mangledmuse

[queen0fl0ve]

Hello! How are you all? I have recently opened an Etsy page selling stickers because it is something I have always loved and wish to do this as a full-time job as I suffer from severe anxiety and 9/5 jobs do not help.

I am asking for some donations to go towards things to enhance this small business. I also hope to one day be successful enough to be able to make donations to other GoFundMe pages alike. Thank you in advance.

[lal-ffxiv]

...

okay last thing before going to sleep otherwise I won't sleep or I'll forget. Cuz I meantioned Asdis' curse and blessing and I'm sure there like an actually writing term for the cross of a tragic flaw and the monkey's paw. Or just concept that every blessing is a curse and every curse is blessing as something that will help oc in their life and constantly draw them back just as much. (Yes I did watch Ella Enchanted at formative age and then was banned from watching it because of normal reason thus making it my favorite movie)

of course I talk alot of Luka's because its quite real for them Menphina's blessing soothes their heartaches and comforts their sorrows and with overcoming that pain naturally Luka doesn't grow as person. Stuck in this cycle some days more than others. Forever delightful and distant. While it motivates them and aid them in pushing forward and same time is doubt of Luka's strength. Do they carry the world while not feeling its weight because they leave that burden to others and Luka can't have that doubt bother them that long.

But for Asdis its not really know to her. Just starting with her adopted parents. This elderly couple find this werid looking toddler in the veggie patch one day and just fall in love with her. The child they never had despitely quickly growing twice their size and just being creepy (asdis empathic abilities) somtimes. Even Asdis commits murder/mansaulgher I forget which it is. They can't be mad at her and Asdis doesn't feel like what she did is wrong. While feels that intial horror, the worry that concern. Her parents reassure her so surely that she doesn't feel her own remorse. And then with her aunt the woman doesnt like her. The woman might actually despise her but even still Asdis is cared for and protected in her home because thats her niece and you love family (this coming from the woman that hasnt spoken with her sister on princple for many years and stole her family's wealth when she moved to an enmey city). Her aunt trust her so much and isnt that a kind of love to be given someone's last request. and of course Asdis' never-to-be husband that worships the ground she walks one because he werido. Spends years stalking (waiting) for her as she possesed by a voidsent and ultimately giving up his life for her. Asdis is so loved that she taken from the people that love her so much. [Wording here is delibraite because Asdis can never be sure she loves someone genunie because she feels their love for her stronger than her own emotion. I mean Asdis felt her emotions once and a guy died] her aunt's dying wish leads to massace in sil'dih. Even the voidsent getting fed emotions via Asdis' empathy feels that emotion that the two entwined by some feeling more than anything else after to 1000 years or so. At that point Asdis is scared that Achlys will somehow leave her but that impossible right? Freaking shadowbringers seprerating her soul from the voidsent. Like did thr crystal exarch not read the purchuse recommendatiosn. So yeah that repeating thing in asdis story. That love isn't the thing that makes Asdis good. Its usually a path to being more evil. As how she felt their love too feed Asdis' delusions of grandeur too so thats great. Maybe being hated would fix her.

Luken is his own blessing and curse. He master of his own fate (no matter how much he wants to ask the spinner why?? It is just him). He just a dude trying to live his life and he keeps making a hot mess of it. Luken has choice to help himself and he doesn't. Luken walks the fine line between self-sabotage and being his best self everyday. Like he could be legitmate busness owner but he running his small crime ring in the backroom. He trapped himself so far into his past that he destroyed his future. Luken doesn't have good or bad luck he just his choices and the the consequces of them. Not even calling a good or bad choice. Their isnt the right or wrong of it its just up, down, left, right and he ends up going in circle anyways. Its called Luken's Narrative because he doomed by it.

[3000s]

i hate small busnesses i hope they kill world

[pauls4all-zambia-trip-2023]

Day 10 - Social enterprises

After a few very exciting and rewarding days at Limpaela school, we rose early this morning for our final full day in Zambia and an opportunity to learn a bit more about a number of social enterprises and business that are supporting the local community here in Ndola and Kitwe.

Firstly, we went to have a tour of a honey farm where we learnt how the honey is made. This was really interesting to see, but it was also great to learn about the model which is beneficial for local farmers in the community. Local farmers are given the hives for free on the basis that they have to then sell their honey back o the honey farm to be processed. This is a very interesting model and ensures that the honey farm supports local farmers, but also benetifs the honey farm. Th honey is then sold overseas, to places like the USA and Europe and therefore does not compete with other locally produced honey in Zambia.

After the honey farm, we travelled to the huge Chinese built football stadium in Ndola and we were lucky enough to be able to be able to play a match on the pith which was great. We played Europe vs the rest of the world, with the rest of the world winning 2-0!

Next we had lunch with the Beyond Ourselves team. This was the last time we were going to see many of the people in the team, so it was an opportunity for us to say thank you and goodbye to some of the Beyond Ourselves team who have helped us and enabeld us to have such an incredible experience in Zambia.

The final project that we viaited today was Chichtekelo Youth Project, an organisation which supports street children and provides them with somewhere safe to stay, an eductaion and life skills. It was very humbling to hear about what this project does to support children who have had very difficult childhoods. The organisation also has many small busnessed which help to fund the project to try and ensure it is self sufficient. One of these projects is Gigibonta ice cream and we were able to visit the ice cream factory and make our own - we made Oreo ice cream and orange sorbet which were delicious! Gigibonta has 9 shops across Zambia and the money made then goes back in to fund the project. At the end we were able to meet some of the children who were being supported by Chichtekelo.

On our way back to Mist Gardens we stopped at a curio shop to get some souvenirs and presents and then we returned for a BBQ and a final night of reflections, where we got to see some of the photos and videos from the trip on a big screen.

[purplerocker-thesims]

Round 2 - Bolam

They start Their round on Day 2 with just enough money to get themselves a small hovel.

Speeding through day 2 and 3. This is all they typically do when left to their own.

Leaving them to their own will, is fun

There morning typically follows the routine of kiss wife, talk to wife, love this pregnant wife. He's completely smiting with her. For being a workaholic Fortune guy, he's very much giving I love my wife more than anything in the world and I adore that.

Day 5 came, and they moved into Earna's mother's place.

First thing they do, Is have a cheeky woohoo. That's a great place too woohoo, like they don't woohoo to many times a day.

Felberta Took in change of chopping wood, and continuing the family business, teaching Guy the ropes of what he is required to do. She been sobbing and stopping at times to cry.

The babies came as twins. First born baby girl names: Eldrida Then a baby boy named Aidric.

When day broke, for Day 6, business as normal, just juggling sleeping babies.

Earna at the cash register, until the afternoon, where she took care of the twins, before he jumped back to the busness, Earning themselves a rank 7.

Felberta Broke the basin skin, when washing herself, and had to call over the Eastmund Maxwell to fix it, for some wood.

Eastmund requires mechanical skill to help his uncle, and the best way of getting that skill is by helping the everyone, for the cost of some goods that they provide for the settlement.

After a long day, Earna makes dinner for her mother and husband, setting the table with their meals before herself.

Phone rang, A friend of Guy's, asking for him, So he spent his evening chatting with Solomon palschal.

Day 7 - The Summer dance and twins birthday

In the morning, was Guy up at 3 am changing and feeding the babies and feeding himself, didn't go back to sleep, but when his wife bot up. Well

They are getting down to business very slowly, taking their time. They busy last couple of days and they need to time to love each other, and what better day to do that then the day of celebration. They chattered, the made out, chattered again, because

The most important type of conversation.

The summer party Started,

Aging up the little ones.

Eldrida - Eccentric and Heavy Sleeper Aldric - Genius and Insane

Teaching on off them to walk. The round came to an end: Social Rank: Peasant Total money: 7912 Tax: 3,165 rent: 250 total tax: 3,415 money after tax: 4,497

[the-firebird69]

this is what the optima looked like t o our son and most who are his size. normal not to too big but this is the compact size. we like it and can make tons and the next size up

they tried to find ours in them failed and miseralby they dirve them and tons of them. we can flood hte market. and we need to think on it. not really. we need to do this. and the other cars and pronto. tons of them. and the simplified versions and now. need is there. the auto swap is foreer. need to take out ones that work and fix and send them out and take parts for the popuolar models. are about 200 not too hard. huge scrap yards and we have quiet a few. send unsed parts all over now. are certified we inspect htem. take time. need to though. a valuable busness are at us awe ht htem now. tons ow fhem rigged no. dont bother they hurt themeslves trying. and no it works. we do have factory housing and busses now. need them badly and buses. take them all ok now.

we rock on this now. rock. tons are opening. the small factories go up too and more toay every day are at 250% after covid. need trump dead and his freind tomy f and macs out too. now. it is hell and real.

Frank Castle Hardcastle

Olympus

Zues Hera

we do the work too but ok we focus t is hard we need ours now and others and in now ok all

Thor Freya

[ghjngj]

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working capital, small busness funding, loanshttps://vipcapitalfunding.com

[dakoosuperapp]

"No act of Kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted" We, at Dakoo, Celebrate the #kindness in the world and strive to do the least possible every day. 🎈 #worldkindnessday #worldkindnessweek #kindnessmatters #kind #specialdays #dakoo #feanchise #india #smallbusiness #smalltown #localstore #entrepreneurs #startup #busness (at India) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck6PWo8vQTe/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[idontgiveaflyinggrayson69]

When your dog becomes a brand ambassador! 😍😍😍

Marley is officially a brand ambassador for my close friend’s Canadian-based pet accessory small business Chasing Tails Co. Chasing Tails Co. has a wide range of pet bandanas (slip-on collar and slip-on neck styles - including a cat size for cat momma’s out there!), collars (3/4″ to 1.5″ thickness with silver metal or black plastic hardware options), and engraved pet tags! They also carry zero waste scrunchies (made from the scraps of their bandanas and collars) and wristlets so pet parents can match their fur babies! 

They just released their fall collection, which includes the two bandanas Marley is pictured in (pup cup and rustic fall), which means they currently have an end of summer sale and collar sale going on now!!!

As a brand ambassador, Marley also has her own discount code: Marley15. Use this code at check out to get 15% off your order!

Marley is a 45lbs Hungarian Vizsla and she wears a size Medium collar and bandana. Her sisters Anna (85lbs Golden Retriever) and Nylah (85lbs English Mastiff) wear size Large bandana, while Nylah wears the XL 1.5″ silver hardware collar, and Alaska (120lbs Bouvier des Flanders) wears size XL bandana. 

Nylah is just a pup (8 months), but a VERY big pup and we went through about 8 collars with her, not including several harnesses and a gentle lead to help control her leash pulling, but Chasing Tails Co.’s XL collar not only holds up to her pulling, but has helped us work on her leash manners. Not to mention it’s quick drying, which is super needed when her favourite hobby is slashing in the doggy pool and water bowl!

I know a lot of you guys have fur babies, so please check Chasing Tails Co. out! I personally adore their summer collection (white paws bandana, come on! It’s adorable!) and now with fall upon us, doesn’t your fur baby deserve a cute new bandana to match the aesthetic? 

Chasing Tails Co. is based out of Thunder Bay, ON, with free local shipping, and flat rate Canada-wide, as well as US and international shipping options - shipping rates are posted at the bottom of their website. 

[smbizamerica]

Small Business News Tuesday 10-16-18

[fraxotic]

High Return At Low Investment

We all want to do business in which investment is low, but profit is high. A middle class man always keeps wondering how he can increase his income or how he can earn side income that can help him to generate extra income. There are many small business ideas that require very less investment. These ideas, if executed well, can ensure that the business grow and is profitable.

There are many other businesses which can give you more profit in less money and one of them is a vending machine. In today's world everybody wants to earn passive income/side income. And that is the reason Vending machines came in the market to help them. Low cost vending machines helps middle class people to generate extra income. Vending Machine Business not only generates income but also allows you to reap the benefits of a small business owner. All of this without the drawbacks of opening a store, franchise, or a restaurant.

Whether you are doing  job or you are a student or a housewife, a vending machine can help everyone to earn more money.Vending Machine Business requires minimum maintenance and little storage. It is quick and easy to start as a vending machine operator, provided you have the right product to sell to your target market.

We can now see that, as a result of COVID, people’s businesses and jobs have ceased. Now days people are looking for something that can give them side income/passive income. The vending machine is very popular today. Especially since the arrival of Corona, the work of the people has stopped. Today smart people are making money sitting at home by installing the vending machine.

If you also want to earn more money for less expenses then you can also earn from the vending machine. If you want to know more about how to earn from vending machine then you can visit our website, you can mail us or you can contact with our customer care executive.

Website - https://fraxotic.com/

Email - wecare@fraxotic.com

[realcleargoodtimes]

The Paycheck Protection Program and other federal efforts largely neglected them, a survey commissioned by two equal-rights groups found.

APPARENTLY YOU CAN’T  FIX STUPID-MORETRMP FAILURE.

500 business owners and 1,200 workers from April 30 to last Monday. Just 12% of the owners who applied for aid from the Small Business Administration — most of them seeking loans in the $650 billion paycheck program — reported receiving what they had asked for, while 26% said they had received only a fraction of what they had requested. Nearly half of all owners said they anticipated having to permanently close in the next six months.

[lol-jackles]

This is old news but I didn't see a post about it when I was going through your blog. So as you might know Misha is now doing Cameo videos for money to interact with his fans.

One particular fan paid him $300 to ask him to describe a "destiel kiss" and to read her destiel fic. misha sent her a 15 second video back saying he didnt have time for it and then didnt even answer her question but still charged her the $300 for nothing.

Basically every question he gets is destiel coded and its starting to get sad. He clearly doesn't want to answer them.

Its been 5 months sincs Spn's finale, how long does he expect to live through destiel and not move on to something more? Like a job?

Do you have the actual video to share?  If true then I think he used this girl as an example and warning to others of what not to ask of him.  Him keeping the money sends a clear message to shippers of the consequence if they try to pull similar requests on him.

Do I agree with what Misha did?  Yes and no.  While I have no issues with Misha vacuuming money from his gullible minions, my main criticism is as entertainers you perform for the fans that show up, whether the venue is a stadium or a small club or 1000 people showed up or only 10 showed up.  You perform the same no matter the crowd size.  That was my issue with him for not headlining his own convention for the full weekend in contrast when he was willing to work a full weekend in the J2-led conventions simply because the crowd size is 4 times bigger than his own.

Ethically Misha should refunded that girl’s money.  She had a specific request and if he wasn’t going to fulfill it then he should at least give her a video of encouragement and well wishes.  But again I think his purpose was to use her as an example/warning to Destiel shippers and show them the line he won’t cross.

“Basically every question he gets is destiel coded and its starting to get sad.”

Meh, it’s what most lower-tier actors playing 5th wheel characters do, ship bait their fans.  Star Wars Oscar Isaac did it to John Boyega who ignored him and was bitter that his own character didn’t get a canon ship with Daisy Ridley’s Rey.  Its not personal, its busness, literally.  Misha had the pooping heart necklace and mix tape keychain ready to go as soon as the opportunity presented itself.  There are non-shipping Cas fans but they’re not the ones ponying up the big money on him, and why he pandered hard to the Destiel crowd.  I mean, can you really blame him?  I gave his cameo 6 months before most of the shippers tire out, then his fees go down and Cas fans move in.   

On another note, I’m impressed with Loni Anderson’s cameo, she has a different outfit for each message and she looks like a million bucks.  She clearly put effort for her fans.

Where as others have clearly churned out several messages in a day while sitting on their couch and wearing the same shubby clothes.

[caltropspress]

FEEDBACK LOOP #6: Cargo Cults’ “Rammellzee”

Since these symbols and all symbols are drawn, infinity’s separation from all symbols must be shown through drawing. The only proof of such a separation of the infinity would be the understanding by the majority of the planetary peers. There is no other way.

—from IONIC TREATISE GOTHIC FUTURISM ASSASSIN KNOWLEDGES OF THE REMANIPULATED SQUARE POINT’S ONE TO 720° TO 1440° THE RAMM-ΣLL-ZΣΣ (1979, 2003)

The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.

—from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland

Riding among an exhausted busful of Negroes going on to graveyard shifts all over the city, she saw scratched on the back of a seat, shining for her in the brilliant smoky interior, the post horn with the legend DEATH. But unlike WASTE, somebody had troubled to write in, in pencil: DON’T EVER ANTAGONIZE THE HORN.

—from Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49

1.  I walk down the street and people look at me and say, “Who the hell are you?”

Cargo Cults (Alaska and Zilla Rocca) begin their track “Rammellzee” with the voice of the some-16 billion-years-old being himself. The song is an ode, an invocation. The organ sample provides a bizarre ride: a carousel of colors. We immediately plummet—into a well, a subway tunnel, a cosmos of linguistics. Not a nonchalant That’s deep, but a depth of knowledge where “cipher” means code, means Supreme Mathematics, means gathering with your rapfolk outside the Nuyorican Poets Cafe or in Washington Square Park: a deep connection. Mimicking Rammellzee, Alaska presents the listener with “swirling pages / forming mazes of [his] formulations” and subsequently “break[s] them down into a form that’s shapeless.”

2.  Hip-hop is ageist….In blues, you ain’t official until you fifty. (Ka, Red Bull Music Academy interview with Jeff Mao, 2016)

The phrase …of a certain age has, historically, been used euphemistically to describe someone (typically a woman) who has existed for a “shameful” tally of years. Society is still undoing the stigma, but rappers have made strides.

In Adult Rappers, a 2015 documentary directed by Paul Iannacchino (Hangar 18’s DJ paWL), Alaska is [accidentally?] presented twice in the closing credits—like a double, a separate persona—which calls to mind the multiple personalities of Rammellzee: Crux the Monk, Chaser the Eraser, Gash/Olear, et cetera. Age allows for maturation, for building, for bettering. In Rammellzee’s case—and I’d argue Alaska’s—it allows for complexity to emerge organically through wisdom. It allows for reinvention, for many versions of one’s self. Age and development is how an aerosol can with a fat cap can graduate to customized deodorant roll-ons and shoe polish canisters.

It begins with jerry-rigging a nozzle and ends in diagramming a “harpoonic whip launcher/pulsating extendor” to illustrate the deconstruction of letter-formations in the English alphabet. The spirit of experience pervades the Nihilist Millennial album. As anyone who has ever sat on the couch knows, communication can also improve with age.

3.

Artists and rappers like Rammellzee and Alaska rely on wild-styles, a self-made world that warps quantum physics and disregards notions of dimensionality. It’s dream-vision. It’s liberation. It simultaneously celebrates and critiques communication: like the image of a muted horn.

“Communication is the key,” cried Nefastis. “The Demon passes his data on to the sensitive, and the sensitive must reply in kind. There are untold billions of molecules in that box. The Demon collects data on each and every one. At some deep psychic level he must get through…”

“Help,” said Oedipa, “you’re not reaching me.”

“Entropy is a figure of speech, then,” sighed Nefastis, “a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow. The Machine uses both. The Demon makes the metaphor not only verbally graceful, but also objectively true.”

[…]

Nefastis smiled; impenetrable, calm, a believer.

The wordplay seems just that: play—that is, until you find the thread. Alaska cobbles together words like rubbish, W.A.S.T.E. Words appear daisy-chained together—flowery, ornate, and strung together by their stems: “fatalism, Fela Kuti, razor thin” / “smash the superstitions with acid tabs and some Sufi visions” / “deep dive Sonny Liston” / “Walt Whitman.”

The track reads like a codex. Something crafted in a scriptorium. His words are warfare—double-tracked/double-barreled—and he slips into braggadocio to prove it. It’s an authoritative posture of experience. Having started atomically small—from Breaking Atoms bedroom listening, to Atoms Family—Alaska’s flow presents nuclear now: maximum damage.

There’s a refinement to what this duo is doing: “Me and Zilla well-established with a lavish vision. / Both hands crusty with Ikonklastic Panzerism.” The boasts rely on royal diction: Camelot, palace doors, Prince Paul. Each man a king, a God, and each one should teach one. Mentor texts for the masses.

4.  

Rammellzee is an equation, And simply stated it’s the way of life I’m chasing. That’s why I praise the future-Gothic future-prophet. Gotta rock it, don’t stop it, Gotta rock it, don’t stop.

You find diversions on the song, exits into familiar chambers. GZA quotations (“I was the thrilla in the Ali-Frazier Manila”) and allusions to Main Source. Large Professor rapped “Dead is my antonym,” and if that’s to be proven true, money needs to be removed from the equation. The refrain of “Gotta rock it” not only calls to mind “Beat Bop,” Herbie Hancock, and Grand Mixer DS.T (or his later incarnation, DXT), but rockets—Afrofuturist angles, future shocks (Bill Laswell [Material], friend to Rammellzee, had a hand in all this). It’s not so much a “future-prophet” as a “future profit.” “Freedom in the process” means creativity without expectation, without the constraints of market value.

Alaska gives it to us straight: “I don’t care if you don’t like it, and I don’t care if you don’t buy it / ’Cause I find freedom in the process.” Despite becoming increasingly complex in his visual approach—like a heap of garbage that loses the definition of its component parts over the ages—Rammellzee understood time equals clarity of vision. A wasted world becomes a meaningful one. Of course, we got to pay rent, so money connects, but ownership of one’s art is about empowerment. “Selling out” is the opposite—an evisceration of one’s self and spirit. “We lost control from the second we sold the art,” Alaska raps. “We sold our future….We should be seeking enlightenment.”

The moment arrives, epiphanically: “I find freedom in the process so I’m grateful, / And that’s my main source: it’s my friendly game of baseball.” For Alaska and Zilla Rocca, it’s not a job—it’s a passion, a pastime.

5.  Nascent imagination deep inside a battle station.

Post-9/11 meant luxury apartments displaced Rammellzee’s Battle Station loft, his living museum. But the art has been excavated and exists posthumously. His Gothic Futurism and Ikonoklast Panzerism seem at home archived on the internet—a network that appears more like a chaos cloud. Rammellzee deconstructed and transcended language—junk monk scripts and calligraphic cut-ups of consumerism. His art is the empowerment a recycling arrow-triangle could only hope to be. Recycle is also rebirth. Rammellzee’s career path is circuitous, deep-tunneled (subway-esque), eternal.

Similarly, Alaska’s multisyllabic patterns are an endless barrage, like weaponized letters tilted sideways, like bottle rockets angled into a bottle’s neck: “Armament / Now my names are built like a BattleBot / Locked inside an ad hoc Camelot, I rather not / Tangle with a rabid lot, hop inside a rabbit hole.”

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?”

Boredom can make trouble, but boredom can also breed creativity. Alaska rather not spar with trolls under ISP bridges—though he’s equipped to. Instead, he channels his energies into material.

6.  Our culture is done. We lived it.

Near the end, Alaska paraphrases Rammellzee: “I’m not the first or the last to don the mask. / I see it as a title, I’m monastic with these raps.”

Living a life of art—making it regardless of accolade or monetary payment—is the highest form of creativity. Live the art and die by it, like Stan Brakhage, poisoning himself at a slow pace as he applied toxic dyes to celluloid film. Like Rammellzee executing graffiti pieces maskless, huffing the carcinogenic fumes.

MF DOOM (née Zev Love X)—a Rammellzee descendant—taught us how to revel in anonymity, the importance of not spotlighting yourself, but instead seeking out the shade, secret passageways, and the trapdoor in the stage floor. Not all of us heed the advice, but some do, and they feel the throb of real success, not the sort that shows up in bank statements and 401(k) plans.

Images:

“Beat Bop” test pressing, Rammellzee and K-Rob, art by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1983 (detail) | Rammellzee black-and-white portrait photograph (unknown) | Ikonoklast Panzerism diagram from IONIC TREATISE GOTHIC FUTURISM ASSASSIN KNOWLEDGES OF THE REMANIPULATED SQUARE POINT’S ONE TO 720° TO 1440° THE RAMM-ΣLL-ZΣΣ (1979, 2003) | Page 34 (muted post horn) in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Bantam Books edition (1966) | “A scribe at work,” from an illuminated manuscript from the Estoire del Saint Graal, France (Royal MS 14 E III c. 1315-1325 AD) | Herbie Hancock, Future Shock cassette cover (1983) | Grand Mixer D.ST comic book image (unknown) | Stan Brahage at chalkboard (unknown) | Stan Brakhage, Mothlight celluloid (1963) | “Beat Bop” test pressing, Rammellzee and K-Rob, art by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1983 (detail)

[fasd701]

For my Fashion Studio Class FASD701, I started my reviewing my design values . My values align with ethics and personal values, I want to work hard this yeaR to focous on sustainability. I want to work in a more sustainable way with a focous on a locally made, small busness feel and made with love and thought. 

The guidelines that I have have set and what I would like to acheve in my project is of course sustainability as well as natural and organic, I also want it to be somewhat affordable, stylish and asthetic. I would like it to have handmade elements and fall under the contextual posisioning of Artisinal Clothing. 

[queernuck]

The Tragedy of Humboldt and The Injustice of Tragedy

The tragedy of the Humboldt Broncos is one that is widely known in the hockey world, is a sort of moment that endures more than any other similar tragedy in part because of its magnitude, because of the way in which it is so singular, such an event beyond itself. Indeed, it appears as an event akin to Baudrillard’s concept of 9/11, one that all but excuses any sins on behalf of the Broncos and mythologizes the team, captures them eternally such that they have achieved a status unimaginable for a junior team in their position. A junior team revered by the pros, by the Hockey Hall of Fame, a hockey team out of time. There is little doubting that the story of the Broncos is tragic, but the sentencing of Jaskirat Sidhu is part of what magnifies exactly goes into the cultural baggage surrounding such a tragedy, and how it informs structures of carceral justice along with their ideological basis, along with the means by which hockey culture is structured, repeated, and spread.

The shock of the Broncos was magnified by the fact that they were travelling to a playoff game, that so many of the victims were so young, they looked like other hockey players, they had the same shade of bleach-blonde hair as part of a tradition many young hockey players follow where they bleach their hair during the playoffs. One of the most emblematic photos from the post-crash scene was a snapped DVD of Slap Shot, a movie that itself is emblematic of the culture of hockey. R-rated, with risqué and frankly dated humor, the comedic structure of the film still holds up rather well, especially when taken with the performance of actors like Paul Newman and the roughness of hockey culture more generally. When pictures of the victims began to come out, the sense of tragedy was only magnified by just how familiar they seemed, how it brought in that recognition of the hockey world as a whole, hockey families, ones who knew the experience of travelling state to state town to town province to province in order to have a shot at, one day, making the pros. The familiarity of this lead to an act of remembrance that was echoed across the hockey world, the leaving out of a hockey stick, to symbolize a stick left out in case any of the boys wanted to grab one and play some shinny.

To again refer to Baudrillard and his media analysis, as well as Deleuzian concepts of the event, this was a moment of automotive violence, of bodies colliding with one another in a new singularity, and this was one such arrangement. Sidhu recognized this as well, as part of the trial process he never asked for a plea bargain, levied no defense, and was willing to accept a maximum sentence because of his guilt over the accident, how he felt after killing 29 despite it being in no small part a fault beyond him, a fault that resulted from the situation he was in. As the editorial in the National Post that I refer to points out, he had merely five days of training and three weeks of driving, only one driving on his own, before the day of the crash. The same day, he had needed a farmer’s help to tow his rig out of soft mud he had been mired in while checking his GPS, having to rely on the farmer’s help after the trucking company he was working for ignored his calls. The tarp covering his load had come loose earlier in the day, requiring an adjustment that had come undone a second time, distracting him as he drove into the intersection where his truck crashed into the Broncos’ bus. The very same intersection has since been improved dramatically, in recognition of both this crash and a previous fatal accident at that very same intersection. A combination of lax regulations in Saskatchewan effectively combined such that an inexperienced driver could meet the Broncos’ bus in such a tragic fashion. 

The trial, which eventually gave Sidhu 8 years in prison as a punishment, was marked by 90 different victim statements, many of them scathing and directed at Sidhu on behalf of the Broncos. So much is captured by the tragedy of the Broncos, and this is yet another part of this: the ease of constructing narratives in the case of "victim impact" statements involves playing off of disparities between the prosecution and the convicted, the way in which structures of culpability and liability are conceived of, and the way in which the symbolic weight of a tragedy becomes something beyond itself, including the problems of ableism and white supremacy in the narratives of hockey as a sport. There is no accident that sled hockey is often considered lesser, is considered a secondary sport and moreover is dominated by narratives around the Team USA sled hockey team and the proliferations of veterans on the team: the way that disabled bodies are only acceptable, only considered worthwhile if they have been deployed in service of empire. Accomodations for disability are not seen as worthwhile specifically because bodies are understood as incomplete, and while that consideration is being extended in part to members of the team left disabled, the way that it is conditional, that it is in part reserving a kind of ability-to-appear, becoming-disabled being conditional on tragedy in some sense involves a pessimism that implies the very structure of hockey culture itself: the way it values keeping the appearance of an intact body, the way in which it values perseverance through injury above all else as part of dedication to the team.

In another sense, the way in which it represented an act of singular violence against not only a team, but a white team at that, lead to the impact of such an accident specifically as one interrelated with hockey. There was a sense where the sport itself suffered a loss with the Broncos, and this was in turn repeated through continuous invocation of the Broncos’ memory. The notion of the team has been used to talk about so many things directly in relation to hockey, a refusal to branch out beyond the sport, the way that hockey culture as a whole is seen as dominating certain hegemonies, Canadian identity, and how the means by which Sidhu could be understood as an “Other” rather than an unlucky indictment of a wider array of conditions placed onto a singular person. The punishment, effectively, is merely additive to what is already clear, that it must be placed on the individual in order to avoid recognizing the structure. 

The same has been more widely true in hockey culture recently, with the means by which the firing of Mike Babcock has revealed a wide range of racist, homophobic, and otherwise revolting harassment that extends down to Junior teams, that is pervasive through the sport, that shapes the ideology of teams like the Broncos and the teams that players will eventually go on to play in, at every single level. When looking to the idea of victim statements, as mentioned in the editorial, their steering of justice is fundamentally reactionary because of the way in which it is linked to “Victim Advocacy” not as a genuine framework of advocating for those most victimized by violence, but rather as a kind of enhancing of already-present violence in the legal system, as a kind extrajudicial recapture of attitudes around how victimization must be understood, and moreover how it must be punished. Carceral violence is the only means through which it can be doled out, is the only way that one can meaningfully affect a close in the disparity between the victimized and the victimizer. 

Of course, things are rarely that simple, and the means by which the judicial system uses structures of convenience in order to then decide exactly what kind of justice can be meted out by such a system. The focus of the editorial in question points to much more reckless acts receiving far less dramatic sentences, that far more intentionally violent acts have been given less violence in a judicial sense. However, the means by which this combined a specific series of evocations of certain values, certain ideological fetishes in order to create the kind of denied-individuality as well as the critical reversal into the individual necessary for the creation of the hockey player. 

The continuation of the tragedy into such an event, the way in which this tragedy is arguably continued by the heavy-handed response, the way that an entire apparatus of justice and carceral retention is symbolized (not to mention the close relationship of many hockey players to such apparatuses due to whiteness) through this tragedy makes it such that, when the lives of these players, the victims of the accident, the driver who was woefully unprepared but still pressed into driving by the demands of capital, and how these demands were enacted upon a busful of teenagers, how the dangers of travel were made clear through them, the way they were themselves victimized by a kind of cultural arrangement beyond themselves just as thousands upon thousands of hockey players are, with very few representatives ever made to answer for it, and those chosen often chosen out of convenience.