera, including Lucy Aharish, who makes considerable effort to bring Palestinian and Bedouin perspectives to her show. It also employs at least one massive racist though.)

I write this post because I keep seeing an unsourced claim by goyim that there's a poll showing a high rate of approval - 88%! - of the destruction and/or deaths Israel and the IDF are causing in Gaza. I went down a rabbit hole and simply couldn't find a poll asking about approval of deaths or destruction, although maybe I was looking up the wrong keywords? As a result I have just... So many questions. Because with the information I have from trustworthy local news sources, from the news channels I mentioned above and papers such as yediot aharonot/ynet and Haaretz, it doesn't fit with current public opinion, including many recent protests for more efforts towards a ceasefire. So my questions are thus -

Who conducted this poll? Was it a think tank, a government agency, a paper, a news channel? If so, which one? Are they left leaning, right leaning? Was it conducted by an Israeli or foreign institution?

Who did they ask? Was it a sample of likud voters; all Israeli adults; did they include only Jewish Israelis or also Arab citizens (approx. 1.5 million out of our 8 million population), Bedouins, and other minorities?

When was the poll conducted? Was it in October, immediately after the Oct 7 massacre, before the death toll in Gaza grew? Was it conducted more recently?

What, exactly, did they ask? Did they ask about destruction in general, or about the death toll in particular? Did they ask about the attempts to rescue hostages with military means, or all military actions? Did they ask about the number of Hamas operatives dead, about their estimated ratio of Hamas to civilians, about the total deaths?

What was the size of the pool surveyed? Was it conducted on a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand people?

Because without this information, that one, sole statistic is essentially useless. As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Always look at the source and ask: who asked the questions, who got asked, and what the questions were.

More specific statistics and sources under the cut.

I did find one survey by the Israel democracy foundation that asked if the IDF should take the Gazan suffering into account - an entirely different question, although it did still have a horrific 89% Jewish Israelis and 14% Arab Israelis and Palestinian citizens who said they shouldn't. That said, the pool they were drawing from was not very large - 500 of the interviews were conducted in Hebrew, 100 were conducted in Arabic. Also, of the people who supposedly said that they shouldn't, a little more than half of both populations said they should "somewhat" take it into account - that is, they didn't say they shouldn't take it into account at all, just not make it their first priority. This survey was conducted mid December.

In another survey by the same source with a slight larger sample size (a little over 600 Jewish Israelis and a little over 150 Arab Israelis), an insanely low 15% still wanted Bibi to be the PM, with the only candidate who received more than 6.5% being the center candidate Benny Gantz, who historically has tried to cooperate with center and left parties, with a whopping 23% of the votes. The survey included 10 candidates, as well as five other non candidate options. 4% voted "just not Bibi", and an actually insane 30.5% voted they were undecided. Only a quarter of those surveyed believed Bibi would manage to maintain a coalition after the war, a number that includes more extreme right wing voters, and only the ultra Orthodox haredi population had a majority of people (60%) who believed he can. This survey was conducted in January.

The channel 13 news survey from early March - barely over a week ago! - covered more specifically which parties would manage to get into the government and how many seats they would get, as under a certain amount of votes you simply do not get seats. Not all seats get into a coalition. According to their poll, the amount of seats the likud would get is halved, from 32 to 17, while gantz's the state camp would grow from 12 to 39. While currently meretz gets 4 seats and haavodah do not get enough votes to get a seat at the table so to speak, a combined haavodah and meretz under Yair Golan gets 9 mandates. In total, the right wing only get 47 mandates, well short of the amount of mandates necessary to create a government.

Channel 12's corresponding poll from January shows 35 mandates for gantz, and bibi had 18 mandates. Channel 11, in the same month, gave gantz 33 mandates and bibi 20.

I also sources an English Jerusalem post article which reports on channel 14's polls; jpost is a right wing biased paper, and yet even they report 36 mandates for gantz and 18 for bibi as of February.

Sources

The Israel democracy institute: 1 (English), 2 (Hebrew), 3 (Hebrew)

Haaretz: 1 (English) (paywalled)

Channel 13: 1 (Hebrew)

Ma'ariv: 1 (Hebrew) (reporting on channel 12)

Podcast which summarizes the above article: 1 (English) (includes transcript)

Kan 11: 1 (Hebrew)

Jpost: 1 (Hebrew)

[macontheweb]

Hey Mac! Spotify recently threw a song by the National my way, which made me listen to a few more and man, this is good.

I know you like them too so I thought I'd come by and ask what your personal faves by them are 👀🙏

Hey Alex! Ooh I love that you're enjoying them so far. Thank you for giving me the space to talk your ear off about one of my favourite bands!! I feel like every time I go down the rabbit hole with The National I discover a few more faves, but I'll try to keep this manageable for a tumblr post lol.

I Need My Girl

The National's lead singer Matt Berninger called it "the most direct, earnest love songs we’ve ever written." It's so simple - a song about a man yearning for his wife - but it gets me every time. I know you love a moment of slow, sweet melancholy, so I think you'll like it too.

Mistaken For Strangers

This one reminds me of the friend who introduced me to The National. When he got drunk he would always point to his own jacket during the "showered and blue-blazered" line. In a song about losing friends, what a thing to remember one of the great friendships of my life while listening to it. </3

Day I Die

Speaking of that friend, I went to my first National gig with him. At the time, I didn't really know any other tracks apart from this one, Guilty Party and I Need My Girl, but I'd latched onto this song because it made me Feel Things about a situationship I'd been in a couple of years earlier. When they launched into this live, it was so electric. "Don't do this / I don't do this to you" still makes me want to scream.

Bloodbuzz Ohio

I'm a great lover of The National's lyrics. There might come a point where you're listening to them and you have to stop what you're doing because a line hits you in a place you never thought you'd be hit at like...three pm on a Wednesday. For me, one of those lyrics is from Bloodbuzz Ohio: ""I still owe money to the money to the money I owe / I never thought about love when I thought about home." Maybe my second favourite song they've ever written.

Slow Show

A song for the socially anxious - it's about being out somewhere and just wishing you were home with a person you loved and could feel truly comfortable with. Also, I have been known to make this song about my blorbos at every available opportunity.

Apartment Story

As much of a sweet little love song as The National has ever turned in, and a love letter to happy domesticity. Has a very 'us against the world' vibe.

Graceless

Hands down my favourite song. Its exploration of depression and meds is still unrivalled by anyone imho. I spent the worst parts of the COVID lockdowns blasting this in my living room, and when they performed it at my local gig, I cried buckets.

(Very) honourable mentions:

Guilty Party

England

This Is The Last Time

Afraid of Everyone

Brainy

Don't Swallow the Cap

About Today

Terrible Love

Phew, okay! I'm sure that's way more than you were asking for. Enjoy anyway, my friend ❤️

[ohgodimafraud]

td//iapt - lu//cifer

my age is invalid

hi i really like this neet and i like that he has so much canon snz. ive had this in my drafts for like over a month but i got nothin better to do so here i hope u enjoy

Just when Urushihara thought he was in the clear from horrific sinus symptoms, his body firmly corrected him first thing in the morning. Apparently the more-than-week-long allergy attack he’d endured—courtesy of the kitten Maou had brought home—hadn’t been enough suffering for him. The fact that the headache accompanying the dull aching in his sinuses had come on together full force indicated this was something different. Something new, yet tauntingly familiar. 

Even with the little evidence he’d gone off, he’d done a double take when he’d gotten up to stock the closet with snacks and to bring the computer in to make sure nobody had decided to bring another cat in from the cold. Upon further inspection, nothing seemed suspicious and he remembered they’d all been in somewhat early for the night. Yep, he’s sick. 

After many failed sleeping attempts, Urushihara had to admit to himself that he’s stuck awake for the time being. The bottled tea tasted especially sweet in his mouth as it washed away the grime from breathing exclusively through it and throughout the hour he’d spent grieving his inability to sleep. He’d done his best to stay quiet enough to convince everyone outside of the closet of otherwise, but it’s starting to hurt to muffle his coughs into his sleeve. And even worse is—

“hGNxnt!” 

—Pinching his nose shut to sneeze. After the amount of grief everyone had given him for his allergy attack, he’s not looking forward to his roommates and neighbor taking notice of this too. They’re gonna be pissed. The computer screen went black as he opened a new tab and he gave himself a wry look before typing in his next search. 

This sucks; he can’t even enjoy the rabbit hole dive on The Sims he’d started on the computer when playing the actual game had become too much of a struggle (stupid overheating computer). His tired eyes trudged on deep into the Fridge Logic section of the TV Tropes page as he tried to bore himself back to sleep. Maybe he’d feel better if he ordered something? 

Oh no.

“Hihh…” The tickle in his nose had become fierce from being denied its full resolution. “Nnh…hh…h-ngxht!” 

And now he’s gone and made it worse. 

“hh-....hihhtschh’iuhhh! --ahkSHhh’iuh!” he sneezed a little too freely against the hand he’d thrown up in front of his face too late. Damnit. Maybe Ashiya won’t notice. Goosebumps prickle across his skin and create art with the speckles of spray. “hh- hhyhh...hihh! ehhdtSChh’hiehh!” 

What had started as a dull ache in his throat this morning, has evolved into a monstrous omnipresent itch always creeping deeper into his sinuses; each sneeze counterintuitively only seems to make the desperation to sneeze again worse. Time to look something else up. He sneezes again and forces a few miserable sniffles to avoid letting any of the mess that’s threatening to escape to do just that. He’s genuinely wondering if Ashiya would kill him for wiping his nose on his sleeve, but he’s starting to run low on options; he’d depleted their tissue supply down to nothing last week, and he knows his roommates were already pissed at him from his most recent purchases to want to approve any additional expenses. 

“Must you continue these theatrics?” Ashiya’s voice chimed in from outside the closet, fist rapping on the door. Speak of the devil…Or in this case Alciel.  “Good morning. Oh, no. That’s not right, it’s not morning—it’s two PM.”

Urushihara sniffled and sneezed loudly again before giving a petulant greeting. “Hell-fucki’gg-o to you too.”

“I vacuumed thoroughly already and I’ve no plans to do so again,” Ashiya said with a scowl in reference to his efforts in removing all the cat dander. In all fairness, he had vacuumed and dusted and disinfected with his usual diligence. “Time to get up. You can’t keep avoiding your chores like the plague.”

“hehtk’SCHhhu!” Urushihara answered. He hadn’t heard half of what Ashiya said while his breath was hitching. “Greadt choice of words, dude.” He rolls his eyes. “I thingk I’mb sigck.”

Ashiya opened the door and sighed, forehead scrunching as if he’s the one with a headache. “You’re kidding.”

“Yeah, I’mb ju-juhh—” He sniffled again, fighting for his life to keep his nose from running whilst trying to keep next breath from snagging and triggering another onslaught of sneezing. Unfortunately, sneezing again is inevitable and has to pick between the glorious options of letting his nose run or sacrificing the shirt or the thin blanket wrapped tightly around himself. “Hehh…” He cups the blanket over his face before letting out a boisterous sneeze. “Jusdt sdneezi’gg for the lullz.”

“You can not be sick, you barely leave the closet, never mind the apartment! And, hey, that blanket was just—” 

“HEHhhkshh! Mbaybe I’mb allergic to you thend.” 

“Ugh!” Ashya takes a step back. “I think you sneezed on the blanket and the computer at the same time. How?”

“Doh one else uses the combputer addyway,” Urushihara said awkwardly, scrubbing his nose with the back of his hand. As an afterthought, he wiped the laptop screen he’d evidently misted with the hem of his shirt and pretended not to notice the dagger-like glare Ashiya’s eyes had been pushing into him. 

Ashiya sighed and walked away and returned with a three-ply mask. “Here, at least attempt to not spread your germs everywhere. His Highness does not receive much in terms of sick leave, and as you know, the household budget is stretched thinly enough as it is.”

“Thangk you for your concerned. I’ll jusdt stay in here,” he said sarcastically as he fixed the loops of the mask over his ears. He sniffled thickly and pointedly added, “You’re probably bedtter off leavi’gg the door closed.” 

Urushihara had dismissed him, but Ashiya continued to stand there in some form of disbelief, so back on his ears went his headphones. He knew the soundproof ones would  be worth it. He easily returned his full attention to his search: Cold, flu, allergies, sinusitis. Hm.

Ahsiya pulled the headphones off his head. “If you were really trying to get better, you’d be resting, not rotting over your computer.”

“It’s releveddt research, Bo’b.” Urushihara said, not moving his tired eyes from the screen. “And be careful with these, they were expendsive.”

“How expensive?” 

“Mbore expend’sive if you break themb and we have to order an’dother pair.” After skimming a few articles, he finds a website with a seemingly useful tool that'll hopefully bring him one step closer to figuring out how to get rid of this world’s ailments.

“You’re lucky I don’t have the internet disconnected. What’s that?”

Uriushihara was too fixated on using the WebMD Symptom Checker to hear what he said. It was not off to the best start. “Oh, not even my age is valid, huh.” 

“What?...And who is this Bob?”

“What?”

“You said you were researching Bob?” 

Urushihara’s head spun for a moment. What the fuck? His head felt like cotton as he recalled their exchange. Idiot. “Mbo’bb,” He attempted to amend. It didn’t help the confusion. He sniffled—or at least tried to—a few times and groaned. “Emb Oh Emmmmb. Ugh. Forget idt.” 

“How can you have a runny nose and congestion?”

Whether that was in reference to the list of symptoms or the pathetic display, Urushihara didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. Another thing this mask is good for is hiding the flush that just crossed his cheeks from the mix of concern and disgust written all over Ashiya’s face. “The hell if I n’dow.” He adds “headache” to the list and casts a glare at the man who’s hanging over him like a damn tree. 

“Hheh…h-” He has to stop searching as his nose starts to run again and drags the creeping tickle from the back of his nose forward. At least he’s already wearing a mask, he supposed. It gives him the maximum amount of time to try reading without the nuisance of having to turn away from the screen. “h-huhh…EhhdzsSCHhh’iyuhh! Guhh…” He sniffled and shook his head as the relief from the sneeze was lost to the pounding in his head.

“Don't forget sneezing,” Ashiya reminded him with an eye roll. 

“Yeah yeah. Hilarious.”

“Really chills? Do you have a fever?”

“Dude, I dunndo we don’dt have a—” Urushihara didn’t get the chance to horrifically pronounce the word “thermometer” before Ashiya’s palm came flying at his forehead like he was aiming to smash a mosquito into his skull. He shrinks back into himself like a frightened turtle at the unwanted human contact. “T-Too close…”

“Hm. Best put fever down too.”

Urushihara shrugged, not risking another breath, never mind attempting to make another thanks, Mom type of remark, with how precarious his grip on the next sneeze threatening to escape is. It’s proven futile when he inevitably has to breathe.

“ndtKSH! IHHSHHhu! Guhh…” The inside of his mask felt particularly disgusting after that set of sneezes. He grimaced and clicked around a bit more before continuing to the results. They both pretend to not hear the crackling in Urushihara’s sinuses joining in the cadence of the clicking and typing.

“You’d think someone so small wouldn’t be able to sneeze so loudly,” Ashiya mused. 

“Ugh, dude ah-hehhH- hhh…f-fucgk off.” Urushihara paused to steady his breathing to avoid a repeat performance. He cleared his throat indignantly, bang conveniently shifting to cover more of his face. His hair along with his mask have effectively covered a good 75% of it. “I guess it’s a cold or flu. Dunndo.”

He clicked back and forth to compare while Ashiya continued to hover. “Either way, it looks like rest is the best remedy.” And with that, he confiscated the laptop and held it out of Urushihara’s reach. 

“H-hey! What th-the heh…hh-hHYSCHh’iew!” 

Slam.

The sound of aerosol spray followed, and then the pungent scent of disinfectant, and then another loud sneezing fit. It’s only when Urushihara  has resigned himself to trying to sleep again that there’s more knocking—this time at the front door. Ashiya answered the door to a stern-looking Suzuno.

“Tell me you didn’t bring another stray in,” she commanded, looking past him. 

“What?” 

“Do not lie.” Suzuno peeked in, looking around, perhaps hopeful that there really is a cat in the room. She shook her head and glared at Alciel. “I can hear Lucifer sneezing from next door.”

“I’ll have you know, I did no such—”

“Is that poison?”

“It’s Lysol!”

When the bickering seemed like it wasn’t going to resolve itself fast enough, Urushihara sighed and put his mask back on before opening the closet door. “N’dot allergies. I’mb sick.” he said miserably before slamming the door again. 

“He’s a bit cranky because he exceeded his screen time for the day.”

“Screw you.” The voice crack that accompanied the phrase and the chesty cough that followed stripped him of what little remaining NEET pride he retained after Ashiya had talked about him like he’s Alas Ramus’ age.

“If you don’t mind, he needs to nap.”

***

Maou came home with tissues. He, too, had been kept up by Urushihara’s sporadic coughing and sneezing; the closet door could only muffle so much, and Urushihara wasn’t exactly one to ail quietly. Eventually they’d just put white noise videos on the laptop to act as a buffer for all of the noise.

He yawned and announced his arrival, quietly in case Urushihara was actually sleeping. (And if that’s the case, he’d take advantage of the peace and enjoy a nap.) “Hey, Ashiya. Look, free tissues? Isn’t Japan great?”

“Oh?” Ashiya’s face lit up at the word free. 

“And when I mentioned my roommate was sick, she gave me a whole handful,” Maou whispered excitedly.

“Excellent, Sire!” Ashiya praised, holding a few packets of pocket tissues. He sighs.“Though at the rate he’s going, we’ll be out by tomorrow. Again.”

Maou pointed at the closet. “Is he…?”

“I don’t know.” Ashiya shrugged and frowned. He lowered his voice. “He finally went to sleep an hour ago, and he still had a fever.”

“Still?” Maou frowned. “Chi said he should see a doctor if it lasts more than three days.”

“I’ll make sure it does not come to that.” Somehow, Urushihara was the only one of the trio to have not landed himself in the hospital, and it’d be best to keep it that way. Ashiya’s brow furrowed at the risks involved with the situation. Even beyond the risks to the budget.

“It should be okay, fevers are pretty common,” Maou smiles. Lightly he added, “Besides, all he ever does is rest.” 

“hyHEH’gkSChh!” The hoarse noise was muffled by the closet, but they were standing close enough that they could hear the familiar sound of Urushihara’s sneeze.

“Could you guys ligke stop talk’igg about mbe?” he complained, snuffling noisly.

“Chi says that’s just a superstition.”

“Seriously? Thatd’s like our whole thi’gg.” 

They shared a moment of silence. 

“How are you feelin’, man?” Maou asked, changing the subject. Urushihara coughed. “Not great, huh?”

“Are you gonnda give mbe a tissue or are you just gonnda stare at me?” 

“Watch your tongue and be grateful, Lucifer!”

“Here,” Maou said, handing him a few packs. 

***

“Here. The pharmacist told me this is one of the most commonly used cold medicines.” Suzuno passed the bag over to Ashiya. As Ashiya bent to thank her, she interrupts, “Do not mistake this as an act of kindness, I am merely tired of being kept up all night.”

“heh’GKSCHh’hiuhh!” 

“I can’t thank you enough,” Ashiya said with a slight bow. He rapped on the closet door with the backs of his knuckles. “Urushihara, come take your medicine.”

“There’s something else for you, Lucifer,” Suzuno said as the closet door creaked open. She reached into the pocket of her kimono and revealed a folded piece of paper and held it out to him. “It’s from Alas Ramus, apparently she’s worried about you.” 

Urushihara opened it to reveal a card drawn by the kid. He’s pretty sure the two blobs in the corner were meant to be them together, and scrawled over a heart were the words git well sun looshifa. “W-well, mbake sure you tell her I’mb not dyi’gg or anddythi’gg!!” he protested, eyes prickling with tears. He clears his throat and carefully folds the card and tucks it away into one of the nooks in the closet, and ignores the proud smile on Maou’s face as he takes the most disgusting swallow of his life.

“Don’t grimace like that, you’re older than everyone in the room put together,” Suzuno scolded. 

“Dude, that’s ndot what grape tastes like!”

“He means thank you.” 

“...Thank you,” he said hesitantly, face warming over to his ears. 

Suzuno cleared her throat. “Get plenty of rest.”

And soon enough, the Devil's Castle was at peace again, at least for the evening.

[outlanderalien]

@fullheartedlyprovocative

Very good point! Many people who aren’t from the UK are probably not aware of the impending disaster that is Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

I keep describing him as a clown, incompetent and overall destructive to society as a whole, but i’ve failed to go into detail. And the reason is simple: There’s just far too much to cover in a concise and efficient way. It is very literally a massive rabbit hole that knows no end.

But i should probably collate some of his more memorable moments, so that everyone can get a rough idea about who he is exactly and why we’re all dead inside. 

Bojo is often described as clownish, but don’t let that fool you into thinking he’s harmless. He’s as Machiavellian as a politician can get, and he weaponises his clownish behaviour in order to cover up his corruption. He has this down to an Art. 

A recent example of his perception manipulation:

During the Brexit referendum, Boris was heavily campaigning for Leave, and he infamously commissioned a big red Bus with this message on it, claiming that the 350 million currently going to EU membership will be redirected to the UKs NHS (National Health Service), this was a massive deal and fueled the leave campaign. 

This was also a massive lie, and he was (rightly) hated for it.

The Bus Lie hung over Boris long after the referendum. When you’d type up Boris Johnson on Google, it would suggest the Bus scandal as an auto-complete search, bringing up countless articles on the lie that had clearly tarnished Boris’ reputation.

However, during the leadership campaign, Boris did something extraordinary. While being interviewed about his leadership bid, he was asked what he does for fun. This was his response:

Hilarious. Ridiculous. Blustering. Making it up as he went along. It quickly became an interview widely mocked across social media and news outlets. Why did he make himself sound like such an idiot? Why buses? This is why:

He is not only immune to being mocked, he has weaponised it to cover up his biggest controversies. Typing up “Boris Johnson Bus” now yields funny clips of him struggling to get through an interview talking about painting little buses. His Bus Scandal has almost been entirely pushed out of the picture.

That is only the tip of the Boris shaped iceberg. 

His clowning has gotten him national and international mockery. Who can forget that time Boris (while Mayor of London) got stuck on a zip-line because he was too heavy?

Or that time that he got overly competitive in a game of rugby against kids and tackled a child.

Or that time during a recent Leadership debate where he pulled out a literal Kipper and waved it about, declaring that “we will get our Kippers BACK when we leave the EU!”

What a silly man. How completely harmless he must be.

Well while the nation struggles to get these images out of their heads, collectively we have forgotten many of his greatest sins.

One sin still hangs above him... An ongoing scandal that has endangered the life of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. 

In 2017 Nazanin had travelled to Iran from the UK to visit her parents, when she was detained by authorities under suspicion of coming to Iran in order to train journalists. In 2017 when Boris was Foreign Secretary and during Nazanins trial, Boris made this statement to the news:

“When I look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism, as I understand it,”

This was considered damning evidence that was used against Nazanin. She is still imprisoned today. Her husband in the UK has been tirelessly campaigning for her release, going on a joint hunger-strike with her. Boris refuses to take any responsibility for his comments or apologise for what he has caused.

This isn’t the first or last time Boris has been reckless with his words.

Very recently, Sir Kim Darroch (the UKs (now former) ambassador to the US) suffered a memo leak, in which unflattering remarks regarding Donald Trumps presidency surfaced. The leak was unfortunate, but the comments made were not unprofessional and entirely expected from a foreign diplomat. But Trump wasn’t happy and applied pressure to the UK government to fire Darroch for doing his job. The entire UK government united behind Darroch and supported him...... well... almost the entire government. During a live debate, the final two leadership candidates were asked about the Darroch situation, and whether Darroch would remain in his job if they become PM. Boris refused to comment and avoided the question as usual. However since Boris was the favourite to win, Darroch realised he had no hope, so he resigned. Boris was cited as the main reason and was widely criticised. 

Before Boris was a politician, he was a journalist. And in recent years, a very unsavoury recording surfaced from his time as a Journalist in 1990...A phone recording between him and Darius Guppy, where the two conspired to have a reporter physically hurt. (Somehow this is the only youtube video available on this...)

Boris has also been known to have absolutely no filter and speaks before he thinks. Such comments are a result of this.

He had referred to black people as “Piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”

In 2018 he had referred to Muslim women wearing burkas as looking like “letter-boxes”

At a conference on Libya in 2017 he claimed that the country could become a thriving luxury resort once they “cleared the dead bodies away”

In 2013 he claimed that Malyasian women went to University because they “have to find men to marry”

In 2006 he claimed that Barack Obama had an “ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender”

All of this... and we haven’t even covered his politics yet.

This is the big reason why he’s becoming PM and it’s simple. He’s lying to everyone.

He’s promising everything to everyone. He’s promised a soft brexit to some, a hard brexit to others. But he refuses to explain how he would achieve either. He’s only now clearly settling on the side of a hard-brexit, or what’s considered a No-Deal brexit (walking away from the EU without striking a trade deal), but he has no answers for any questions posed to him. 

His debating strategy, and interview strategy is to make people laugh until they forget what they asked him.

When asked "Is austerity a dead duck at this point?” he ended up rambling about ducks for a solid minute and making the audience giggle before giving a very vague and nothing answer

When debating with leadership rival Jeremy Hunt, he won over the audiences heart by interrupting Hunt with immature jokes.

After declaring that he knows exactly what he’s doing in regards to a No-Deal brexit, he tells everyone that he will follow “Paragraph 5B” of a document that will supposedly solve the Brexit crisis. He repeats “Paragraph 5B” constantly, giving the impression that he’s a man of detail and knows the entire document like the back of his hand. When asked if he knew what was in Paragraph 5C, he simply states “no” and tries to play it off like it’s funny. Without a studio audience to laugh at him, he was simply left in the silence of an astounded interviewer. This is one of the many reasons why he had avoided as many interviews as possible during his leadership campaign.

The fact is, no one knows what he really stands for, no one knows what he’ll really do. He’s a wild-card, or more appropriately, the Joker card. He seems crazy enough and chaotic enough to go through with No-Deal that people are voting for him. But so many people are going to be disappointed. This is a man who says he’s always wanted to be Prime Minister ever since he was 15. He wants power for the sake of power. And for some reason, the Tory party are handing him that power.

There’s so much more to go into, but this is a good initial crash-course into Bojo, the literal clown.

[arabellaflynn]

Text of a test monologue. Would you like to see me deliver this on camera, with no makeup, no lighting equipment, and using Notepad as a TelePrompTer? Head on over to my https://www.patreon.com/ArabellaFlynnPatreon, and for a dollar a month you too can see me waffle on in real time.

Hi, all. You may notice that I am on video now. I was going to shoot a couple of tests and apologize for the poor quality of the footage, and explain that I want to start vlogging and streaming in addition to writing, but I need some equipment to do it properly and for that I need to raise some funds... But fuck it. This is going out first instead.

As I record this, it is the fourth of July. You can probably hear the fireworks outside my window. I know I can. There are a lot of those, because we've all been inside and bored for the past four months. 

I know a lot of people who have opted not to observe the holiday this year. The 4th of July is often viewed as a celebration of the American institution, which is a little bit on fire right now, with a few people determined to squirt lighter fluid all over the flames like a bored suburban dad at a barbecue. On the other hand, it's also Independence Day, and marks the end of the long, painful process by which a population broke free of distant, uncaring overlords who cared mainly about the financial dividends of their colonies, and ignored the grievances of the people until they started breaking shit. So YMMV.

I would comment on some of the details, but I don't know them. The Late Show is on hiatus, and John Oliver doesn't air until tomorrow. I, like a lot of my demographic, get most of my current events from comedians. There's a reason for that.

I actually watched a lot of news as a teenager.

Well, "watched" might be too strong a word. It's easier for me to fall asleep if there's some sort of droning noise in the background. When I was about fifteen, I discovered that, unlike the main CNN channel, which has actual shows and documentaries, CNN Headline News just runs the day's top stories over and over again in an unending 30 minute loop. Interesting enough to keep me from falling into a train of thought that will prevent me from sleeping, boring enough that I don't want to stay up and listen.

I have no memory of the desk anchors. I'm sure they were consummate professionals, but they also had no distinguishing human characteristics whatsoever. I know they were updating the loop live, because occasionally a story would be added to the list and another one would drop off the back, and occasionally one would flub the text on their prompter, but other than that there was no hint that the face at the desk was attached to a living, breathing person.

I do remember a couple of the correspondents. One was Christiane Amanpour. Her voice stood out; CNN is an American news station that was originally restricted to American cable networks, and the vast majority of the staff is from the US. Amanpour is British-Iranian, having split her childhood between Tehran, before the revolution, and London, after. They liked to send her to the bowels of Eastern Europe to report from the war-torn streets of Citygrad in Countrystan. She had already caught some criticism on her reporting of the Bosnian War, for advancing the apparently controversial opinion that genocide was bad. I didn't know that at the time; I just thought she sounded more like she told real stories than read off lists of facts.

Another was Anderson Cooper, who was not nearly such a big deal then as he is now. Cooper, a self-described adrenaline junkie, was a war correspondent at the time, with a habit of ducking only briefly for explosions before standing back up to continue his piece to camera. He wouldn't be infamous until his coverage of Hurricane Katrina years later, both for the overall stellar job he did, and also for that one time he got tired of getting non-answers from some government toad in a live interview and very professionally flipped his shit at the lady, asking if she realized how tone deaf it was to sit there thanking other politicians for doing essentially nothing while there were still bodies in the street.

I quit watching the news when I moved away to college. It wasn't necessarily that knowing was worse than not knowing, but I felt a lot of pressure to be "adult" about it at that point, and watching proper news shows made me anxious to the point where I wouldn't sleep. I outright avoided it to the point where I made it to a canceled class at 4 pm, Mountain Standard Time, on September 11, 2001, before anyone told me what was going on.

I wasn't able to put my finger on why I found the news so horrible until many years later. I can't remember what rabbit hole I'd fallen down, but I ended up sitting on YouTube watching segments of the live news coverage of the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. Reagan was shot in the side and later recovered without complications, but his Press Secretary, James Brady, was struck in the head and sustained considerable neurological damage. Brady, together with his wife Sarah, later went on to be a noted advocate for gun control, but at the time was reported to have died on the scene. 

I wound up watching a lot of one of the news desks -- ABC, I think. It started out like all the others, until the anchor tripped up a couple of times and referred to Press Secretary Brady as "Jim", and I realized: He knows these people. Personally. He's a member of the White House Press Corps, or a friend of the Bradys, or both. I'm watching a journalist reporting on a moment of historical significance to the American people, and a human being who has to tell the entire nation about someone's personal tragedy. His investment did not make him any less professional or informative than any of the others, but it did make his coverage feel very grounded in reality in a way that most news, then and now, does not.

The older I get, the more disquieting I find it to have a talking head behind a shiny desk read me a list of horrible things that have happened today without any apparent reaction. It makes it seem like these things are a randomized representative sample of the cruelty of the universe, rather than what they are, which is a list of things so unusually terrible they made the news. I realize that this is part of an effort to remain impartial so that the viewer can decide how they feel about events, but it's also disturbingly normative. Yes, everything is on fire, everything is always on fire, this is nothing new. 

I can't say I'm any more enamored of the opposite, either, the more recent style where the news anchor's entire job is to tell you that entirety of human existence is awful and here's what you should prioritize being afraid of this week. Everything around you is on fire, the fire is racing right at you, and here's whose fault the fire is.

A lot of Americans, especially younger ones, have taken to getting their news mostly from political satire because-- well, one, because for about the past twenty years, our comedians have been better at fact-checking than our actual newsrooms. You can thank Jon Stewart for getting a bee in his bonnet over that. But also because their coverage of major issues takes neither of those paths. The Daily Show alumni write up stories like they actually live on the planet they're reporting from. You're on fire? They're on fire too! Holy shit, let's all find some water! 

The conceit behind the comedy of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report and Full Frontal and Last Week Tonight and now the monologues on The Late Show is not that this is a normal amount of fire for everything to be on so it's fine, nor establishing that someone has set you on fire on purpose and here's who should be punished for it. It's bewilderment and frustration at the way we somehow keep catching on fire over and over again. Yeah, they crack jokes, because it's their job, but all the jokes are predicated on the idea that this is, above all, just very, very, inexplicably stupid. We can, and we should, be better than this. And the hosts stubbornly refuse to just give up and internalize as immutable all the reasons why we aren't.

You wouldn't know it to look at him, but Jon Stewart has accumulated "fuck you" money from his time on The Daily Show, among other things. I really hope the rest of them are doing the same. Because we need some figureheads who are able to say "fuck you" to a lot of authority figures right now without having to worry about how their family is going to survive the next month. John Oliver has HBO backing and I'm pretty sure Last Week Tonight has roughly equal budgets set aside for handling lawsuits and shoveling money at charity. Stephen Colbert has been insulting Donald Trump as hard as he possibly can since day one, and he just re-upped until 2023. Samantha Bee has her husband holding the camera to shoot her monologues out in the woods. 

They've all figured out how to produce their show over the internet, so at least we have something to watch in the After Times.

I really hope the neighbors run out of fireworks soon. Aside from not wanting the neighborhood to be literally on fire at any point, one of my housemates has a dog, and the dog has epilepsy, so this has been an interesting evening. Sorry about the fireworks, sorry about the camera, sorry about the country, sorry about the state of the world. Imma go find my Xanax. G'night.

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[understandingthevoices]

~ wrote a thing about identifying narcissistic abuse in the brown girl group i’m a part of since so many brown boys are narcs lmao and it was so well-received that I thought i would share here too ~ 

Recently a few people asked me how I became aware of my ex's personality disorder and how I started my healing process w/o a therapist (though if I had seen someone, perhaps this would have been faster)...

It's a LONG one but hopefully informative!!

So we had been on and off for years since college - with me realizing flaws he had and him making it up to me until the next one hit and so on and so forth (and I thought, yay! change! this can work***) - but then it came to a point where I told him enough was enough and we deserved to find people who made us happy and maybe we could revisit "us" in the future. But he cried and told me he couldn't lose me and wanted to actually try the "love" thing out... So, I allowed myself to believe he was for real -- and (somewhat) let down my emotional guards that I had held for self-preservation. Things seemed to be going okay - we would send each other hearts, talk about our future house, kids, etc and everything was fine and dandy, and I thought I was "happy" or "happy enough" - after all, I had the guy right? What more could I want?

But then, let me take you to a Friday afternoon at Trader Joes's, where I was grabbing my groceries and suddenly noticed something: along with her groceries, every woman was walking out with flowers, which I imagined was because of a scheduled date night. it seems so silly now, but at that moment, I broke down into tears because I realized I wanted that too - and if I continued in my old patterns only because it (he) was familiar and all I had known, I would never get that.

He would tell me about our beautiful future life together but wouldn't even take a 4 hour train to visit me.

Basically, He could talk a big talk, he could weave stories about anything to make me believe in us (and he was a MASTER storyteller and had a vivid imagination), but he couldn't walk the walk. Or rather, he didn't care to walk the walk. And if I brought these things up, he would belittle me or say he was busy, essentially reframing my needs as unimportant and not worthy of consideration. But then he would cover it up by saying our kids would be beautiful and smart, he would leave NYC to be in Boston for me, etc - and it was so easy to get sucked in, so tempting to believe this was only temporary.....

But then I would have insomniac nights, where I was filled with anxiety/sadness because I knew I wasn't happy - and the breakdown in Trader Joe's confirmed that

And he had already conditioned me into understanding that if I talked to him about these feelings, he would invalidate, ignore, and eventually bring them up later as ammunition (a favorite of his was “did you forget, we’re not a couple”, which was so hurtful and confusing af lmao)

Up until that point, I had maintained he was just "emotionally unavailable" or "commitmentphobic" and if he saw I wasn't going to nag him or push him into marriage, etc - he would realize it wasn't so scary and we could finally build a life together! It felt like we were moving in that direction, finally. But then every so often, I would have moments where the reality became a little too clear and there was little I could do to stop myself from breaking down.

And it was at my wit's end during these nights that I googled things like "why is he so emotionally distant" and stumbled upon a trove of gold Quora questions/answers - and once I discovered Quora, I went HAM.

Questions like...

"why does he try to make me jealous"

"why does he get mad when he sees me with other guys"

"why won't he commit"

"why won't he let me meet his friends"

"why does he not let me go" / "why does he keep holding on to me"

"why does he say he cares but not visit"

... And throughout all of this searching, one of the answers inevitably mentioned emotional abuse (and often narcissistic abuse) - and while I didn't initially think my situation was abusive, because it seemed like such a strong term, I was so desperate for answers and it came up so often that I said fcuk it, let's see what this is about.

So I googled "emotional abuse" and "narcissistic abuse" and read the stories of survivors, many of which echoed mine. I was shocked that these people had dated what seemed to be clones of my own ex. Many of them mentioned kids/divorce/etc and how they wish they had realized the signs sooner instead of wasting so many years with an emotional vampire, who would initially seem like your soulmate, ingratiate himself to you, praise you and put you on a pedestal, only to suck the life out of you through devaluing mechanisms and never listening to your needs, and discard you later (or stay until you stop giving them chances) - and then play the same game with the next victim, leaving a trail of broken people. They posted about the fake personalities, the emotional highs and lows, how he would leave and come back months/years later as if nothing had changed, etc - and things finally started making sense.

I had noticed many of these things - but without the awareness of narcissism - didn't know what to make of it. For example, when we were on our off-periods and he was out chasing Muslim girls, he (someone I had known as a frat fcukboy who would crush 20 beers in a night) became the sober, praying virtue-driven man. When he was out chasing someone else, he pretended to love Rupi Kaur poetry - even though we made fun of it together (no offense). I often felt like he seemed so ~different~ during these periods - and would call him out on it, but he would always deny it. But, looking back, I realize it wasn't just in my head as he wanted me to believe.

Luckily for me, he had grown to like one of these girls and we decided to take a break (later, I would realize he was trying to 'triangulate' me with her, but even back then I wouldn't succumb to his dumb games) -- which gave me much needed time to continue my Quora obsessiveness... and I went down the rabbit hole. Quora led me to narcissistic abuse recovery youtube channels and instagram accounts - which further opened my eyes to the lies I had been fed. It was heartbreaking but I began to realize his version of "love" (if you can even call his self-serving love that) was so different from mine - for him, it was latching onto someone who would validate him, give him the emotional supply he needed, and be there at his beck and call -- which I was happy to do if it was reciprocal, but of course it wasn't lol. It was completely one-sided and I let it happen because for me, the love I felt was genuine - not fabricated - and I thought that's what you do when you're in love (and it's what I saw growing up in my parent's relationship). I didn't want to believe it but the answer was clear as day - I had been conned into a fake relationship by someone who didn't have the capacity to love someone, and could only use them.

At this point, I realized ~5 years of on-and-off narcissistic abuse (and more than 2 decades of observing my parents' toxic marriage) would take a long time for me to heal from, but if I wanted to have any chance at a truly happy, healthy relationship (which I so earnestly did), I had to let him go. So I dived headfirst - watched at least 1-2 hours worth of videos every day, cried about the disrespect I had put up with, wrote pages and pages of text, etc - and became entrenched in this mode of self-improvement and inner child-finding. And I put them on my tumblr, so he would see them (I knew he was still checking up on me).

So when he inevitably came back because the girl he was chasing "was not who I thought she was" and wanted to be with me because I was so "perfect, knew him better than he knew himself, and so smart", I had the emotional wherewithal to tell him I didn't want this anymore -- and the little bits of changes he would make to attempt to gratify me - I could see through them and they were no longer enough. I think it was a last ditch attempt on his side - my tumblr posts made it obvious I was leveling up and wanted nothing more to do with him.

He was upset and told me he was talking to this girl on a dating app - but she was boring and a downgrade from me - and I just said, "cool". He then told me if I didn't want to try again, he would have no choice but to date her and see where it goes. And at that point, I just wanted him to leave me alone, as I knew anything with him would be a dead end. And I was TIRED. So to his surprise, I said go for it - and blocked him from everything and everywhere. I felt an immediate sense of relief, as I knew the nightmare was finally over and he was someone else's problem now. Of course, just like anyone else, I have my ups and downs too - but I'm definitely much better off.

Now? I haven't heard from him in over 2 years. I don't think I will - I told our mutual friends all about his deceit, post about it on my twitter, and make sure everyone knows how phony he is - and I think he realizes the ruse is over. I have found him out, and he knows he should stay away unless he wants me to expose him even more. I can hit him where it hurts and he is terrified - exactly where I like boys to be ;)

Anyways, last I heard, he's engaged to that girl he said was a downgrade (which isn't that surprising - since I gave him a narcissistic injury by leaving he knew he had to lock down the next one or she would leave too) - which is quite sad. I pray she sees the light before he takes too much away from her.

Hope it clears up things -- as always, feel free to PM me. More than happy to help anyone, especially if it means saving one of you from a toxic monster <3

***This is one of the subtle points that makes narcissists so difficult to identify: usually, when someone changes for you, it's because they like you and don't want to hurt you - compromise! that's what you do when you're in love, right? However, for a narcissist, it's not "love" - it's him realizing that if he wants to keep you trapped in his web of deceit, he needs to change - and this is true for both the beginning of the relationships and the whole duration. They don't have any integrity so they will change into whoever you want them to be, if it means you'll be attracted to them -- they are so good at reading you, figuring you out, and identifying your deepest desires/wants that they can transform into your idea of a perfect partner -- and they DO, but it's only a set up to manipulate you later. It's addicting to meet who you easily consider your "soulmate"... but in the end, you realize it was too good to be true.

[smoochcal]

numb without you (part six)

a/n: we got 20 notes on part 5!!! a little reminder that I would really like to get at least 20 notes on the previous part before I post the next one, so please tell your friends about this series :) I just wanted to take some time to thank each and every one of you for supporting my writing. if you have any suggestions on how you want this series to go, please let me know!! this series has quickly become my baby and I am very proud of it. also, a big giant thank you to el for helping me with the little details of this series and for inspiring me to be soft on a daily basis about both luke and calum. I have so much love for you it’s kind of ridiculous. (read part five here)

pairing: readerxluke

word count: 1.8 k

playlist: numb without you by the maine, risky business by the cab

summary: you get morning sickness for the first time and don’t want to bother Luke with it

warnings: swearing, mentions of puking, slight jealousy

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Y/N’s POV:

Can it even be called morning sickness if you are dry heaving over your toilet at 11pm?

I mean it is a possibility that this is just the aftermath of you eating too much ice cream, but you really doubt it. Especially because your doctor was surprised that you had not experienced any morning sickness yet. Of course, this had to happen right after you were left alone though. You always hated being sick and if right now is any indication of how the rest of this pregnancy is going to go, you better be prepared for a lot of sickness. The waves of nausea are still hitting you pretty hard, but you go into the kitchen to see if you have any ginger ale or sprite or saltine crackers to calm your stomach. That’s what always helped when you were little at least.

After five minutes of frantically looking for food in between the waves of nausea that made you hover over your sink more often than not you decide that you do not have anything that could help you in your current situation. You sigh at the thought that is making its way to the front of your mind as you pick up your phone. You don’t want to call Luke since he was just here, and you really don’t have many other options of people that can help you. But you definitely need someone to get you some ginger ale as soon as possible if you want to make it to work in the morning. You scroll through your contacts and your thumb hovers over the person who you inevitably have to turn to.

Calum.

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Calum’s POV:

11:55 PM

That’s the time my clock reads when you were rudely woken up by someone calling. The minute you finally open my eyes and see who is calling, you answer right away feeling bad for even thinking negatively about the situation.

“Y/N, what’s wrong? Is everything okay?” you mutter quickly, worried that something bad has happened since you left her earlier today.

“Calum, calm down. I’m okay, the baby is okay…just…fuck can you go to the store and bring me some ginger ale? I’ve been puking for the past hour or I would get it myself…and I would ask Luke, but he recently left and-” Y/N starts but you cut her off.

“I’ll be there in twenty…hang in there,” you say before quickly hanging up and putting on your shoes.

You guess this is only the beginning to your late-night rendezvouses with Y/N, which forms a pit in your stomach worried about the future.

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Y/N’s POV:

Literally in twenty minutes flat Calum was at your door step with two bags from the nearby grocery store. You could not be more thankful for him at a time like this. You stop violently retching your guts up about five minutes ago which you were rather pleased about considering you did not want Calum to see you like that…not like he won’t see you at your worst throughout this pregnancy, but today was not that day.

He brought you a two liter of ginger ale, your favorite kind to be exact, and some crackers and other various snacks for when you were feeling a little bit more yourself. You were so thankful that he was able to bring you what you needed, but you can’t help but feel a little guilty that you asked him instead of Luke. In any other circumstance you would’ve asked Luke over Calum but you felt weird asking Luke to come back so soon after he had just left. He’s still your best friend but you don’t want to put all the “father of the baby” type responsibilities on him when Calum is the father and Luke isn’t.

You’re sure this isn’t going to be the only time that you feel this way. It just sucks because you were so close to Luke before this and you don’t want a baby to ruin your relationship with your best friend. God, why couldn’t you have just made your move in Luke instead of Calum. What were you thinking?

Before you could dive deeper into this self pity rabbit hole you were digging yourself, Calum grabs your attention.

“Is there anything else that I can get you before I go home? It’s getting kinda late and I know we both have work in the morning…” he says, pulling you out of your thoughts.

“No no I’m good…thank you again for everything. Sorry that I woke you up…” you respond, feeling bad that you had been so inconsiderate of his time.

You walked him to the front door, thanking him about seven more times for helping you out. He asks you to keep him updated on anything else that happens. Especially the nausea which makes you laugh. And just like that you are alone again. You pour yourself a glass of ginger ale and decide it would probably be best if you got ready for bed considering it was already 12:00 and you had to be up for work at 7:00. You take a sip of your drink, already feeling better and lay down hoping that sleep comes easily tonight. Before you know it, you were out like a light.

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~The Next Day~

Luke’s POV:

You can’t believe it. You can’t believe she chose Calum over you. Okay, maybe that is just you being a little dramatic. But she really called Calum last night instead of me? What happened to my best friend who would call me if she needed a bug killed in her apartment? Shouldn’t this be the same thing?

You’re sure she has a reasonable explanation for why she chose him, so you really shouldn’t worry about it. It was just a one-time thing, or that’s what you keep telling yourself. You know you shouldn’t let your emotions get the best of you; jealousy doesn’t look good on you anyway. But the longer you think about it, the more these negative emotions fester inside of you.

You decide to text her.

To: Y/N

From: Luke

Guess Calum is better at midnight runs than me?

You know you shouldn’t have sent that message as soon as you see the “read” sign underneath it.

Shit.

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Y/N’s POV:

Oh, you have GOT to be shitting me. He really is pulling this shit right now. When my evening “morning” sickness is in full swing? You really are angry with Luke. Like really really freaking angry. Is he being serious right now? You know your anger can get the best of you and that is definitely what is happening right now. You pick up your phone and dial his number.

“We are not playing whatever this jealousy followed by guilt thing is. If you want to talk come over to mine. And don’t you dare mention anything about the smell of vomit,” you state blatantly, hanging up the phone before he has the opportunity to respond.

Within ten minutes Luke is at your door letting himself in with the key you gave him in case of emergencies, which he determined this was. He found you sitting on the floor of your bathroom, your hair matted down on your forehead and a cup of water sitting next to you. He sits down next to you, rubbing your back and handing you the ginger ale he picked up for you on the way over.

“I’m sorry for being jealous…I’m just not used to someone else taking care of my best friend when she needs it the most,” Luke starts, looking down to avoid eye contact.

He helps you up off the floor and hands you your tooth brush to allow you to brush your teeth and attempt to get the nasty taste out of your mouth. He then goes into your room and grabs some new clothes for you to change into, assuming your other clothes are sweaty from the time spent puking. He found a shirt that used to belong to him and a pair of sweatpants for you to change into and left your room to give you some privacy. You didn’t even realize that he handed you the shirt that until recently belonged to him when you changed shirts. When you were finished getting changed you went into the living room where you found Luke sitting on your couch, his favorite blanket of yours already draped across his lap. You sit next to him and he shares the blanket with you, giving you a sheepish smile.

“I’m going to tell you something and you have to promise me that you won’t be mad about it, at least not at first,” you say, hoping that he will comply and not say anything to test your patience anymore.

“Okay, I’m listening,” he replied, allowing you to say everything you need to.

“Here goes nothing…recently I have had a lot of time to think and reflect on what I want to happen in the next couple months before the baby comes. I have given it a lot of thought and I don’t think there will be any romantic involvement between me and Calum. That being said, I still want him to be a part of the baby’s life and he will be around me and the baby from here on out. But you are still my best friend. I want you to be here as often as you want, but you have to understand that I don’t always want to bother you with little things like getting me ginger ale at odd hours of the night. You have to know that Calum is going to want to be as much a part of this pregnancy as you may want to be. He is always going to be the baby’s father and he will always be around now. He is your friend too so this should not be that big of a deal. You’re my best friend, Luke and you always will be. I just wanted you to know my headspace with all of this so I would have some peace of mind. So if you could please put your jealousy aside and just embrace the fact that your goddaughter or godson will be here in less than six months that would be very helpful,” you ramble, completely disregarding the fact that you just spilled the beans on asking Luke to be your baby’s godfather.

To be continued…

[in-the-gardens-of-inspiration]

Yo, so let me preface this: I used to watch the 2003 4kids TMNT when I was a kiddo, and I've also been watching TMNT2012, and I'm also pretty hype about Rise tbh, but it got me thinking about the weird rabbit-holey SI/reader being in a relationship with one or more or all of the bros- and like, made me think back to the one I wrote a few years back when I was sick. It also made me think of Raphael having the Hebrew version of his name instead of the Latin/Italian version, Raffaello, and of course because Angelology is its own dark rabbit hole of research, yeah, I was thinking about the archangels, the Hamato brothers and a SI/OFC. Also a bible-thumping, born-again bus seat neighbour.

Then I decided, I have to write this glorious mess.

(It's for 2012, 'cause I'm most familiar with that incarnation atm)

__

There's something crappily unlucky about getting stuck in New York City after 10:30 in what many, if not most people consider the bad part of town.

It was a reprieve at first, honestly, but after the first 10 minutes, it just was such a drag.

Want to know what happened? Well, the Greyhound broke down, and the driver couldn't fix it, so he called another bus to pick his passengers up, which would be coming. Eventually. Some time after 11:30. Wonderful.

Great. Well, I wasn't beside a born-again Christian Evangelist Bible-thumper trying to shove her brand of religion down my throat, so plus.

On the flipside, minus: I don't know NYC, like at all, I was daytripping. So I wandered off because I was rather sick of my benchmate, the Bible-thumper, and, haha, of course, got lost.

Now I've heard some shit about the Big Apple recently, and like, it's wacky. Ninjas? Aliens? Oh get real. That's a movie publicity stunt.

But ho boy, was I wrong.

So while I was wandering, trying to find my way back to the bus shelter, I hear footsteps approaching me, and like these suited Pod-people clones with these gnarly laser rifles are following me. My eyes go wide, 'cause holy shit, this is either a ballsy as fuck publicity stunt or I'm about to get murdered or worse by these plug fugly clone rejects, and to be honest, either choice sounds kinda shitty.

So I'm there, speed walking the FUCK outta there, when I hear whooping, jeering and clanking metal, I turn, lo and behold: ... Uh turtles...?

I blinked a couple times, nope. Not a stress-induced hallucination, okay, that's good? Yeah, a quick pinch to the arm also verified it wasn't a dream, because oww... And uh, my stare was being returned, and I barely withheld a squeak of startlement, with a no-doubt awkward look I gave my rescuers a smile-and-wave combo. And immediately regretted it.

Between one blink and the next the turtly-shaped anomalies, there were four of them, all around 5-ish feet tall. All sorta staring- like what happens when you stare too long at the abyss, it stares back.

"Um, hi..?" Mouth engaged before brain rebooted, great start. "Thanks for saving me from those creeps..." I think I nervous blabber, that's gotta be the only reason I'm still talkin'. "My name's Daphne, you, uh, fine fellas see a bus shelter 'round here? Think I got a little turned around.." Finally, my mouth ran out of words to spew out, and I was left to get a closer look at my rescuers. I mean, outside of 5-ish foot tall turtles.

Decked out in domino mask-like bandanas, the quartet made for a fairly imposing image, weapons adorning them and blank eyes. Fairly imposing at least until the shortest one, in the orange, spoke, baby blue eyes glittering at me. My mental image of my knights in tortoiseshell armour tarnished a bit,. "Whoa, bros, she's kinda pretty."

She's also right here, I snorted, taken aback, god he sounded like a teen- oh shit, could he actually be a teen? Huh, that's not something ya see everyday, teenage ninja mutant turtles.

The one with the red bandana smacked the one that had spoken upside the head. "Why don't you think before you speak?!" ... Okaay, that's, uh, new.

He spoke again, absolutely unfazed by the whimpering, teary-eyed stare he was receiving, "Bus shelters about five blocks that way." And he pointed in the direction I'd come from, ah nuts, I'm probably getting more lost in the seedy part of an already dangerous city, great. I smile at them a bit wanly, "NYC's got my internal compass a little on the buggered side, but eh, thanks for the directions." I move to push past them, when a blast of pink energy from a nearby alley slams into the pavement in front of me, and I leap back with a choked off curse.

The one in blue grimaces, and barks out, "Let's take care of these pests first, Mikey, Don, can you cover for..?" I'm assuming he's the leader, but it still startles me a bit when he looks at me amidst the blaster fire. Holy shit, my day's just become an episode of a comedy sci-fi anime.

So Blue told Orange, 'Mikey', and Purple, 'Don', to cover me, the civilian liability, yeah, fair, but I was planning on booking it back in the ensuing chaos, nuts. Right, he asked my name again, "Daphne."

"Sure thing Leo!" Next thing I know after Orange chirps that is the sound of a facepalm, ah, that sweet sound of exasperation. I see Blue grit his teeth, and Red poorly hold back a bark of laughter. Ah, I assume they were going for subtle and mysterious. They failed. Oh well.

I fished my phone from my hoodie pocket, 11 pm, oh good. I had time. I put my phone back and sat crosslegged on the ground, and propped my head up. Makes both less and more of a target, I'd wager, plus with all this cloak and dagger, haha, ninja b/s maybe I'll make my bus before they drive off and I have to find a hostel or something.

Again I find my mouth running off before my brain can process, "So... Come here often?" Of course I had to imbue as much sarcasm as I could, raising my voice so all four could hear me- probably not my best call, but I was tired and getting quite cranky. All but Blue were at least amused, Blue, eh, ya can't win 'em all. "So, eh, what are these pod people supposed to be anyway? Rejected robot clone Men In Black?"

I flinch as a silver robot with a smirking brain goes to reach for me, but man am I glad I took a a few years of various martial arts. With a spot of grace, and it beint close enough to use it's brain as a spring board, I do a back roll, and end up knocking into Purple on the get up. "Sorry man, didn't mean to, ugly over there caught me by surprise." He turns to see where I rolled from, and spots a KO'd 'droidy bastard. "That'd be ugly then?" Giving him a cheeky smirk, I humm, "Mmhm, that's him, warts and all!" I stretch, mutterjng to myself as I do, "Ah man, it's been a bit since I've done that..." The four of them by this point have have taken care of the robo-menaces, and Blue still looks extraordinarily unimpressed. Almost like what happened was my fault.

"What are you even doing out here so late? Most people aren't." My eye twitched, yeah, that was equal parts tiredness and irritation, "Like I said, New York buggers with my internal compass and I got turned around. I don't want to be a target for less-than-savoury people, so I learned a helpful tip, called look like you know what you're doing. I'm pretty fucking lost right know, so some help would be much appreciated. If you want incentive, I've got some artisan dark chocolate, and some low-sweetness white chocolate, that ok?"

Eventually, after 10 minutes of bickering, a bar of white chocolate lighter, I was able to get an 'escort'. Red who I found out was properly called Raphael, who was equal parts volunteered and voluntold to make sure I was able to see the bus shelter before buggering off. As I walked the last couple of blocks, an errant thought popped into my head. Raphael was classically an Archangel. There were classically, at least in bare-bones Christianity, four of them. Micheal, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel. That- oh boy, did that give me an idea if that lady was gonna try and make me change my beliefs and spirituality.

Plot twist, or maybe not, my favourite person in the world decided to sit rihht beside me. Again. For the long ride homewards. I think she took my silence as license to gab. Oh joy.

Putting on my most awed, touched by God face, from the shadows of my hood, and the most dreamy voice I can manage I put my plan into being.

I flip my hood down, and turn to face her a little bit more, "You know," I cut her off mid-I'll-be-damned-if-I-don't-convert speech, "I think I was visited by the Archangels, you see, I got a little turned around, and I think they guided me back safely." She was gaping like a fish, "One of them even spoke to me," I continued blithely, "He introduced himself as Raphael. That's after they scared off a group of muggers." She looked like I slapped her with a particularly slimy fish, "I-I, bwuh?" Eloquent, lady, very eloquent. "They were so kind and helpful, I can't believe they appeared to this sinful daughter..." After a beat or two, "Miss are you okay?" The fanatical lady was still a bit BSoD, which was a-ok by me, so I flipped my hood back up, and went back to trying to sleep.

I didn't think much of the whole incident for a while, until my friend flipped me a vid of a radical upstate New York lady losing her shit upon being interviewed by a televangelist. I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry. She was talking about me.

Not quite in so many words, of course, since she wasn't there for what actually happened, but she flipped out when the 'pastor' questioned the validity of her, by extension, my story, through my phone speakers I could hear the question being asked, 'how do you know she was sober?' and the lady just loosing it. I wheezed. What?

[canaryatlaw]

okay, so today was a train wreck. to fully explain, as my day post technically begins right after I write the one from the previous day, I have to start at 3:45 am last night/morning. I think I mentioned that I had a very slight cough after a few days of sore throat and congestion, but I didn’t think anything would come of it. I fell asleep at some point after 12, I don’t remember exactly, but when I woke up briefly at 3:45 am I was in a very different state, and it was immediately apparent to me that I was going to be having an asthmatic bronchitis episode today. Dammit. Not only is it super annoying and painful to be coughing up my lungs all day, but because it’s not a very common condition getting the medicine to treat it can be a big hassle (see the last episode in April 2017 when the urgent care and two doctors offices dismissed me before I finally found one who was actually willing to listen to me and help). Well, not much I could do about it at 3:45 am, so I tried to fall asleep, which I did eventually, but it took a while. I honestly don’t remember when I woke up, I wanna say some time after 10. My cough situation was the same and at this point I’ve had like 6 episodes of this happen, so I know right away what’s going on. Now, the tricky part was going to be getting to a doctor because guess what, it’s Saturday, and getting sick on Saturday is super inconvenient (and as mentioned above, I’ve attempted walk in clinics and they refused to listen to me). I did have a bit of a choice to make, whether I wanted to call my pulmonologist back in NY or if I wanted to call the doctor out here that ended up helping my last episode. They have very different approaches and thoughts on what’s causing it, but they’ve both been able to successfully treat it, so it’s hard to tell. I did reconnect with my NY doctor after the last episode and I’ve seen him several times since then, most recently in December I think, where the doctor out here I haven’t seen in about a year or so. I ended up deciding on the NY doctor mostly because I thought it was more likely that I would be able to reach someone from that office because they are pretty large and well-established I felt like it was more likely they’d have some coverage as opposed to a single practitioner who was probably not in on the weekend. So I call, get the office is closed message, but if it’s an “urgent medical issue” (but not an actual emergency, because they already said if it’s that hang up and call 911) stay on the line and get transferred to their answering service who can get messages to the on call doctor. So I talked to the lady and she took down the info, and said I should get a call back from a doctor shortly. Alright, sounds good, I guess I’ll do some bar prep while I’m waiting, so I did that while awaiting the call, but it didn’t come, and around 3 it was like, 4 hours after I called, so I felt like it was reasonable to call back at this point. So I did, there were some issues with the message getting passed along, they said they’d try again but if I heard nothing don’t wait so long to call back. So when another hour past with no call I called back yet again (I have to be the most annoying phone caller over all the ones I’ve done over the past week) and the lady said she’d pass it on to her supervisor to expedite the request and I was like OH THANK GOD at this point, lol. So I think some time around 4:30 I got the call from the on call doctor. I explained to him that my doctor has been treating me for asthmatic bronchitis since my original episode in March 2013, and there have been about 5 or 6 reoccurrences since then, but if I get the meds I can control it fairly quickly. Fortunately he was able to view all my medical info and what my doctor had previously prescribed, and he believed me, which is always big lol and he called in several prescriptions for me, prednisone along with an inhaler and a recommendation to get some OTC allergy meds. He was like “are you on something regular for your asthma?” and I was just like oh boy this is not a good time to go down that rabbit hole so I was just like “I don’t get normal symptoms, just this” which he seemed to accept as an answer lol. So he called it in, and I pretty much immediately headed over to Target. It was only at this point that I called my parents to let them know what was going on but I had it totally handled and they didn't need to worry about anything, because they flipped the fuck out last time this happened and it was super unhelpful honestly! So I was basically just like “yeah I’m having an episode but I already got the meds called in and I’m going to pick them up now so you don’t have to do anything and have nothing to worry about” lol, so I’d say that was pretty successful. I still felt like shit and didn’t want to walk so I ubered over, and actually stopped at a beauty supply right down the street because I need to cut a wig I got for a cosplay I’m gonna do coming up soon and needed some supplies. The store was super ghetto, which I mostly expected because I know it’s not a super great part of town, but there are no Sally’s near me at all so I’d have to go really out of my way to go there. I had a list of a few things, but I ended up only getting some hair cutting scissors, only to find out they were actually thinning scissors, which will actually be helpful with this style but not for normal cutting purposes, lol. Oh well. So I headed over to Target and went to check in on the prescriptions and to my surprise they had already filled them, so I got those and then did a short grocery run based on a few things I’d written down, more or less my weekly groceries, pretzels and fruit and lemonade, and some snacks. So that didn’t take long, I checked out and ubered back home because again still felt shitty. Got home, unpacked my groceries, then checked out the medicines. There were 3, the prednisone, an inhaler, and some albuterol but it was in the form that you would need a nebulizer to access it and I don’t have one of those, so we’ll see how I’m feeling and if necessary I’ll call on Monday and see if I can get it in inhaler form (or get a nebulizer). So I took the meds, then did some bar prep before trying to prepare to cut the wig. I had a youtube tutorial of the exactly style I was doing so I figured it couldn’t be that bad?? But like every artistic pursuit I’ve ever undertaken I’ve vastly overestimated my ability to do anything that involved even the smallest amount of creative talent. welp. One of the big issues was I didn’t have wig head to put it on which is pretty essential, so I ended up balancing it on an upside down (empty) apple juice bottle, but it kept slipping out of place. I tried to just cut most of the ends off because it was super long and the look I’m doing is pretty short, but of course it still came out super choppy and like, that’s kind of okay because it’s supposed to be kind of choppy but like, in a way that looks good, not like this lol. I was worried about cutting it too short, and there were definitely a few pieces that were, but for the most part they were good. The next step though was the layering and I couldn’t get the wig to stay in place on the bottle, so after many attempts I finally said fuck it because there was no way I could get it down like this. So I guess that project is on hold until I can get something (hopefully a wig head) that I can pin the wig to so I can cut it without it moving. So with that no longer an option I headed back to my con law lecture which was of course 4 hours long, so that took up the rest of my night of course. I object to them scheduling long lectures for the weekend, but it’s not like I can do anything about it. Tomorrow’s schedule is probably going to be an issue, because they have two 4 hour lectures and I have church, and by the time I get home it’s like 3 pm, so that would be a LOT. but we’ll see. I’ll see how I’m doing in the morning. I hope I’m doing better, I kind of pulled in the rationale of the other doctor I saw last year since he treated it by increasing my acid reflux meds, so I grabbed some OTC ones I had and added them to my pill box (I’m not gonna overdose on a fucking antacid, calm down) so maybe that will help because it did the trick pretty quickly last year. I’m supposed to be in the nursery and like, obviously this is an issue with my body, not something that would be contagious but like, I’m still going to feel bad if I’m holding a small child and coughing, I mean I don’t think I’d want a coughing nursery worker holding my kid, so if it’s bad I might have to bail on them, but idk how many people are signed up. So we’ll have to see how that goes. I just remembered how when this coughing happened last year there were numerous strangers that offered my cough drops just based on hearing me cough in public. And like, I had cough drops in my purse, but I just thought it was such a sweet and compassionate gesture, and it really touched me. That will always be a happy memory of Chicago for me, if I end up staying or not- Chicago has always taken care of its own. Alright, it’s 1:30 am, I gotta wake up early for church, so I’m getting off of here now. Goodnight dearies. Hope you had a kickass Saturday (and definitely were not sick). 

[cheyennenolanhitegd]

Podcast 7

This week’s podcast was Adventures in Design with Mark Brickey, featuring Paul Frank.

I had never heard of Paul Frank before this podcast, but after googling him, I immediately recognized Julius (although I’m still not very familiar with him). I kind of went down the rabbit hole learning about Paul; I read an interview about him leaving Paul Frank Industries that just made me feel really sad. The part where he had to fight to even use his own name again reminded me of that time John Fogerty was sued for sounding too much like John Fogerty.

In this podcast, Paul and Mark discussed success a lot. It particularly struck a chord with me when they were discussing success in terms of money. They repeated this a few times: passion ahead of profit. I try to keep this in mind. Graphic design is a hard field to be in; it’s a lot of work for (often) little money, and like Paul said, your brain doesn’t shut off at 6 PM every day after work. Even design classes can take a heavy emotional toll; since starting the CA&D program, it now feels weird if I’m not constantly doing something. However, I recently read a study that showed that art majors have the highest sense of satisfaction out of all college graduates. I think we as creatives have an easier time putting passion ahead of profit.

Sometimes I struggle with this, though. Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, I have a weird outlook on money. Like Mark, you grow up seeing having money as the aspiration in a way. But, you also sometimes don’t realize you’re poor (rather, you’re rich in love, so they say). So many people in my school district qualified for the free lunch program that we all got free lunch. Our inequality made us all equals. Up until recently, I didn’t worry about finances very much because I was used to scraping by. Being on my own 160 miles away from home kind of broke that illusion; now that I’m the one paying the bills, it’s easy to be hit with Sudden Onset Adult Fear and be afraid of spending money, and then a day later to spend that money too frivolously. But, of course, I have to find the balance. I think it will all fall into place if I keep putting passion before profit.

[suraj-singh1]

BASIC PRODUCTIVITY MYTHS

BASIC PRODUCTIVITY MYTHS

Before we start talking about what productivity looks like, let’s spend a moment discussing what it isn’t. There are a lot of misconceptions out there, and they muddy the waters for people like us who are honestly trying to get some work done.

Myth #1 — “The same productivity system will work for everyone.” This is the one-size-fits-all mindset that some experts push on us. For some, David Allen’s Getting Things Done method (known as GTD) is the epitome of all things productive. For others, it is the Action Method. Some sing the praises of the Pomodoro Technique while others swear by the Don’t Break the Chain method (also known as the Seinfeld Method). Everyone thinks their system is the best, and they are quick to tell us why we need to dump our own methods in favor of theirs.

Here’s the deal: productivity is like using tools on a home improvement project. When people need to screw two pieces of wood together, they have a basic need: to turn a screw until it embeds itself into the wood. They have choices, though, about how they meet that basic need. Some prefer a manual screwdriver, while others need a powered tool. There is no perfect system that works for everyone. We are as unique as our fingerprints, and therefore we each need to use whatever works best for us.

Myth #2 — “You just need the new killer app.” The world of productivity software makes the rabbit hole that Alice fell into on her way to Wonderland look like a shallow pothole. It’s more than a little ironic that I could waste more time browsing, buying and testing productivity apps than any single app could save for me. If you care about getting a lot of things done, as well and as fast as you can, then you need some kind of tool. But hear me out: there is no perfect app. Yes, there are great programs out there for managing your todo list. Yes, I prefer a specific application and recommend it to many people. But no, there isn’t a single app can meet all the needs of all the people. Why is testing out dozens of productivity apps bad for productivity? Really, you’re wondering that? Well, for starters, it takes a lot of time to do that. The experimentation phase also has a high level of friction in it, because it takes effort to move an entire task list from one application to another, over and over. We’ll talk more about how to find the right tool later, but for now, just remember that this myth is the downfall of so many well-intentioned freelancers.

Myth #3 — “It’s all about checking off those boxes.” I’m obsessive-compulsive and freely admit it to anyone I meet. And this means that I have a fetish for small boxes next to items on a list. I love (read: LOVE) putting checkmarks in those boxes. It makes me feel like I‘ve accomplished something. That feeling can be deceptive, though.

Checkboxes are tricky. They tend to level the playing field and remove priority and difficulty from the equation. When you focus on checkboxes, it’s all about getting the whole list done, or as much of it as you can. On Monday, you might complete 100% of your tasks. Awesome job! Tuesday, though, you only checked off 50% of them. Tuesday night feel like a failure if all you care about is checkboxes.

But what if I told you that Monday was a big list full of tiny, insignificant projects. Getting them done was helpful, but they were the productivity equivalent of scooting the couch a few inches to the left. And what if I told you that Tuesday was only six items, but the three you finished took you eight hours of hard work, and they wrapped up two really high- paying projects. Now that 50% looks a lot better than 100%. Tricky, right? Checkboxes give us a feeling of movement. Sometimes that feeling is the truth, and sometimes it’s fiction.

Myth #4 — “Multitasking is the key to getting things done.” Somewhere along the way, this notion crept into our culture that if we could just do more than one thing at a time we could get more done in general. We’ve all tried it. While you’re on that conference call with a client, you might try responding to a couple of emails. Or maybe you’ve occasionally had two separate projects open at the same time, thinking you could trim a bit off by jumping back and forth.

Again, reality delivers a rude wake-up call. We have a finite amount of time, attention and energy. These are our three limited resources, things that we can’t make more of each day. If we do two tasks at the same time, each task is getting half the attention and energy that it would have received if it had been tackled alone. Splitting the limited attention you have to offer between two projects instead of one also means that the quality of each project goes down. I’m already prone to make stupid mistakes, so why in the world would I actively hinder myself in doing the best I can? I just make no sense. Multitasking doesn’t supercharge our productivity, it handicaps it.

Myth #5 — “Busy equals productive.” The world wants you to think that if you stayed busy from the moment you sat down at your desk until the moment you stood up and went home, that you have accomplished something. This, too, is a lie, because it fails to distinguish between the truly important tasks and those which would be nice to complete, but not necessary. I had a conversation recently with a few freelancers who were convinced that their jobs didn’t stop at 5:00 PM. One even suggested that if you’re “done” by 5:00 (meaning, I assume, that you’ve completed your todo list for the day), it means that your business is struggling. Yes, according to these people, unless you leave the office each day frustrated that you didn’t do more (whatever “more” means), you should be working extra each evening for a sense of relief.

I couldn’t disagree more. Freelancing is a constant exercise in catching tasks (projects, small requests, business minutia, etc) as they’re thrown at you, placing those tasks onto a weekly or monthly schedule, and then tackling each day on its own. If you feel compelled to work insane hours just to stay caught up, then you need a serious lesson in time management and project scheduling.

Urgency is a feeling. Planning about measured commitment. Don’t respond to feelings; follow through with your plans and finish your day.

[beedujourblog]

Besides it’s amazing natural beauty and outdoor hiking trails, Jeju Island is also famous for it’s many museums and theme parks around the island. One of its most recent attractions is the new exhibition hall, Hello Kitty Island. A new complex built to indulge in the ultra-cute world of Sanrio’s most beloved character…Hello Kitty! I first heard of the place two years ago when I spotted it on Instagram. As fate would have it, I was going to spend a weekend in Jeju….and Hello Kitty Island was on top of my to do list!

What is it?

Hello Kitty Island is a new concept created by Sanrio for fans and customers to enjoy a new type of exhibition of Hello kitty. Playing on Jeju Island’s growing popularity as a rather romantic destination and hot spot in Asia, they decided to build a new place for indulgence and enjoyment for tourists.

  Hello Kitty Island is a 3-storey exhibition styled complex devoted to the growth and development of Hello Kitty.  From lifestyle interior concepts, play rooms, movies and at installations, the Hello kitty island offer everything under one pink roof.

Where is it?

So Jeju Island isn’t exactly small, and in my previous post you will have rely on public transport or rent a car. I was foolish and took a cab. Hello Kitty Island is really far from the main city and a one way cab ride can cost you about KRW 30 000 (US$30)! This is fine if you are sharing, but I was alone as I nobody else I knew was interested in visiting this magnificent site of culture.

There is a bus going down this highway, but then you will still have to take a cab to eventually get there. In this case, you will also need a phone.

Hello Kitty Island is really in an awkward spot. I’m not sure why they put it in the middle of the island besides the mountains on a highway. I think a spot near the beach would have been more fitting in any case.

On entering

The complex resembles a pink cushioned jewellery box and stands out amongst the lush green vegetation of the island. On entering you are greeted by a large Hello Kitty shaped door, through the door you are overwhelmed by a looming Hello Kitty doll tree that goes right up to the 3rd floor. Behind the tree, you enter her home.

Hello Kitty over the years

The first hallway you enter will show you the development of the character over the years. The room showcases some of its first products and merchandise form the 1970s and how it has grown into an international brand since then.

Every year Hello Kitty has a theme, and through that theme numerous merchandise is sold and marketed. Themes range from Hello Kitty’s water adventures, then her farming attempt at growing perfect tomatoes to her more romantic silhouette edition. It also showcases her famous collaboration with various fashion brands. These themes also come with new design styles which will be incorporated into her collection of the year on whatever products they create.

We are also shown a timeline of her friends, or Sanrio’s other popular characters who have joined in over the years.

There was also this really cool hologram machine of Hello Kitty and her family.

Good Morning Hello Kitty!

In the next room we enter a part of Hello Kitty’s house. We find statues and photos of the family throughout the room. The room is based on the original cartoon and tries to take you through the daily life of Hello Kitty at home.

Out and About with Kitty

Out of the cosy home you are taken to a room that is created to show the busy street where Hello Kitty and her friends venture out into in the cartoon world. First you can catch the bus at the giant apple-shaped bust stop. Inside the bus you can take a seat or hold onto the Hello kitty hand rungs while a screen shows you scenes from different stops along the route in the town.

Hello kitty Loves reading and art

Your next stop is an installation of a library. In the 80s Hello Kitty promoted reading and books to inspire young children to indulge in literature.

There is a cool interactive room where you can create various patterns using Hello kitty designs and images through touch screens.

After that, they offer some art activities for kids in the Hello kitty Art School.

There’s also a dance room , where you can learn and follow Hello Kitty’s latest dance moves accompanied with an upbeat song. The room was well decorated with strobe and neon lights adorning the space.

Adventure time

As you walk past the giant Hello Kitty tea cups, you will ascend to the adventure themed rooms. Along the way there will be posters showing Hello Kitty’s various cartoons and yearly themes through bright and colourful illustrations.

  The forest of emotions

These brightly decorated rooms try to recreate a fantasy adventure concept of Hello Kitty’s world through fairy tales and myth. Starting with her story “down the rabbit hole”, we get to look inside her version of a wonderland filled with trippy castles, tea time, star constellations and a romantic fountain.

One of the interesting installation is the Forest of Emotions, where the characters are placed between tree silhouettes with changing colours in a dark room. See the video for the changing colours.

Sailing the skies

This adventure room is connected to the current 3-d film that is being played in the theatre. Hello Kitty and friends go into another dimension aboard a pirate ship. They sail through the body of a whale and they encounter the Little Twin stars. In this room, you can put you head in the whale’s belly and walk into a giant star. Pressing the lit up buttons reveal various constellations of your favourite characters.

See the video for what’s inside the Star Room

But is it art?

After this room, you will be led through exhibition rooms displaying Hello Kitty through modern art. There are some interesting pieces that question and challenge her identity and her role in consumerist culture.

Lifestyle

Out of the museum you get to walk through a room devoted to Hello Kitty décor and it’s great for photo opportunities. This is major décor goals as far as I’m concerned.

There’s also a fun play area for kids with everything themed with our favourite cat!

Hello Kitty Café Time

After all the rooms, you are led to the famous Hello Kitty Café. This one is really big and offers amazing views of the island.

Hugs with Hello Kitty

At around 5 pm, Hello Kitty makes an appearance for some cute photo opportunities. To be honest, the complex was rather empty due to the lack of tourists, so there was no line. The staff are kind enough to take a photo for you with Kitty.

There’s a gift shop on exiting the complex. I just bought my magnet souvenirs. I got the Hello Kitty Jeju edition with Hello Kitty as Mount Halla Kitty, Hello kitty as a Jeju orange (as Jeju is famous for its orange farms) and Hello kitty riding the famous black Jeju piggy.

What a day

This place is big, and there’s lots to see. Luckily there was hardly anybody when i went, Getting home is a bit tricky without a car, but if you need to take a cab the staff kindly call one for you. Hello Kitty Island is a must for anyone who loves the world of pop culture and cute.

Hello Kitty is always fun!

Cute travels,

Bee

Hello Kitty Island, Jeju! #jeju #hellokitty #sanrio #travel #travelblogger #korea #lifestyle Besides it’s amazing natural beauty and outdoor hiking trails, Jeju Island is also famous for it’s many museums and theme parks around the island.

[just-keep-breathinggxx]

ayyo whats up

I haven’t been feeling like posting daily recently soz. this past week has been a bit crazy for me. i’ve been logging on mfp of course tho. convenience in just logging weight and calories rather than my day’s events and emotions. the point of this is to see trends in my emotions and eating habits bc duh emotional eater here. ig starting where i left off. Monday my parents left for a 5-day hike, so i was left to my own devices for a while. Tues June 4 I was pre-occupied with trying to schedule my weekend and somehow still go to a twenty one pilots concert. I hit the 1200 cal limit (just over actually) mostly bc I had potato salad for dinner and chocolate chip cookie from wawa left over from the day before. Again, its all about convenience... maybe i should start meal prepping so its “grab n go” convenience all week. Anyway Wed June 5 I was able to snag top pit ticket for about $50 which is hella cheap (face value was $100) and sold my tix for the AC show (for below face value, but enough to pay for my other ticket). I was able to fast til the afternoon. Went to Sorrentino’s for a high fat Porkroll and Cheese sandwhich and got half a turkey and cheese sub for later. Also drank a sugar-free 8oz redbull on the way to newark and a bud light tall boy when i got there. Only ate half of my half sub so what that’s like 3 inch sub? quarter of a whole sub? Anyway my calories for Wed was under 1000. Thurs June 6 I woke up starving so ate the other half of my turkey sub for breakfast. I didnt eat again all day til like 7 pm. I really gotta stop going to wawa bc I always end up getting a milkshake and cookie with my sandwich (chicken bbq strip hoagie = 520 cal) which always sends me over 1200 cal. Didn’t eat the cookie though bc 16 oz milkshake is a struggle enough to finish on its own. all in all 1400 cal. Fri June 7 i did okay. Sometimes I dont feel hungry in the morning, and sometimes i’m ravenous when I wake up. Luckily it was the latter. I just had some coffee and did barn chores all morning. I ate the cookie for lunch though (convenience). I knew I had a busy day coming up on Saturday, so I went to Walmart last minute for a few things. Walked down the frozen dinners aisle cuz i knew I wouldnt have the time or energy for making dinner that night. Got one of those one serving Fit Bowls (Stouffer’s Beef with Brocolli). I hate how high in sodium they are though. I got Tollhouse cookie dough while I was there so I had cookies to bring to Jessie’s party the next day. ngl I had like a spoonful or two which is essentially a cookie or two in itself... Without the cookie dough Friday was 862 cal according to mfp. Sat June 8 I started out the day strong but mostly bc I knew I was gonna party moderately hard that night lol. Parents came home around 2am, which I had to let them in for. I had coffee when I got up later around 7 and went to Joe’s walkathon at Allaire. They had all kinds of snack foods spread out for the walkers. Sometime before we started, I had a small generic granola bar. After the walkathon I had to rush to get to Jessie’s new place for the housewarming party. Ya know, I never thought about how many calories are in beer let alone an IPA, otherwise I wouldve stuck to something lighter. Picked up a 6 pack of Dogfish Head cuz I couldnt find any Long Trails. Idk If I had the whole thing or not (blacked out around 4/5 beers lol). Hey, dont judge I literally only ate a tiny granola bar and a hotdog when I got there and im already a light-weight. I also couldnt pass up the cookies I made when I walked past them from the bathroom lol. I remember having two and mentally telling myself no more. Yesterday Sun June 9, I woke up kinda hungover. Dad asked if I wanted something from Sorrentino’s and i knew a Porkroll and cheese would help my hangover. Mom ditched to flipflop the longtrail again. I felt like shit from what I’d been putting in my body this past week and sorta fell down an *d rabbit hole on youtube and was sorta influenced to fast. So, yesterday, that was all I had. Lots of coffee and a breakfast sandwich. 637 cal. Today Mon June 10, Dad asked if I wanted to go to Sorrentino’s for breakfast. Tbh I woke up simultaneously straving and nauseous (hmm wonder why lol). So I agreed but instead of something heavy and carb loaded, I did the “no carb” platter. Scrambled eggs and bacon, hold the homefries and toast. I think if I do get hungry later today, I’d just have some tea and be good. Hopefully my dad won’t invite me to dinner with him and Susan later. My weight has been fluctuating around 145-147. Also forgot how much clothing can weigh ( about 2 lbs) bc I weighed myself in just my bra and underwear at 144.3 lbs after breakfast. Problem is, its my parents scale in their bathroom so normally when they’re not in I just dash in there (no shoes of course, but still clothed) and weigh myself. So, I put my clothes back on and weighed in at 146.3 lbs. Week average of 145.8 lbs. Honestly not complaining too much cuz that’s still down 3.2 lbs since I started two weeks ago. If i keep fasting and maybe doing omad I can get below 140 a few weeks.

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Deja Vu: The Best of The Week

J Cole, Photo: Live Nation

  Well, we survived another week of heat, rain, and everything in between. This week we have a ton of entertainment options that will have our city being visited by the likes of J Cole, Boyfriend and The Avett Brothers, while locals like Trillblazers, Mockingbird Brother and many more will fill in the gaps. Houston, here’s how to spend the following seven days.

  On Wednesday, you can get going over at Walter’s for the experimental drone noise of Proud Father. The electronic sounds of this New Orleans-based, all-tape producer are a trip and something to behold, and his latest, Open Marriage Proud/Father Split, is pretty mesmerizing. Cloud Head will be on as direct support while the intense punk of Houston’s Cop Warmth will go on beforehand. The electronica of Andrew Sainz will get the all-ages show started with doors at 8 pm and a measly $8 cover.

  Thursday you could begin at Rudyard’s, where you can catch the return of Houston comic Al Bahmani. Al B is a guy with plenty of stories to tell, so it only makes sense that he’d return to Houston from Los Angeles to record his first proper release. He’ll have some heavy hitters on the show with him, as the always funny comedy of Slim Bloodworth will be on as feature act while the hilarious antics of Warren Wright will serve as host. The 21 & up show has doors at 8 pm and tickets for $7 or two for $10.

  Kap G, Photo: Atlantic Records

  The studio in Warehouse Live will bring the celebrated bilingual hip hop of Atlanta’s Kap G to town. G has been making a name for himself since he dropped his 2012 single, “Tatted Like Amigos,” and since then he’s made quite the name for himself as a solid performer. His latest, SupaJefe, from this year, proves he has plenty of swag as well. The hip hop of J.R. Donato will be on hand as direct support and opener for the all-ages show with doors at 8 pm and tickets between $15 and $20.

  Upstairs at White Oak Music Hall, the “mysterious raunchy feminist” sounds of Boyfriend will swing through town. The New Orleans-native-turned-LA-transplant has been on a tear for a minute now, and her live shows are always a trip. Her latest release, this year’s Next, definitely shows off how solid she is as a rapper and producer. The punk of Houston’s Giant Kitty will get things started as only they can as direct support and openers for the all-ages show with doors at 8 pm and tickets for $10.

  Mockingbird Brother, Photo: Nikki Machacek

  Red Light at Springbok will bring the catchy sounds of LA’s Warbly Jets over to the upstairs venue. These guys are upbeat, their music is a mix of electro-pop and catchy jams, and their latest single, “4th Coming Bomb,” should make you want to get down. The emo energy of Houston three piece Mockingbird Brother will be on as direct support and openers for the 21 & up show with doors at 8 pm and a $10 cover.

  Friday you could get started over at Smart Financial Center when The Avett Brothers bring their catchy and infectious folky pop to the Sugarland venue. These guys are always worth making it out for, if it’s your thing, and their latest chart topping release, True Sadness, from last year, is pretty strong. The rescheduled date from last year doesn’t have word of support or openers, but that could change. The all-ages show has doors at 6:30 pm and tickets between $49.50 and $69.50.

  Of course, I’d guess that many of you would be heading to Toyota Center to catch the hip hop jams of J. Cole. The German-born and North Carolina-raised rapper has definitely blown up since his last set here, and his new album, 4 Your Eyez Only, from last year, has plenty of pop surrounding it. The highly energetic sounds of Anderson .Paak will get things started for the all-ages show with doors at 7 pm and tickets between $29.50 and $125.50.

  Kiki Maroon, Photo: July St. Juniper

  The studio at Warehouse Live will have another edition of The Burly Q Lounge from Houston’s Kiki Maroon. The vaudeville-inspired show, that often features comedy, music and burlesque, will feature the likes of Dallas’ Confetti Eddie, Bethany Summersizzle, Nikki Knockout and more alongside a list of local performers. The seated 18 & up show has doors at 7 pm and tickets for $25.

  The Heights Theater has a set from Old 97’s founder and accomplished solo act, Rhett Miller. Miller has always made some of the most intriguing and all around compelling tunes in music. His live shows are the type not to be missed, and his latest release, The Traveller, from 2015, is pretty epic. Austin’s Charlie Sexton will bring his twang on board as opener and direct support for the all-ages evening with doors at 7:30 pm and tickets between $22 and $34.

  Trillblazers, Photo: Jordan Asinas

  At Walter’s you could get groovy when the Southern experimental sounds of Knoxville’s White Gregg performs. This band has nuances of acts like Man Or Astroman coupled with the art rock of bands like XTC, while still offering up something new and fresh. Their latest release, Nice Spread, from 2015, is a pretty intriguing album. The trippy electronic sounds of Houston’s Trillblazers will provide direct support, while the indie rock of Mother Ghost will get things going. The all-ages show has doors at 8 pm and tickets for $8.

  Rudyard’s will help celebrate 25 years for Houston’s Poor Dumb Bastards when the band swings by to perform. Of course, if you’ve never seen these guys, then you don’t know how being creative with duct tape can create a new look. Back in the day, this band did everything that was considered off limits, and yet they still keep going. The leather-motorcycle-punk of The Velostacks will be on as direct support, while Hell’s Engine will get things started for the 21 & up show with doors at 9 pm with an $8 cover.

  On Saturday, you might want to swing by Mucky Duck for one of two live sets from Texas’ Max Stalling, as he’ll record both for a new live album. While Stalling’s acoustic sets have become a fan favorite, you may not know his contemporary country sound. His last release, Banquet, from 2015, was one of the better new country albums I have heard. The 21 & up shows are at 7 and 9:30 pm, and both have tickets between $20 and $22.

  At House of Blues, the always popular mix of blues rock and conjunto of Texas trio Los Lonely Boys will perform in the big room. These guys are much more than their hit track “Heaven,” and their live shows are a cross between fun and funky. The soulful funk rock of Austin’s Jackie Venson will open the all-ages show with doors at 7:30 pm and tickets between $25 and $59.

  Ak’chamel, Photo: Terry Suprean

  The always-intriguing-and-hard-to-drop-into-a-genre sounds of Ak’chamel will be over at Rudyard’s in celebration of their new album release. That album, the recently dropped Death Chants, takes the listener further down the rabbit hole in the universe of distant chants and gypsy sounds that this sometimes-duo-and-sometimes-five-piece band creates. I can’t tell you what you’ll see from them other than that it will be like nothing else you’ll see in a good while. The psych krautrock of Houston’s Unified Space will be on beforehand, while Bodyfat will open up the 21 & up show with doors at 8 pm and a $5 cover.

  Rockefeller’s will host the return of Houston’s Spain Colored Orange. While I say return, it’s not that band really went anywhere, but rather started playing a lot less. The live show from these guys put on is always a good time, and their last album, Sneaky Like A Villain, from 2009, still sounds as fresh as it did when it was released. There’s no word of support or openers, but that could change on the all-ages show with doors at 8 pm and a $10 cover.

  Housing Crash, Photo: Ozge Kal

  Avant Garden hosts a barn burner of post rock and more when My Twilight Pilot headlines a set.  The shoe gaze group never lets down anyone who catches them perform.  They’ll have direct support from alt rockers The Thief And The Architect while the experimental indie rock of Pasadena’s Super Robot Party will perform prior.  The punk of Uffizi will also be on the bill, as will Turkey’s Housing Crash who will get the evening started.  The 21 & up show has doors at 8 pm and a measly $5 cover.

  At 809 Pierce, you could get down to the sounds of Santa Muerte. They’re described as some true noise makers, so if that’s your thing, then you should check them out.  LEDEF of House of Kenzo will be on as direct support, while Majia Records residents Anitra, NNOA, and Tearz will get things started. The BYOB show has doors at 10 pm and a $10 cover.

  On Sunday,  House of Blues will bring the R & B soul of New Orleans’ PJ Morton to town. Of course, you may know Morton from his regular gig as a keyboardist in the band Maroon 5, but you should know that his solo work is everything Maroon 5 wished that they were. His latest release, Gumbo, has him teetering between ’70s soul and modern pop like no one else going. The urban big band sounds of MAJOR. will be on as direct support and opener for the all-ages show with doors at 7 pm and a $20 cover.

  The alt pop soul of Austin’s Swimming With Bears will be in the studio at Warehouse Live. At first listen, you might not place too much importance on these guys. But around the one minute mark on their EP, last year’s Swimming With Bears, you should fall for what they’re doing. The ambient indie rock of Houston’s Mourning Bliss will be on as direct support and Anchor, the Mammoth will open the all-ages show with doors at 7 pm and tickets between $8 and $10.

  The Fixx, Photo: United Talent Agency

  Monday you could head to the big barn at Dosey Doe to catch London-based ’80s new wave rockers, The Fixx. These guys seemed to dominate the charts back in the day with hits like “One Thing Leads To Another” and “Saved By Zero,” plus you’d be shocked how solid their live sets still are. Their last release was 2012’s Beautiful Friction, which sounded fresh for a band that’s been around as long as they are. The all-ages show has dinner served from 5 pm to 6:30 pm, which is included in your ticket price between $68 and $108.

  That’s about all that’s happening around town. No matter what you decide to do, please remember that drinking responsibly and acting like a well-adjusted adult is what’s best for everyone.

  Deja Vu: The Best of The Week this is a repost