#this level of acceptance and openness was non-existent 20 years ago

[notfinancialadvice]

How I Built an Emergency Fund, inspiration I deeply hope is helpful

As the blog URL says, this is not financial advice. This is how I did this thing, and I am posting it here, publicly, in hopes that it helps you should you need this information.

In short: Remix this advice to what fits your life + do not sue me if this goes poorly for you. This is for Americans, if you do not live in America and/or your money is not in America, I hope this is a useful base.

None of these links are affiliate links.

I write these things as a mental shift. I like to ramble and I wish I had someone tell me this stuff 20+ years ago. I'm hoping this helps you.

This is an incredibly long post so I'm putting it under a KEEP READING.

This post goes over two stages: "short term + not life-or-death" and "long term + actual life or death"

Part 01: SHORT TERM + NOT LIFE-OR-DEATH FUND

You need to find a high yield savings account that is FDIC insured. Ally is a popular bank for this.

Functionally, the only difference between a "high yield savings account" and "savings account" from the giant conglomerate bank down the street is the interest rate.

I do not know why non-high-yield savings accounts exist. I'm guessing because legally they can, and I hate it.

Moving away from my personal socioeconomic views to return to advice.

"FDIC insured" is not something you pay for. It is nearly universal on savings accounts. If a savings account, or a checking account, does NOT have it, then you should not put your money there. Something is wrong with that bank.

FDIC means if your bank goes out of business, your account is insured up to $250,000, per account, by the government. So if your bank goes out of business, the government makes sure you still have your cash (up to $250k).

A high-yield savings account means your cash is available whenever you need it.

Other products, like CDs, exist, but this ramble is designed to be as simple and starter as possible. Begin with a high yield savings account, build up from there as you do your own research + compare this to your needs.

Do not accept an account that has minimum balances. Do not open an account with monthly fees.

Touch this account as little as possible.

For every $1 you put in, every month, a few pennies will materialize. It's not much, but the main point is at every level, your money works for you.

Rich people do this. You can too.

Touch this account as little as possible.

You can have multiple savings accounts.

I personally have a savings account in the above structure designed for "oh hell I am kinda screwed, but will be okay, just need a buffer."

"How much should I have in there?" you might ask. Common advice says "3-6 months expenses" which is a lot. I say "start with literally $1 and continue as you can until comfortable with what is possible, for you, at this time."

Will $1 make you rich? No.

Will it save your life in a bad situation? Probably not.

Does this $1 essentially become a tiny robot that is making you money for as long as it is docked into its cargo bay? ...weird metaphor but we'll go with it, sure.

Ultimately is it a start? Yes.

You can have multiple savings accounts. You can have a savings account "this is for short term emergencies" and "this is for... slightly less short term" etc.

It costs you nothing to have multiple. They all operate in the same way. It's handy to have them all at the same bank because it can make transferring cash easier.

Part 02: LONG TERM + ACTUAL LIFE-OR-DEATH FUND WITH RISK SO BE CAREFUL

Once you have your savings account set up, and it's being funded on a regular basis (every week, every paycheck, every month, every quarter -- whatever works for you), look into creating a second, bigger, more dangerous-term cash reserve.

I like my Roth IRA. This is a link to a proper finance blog that has a lot of details. I am trying to make this handy/simple to get started.

401ks and (non-Roth) IRAs are funded with pre-tax dollars, frequently in conjunction with your job.

Normally, cash goes from job -> government takes a slice -> you.

Pre-tax retirement accounts, cash goes from job -> retirement takes the percentage you decide -> government takes a slice of what is left -> you

Roth IRAs, job -> government takes a slice -> you -> Roth IRA

The benefit to pre-tax retirement accounts being, because the cash going in is pre-tax, there is more of it.

It can grow faster in the stock market or other places your particular fund allows you to put cash into.

The taxes come out when you withdraw -- usually retirement -- because if you withdraw before you retire, you are heavily penalized with extra fees.

That's why Part 02 is a ROTH IRA. Your money has already been taxed -- job -> government's slice -> you -> Roth IRA.

This means the money is yours, already taxed. If you withdraw the gains, those get taxed, but the base, that's yours.

If you invest $100 and it grows to $105, you can withdraw $100 without paying fees or taxes. If you withdraw that extra $5, that is when taxes start to come into play. If you withdraw $100, and leave the $5, the $5 continues to grow, and that extra growth is taxed if withdrawn. So try not to touch it (ideally you leave all of it until retirement).

This is why this is an emergency, life-or-death only, account. You tap it only when you need to when all other choices are wretched and ruinous.

There is an annual limit as to how much money you can put into a Roth IRA (several thousand bucks).

You can start them very small. Like $20 or maybe less.

Look for a bank or institution that does not charge fees to open and maintain one.

AT EVERY STEP YOU SHOULD BE AVOIDING FEES

Here are smart people talking about ideas on how to get started.

Okay, so, what do we do now with this fancy roth thing.

Here is where things get... uncomfortable.

A Roth IRA is an account type.

You need to do something with your money.

The reason you have this in addition to, and secondary to, your high-yield savings account is because this is an investment vehicle, the balance is going to go up and down, and may reach $0.00.

For my Roth IRA, I like "exchange traded funds" -- ETFs.

There are a lot of options -- you can invest in most anything

Because my Roth IRA is built for "help me I'm dying" emergencies, I invest in a mix of S&P 500 index funds and small-cap funds.

SO MANY WORDS.

Let's break this down what this means.

S&P 500 index funds: This is an index fund of giant, giant, giant companies.

An index fund is like a stock. But instead of a single company, it tracks (owns shares of) an index -- like the DOW or Nasdaq. Or countries. Or... the entire market for oil. Etc.

The metaphor isn't completely accurate, but I like to think of it as "an index fund is a company that owns tiny bits of other companies."

Like, okay, say you have SlimeIndexFund and a share price is $40.

In this example, SlimeIndexFund owns $10 worth of "BardCo" and $10 of "ThiefCo" and $10 of "MermaidCo" and $10 of "EvilCo".

Let's say EvilCo does a lot of evil and is now worth $15, and MermaidCo does a lot of mermaid stuff and is now worth $15, and BardCo sings out of tune so is now worth $5. ThiefCo is oddly at the same $10 but we're scared so we're leaving ThiefCo to stay at $10.

A share in SlimeIndexFund is now worth $45. ($5 BardCo + $10 ThiefCo + $15 EvilCo + $15 MermaidCo)

This is diversification

Because I bought an index fund, instead of just buying BardCo, my risk is less.

Had I bought all MermaidCo, my return would be higher -- but this is a much bigger risk.

The entire purpose of this set up of a Roth IRA is TO MINIMIZE RISK.

Your Roth IRA should allow you to buy "fractional shares" and if it doesn't fuck that bank, go somewhere that does.

In the above example, SlimeIndexFund is $40/share and at that price you are getting the full benefit of 1 share.

Let's say you have $10.

You buy a fractional share of SlimeIndexFund for $10, which is 25% of 1 share.

So when SlimeIndexFund shares raise from $40 -> $45, your fractional share goes from $10 -> $12.50.

Not all funds and stock shares (etc) have fractional shares, most do.

It's a great way to start and build.

Small-cap funds: These operate in literally the same way. The difference is the companies are (in comparison) much smaller. They tend to be more nimble.

So I am diversifying between "here is a fund, it has a lot of large companies" and "here is a fund, it has a lot of small companies."

Let's say Big Office Building real estate goes down, but the sale of Small Company Making waffles goes up. This mixes together and I'm less in danger of losing money, or losing much money.

You can pick individual stocks.

The reason it is not recommended, by nearly everyone, is because the market has incredible tools and power over individual stocks.

By using any kind of fund that bundles things together, you are thereby automatically using these tools by proxy

It is critical to understand this is the stock market. Your account will go up and down. It may go down A LOT, like 25%, and take years to recover. Maybe it goes down 100% to literally $0.00.

That's why this is the LAST RESORT EMERGENCY FUND.

So why are we doing this.

This feels... wrong?

The potential for growth is significantly higher than a savings account. Adjusted for inflation, somewhere in between 6-7%.

At this rate, if you can leave your initial deposit alone for somewhere between 10 - 13 years, it has doubled.

This equation recalculates every time you make a deposit. So if you can deposit $20 every pay check, it has the potential to grow very quickly.

As above, this is the stock market, so it can also get wiped out.

But given the stock market has historically always recovered, though it may take several years, the risk is worth it to me + a lot of other people.

The reason this is built as a last-resort cash bucket is because of this risk. Before moving into this arena, you should have other cash buckets as a buffer.

Your RISK is it goes down. Which it will frequently.

Your REWARD is if it goes up. Which historically it has far more than it went down.

The PURPOSE of using funds as described above is so you don't have try to guess who the next Amazon is and wind up picking the next Pets.com (which went out of business, like, a long... long time ago).

The people making the funds figure out who is Amazon and who is Pets.com and work, day and night, to make your money grow and/or protect it when outside influences are hurting the market.

They are incredibly equipped to do this and their literal livelihood is on the line when they do it poorly.

Which is a polite way of saying, they are continuously incentivized above all else to work for the fund you're investing in.

The reason you're doing this in a Roth IRA specifically is you're hoping to keep as much of it intact, as possible, until you retire, at which point -- if you've followed fairly simple rules -- you withdraw the base and gains tax-free.

Whereas money in a normal stock account? Those gains are taxable every year.

"I have literally $20 I can save per pay check! Can I put in $15 into a high-yield savings account and $5 into a Roth IRA to get started?!"

Yes!

Also, congrats! You're diversifying already!

Your Roth IRA broker should allow you to invest a minimum of $1 at a time, and buy fractional shares. If they don't, don't sign up with them!

Lean heavily into your high-yield savings account until that is very comfortable and thick, then push money into the Roth IRA.

Your goal is to build a system that works for you -- both literally (money working for you) and emotionally ("this is comfortable")

"Should I pay off debt before proceeding? A lot of people say to pay off excess debt first."

This is up to you.

Most financial blogs etc. do say "focus on paying off debt first" -- it's good advice, your returns are risk-free and permanent, since the lower your debt is, the less you have to pay over time.

Interest -- working for you or against you -- is continuous and eternal.

Personally, I like to diversify everything, so I not-financial-advice ramble "do all three -- pay down debt, throw a little cash into a high-yield savings, throw a little cash into a Roth IRA"

The problem with "pay off debt first" is that it misses out any occasional giant gains the stock market makes (Roth IRA) and introduces the risk of "I have paid this credit card on time for 5 years, I'm short on change for 3 months due to a situation that gets resolved quickly, and now I have a late payment fee, and a higher interest rate."

Look at your life, finances, and potential future and make decisions!

And also:

Always be on the look out for deals with banks. Sign up bonuses, referral links from friends, etc. Think of it as a money sale.

If you are not comfortable with the idea of a Roth IRA hitting $0.00 potentially, do not do step 02. These are ideas, not directives.

All financial tools can be used for different purposes. All of them. Thus -- these are ideas, not directives.

I am listing a few examples of banks, funds, etc. These are not recommendations nor are they affiliate links. They are listed because I want to maximize your start on this path, but caution, in strongest possible terms, you must do your own research and figure out what makes sense for you.

There are a lot of nuances I am paving over for the sake of simplicity, which is why I am continually saying...

...c'mon say it with me...

...you must do your own research before continuing

Smart, free sites that cover this + a lot of other stuff:

NerdWallet

Bank Rate

One final note about Roth IRAs:

Robinhood currently is offering a 1% match on an IRA. Considering the strict limits of how much an IRA can intake per year, it's not much, but it doesn't cost you anything. Money on sale!

As a final note -- always feel comfortable asking people handling your money for help. They are working for you. Your money works FOR YOU.

If you are uncomfortable, leave, immediately, without concern.

At the retail level, there are hundreds of banks and financial institutions clamoring for your business. If someone makes you uncomfortable for not knowing something, or getting a term wrong, or asking "too many" questions -- go somewhere else.

It doesn't matter if your account is literally worth $20.

They are working for you.

This is a business transaction, and if they make you feel like your time isn't worth their business, I promise you there is someone else who will gladly take care of you.

I end with -- whenever someone is giving you financial advice, always ask why. It helps ensure they aren't scamming you, it's just a good business practice.

I like to ramble, it helps me mentally

I like to be useful, I want the world to be significantly more balanced in terms of who is doing okay

I like to write, this is all good practice for me in doing Various Other Things I do

I fucking hate predatory financial practices. I was gatekept out of financial literacy for decades and so every time I help someone else figure out how to set up their own life and protect themselves it is a giant "fuck you" to the systems and directly to the people who stood in my way.

[triskhellion]

Sunday Snippet

tagged by @dear-massacre

from Honey Wine

The Compact had been between shifters, magic users, the fae, and the majority of the Hunter clans. It was the result of years of determined negotiation and sacrifice, including numerous attempted and successful assassinations by those who wanted the bloodshed to continue. But in the end the supernatural beings came together and presented a united front to the Hunters, most of whom chose to change their ways and survive. 

As of 23 years ago, the days of all-out, species or classification based violence which had embroiled countless generations and decimated races, clans, covens and so on, were over. Coyotes vs. wolves. Fae vs. kitsune. Druids vs. witches. Etc. The myriad and ever changing combinations of belligerents that existed over the years. And of course Hunters vs. them all. 

It didn’t mean that no one could ever act against a member of another group (there was an entire section on justifiable force,) but that any such conflicts were to be kept to a personal level and were heavily frowned upon unless for a very good reason. There was a council with representatives from each people that oversaw the handling of rogues.

And so the Argents had ostensibly become upstanding, non-homicidal citizens, never mind that such hateful attitudes were extremely unlikely to simply just disappear. Gerard’s daughter had seemed more than willing to accept a courtship with her newly of age 16 year old son and that had been enough for the great Alpha Hale. Apparently, the bar for concern about his well-being had been physical violence and it turned out that they’d been wrong in that assessment too. Not that they had taken his word for it. 

Derek clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, letting out an involuntary whimper-growl at the painful memories.  

“Who goes there?” a drawling and amused male voice called out from nearby, snapping him back to the present.

Derek startled and jumped up, spinning around to look for its source. How did he get that close to someone without noticing?

Searching intently with his more heightened senses he soon realized that he still couldn’t hear their heartbeat and breathing or scent them in the air, which could only mean one thing: magic. Of what kind he had no idea. 

Cautiously, he crept closer to what he figured was the one place within range that a person could remain unseen. Assuming they weren’t also invisible somehow. Derek shivered at the thought, looking around anxiously as if that would do any good were that the case and feeling even more vulnerable. 

Neither magic wielding humans nor the various fae had given him or his family any real trouble before, but he was out here alone and one could never know. The fae in particular often had a mischievous streak and he was currently outside of the considerable stretch of the Preserve that was part of the Hale territory. 

Knowing that whoever it was likely already had the upper hand and could attack him if they wanted to he supposed he might as well try to face the being that he was dealing with. When he peeked around the other side of a large, uneven tree stump he saw what appeared to be a brunet young man in his late teens, maybe 20, sitting sideways and half sprawled across the seat — no, throne — that had been carved into where the trunk had broken and fallen over some time ago. His head was resting against the back of the recess, long-lashed eyelids closed above an upturned nose and cupid’s bow lips. An open flask of some fruit flavored alcohol was held loosely by the slender fingers at the end of a dangling arm.

Derek tried not to make a sound, but the magical youth knew that he was there, staring.

“Hi,” came that syrupy voice again, tousle-haired head abruptly turning to look straight at him with a raised eyebrow and an impish smirk. His laughing eyes were the color of amber honey. 

“Now I know there aren’t any regular wolves around here, so unless you’ve escaped from a sanctuary or some wannabe House Stark super fan somewhere — and are unusually chill in the presence of strangers — I’m going to assume you’re a Were.”

Derek nodded in confirmation and the unknown supernatural’s grin widened. He was suddenly glad that he’d gone out in his wolf form because otherwise he was sure he’d be blushing under the inquisitive gaze. Well, visibly blushing. The thought of shifting now and standing naked in front of the attractive and self-assured young man on his forest throne only made Derek even more flustered.

Consider yourself tagged if you want to play along!

[jonathankatwhatever]

Pardon my American, but this is how stupid I can be: I was looking at material about homeomorphisms and diffeomorphisms and, even after realizing they were talking about dimensional shapes constructed within higher dimensional shapes, I could not accept that there is a known solution which works in D7, and only in D7 except perhaps in D4 as well, and that there are 28 of these in D7. Or rather, in D7, there are at least 7 structures which are smooth, which don’t have cusps, which can be fully differentiated, and these make a group which cycles, a cycling group, of the order or count of 28. To say it the latter way says that smooth is treating this as an I//I creation or generation versus a shape which has a cusp or which is otherwise not smooth, because that non-smoothness is visible I//I. It’s visible because you can see the cut and paste where the images fit together, where there must be a fold or some other change of direction. It’s like you’re being pushed by the wind toward a lee while the tide is running out, so you can feel the directions pushing at each other, but at the level where the wind suddenly picks up, where you turn a headland and the tide or perhaps some other rapid outflow, like a river discharging, grabs. That exposes, again, why this it is so difficult to see this: I//I can hide in plain sight.

We just explained cusps? I guess so. It has been implicit for some time now.

So, would this be Triangular of grid squares? Yes. So we’re saying that Triangular of gs appears in ‘real life’ through John Milnor’s work on exotic spheres and that this bridges to CM28. That it’s 7 and that 4 is an open question are crucial.

I just saw a bridge of 3*28, so SBE of this, which is a cube of this in gs, which is CM84, which leaves CM16, which invokes multiple fCM associations, like 2T at LC. Another is that CM84 also counts as CM64 plus CM20, and CM20 is directional CM10, which can be treated as area and thus as CM100, so that cube then makes sense as the CM64 Thing plus a CM100 that is part of a larger CM100. This stuff drives me nuts. It’s a CM100 which needs to be manipulated twice, taking the root, then counting the root twice (because it has to add up to 20), and this occurs within a larger CM100 because CM84 is CM16 away, which means the additional gs space is defined by a 2T object.

Is there a better way of approaching this? I’m not sure.

It’s like connected sum is a way to get into Attachment Theory. The why of connection being D-structure. That’s why D7 and CM28, and why I refer to D-structure in gs.

I need to tighten or even express in generalities the reason why D7 here represents D3 and D4. It’s the conception of a Registry for grid squares. That’s what writes out the counts. That’s inherent in f1-3//3-1, which is now clearly the base conception of a functional equation in which the fundamental of 3fD to a bT becomes 3gs related to a gs or 4gs which can be pictured on a sheet of grid squares. So the count of a D3 Object in D4 is D7 by what mechanics? Like above, there has to be a path, and it is obviously addition, so what you’re saying is D7 is the natural extension of f1-3 in which the 1 is D4, making this work through the entire context structure. I suddenly see the context structure appearing: the D4 attaches in pairs exactly as we had it years ago.

It’s freaky how I’m now seeing material that’s 10 years old or more come back as completely correct. I should be used to it, but this stuff was set aside. I remember the work and how much effort it took, but I needed to put it aside for a long time. We’re actually connecting fCM to math that didn’t exist until like 1956. There is no way I could have made it this far if I went down that path. I’d have been absorbed into trying to solve problems with a structure I needed to see from the outside so I could connect the understanding within me, which is keyed to the understanding within you, thus making the Triangular in gs which is what I’m now busily describing.

I got up to let the cat out. It’s now 7:11AM on 29 Apr 2023, and the cat already went back to bed. He killed another baby rabbit. Found him eating it. Not sure how I feel about that: we’re going to be overrun by rabbits if there are no predators for them and the coyotes and weasels have killed the feral cats but there aren’t enough them to manage the prey population so they don’t overexpand. The presence of humans keeps the natural predator population low. And we poison so many, too, because we think we have a right to do whatever we want to get rid of rats and other animals we either fear as unclean or which make our yards less attractive.

In terms of smoothness, there needs to be a D7 example (homeo and diffeomorphism) because we need a count of 28 to be smooth because that means I//I is contained or constrained to - and here I run out of notation because we have each Irreducible being cumulative but what we really need is a way of describing that reality can compare within itself, meaning it constructs gs, or to what isn’t, which means it constructs Triangular with grid squares, which means fCM because fCM expresses Triangular. Wow, that just popped out of my fingers. I can do better than that, but not right this moment. I need to go back to sleep because I’m starting to fight to stay awake.

[thoughts-reasons]

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[mendrax]

My first review of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time

Here’s my first impression under the cut...

The franchise as art.

Not just the Eva franchise but the concept of a franchise itself. Because franchises, as they exist in the world of filmmaking, are inherently a capitalist product designed for escapism. Let’s go to the movies for a brand new chapter in the ever-sprawling saga of commoditized characters conquering a new mile in the millennially trotted hero journey, yay! Isn’t that how you can describe the act of purchasing a ticket to the latest entry in your favorite franchise? And what’s so wrong with that, anyway? After all, we need our escapism when life becomes unbearable. It’s just a public service really!

And is Eva really that different? At the end of the day, no matter how avant-garde it can be, it’s still a product that we’ve come to consume, quite literally, again and again. Not only that, but it’s also a damn good profitable IP with millions of merchandise goods, box-office record numbers and, now, a distribution deal with one of the gods of capitalism: Amazon. Long gone are the days of non-profit experiencing of it. You can now legally pay to watch its whole audiovisual canon in Netflix and Prime.

Still, even after its paradoxical commodification, the text of Eva itself remains as a message of anti-escapism. No matter how many figures, blu-rays and streaming services you pay for, the message of Eva remains the same. A message that quite starkly opposes itself to this escapist consumerism. Even if, ironically, is this very message that, due to its humanity, has touched the hearts of millions who have then turned it into another comfort food. This is so sad, alexa play komm, susser tod…

Now, cynicism aside, the reason 3.0+1.0 elevates the concept of a franchise to an art form is, quite simply, because, at its best, art is a method of communication delivering a message that could only be delivered through its chosen medium. I could very easily tell you to go outside and touch some grass, talk to your parents and hug your dearest, but that’d never have the same impact as experiencing the Eva franchise from start to finish.

3.0+1.0 is a film that can’t work without experiencing all the films and TV episodes before it. I mean, it has its own beginning, middle and end but, really, its message can’t be as impactful without the other entries in its franchise. The film itself rehashes images and situations we’ve come to intimately know from its predecessors. Not only that but it converses with them, presenting nuanced and overt contrasts of key moments. Particularly in its final act, we see the reversal and echoes of a lot of moments from End of Evangelion. Asuka gets mangled, not by outside forces, but by her own doing. Misato gets shot but she survives this. Ritsuko shots Gendo, but doesn’t kill him. Shinji doesn’t punish Gendo by devouring him through Unit-01, but instead saves him by getting close to him. This last one might be one of the most heart-wrenching moments in the whole movie, which, it’s worth noting, serves as the wholesome counterpart to EoE’s bitter ending. To say nothing of the contrast 3.0+1.0 presents to EoE’s beach scene…

But these are all narrative points that, with some serious talent, could even be conveyed through literary form and film, as we know, its powerful because its an audiovisual medium. And here’s where Eva, time and again, separates itself from most, if not all, franchises in recent memory. Its images are not only narrative but discursive. I’d even argue that, come its ending, Eva uses images that don’t really advance its plot, but rather help to cement its discourse, its message. And its been doing that since eps 25-26… The last minutes of Eva will always be a Brechtian assault on the senses with images that demand to be studied and interpreted. They’re not there to finish the bedtime story with a kiss on the forehead of your overworked soul, but to shake it out of its zombie state and fill you with emotions you can’t even describe through words until much later, if at all… I believe that’s why a lot of us have come back to Eva again and again. Not necessarily for its plot, but for the rise of emotions and thoughts that bolt through your core as you experience its final moments and how they re-paint the whole journey you’ve just travelled to get there.

3.0+1.0 is filled with such images that, one day, I’d love to analyze. I’m still too shocked from having watched it almost 20 hrs ago and this is already too long, so I’ll leave this task for subsequent viewings… still my mind can’t help but replay certain images over and over, even as I write this… from Misato looking at the photo of her son and Shinji… Kaworu crying as Shinji extends his hand to him… the juxtaposition of Unit-01 lying on its side, staring at the phallic ruins of Nerv HQ, and Shinji, on the same position and equally sized, staring at the piano he played with Kaworu… baby Shinji blatantly rejecting Gendo, only to find comfort with his mom, and baby Asuka painfully looking at this from afar… to the shot of Shinji and Rei, discussing the neon genesis, on an dismantled theater, as frames from the TV anime are projected onto them and the brick wall behind them… I can’t word what these images mean yet, but I’m looking forward to doing it one day…

I suppose this has turned into a long ramble, but I’m still sure of my opening thought. 3.0+1.0 takes elements of every entry on the Evangelion franchise to express a message that could only be conveyed with such impact by having consumed the entire franchise beforehand, and it does so in a way that doesn’t perpetuate the comfortable escapism of other franchises. Its very message of anti-escapism and use of images that converse emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually with the viewer prevent it from being purely a capitalist product designed for escapism. It’s a piece of art, worth of being discussed at the same level of any work from a grand master of any other type of art. But it’s also a franchise… hopefully this will inspire more franchises as art forms.

And now, as a post-scriptum, because no review of Eva is worth anything without some shameless personal history, I must say that my journey with Eva has been like none other piece of media… I was introduced by it at 18 years old, fresh out of high school, by the person who would become my best friend, and I remember, back then, finding it incredibly comforting and enigmatic. It helped me through a period of drastic change in my life, from changing majors halfway from English to Film, to becoming an older brother at 19 (after a life of being an only child). I was incredibly depressed and struggled with addiction for years after that. I related to Shinji and his perpetual running away from life but, now, seven years later I got to see the conclusion to that journey my best friend invited me to… I also earned my bachelor’s degree in film, have a comfortable job and have been sober for 10 months. I don’t run away as much but I’d be lying if I wasn’t still, somewhat, disconnected from most people in my life. To be honest, I related so much to Gendo’s story on this film and that scared me. It’s still hard to let people in but, still, there’s been some growth. Small victories that allowed me to accept this final film’s message as completely valid. It’s just so wholesome, isn’t it? And yet, there’s a bittersweetness to it… like in every ending, you’re glad it happened but it’s painful coming to terms that it’s over. I cried for a good thirty minutes after it was over, washing the tears away, only to stare at my reflection and turn into a sobbing mess… I’ll never get to experience anything like this for the first time and that’s just incredibly sad… still, I’m so fucking glad for it all, even the wait (as shorter as it was for me) and I do believe I’ll be able to say bye-bye, all of Evangelion… one day.

[the-real-slim-shady]

Transgender and Non-Binary People: The Facts and Science Behind Them

I wrote this essay a while ago, after I had an argument with my mom about transgender people, and I figured I'd share it, it’s really long, so feel free to just skim it and find the important parts lol.

    In recent years, gender issues have become much more prevalent in our society. People who are transgender and non-binary finally feel comfortable being who they are, but there are still people who think transgender and non-binary people don’t exist. Some believe that they’re just seeking attention, or that all of their problems could be solved with therapy. This is a tricky topic because it is hard to scientifically prove how a person feels in their body.

    People usually think of the words “sex” and “gender” as interchangable, but this is in fact incorrect. In general terms, the word “sex” refers to the biological differences between men and women, such as the genitalia and genetic differences. “Gender” is more ambiguous, and harder to define. Gender usually refers to the role of a man and woman in society or an individual’s concept of themselves. To put it simply, sex is in the body, gender is in the mind. Sometimes a person’s genetically assigned sex does not line up with their gender. These individuals usually refer to themselves as transgender, non-binary, or genderfluid.

    We all learn in middle school that the last pair of chromosomes we have determines our sex. XX for a woman and XY for a man. Sex, however, is not that simple. The male/female split is often seen as a man-or-woman binary, but this is not entirely true. Some men are born with two or three X chromosomes as well as a Y, and some women are born with a Y chromosome. In some cases, a child is born with a mix between male and female genitalia. This is sometimes deemed intersex, and parents can decide which gender to assign to the child, but sometimes the child feels neither male nor female or disagrees with their parents’ decision. A person can be female if they have an X and Y chromosome but they are insensitive to androgens, so they have a female body. A person can have an X and Y chromosome and have a female body because their Y is missing the SRY gene. A person can have two X chromosomes and have a male body because one of their X’s has a SRY gene. A person can be female because they only have one X chromosome. A person can be male because they have two X chromosomes and one Y. A person can be male because you have two X chromosomes but your heart and brain are male and a person can be female with an X and a Y because their heart and mind feel stuck inside the wrong body.

    Most people’s sex and gender line up. The expectation that if you’re assigned a male at birth, you’re a man, and you’re assigned female at birth you’re a woman, lines up for people who are cisgender. But for people who are transgender or non-binary, the sex they’re assigned at birth may not align with the gender they know themselves to be. The concepts of gender and sex are socially constructed. We as a society assign gender and sex based on socially agreed upon characteristics. Dresses, the color pink, makeup, long hair, painted nails, and high heels belong to women, but we have seen in the past that this wasn’t always true, and as time goes on, the gendering of the aforementioned products is fading. This doesn’t mean that body parts and functions are “made up”, it just means that we categorize and define things in ways that could actually be different.

    The transgender and non-binary identity has long been associated with poor mental health and trauma that can be “cured” by therapy. Science however, says otherwise. Transgender women tend to have brain structures that resemble cisgender women rather than cisgender men. The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) in transgender women is more similar to cisgender women than cisgender men, and the BSTc in transgender men more closely resembles that of a cisgender man. Science tells us that gender is not binary, it may even be a linear spectrum. Like other facets of identity, it can operate on a large range of levels and operate outside of many definitions. Transgender and non binary individuals are not suffering from a mental illness or carefully “choosing” a different identity. The transgender and non-binary identity is multi dimensional, but it deserves no less respect or recognition than any other facet of humankind.

    It is essential to understand the difference between transgender people and non binary people. Transgender people feel like their assigned sex is wrong, and therefore change their gender and sometimes undergo surgery. Non-binary and genderqueer people identify themselves with neither an exclusively male or female gender, their gender identity is beyond the gender binary, sometimes fluctuates between genders, or rejects the gender binary. People who are genderqueer or genderfluid alternate between genders. Kind of like a craving for food, one day they will feel like one gender and wish to be addressed as such, and maybe in a day or a week they’ll feel like another gender and some days they will feel like no gender at all. This may seem to some people like they should just make up their minds, but trust me, if they could they would. Non binary people, however, feel like no gender, and will always feel like they belong outside the gender binary. Science has yet to provide an insight into the non-binary identity and whether there’s any scientific basis to them.

    Some people say that transgender and non binary individuals are just feeling gender dysphoria, and they can overcome it. Gender dysphoria is actually just a name for how transgender and onbinary people feel before they come out: feeling that your emotional or psychological identiy as male or female to be opposite to your biological sex. Gender dysphoria is a strong desire to be rid of your sex characteristics because you feel like they don’t belong to you. It is a strong desire for the sex characteristics of the other gender, or no sex charecteristics at all. It is a strong desire to be treated as another gender. It is a strong conviction that you are not the gender you were born as.

    Some people believe that gender dysphoria for transgender and non-binary people can be solved by therapy. However, researchers analyzed survey responses from more than 27,000 transgender adults accross the US with a roughly even mix of transgender women and transgender men. People who had undergone conversion therapy at some point in their lives were twice as likely to have attempted suicide than someone who had not. About 70% said they had talked to a professional at some point about their gender identity and of those 70%, 20% had undergone conversion therapy. All of the aforementioned people are still transgender.

    In addition, many medical associations and academies have spoken out against conversion therapy. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry “finds no evidence to support the application of any “therapeutic intervention” operating under the premise that a specific sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression is pathological. Furthermore, based on the scientific evidence, the AACAP asserts that such ‘conversion therapies’ lack scientific credibility and clinical utility. Additionally, there is evidence that such interventions are harmful. As a result, ‘conversion therapies’ should not be part of any behavioral health treatment of children and adolescents."

    The American Academy of Pediatrics says “"Confusion about sexual orientation is not unusual during adolescence. Counseling may be helpful for young people who are uncertain about their sexual orientation or for those who are uncertain about how to express their sexuality and might profit from an attempt at clarification through a counseling or psychotherapeutic initiative. Therapy directed specifically at changing sexual orientation is contraindicated, since it can provoke guilt and anxiety while having little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation."

    Since the beginnning of the non-binary movement, it has gathered skepticism, critisism, derision, and even violence. Many non-binary people (and transgender people too) are accused of being “special snowflakes” or “drama queens” and “attention whores”. However, this criticism ignores the fact that gender identity is largely personal. In addition, something as simple as the way you wish to be identified tends to cause hatred to be sent your way. There is little critisim towards non-binary people that can be directed towards them in a constructive matter. If a non-binary person is in fact “just doing it for attention” the name calling and hatred would just be feeding into their desire for attention and giving them exactly what they want!

    Finally, if exploring your gender identity is a “trend” as some have called it, then isn’t it better than the previous trend of feeling isolated and alone and having absolutely no way to be who you are and say what you feel? In light of the current lack of any scientific evidence as to the biological nature of non-binary transsexuality, it is best to act in the same way as any situation where there is a phenomenon yet to be proven by science: doubt, skepticism, and open-mindedness, which accepts the potential for truth, but does not assume it.

    Some people are against the idea of calling a transgender or non-binary person their chosen pronouns because they disagree with the way that said person identifies themselves, and they reserve the right to their freedom of speech. Dr. Jordan Peterson is one of these people.

    Dr. Peterson is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. He released a video lecture series taking aim at political correctness. He was frustrated with being asked to use alternative pronouns requested by trans and non-binary students and staff. “I’ve studied authoritarianism for a very long time, for forty years,” Dr Peterson told the BBC. “It starts by people’s attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory. There’s no chance I’m going to use words made up by people who are doing that, not a chance.” Dr Peterson is concerned proposed federal human rights legislation will elevate his refusal to use alternative pronouns into hate speech. There is currently a bill in Canada that prohibits discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act on the basis of gender identity and expression. Under this bill, Dr. Peterson is not guilty of hate speech, but he could face sanction under Ontario’s human rights code which extended protection to trans people in 2012.

    Conservatives like Dr. Peterson have conjured up images of good people being dragged off to jail for not calling a person by their chosen pronouns. To the contrary, as legal scholars like Brenda Cossman and Kyle Kirkup have patiently explained, the bill in Canada cannot lead to anything remotely like this. But the milk has been spilled, and rants have been recorded, and the subtext is that there is a segment of society accustomed to others accommodating their freedom but not the other way around.

    Some people are confused as to why calling someone by their chosen pronouns constitutes as human rights, but I am confused about something else: In what kind of society does the question of whether we should respect people provoke a major debate? In what kind of society does the sentiment “you can’t make me” constitute a compelling argument?

    In conclusion, there’s no reason to discriminate against non-binary people or transgender people because contrary to the popular belief, you’re not being morally or intellectually superior, you’re just being rude. Use their prefered name and pronouns. I promise it won’t kill you.

[babyspacebatclone]

I am not making any of this up, only altering minor details as necessary that may be too identifiable.

It is long, so for sanity, full dets under the cut.

TL;DR: Whoever’s writing this crap (aka my life) is a hack, and needs to stop relying on the “medical emergency” trope for preventing my job from having a functioning level of staff.

Context: I work at a daycare center in the Midwest of the USA. It is not a chain; however, the owners own multiple centers in the area. Combined we would count as a large business, so of course that’s not how it is on the books (means they can work us longer before overtime, etc).

At the beginning of our story, there were three open centers. AC, the “flagship” center, with a director who is part of the owner’s family. BC North and BC South were purchased next, and, how can I nicely say it…. Half a step up from Ghetto? I am not joking, when I was working at BCN and my mom visited, she said she wanted to pull me out of there. BCN functions, barely; BCS is a few blocks away, and despite the owner’s insistence should never be reopened in my terrified opinion - never has had staff the 5 years it’s been under them, fortunately. CC has been open for 40 years, and purchased by the owners when the previous owner retired three years ago. I work at CC now, and hands down the best place just because we have a functioning director, which enables us to keep functioning staff (half of which were under the previous owner).

At the beginning of the year 2021, none of the three open centers had enough staff. We advertise openings like crazy, but it’s hard underpaid work. So what does my brilliant *cough* owner do?

Buy two buildings in two different nearby cities to convert into new centers. Because he thinks he can get more staff if he’s hunting in new cities??? idk

Not buy two new centers like he’s done previously, with existing enrolled children and staff - two non-daycare buildings to convert.

Note: I talk about “older” and “younger” rooms in this. By licensing, children are in a specific age group based on chronological age, with some overlap to allow for development (e.g. At 16 months, an infant can be a toddler, but you can also delay until 18 months without paperwork). My center has enough physical rooms we further separate infants and preschoolers by development/sanity; toddlers are in one single room. Also, “Lead” teachers are the ones in charge and have extra paperwork; assistant level teachers (like me) can also run a room but are more likely to go crazy if left unsupported (like me). Aides are considered unskilled enough that they can’t be alone with kids, unless there’s a pandemic going on and we’re just trying to have any warm body in a room….

So, that’s the context of this insanity before March 2021, when the lead teacher who was on maternity leave returned to my center and I assumed we could settle down into a stable pattern for a second.

I am a naïve idiot.

First we lose two experienced full-time positions, a preschool lead teacher and the kitchen/support staff, who are both leaving to move closer to their (different) families because personal reasons. Understandable. We have a new teacher-level staff we can have work the younger preschool kids with our returned (excellent) older preschool lead. Our director will just - do the kitchen work until we can find a new kitchen worker…. I guess? 🤷‍♀️ We’re also training staff to work the ancient dishwasher to help…

At this point CC officially implements a “no new children” policy. We will still accept the children we already promised a position before (mostly infants), and older preschool has a lot of kids leaving for kindergarten throughout the summer (as some parents stop day care during their own summer vacations). We can… Manage.

And our best part-time assistant teacher graduates and moves, but ok.

And then our second-best assistant teacher get a job in her field… ok…

And then the pregnant Toddler assistant teacher is put on bedrest for a month we are praying for her…

Ok two new hires, one an Aide but with experience excellent…

. What. No seriously what.

So, the director of AC is - long term sick. I won’t share details. This leaves us with two directors for three centers (Ideally, we would have four; one’s supposed to be Executive Director…). Here, logic is (strangely) applied and BCN is closed down and the children that chose to stay with the owners are moved to AC. Considering they had, I think, three total staff (one for each age group) not counting the Executive Director that had been covering that insanity…..

(We are also under the impression that the owner is stalling construction on those other two centers-to-be, but with our owner who knows….)

Anyway, the three staff will be helping at the other centers - specifically, the Toddler staff will work some days at AC and some days with is at CC, which is awesome because the Toddlers are drop dead insane right now.

Not joking. We have a biter in remission, an older girl with an attitude and her younger sister that had to move up with her when 16 months because the mobile infant room is packed but my young infant room had movers that had to change rooms, there’s a pack of three boys who just egg each other on, the leader of that pack was visiting preschool but started using the N word at relevant children (obviously, we have zero tolerance for that…), and the two youngest just-moved toddlers are screamers (they got better in the mobile room… they’ve regressed…).

And it’s 16 Toddlers (depending on the day) crammed into one area (that can be divided into two play areas, fortunately), at a 7 to 1 staff ratio.

So what happens last week? That Toddler teacher gets sick. Then goes to the hospital. Then, I am not joking wtf, leaves a vague text message to my director about a surgery I can’t even…

I just. What.

The Mobile Infant Room has a casual biter. Like, there is no provocation, this kid (who is giant and all muscle) just crawls up to kids and bites. The other 10 babies in there are generally ok-ish, but I don’t know how they are surviving.

Both preschools are…. Well, better than the Toddler room now that the one child is taking the summer before Kindergarten off praise whatever deity you worship hallelujah. Still have kids that need breaks in the director’s office but not as often.

My room, which is now 6 infants ages 3 to 6 months, is my default the easiest to manage.

And 4 of these 6 babies come in between 7:45 and 8:15 (the other two earlier), all want a bottle between 8:30 and 9:00 (we have two staff and policy is one bottle per staff…) and some of these kids take 20-30 minutes for a bottle (do the math)…..

But by about 10am we’re settled and we generally have them ready to wait for the next round of bottles staggered…

And the projectile spitter-upper is improving! They’re only spitting up about 1.5 oz a day, instead of multiple 2 oz random attacks!! 😊

………. My brain is mush send help.

[yeaahishowedupatyourparty]

Zara’s Truth Booth.♥️ You can read this as OOC or an IC interview, I really don’t mind!

GENERAL QUESTIONS 1. Please state your full name: “Zara Belle Calloway.”
2. Does your name(s) have any kind of meaning? If so, what is it?: “I’ve literally never asked and I doubt there’s much thought behind it. By the fourth child, you probably just pick a page in the baby name book and go with it.” 
3. Do you have any nicknames?: “No - I refuse to accept Zar or Z.” 
4. Where were you born? And in which country?: “I was born in South Kensington, London…England.”
5. What is your date of birth?: “13th of December 2001.” 
6. Of course, the following question; what is your Zodiac sign? “Sagittarius.” 
7. Do you believe in Zodiac signs? “I think so? I relate more to my moon sigh, though - a Cancer.”
8. Where do you live? “Lilac Heights…Violet Springs. In the most beautiful house. I love it.”
9. What is your home situation like? (ex. do you live with your family? Your partner etc.?) “I live in my own house, most of the time. Sometimes with Danny, sometimes without - hopefully more with in the future. I do go back to the hotel sometimes too, in London. Not as much.” 
10. Do you have any siblings? “Three older sisters…Yeah.” 
11. Do you have any kind of allergies? “Fish, which is just as well. I don’t like it.” 
12. Do you own any pets? If so, what kind of pets are they? “I have two dogs; Pumpkin and Tank.”
13. Why did you apply to St Jude’s? “To build up my career, I guess.”
14. Did you had to go through a lot audition rounds? “Not really. I already had three sisters here and also a lot of work I’d done myself by the time I got to eighteen. I did one round of auditions which I’m proud of.” 
15. What is the current course you’re following? “Acting and Directing.” 
16. If you can switch courses, which one would you switch to and why? “I wouldn’t, I’m fully dedicated to this career I have now.” 
17. What is your proudest project you’ve done? “Euphoria, easily. I wrote it, I directed every episode, I casted it, I bought it all to life and helped develop the characters. It will always be my baby and I’m so happy with how it was received.” 
18. What is the proudest project that someone’s else has done? “Singular Act I. That’s my baby…Or Little Women, that’s my other baby.”
19. Do you like FanCons? “I love FanCons.”
20. What do you like about FanCons? “Meeting the fans! It never gets old and they’re always so enthusiastic and kind. It reminds me how lucky I am, for sure. There’re some I know by name now and I’m more excited to see them than them me.” 
21. What don’t you like about FanCons? “The competition? Does that make sense. It shouldn’t matter who loves who more…I feel like on the fans part it can get quite aggressive when really they’re all there for the same reason.” 
22. A fan memory that always stuck with you? Can be positive or negative. “I feel like I’ve been put on the spot! I don’t know…” 
23. Your favorite event so far? “I loved the Summer FanCon Tour. That was so amazing.” 
24. What kind of event would you like to see in the future? “More events where we get to be silly - fundraisers and challenges. Sometimes it gets too competitive or serious with the award based ones, or talent based ones.” 
25. Would you recommend St Jude’s to friends, family. etc? “For sure.” PERSONALITY QUESTIONS 26. What are your positive traits? “I hate this question, don’t make me answer that.”
27. What are you negative traits? “I’m probably a little too hot-headed and emotional.”
28. What would other people describe you as? “…I don’t know.”
29. What are your pet peeves? “Being spoken to like an idiot, or like I don’t understand things. I’m not silly or incapable at all.” 
30. What makes you happy? “My friends.”
31. What makes you upset? “Oh, anything! But mainly seeing people down on themselves.”
32. What is something you love? “When somebody is so comfortable with you, that they open up and talk about all of their passions. I love when people are talking about what they love in general.”
33. What is something you dislike? “People who behave like they’ve never made a mistake and don’t let others move on from theirs.”
34. What are you strengths? “Again, I hate answering questions like this…Maybe that I’m good at - eventually - admitting when I’m wrong? Or, a good listener?” 
35. What are you weaknesses? “Anything with chocolate on or in it. I’m a simple person.”
36. A misconception people often think of you? “I know a lot of people think that I’m maybe like, how do I put it nicely? A home-wrecker…or, promiscuous, I guess? I’m not. I’ve had maybe 3 boyfriends in my whole life and I’m 20.” 
37. Do you have any fears? “I’m really scared of being alone - like literally and on a deeper level.”
38. What scares you the most? “Deep open water. Yikes.” 
39. What do you do to entertain yourself? “I don’t - I seek out the closest person to annoy until they entertain me.”
40. What is your MBTI? “I’m an INFJ. Most people are shocked at the I part.” 
41. How do you deal with stress? “Cry. Or eat. Or both.” 
42. Are you a determined person? Are you a stubborn person? “To an extent, I’d say so.”
43. Do you consider yourself selfish? “No…”
44. Would you like to be different? “I guess so…Sometimes I wish I was more likeable because I get the sense people aren’t that fond of me.” 
45. Are you more introverted (focused on your inner world) or more extraverted (focused on other people and the outer world)? “Introverted.” ROMANCE QUESTIONS 46. What is your sexual orientation? “I’m bisexual.”
47. Current relationship status? “Taken…Happily.”
48. When was your first kiss? “It was for a random television series and I was like 14. My first real kiss though was only a year and a bit ago.”
49. Do you remember your first date? If so, with who was it? What did you do? “I don’t remember it. Oops.” 
50. Have you ever experienced heart-break? “Yes. Not necessarily through a break-up.” 
51. Have you ever been in love? (If yes, skip to question 53) “Yes.” 
52. If no, how so? 
53. How do you know when you’re in love? “For me, everything becomes about that person. Even songs that I listened to long before I knew someone, or films I watched way before I knew they existed, I manage to tie everything back to one specific person. And, I’m definitely not a subtle person either - I think if I’m in love with someone, they’ll know before I do if they’re observant.”
54. What would be your ideal date? “I always feel like it’s more a question of who; I’d rather do something really simple like staying at home, cooking and watching a movie with someone I’m really comfortable with and like…Instead of going somewhere really extravagant with somebody I know who’ll make me uncomfortable.” 
55. What is your perspective on marriage? “It’s not the ultimate declaration of love. There are plenty of married people who aren’t in love anymore…And if you look into the roots of it, it’s kind of…messed up? I don’t know. It’s nice but not necessary.” 
56. (only for non-virgins) Are you a sub, dom or switch? “…I feel like I can switch it up. It depends on whatever the person I’m with prefers?”
57. What do you think of relationships? “I’m conflicted because there is so much more to life, but I’m not anti-relationship, obviously. I feel like they’d be better and more enjoyable if there wasn’t such a pressure on people to have been in a relationship before a certain age. If you’ve not found the one at 55, why is that so bad?” 
58. What do you think of one-night stands? “I’ve had them. They’re not for everyone, though.”
59. Are you still a virgin? “No.” 
60. Most attractive trait in a different person? “Patience. Especially if I’m talking about specifically attractive to me - I tend to jump to conclusions and get sad or mad or annoyed really quickly. So, people who bear with me, that’s attractive.”
61. What matters most to you when it comes to a relationship? “Genuine chemistry. As soon as that goes, nothing else really matters. Like, if there’s no chemistry for one person but loyalty is there - it almost feels like a job.” 
62. Are you comfortable with PDA? Or would you be comfortable with PDA? “Yeah.” 
63. Are you more of a type to be asked out or the type to ask the other out? “A bit of both. I think I’m probably bold enough to ask people out but it is nice to be asked.”
64. How do you express love to the other? “Pay attention to what they say, make sure they’re happy, tell them everything…Kiss them, cling on to them…Become painfully annoying until they can’t stand it. It’s a cycle.” 
65. Who is your celebrity crush? “Danny. My boyfriend. I don’t even care that it’s the cliche answer, haha.” GETTING DEEP QUESTIONS 66. Do you regret anything? “…Yes.”
67. Is there something you woule like to re-do? So, start all over again? “Yes.”
68. What is something you would never share with anyone? ��For sure…I’m uncomfortable!” 
69. When was the last time you cried? Why did you cry? “…I’m trying to think, maybe a week ago or so? I just felt down and missed somebody.”
70. Most memorable event that happened in your time in St Judes? This could be anything: “That’s really tricky! I’m not sure, to be honest. I wasn’t here when all of the crazy stuff went down, like the cruise ship? I’m really unsure.”
71. One thing you wish you could do all over? “My childhood…but with my 20 year old mind.”
72. Someone you miss? “I’d rather not.” 
73. Something you wish you could forget? “I don’t like these questions.” 
74. Who has the biggest impact on you? “Probably my family - not necessarily in a good way.”
75. What is your perspective on love? Is it beautiful? Does it scare you? “It’s beautiful and being loved is the best feeling in the world, I’d be lying if I said I don’t crave it.” 
76. What has hurt you in the past that you don’t want others to go through? “Losing somebody that is like, your other half. Or actually, losing somebody you really love without much explanation at all. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
77. What is something you have gained, something you have lost and something you let go of during the past year? “I’ve gained…more self-esteem, I’ve lost a lot of time I’m not going to get back - I think and I’ve let go of some trust issues, I think.”
78. Have you ever lost a friend? do you wish you would still be friends? “I have. I lost a friend because she dated my ex after claiming they were just friends - I don’t because it hurt and all she had to do was be honest.”
79. Do you have any triggers? What is the history behind these triggers and are they related to any disorders or mental illnesses? “I don’t think that’s appropriate.” 
80. If you could meet your 16 year old self, what would tell them? “That things do pass..They don’t necessarily get better or easier, but they pass and you learn to deal with things in a more productive way. I’d also hug her - tight.” RANDOM QUESTION ROUND 81. Summer or Winter? “Summer’s weather but winter’s overall vibe and celebrations.”
82. Cats or dogs? “Dogs, sorry.” 
83. Beach or mountains? “The beach.” 
84. Phone calls or texting? “Facetime. I’m that friend.” 
85. Have you ever skipped class? “Yes.”

[gaiapaia]

Kermit and Friends: Regulus

This week’s special guest was Aaron Ozee, author of the very popular children’s book Regulus. The book was such a hit that it was made into an animated film, also titled Regulus. You can purchase the book here and rent or buy a digital version of the film here.

Regulus is about a ‘Rat King’ who refuses to share his cheese with the mice he considers beneath him. Unfortunately for the Rat King, he loses his King status and the bully then becomes the bullied. 

The book has a very strong anti-bullying message, and Elisa’s first question to Aaron Ozee was about that. Aaron would explain how he was bullied growing up and how it deeply affected him in a bad way, only then to use it as motivation in an effort to help others going through the same kind of bullying he suffered as a kid.

Bullying would be a strong theme throughout the rest of the show. Elisa got bullied for the shirt she wore, she was verbally abused by her fiancé, accused of exploitation by a moron, dogged by multiple KAF Wrap-Up show hosts... I mean, Elisa was catching flack from all angles this week for little to no reason. It was unbelievable and a bit disheartening if you’re like myself and care about Elisa.

Andy Dick is simply out of control. After trying to con Elisa out of $650 earlier in the week, he called her a “Fat whore” among other horrible names at The Grove in front of strangers and children on Saturday. He even got his ‘boyfriend’ Lucas to join in on the harassment. Just an awful situation that no one deserves, especially Elisa who has treated Andy like absolute gold these last couple of months.

Elisa finally seemed fed up with Andy’s abuse, but it wouldn’t last long. After claiming she was done with him, Andy actually appeared on the show just as Elisa was getting ready to end it. He was being nice and I could tell right away that Elisa would let him back in her good graces.

Andy would give a half-assed apology for his actions from the previous day, only then to call Elisa crazy and psychotic, only again to apologize after that. Elisa not only accepted his apologies but then offered to take him out to eat after the show. It seemed like she wanted to shift all the blame on to that Lucas guy, letting Andy completely off the hook.

People who don’t like Elisa will look at this behavior and call her weak, or they will say she’s hanging on to Andy no matter what he does just because he’s famous. The idiots who say that would be very wrong.

Elisa doesn’t have an angle. She’s been in abusive relationship after abusive relationship. I’m afraid Elisa doesn’t love herself so she’s more attracted to people that treat her like crap. Elisa will turn 33 in June so she’s old enough where this isn’t some wild young woman phase. My theory is subconsciously Elisa believes she deserves the abuse. It could possibly stem from her parents shipping her off to a demonic boarding school where it stuck with Elisa that sort of treatment is what she deserves in this life. She doesn’t deserve it, though. Not at all.

Elisa may not agree with me but I feel I’m right about this because I’m speaking from personal experience. I deal with the same self-loathing issues I believe Elisa has, but it’s easy for me to sit here and say Elisa should start loving herself more than to look in the mirror and tell myself the same. One of the many reasons why I will never look at Elisa in a bad light is because I can relate to the inner-struggle she’s been going through all these years. I just wish there was a way Elisa could see herself in the same spectacular light I see her in.

Elisa talked about these grandiose visions she had of herself and Andy, being featured on the cover of Forbes magazine, creating hit music, starring in movies... the works.

Just think about this... if you’re reading this blog, you already know how talented Elisa is, even if you don’t like her. You know she’s already achieved a level of success that not 1% of the population will achieve in the entertainment industry. So why does she need someone like Andy freakin’ Dick in order to vision herself on the cover of Forbes magazine? Imagine if Elisa set the goal without a man or anyone else’s help by her side... could she do it? I 100% believe she could if she gave it her all. I understand success isn’t anywhere near as fulfilling when you don’t have anyone to share it with, but you should at least strive to share your success with someone who treats you well.

Anyways, I apologize for jumping out of the review to share my personal feelings. I’m not happy with Andy, I’m not happy with that relationship. I want Elisa to have fun and create a show she can be proud of. It’s easier to accomplish that with a wacky outgoing famous guy like Andy Dick, I get that... but at this point, in my opinion, it’s not worth it if this is how Andy is going to treat Elisa.

Elisa is a grown woman though capable of making her own decisions. I will always love Elisa and wish the best for her because I know she has a beautiful heart/soul and her intentions are always good. There’s more I want to say about the situation but I’ll move on.

Back to Aaron Ozee... he gave a fantastic interview. He’s a very positive guy with big goals but also humble and polite. T-Bob tried to ruffle Aaron’s feathers with a couple of asinine questions about Black Lives Matter, and Aaron couldn’t have handled it more eloquently, even winning Trumpster Bob over (no easy feat). I was extremely impressed. On top of that, Aaron was respectful and non-judgmental to every KAF regular he talked to. Just a truly swell guy and I hope to see him more often on the show.

Kermit made a couple of new friends this week. One was Johnny B’s alter ego, Joannie B. Think Robin Williams as Mrs. Doubtfire and that’s Joannie B. Very humorous stuff. A guy in some kind of Star Wars helmet named White Kanye also made his debut on Kermit and Friends. Apparently he’s been in some escapades with Andy Dick and told some stories. Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell if he was being truthful.

Chris Christine blessed the show with her presence again. She opened up about the 20 years she spent in the American military and how it led to some traumatic mental anguish. Chris credited an Andy Dick Cameo she received as to why she didn’t commit suicide a couple of years ago. She was incredibly sweet and even offered to pay Andy that $650 I mentioned above. Chris also said a lovely prayer for Elisa and Andy. What a sweet soul Chris is all around, she’s easily one of my new favorites.

Sharmin and Dr. Roy joined us in Miami. They’ve been having a vacation together and they helped Elisa sort through her feelings regarding Andy. It was awesome to see them having fun and looking so happy.

Eric Riggs had another sex video presented on the show, this time involving a pen and his rear end. Eric called in and made Elisa shut off the video before the conclusion. He was fine with last week’s sex tape but I guess this week he felt embarrassed. Eric would later read a poem about some woman named Mindy that owes him money, which also somehow involved Elisa’s vagina and horseradish. One of the weirdest poems I’ve ever heard but hey... that’s Kermit and Friends.

Barry “Boss” Mezey called into the show to accuse Elisa of exploiting Kermit’s friends. Barry fails to realize that Elisa gives a platform to literally anyone who wants to make use of it, and the people who garner the most interest from the audience are the people Elisa will feature the most, just like every other reality show in human existence. Barry’s phone calls could not have been more wrong, shame on him.

Lastly, Elisa sort of snapped this week on a chatter by the name of Nikki. Nikki criticized Elisa’s shirt and then said she could have a more popular show than Kermit and Friends if she tried. I think Elisa had some pent up frustration regarding Andy and sort of it took it out on Nikki, which by my estimation Nikki honestly deserved anyway. I just wish Elisa had that same fire not to put up with Andy’s BS. But Nikki has said some very mean things about Elisa in the past, both on Discord and on other Kermitarian related streams, so it’s not like Elisa attacked some innocent princess who made one bad comment. Nikki can be funny but she’s not a nice person at all, so while I commend Elisa for apologizing and feeling guilty over her words to Nikki... sometimes the bully gets bullied just like in Regulus.

The show ended with Elisa playing yet another tremendously creative music video from her talented co-host, Sugar. Overall it was a good show. The interview with Aaron was very professional and well done, and the Andy stuff I’m certain was entertaining for most people. KAF continues to deliver every week, just as I’m sure it will next week. 'Til then, I sincerely thank everyone for reading and I hope you all have a superb week... well, unless your name is Andy Dick, in which case you deserve a very bad week with another bite to the face from my main man Fozzie.

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 346

THE MYTH COLLAPSES: THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

An embarrassing fabrication of evolutionists: The reconstruction of Piltdown man from the chin of an orangutan and a man’s skull.

In the West, the theory of evolution continues to be promoted as if it were a proven fact or a secure, testable and tested law-something that no-one in their right minds questions any more. This presentation implies that there is no room, let alone any need, for discussion. The most common media cliché is that the evolutionary chain has been confirmed yet again by yet another discovery of the missing link proving human ancestry from apes. Faced with this kind of promotion and presentation, and the sheer pervasiveness of it, it is no surprise if non-specialists come to accept that the theory must be true, and that it must be accepted by all the specialists, the whole scientific community, with no serious doubters. However, that perception is far from the reality. In the first place, the theory lacks completeness on two major counts and there is no likelihood of these deficiencies ever being made up. In the second, there are major voices of dissent from within the scientific community, alongside alternative theoretical explanations which demonstrate a far superior conformity with observed or experimentally obtained data.

The origin of life

To have any enduring claim to viability the theory of evolution must explain the origin of life in its own terms. It must be able to answer the question, ‘How did life evolve from non-living forms?’ It needs also to explain how the notion of ‘selection for survival’ operates before life exists, to explain how ‘life’ is the best way for non-living forms to exist longer. Just as the theory tells us that, because rhinoceroses with the thickest skin did best in battles with other rhinoceroses, over aeons of time rhinoceroses evolved skins as thick as skins can possibly get while still functioning as skins-so too, it needs to tell us how life is an adaptation. If it is, what is it an adaptation to? Moreover, if life is an adaptation, why is it the same across the whole range of living forms (animal or plant or in-between)? We have innumerable varieties of living forms (adapted, we are told, to different conditions of climate and competition for food resources) but we do not have different varieties of being alive. Is that what we should expect? Should we not expect that the creatures who lived longest (and had offspring the least often) would have out-survived all competition, until eventually they lived so long it was for ever? Or, vice-versa that those who lived the shortest lives (and therefore had more offspring more often) eventually fell back, after aeons of trial and proof, into hardly being alive at all individually, but merely replicating themselves? In fact, of course, the same climate and conditions of competition for food resources support both relatively long- and relatively short-lived forms at every level of complexity and thoroughly intermingled within even the same individual life-form.

Life rests upon an infinitely precarious equilibrium among the proteins, the building blocks of life, found in the simplest to the most complex of living forms. Denying the existence of a conscious Creator, the theory of evolution cannot explain how this equilibrium was established and protected. The theory proposes chance and coincidence as the only scientific way to think about the question. But a scientific way of looking at a problem must have at least some likelihood of being true, if we are to expend energy fruitfully on verifying or falsifying it. In other words, a hypothesis must be reasonable to start with so that we can test and judge it. It must not be irrational: the appeal to chance and random coincidences is nothing if not an abandonment of reason. A protein is made up of the combination of on average 1000-1500 aminoacids in 20 different types in a certain sequence. Even a single error in that sequence renders the protein useless. There is zero probability of this happening by chance, not even if the universe is billions of light-years wide and long. One of the foremost advocates of evolution, the Russian scientist A.I. Oparin confesses this impossibility in his book The Origin of Life (pp.132-133). Even the simplest of these materials (proteins), consisting of thousands of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms, each with a unique design presents highly sophisticated structure. For those who study the structure of the proteins, it is as hopeless for these proteins to have formed by chance as for the Aeneid (the long Latin epic by Virgil) to have been composed by random association of the letters of the Latin alphabet.

Another evolutionist scientist has offered a different analogy with the same conclusion. The probability of a chance formation of only one of the proteins required for life (Cytochrome-C) may be likened to the probability of a monkey writing out the history of humanity by randomly pushing the keys of a typewriter.

What evolution theory defends is exactly this nonsensical assertion. Yet, the examples above are only the probability calculations for the chance formation of a single protein. However, millions of similar impossible coincidences should have been realized consecutively in order for the evolution of life to be effected.

The probability of chance formation of a Cytochrome-C sequence is a low as zero. If life requires that certain sequence, it is likely to be realized only once in the whole life-time and space of the universe. Now it could be proposed that some metaphysical power(s) beyond our definition consciously enabled its formation. But to entertain such a proposition is, apparently, not appropriate for the modern enterprise of science. Therefore we have to fall back on the first hypothesis as the best we have at present.

If, as it appears, the theory of evolution is not justified by the information we have, how does it survive? Has questioning it become, among the specialists, a taboo which they violate at the risk of their reputation and their careers? If so, why? We will return to this question.

The problem of transitional forms

Another of many difficulties with the theory of evolution is that the theory requires there to exist or have existed in the past transitional forms. For example, if the theory claims, as it does, that life originated in the sea and then sea creatures were driven (by some force, let us say, a climatic change like a fall in sea-level) to move on to dry land, the theory must produce evidence (or at least convincing argument) of the transitional forms between the sea-creatures and the land-creatures they evolved into. Our present experience of, for example, fish, is that if they come out of the water, they very quickly die. We have no reason to believe that fish were so radically different aeons ago from what they are now. If anything, the evidence is all the other way: that fish as fish were the same then as now. So how could enough of them have lived long enough in shallow-water or no-water to establish in their gene pool the skill to evolve gills into lungs? Nobody can say that maybe some of these fish happened to acquire a lung at the end of the four-millionth year while they were in the throes of death. It is entirely nonsensical. But this nonsense is exactly what the evolutionists assert. The same problem arises when we look for transitional forms between land-bound reptiles and flying birds.

Some allegedly extinct intermediate transitional forms have turned out to exemplify only the temptations of forgery and distortion in the service of falsehood into which some scientists have allowed themselves to fall. For instance, the fish Coelacanth (Rhipitistian Crossopterigian) presented by evolutionists as a transitional form between marine and land creatures, and supposedly extinct about 70 million years ago, was found alive and well in 1939 near Madagascar, and has been caught about 50 times since in the open seas. Furthermore, the organs that prompted the evolutionists to present the coelacanth as the transitional intermediate form (inner ear alcoves, head typed backbone and swimming bag), do not have these properties at all. The same is true for other fossils presented as transitional intermediate forms. The well-known nature scientist A.H. Clark acknowledges that, since we have no single evidence indicating a transition between fossils and living groups, we must accept that such transitional forms never existed.

A well-known genetic and evolutionist, Richard B. Goldschimdt admits that there is no such a thing as the transitional intermediate form. He explains the differences in species by sudden leaps. Now to say that a species originated all of a sudden is tantamount to saying that it was consciously originated or ‘created’. Although the evolutionists are embarrassed on scientific platforms, they do not have a hard time deceiving the ordinary person in the street, because the theory is so well-packaged. You draw an imaginary schema representing transition from water from land, you invent Latin words for the animal in water, and for its descendant on land, and you draw sketches of both (both wholly imaginary constructs), and the package is completed or, as we should rather say, fabricated. ‘Eusthenopteron transformed into first Rhipitistian Crossoptergian, then lchthyostega in a long evolution process.’ If you put these words in the mouth of a scientist with thick glasses and a white apron, you are half way to convincing most people. For the great many people who see reality through the media packaging of it, this kind of presentation is good enough to be truth: it is easy to believe, it makes no demand on consciousness, or reason, or conscience: we are all here by chance, we are not here by the will of a Creator to Whom we are answerable.

The most common package is, inevitably, the one that relates to human beings. A central feature is the string of related sketches (all imaginary constructions) of an all-ape, three-quarters-ape, half-ape/half-man figure, gradually ending in a drawing that looks more or less like a European male of average build and features. This is offered as our story, our beginning long ago, our present being now. This string of sketches will be found on virtually every classroom wall, from primary schools to secondary schools and in every popular textbook or encyclopaedia which touches upon the subject, and in the form of stuffed exhibits in every science museum in the West.

In these drawings, half-ape half-human creatures are seen as a family. Having a hairy body, a slightly bent walking posture, and a face in between a man and an ape, these creatures are supposedly drawn from the fossils found by the evolutionist scientists. But the fossils found give information only about the bone structure and skeleton, and examination of the teeth will reveal information about the probable range of diet.

The fossils tell us nothing at all about how hairy the body was that hung upon those bones, nor what kind of nose, ears, lips or hair would once have rested upon the particular skull. But the evolutionists’ sketches picture do, almost always, show the organs like nose, lips and ears, and these are drawn (to fit the theory) and do indeed show something half-man, half-ape. This is not science, it is fiction or, more precisely, it is myth. Another support for this fiction, and another proof that it is fiction, is that the same bundle of bones can give be made to give rise to quite different re-constructions, depending upon the particular theorist’s preference: for example, the three totally unlike re-constructions of the fossil called Australoplthecus Robustus (Zinjanthropus). There is certainly a power behind these presentations of the theory, but it is not the power of reason disciplined by facts and evidence, but the power of myth-making imagination inspired by a particular ideology.

The ideological background to the theory

In order to understand why the evolution theory is promoted and defended so insistently, we need to look to the historical background behind it. Until the modern period, the intellectual life of Europe was basically subject to the authority of the Church. Starting from the 16th century, the order justified and underpinned by the authority of religious beliefs and principles started to conflict with the interests of certain social groups. Acquiring great wealth through commerce but having no political power, these groups began a long struggle to limit the authority of the Church. They did so not only on the political and social fronts but also on the philosophical front: religious beliefs and the authority of religion had to be weakened before the social-political system underpinned by religion could be radically reformed. Almost all the 18th century ‘enlightenment’ intellectuals and 19th century positivists came from these secularising groups and were funded and supported by them. (The French Revolution was the biggest single social transformation realized by their machinations.)

To say that a species originated all of a sudden is tantamount to saying that it was consciously originated or ‘created’. Although the evolutionists are embarrassed on scientific platforms, they do not have a hard time deceiving the ordinary person in the street, because the theory is so well-packaged. You draw an imaginary schema representing transition from water from land, you invent Latin words for the animal in water, and for its descendant on land, and you draw sketches of both (both wholly imaginary constructs), and the package is completed or, as we should rather say,fabricated.

The space opened by the weakening or elimination of religious beliefs was filled by new ideologies generated by the same social groups. The first ideology was liberalism, followed by socialism which developed as a reaction to it. Later came fascism meddled with racism. Despite containing some opposing ideas, these ideologies were all by-products of the new secular system and stood on the same anti-religionist ground. None of them spoke of the man’s responsibility before his Creator or the obligation to organize personal and collective life according to His guidance. Conversely, the principles that necessitated belief in religion were harmful to the new ideologies. One of the most important of these principles is that man was created, as the Church had always held (following the same belief in Judaism), by God in His own image, for the purpose of doing His will and worshipping Him.

It was very noteworthy that communism, the most radical and outspokenly anti-religious of the modern ideologies, showed a particular zeal for the theory of evolution. Karl Marx wrote of Darwin’s Origin of Species in a letter to his comrade Friedrich Engels (dated December 18, 1860) that this book presented the natural-historical basis for their critique of capitalism (Marx and Engels’ Letters, vol.2, p.426).

Darwinism laid the basis for fascism which is one of the by-products of the new secular order. Holding some human races superior to the others, this notion proposed that some races were in advance of others in the evolutionary process. This trend called Social Darwinism inspired many racists from Arthur de Gobineau to Adolf Hitler. Darwin himself prepared the ground for racism by proposing that the white man was more advanced in evolutionary terms.

Besides communism and fascism, the capitalist ideology dominant in the Western world and now in nearly the whole world, needs people to believe in evolution. To undermine people’s commitment to religion and moral principles, to reduce their aspirations and relationships to merely economic ones, it was necessary to convince them that man was not created by God as a morally responsible being. It is very noteworthy that major capitalist dynasties like Rockefeller and Carnegie come first among those who have granted funds and other support to the flourishing of Darwinism in the U.S.A. Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, in their book The Hidden History of the Human Race, explain how the Carnegie Institution was virtually aiming for the victory of the scientific cosmological vision over the old religious cosmologies. The Rockefeller Foundation supports the same materialist cosmology and serves the mission of ‘modern civilization’, aiming to confine the concepts of God and spirit to the mythology museum. The evolution propaganda promoted in the distinguished media organs of the West, and reputable science journals is a consequence of this ideological requirement.

Conclusion

No ideological program, whatever the illusions of its supporters, and whatever their means of promoting and packaging their untruths, can survive for ever. Precisely because man is God’s creature, made for nobility of being and action, he must and will seek truth, albeit temporarily deviated.

All the information revealed by modern biology shows that the origin of life, especially the molecular structure of living creatures, cannot be explained by coincidence in any way. The transcendent consciousness ruling over the whole universe is the ultimate evidence of God’s existence. As a matter of fact, some eminent names in microbiology have come to the point where they cannot defend evolution any longer. Instead, another theory has begun to get a long overdue hearing among these scientists: the theory of conscious design. The scientists defending it remark that it is very evident that life has been created by a conscious designer

[thesethingsofours]

Parents are the Worst.

I recently began listening to Nice White Parents, a new podcast hosted by self-confessed nice white parent, Channa Joffe-Walt. It’s produced by the people in and around Serial, This American Life, S-Town and The New York Times. If you are familiar with those titles, you’ll know what to expect – in-depth, considered analysis of a heretofore, under-exposed social issue, executed with an East Coast progressive liberal stride; a pleasingly audible, irreverent gait and the swagger of emotional intelligence and self-aware humility. Through research, interviews and attaching herself to the Brooklyn School of International Studies for several years, Joffe-Walt tells the story of the New York Public school system and its apparent failure to meaningfully integrate itself since Brown v Board of Education made racial segregation illegal over 65 years ago.

In episode 2, Joffe-Walt tracks down and interviews some nice white parents from around the time the school opened in 1963. These people had written letters encouraging the school board to erect the school building closer to their own neighbourhood (and consequently further away from the darker-skinned families it was more likely to serve). They expressively emphasised their wishes to send their kids there and virtuously aid the process of integration, which they believed to be morally imperative.

But apparently, none of these letter writers subsequently sent their kids to that school. It remained, as anticipated, a predominantly non-white school. Laid alongside the tense machinations of the contemporary school’s invasion by a large new cohort of white parents and their issue, Joffe-Walt’s hypothesis is that white parents have always held liberal aims, and the clout to impose them, but do so with little consideration for their non-white counterparts or any real commitment to seeing through the incumbent practicalities. From the outset, this natural conclusion is persistently hinted at, not least from the podcast’s deliberately provocative title. Perhaps, on an individual level, this hypothesis contains some truth.

However, as the story extends, the blame gains weight and the theory mutates into a generalised accusation. Responsibility for the mediocre state of New York’s (and by implication, America’s) public schools is explicitly laid at the pale feet of white parents. It's an exposition of what is often described as “White Guilt” and its corresponding effort at contrition (i.e. the guilt felt from the inherited sin of one’s ancestors’ oppression of non-white people, primarily through slavery). While White Guilt might have its conceptual uses for a few people to come to terms with idea of race (although even there I am sceptical), its value as a wider social narrative is deeply unconvincing, and potentially damaging. Nice White Parents does a good job showing why.

In the podcast, anecdotal evidence is drastically extrapolated to justify White Guilt. Unless backed up by unequivocal data, it is inherently flawed to base so much on interviews with a handful of people in their 80s about a letter they wrote in the 60s, and (in episode 3) a now middle-aged woman about her perception of school when she was 13. Equally so is to use the example of a single New York school to imply that nice white parents are universally responsible for all the failings of American public schooling. A quick empirical comparison with countries unburdened by America’s racial psychosis would almost certainly reveal this argument to be fundamentally false. I hazard to suggest that Joffe-Walt set out, either consciously or subconsciously, to prove the theory of Nice White Parents, and has therefore fallen into the trap of verification bias.  

Of course, the truth is likely to be far simpler – green, cheddar, dead presidents and moolah (which middle-aged white people in American disproportionately possess). Better schools arrive from broad, deep and perpetual community investment – from good, affordable housing and well-paying jobs to well-paid teachers and decent facilities. That means higher taxes on the wealthy and better provincial management. If a completely non-white school district received $50 billion to invest in their community with educational improvement as its ultimate goal (that or the abolition of private schools), I suspect the idea of nice white parents would quickly evaporate.

It is plainly a damaging distraction to focus on the role of supposed-predisposed-racism of well-meaning, middle-class people, who simply want the best possible education for their children. Instead, the message for the “hereby accused” should be to use their numerical majority and voting power to advocate for systems that would reduce inequality, regardless of race. In this respect, it strikes me that wealth is a sacrosanct subject in America, something that one can never apologise for having too much of. Quite the opposite – the culture is built on celebrating those who hoard capital. Is it possible that Americans are taught never to apologise for having money, so those who see something wrong develop other issues, such as race, for which they can atone?

More deeply, the podcast reveals how the White Guilt narrative is in ideological conflict with the very wrong it is supposedly trying to right. Taken to its conclusion, it inevitably reinforces the idea that white people are innately superior, and race is the primary determining factor for success in American life. In the context of the podcast, it is applied to suggest that New York public schools are destined to fail their students unless white kids and their parents get involved. It is gloriously ironic that condemning the influence of white parents on public schools serves to reinforce the supposed inferiority of non-white participants in the education system… because of their lack of whiteness. At the end of episode 3, Jaffe-Walt lays this out:

Nice white parents shape public schools even in our absence, because public schools are maniacally loyal to white families even when that loyalty is rarely returned back to the public schools. Just the very idea of us, the threat of our displeasure, warps the whole system. So “separate” is still not equal because the power sits with white parents no matter where we are in the system. I think the only way you equalise schools is by recognising this fact and trying wherever possible to suppress the power of white parents. Since no one is forcing us to give up power we white parents are going to have to do it voluntarily, which, yeah how's that going to happen? That's next time on Nice White Parents…

(Consider replacing every mention of “white” in this excerpt with “affluent”. Would that not feel infinitely more true?)

In fairness, the honourable, “anti-racist” intention is clear – in order to defeat “white supremacy” white people need to accept their inherited and systemic superiority and eliminate it. Sadly, any idea centred around race – whether malicious or well-intentioned – is bound to collapse under even the slightest pressure. To be truly anti-racist is to recognise that race itself doesn’t exist (other than as an abstract concept that, having infected people’s perceptions after four centuries of concerted, localised propaganda, must be eradicated). Race has no basis in science or nature; it cannot be quantified in any reasonable, measurable way. Simply, it is a lie; invented to excuse the exploitation of others for the purposes of wealth-generation. To base one’s actions on it in any way is to take a leap of faith into a void with no landing. Race is a malignant, empty God; belief in which is destined to lead to malignant, empty behaviour. “Racism” and “Anti-Racism” (as it is currently understood) are therefore both empty, malignant religions, practiced in service of a non-existent deity.

Notably, there are still two episodes to go (released August 13th and 20th). Either might serve to recover some balance. But by episode 3, the stage is not only set for this conclusion to be drawn, but the 1st Grade nativity is in its final scene and the wise men are long since gone.

All that said, if you let the incessant racialization of all things drift past you rather than choking on it, as plain entertainment – storytelling rather than journalism – it’s still an engaging listen; well-constructed and convincingly told. Furthermore, on a non-racial level (if you can somehow listen beyond it), the podcast does have some value, since it reminds me of something I have long half-joked about – that parents (of all stripes) are the worst.

Aside from the obvious, complex Freudian reasons, on a socio-political level, when a choice arises between a laudable, achievable change and putting one’s own children at a perceived disadvantage in order to effect it, a parent will choose its child’s advantage almost every time. No matter their colour, few parents will sacrifice their own child’s prospects – even minutely – to advance the hypothetical children of someone else, or society more widely. Parents are company directors whose primary obligation is to their miniature, genetically-derivative shareholders – they’ll only vote for large-scale change if it is net-profitable or government-imposed.

And of course, parents should pay their kids the maximum dividend. Who else will? A parent is legally and morally obliged to do the best for the young life they are charged with defending. And therein lies the joke. Parents are the worst only because they are ubiquitous. They created you, me and everyone else. We all had them, and most people end up being one. It is therefore less of a criticism than an inevitable, evolutionary truth – just one we should probably be more honest and upfront about. Unknowingly, underneath (and in some ways, because of) its misguided, exhausting racial handwringing, Nice White Parents just about makes this point.

Listen to Nice White Parents here or wherever you get your podcasts.

[sprnklersplashes]

not beyond repair (16/20)

AO3

As March goes on, the clouds finally give way to the sunshine, painting the pavements golden and staying long enough to make the Westerberg faculty give way and allow their students-senior only, of course-to have their lunch outside, much to the delight of the students. Gone is the crowded, claustrophobic cafeteria, traded for sprawling across green lawns and chasing each other around the parking lot with water bottles in hand. There are outside tables, but they sit abandoned and alone, the sun glinting off their plastic. Even if they weren’t in dire need of a good cleaning, the students avoid them and trip over each other to get to the long stretch of grass out front instead, where four years ago they practised handstands and blushed when their skirts fell down. There’s a degree of freedom here that’s unlike anywhere inside, and certainly wouldn’t be found amongst the cafeteria tables. The social hierarchy isn’t completely invisible, the lines still clear when Heather Chandler perches on the wall and only her select few sit around her, but they blur when the rest of the student body are sprawled around her and walking on the walls and leaning back to share candy with classmates. And even Heather herself is too busy enjoying the change of scenery and fresh air to muster up a damn.

In the middle of the grass, Veronica stifles a laugh at Heather Mac, who frowns down at her legs, her skirt rolled up as much as she can while maintaining her dignity and her socks scrunched down.

“I really want a good tan,” she explains, taking her blazer off as well.

“Yeah, you’re bound to get it,” JD says flatly. Heather, unsure of his intent, as always, chooses to take it as an encouragement and beams at him.

“At least you don’t have that big trench coat anymore,” she points out, gesturing to the blue jacket that he’s using as a sort of tablecloth. “That would have cooked you alive. And it just wasn’t trendy.”

“They were the height of fashion in Indiana,” he says. Heather hums nonchalantly before being distracted by Martha offering her a cookie. She accepts with a grin and, after a look around to make sure no-one’s watching them, a kiss on her cheek.

“Aw, what a beautiful display of friendship,” JD remarks, sarcasm dripping off him like honey off a honeycomb. Heather sticks her tongue out at him, but what little malice there was in the gesture is gone when they start laughing together. Even if Veronica does slap his shoulder.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Veronica asks, nudging Martha lightly with her foot. Her half-eaten lunch caught Veronica’s eye, but her panic was subdued immediately when she saw the reason; her head bent over, focussing on a task that had her hands moving quickly and delicately. Martha looks up with a smile on her face. Veronica leans over a little and it falls into place in a second; it’s what they’ve done every year the minute the flowers started blooming. And it’s probably the reason for the distinct lack of flowers around Martha.

“Daisy chain,” she says proudly, holding up her handiwork, both ends falling over her hands and hanging above the ground. Heather gasps as though she’s held up a chain of pure gold rather than the most common flowers.

“Hey, show me how to do it,” she squeaks, giving Martha her full attention. Laughing, Veronica shares a knowing look with JD while her own hands pick daisies from the ground without ever looking down. She falls into an easy rhythm of opening the flower and threading the stem through it, even if she pokes herself more than a few times.

“Come on, J,” she teases, nudging him. “Don’t tell me you’re too manly to make daisy chains.

“Um, I am very secure in my masculinity thank you very much,” he says, pulling a notebook out of his bag and showing the pages to her. “Look. Glitter pen. Courtesy of MacNamara.”

“Wow you’re the pinnacle of progression,” she replies flatly. Grinning, he puts the notebook back in his bag and begins plucking a bunch of daisies for himself.

“Okay. So how do I do this?” he asks, watching Veronica. “Just rip the stem open and put the other on in there?”

“That was violent,” Martha says, looking up from her work, which Heather is watching with wide eyes.

“I prefer passionate,” he says. “It’s a metaphor for the harsh nature of life and how it tears apart innocence.”

“Calm down there Shakespeare it’s a flower necklace,” Veronica says. “Come here, let the pro show you how it’s done.” He turns to face her and she takes two of the flowers out of his lap, digging her thumbnail into the stem. “Okay, here, so you make a slit in the stem like that… and then you thread the other one through like that. And then you keep going until you make… whatever you want. Crown, necklace, bracelet-”

“Scarf?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“That’d be an achievement,” she remarks, handing the beginnings of his chain to him. She spends a few minutes just watching him. “Or, you could always make a weird ear thing to dangle from your boyfriend’s ear while he’s distracted.”

He blinks adorably at her for a moment, bewildered, before his hand slowly comes up to his ear and finds the flowers hanging from there. Veronica erupts into giggles behind her hands and even Martha has to chuckle at him.

“Jokes on you losers, I’m keeping it,” he declares with a toss of his head. “I look fabulous.”

“Yeah you do,” Veronica agrees, resting her cheek on his shoulder, daisy stems tickling her face.

“Oh my gosh!” Heather pipes up, sitting back on her heels. As their eyes fall on her with confused expectation, she clears her throat and lowers her voice, subtly gesturing over Veronica’s shoulder. “Look. I think Betty’s college letter might have come in.”

“Not our business,” Veronica says, despite the quick glance over her shoulder. Sure enough, Betty is sitting cross-legged on the grass opposite her friend Amber, a brown envelope in her hand. “She brought it to school?”

“Maybe she was nervous,” JD says softly.

“Or maybe it’s a superstitious thing,” Heather says. “My dad said when he got his letter he brought it to his school to open to the school spirits would bless him.”

“My mom opened hers in a church when she got it,” Martha adds, looking from one friend to the next anxiously. “Has anything come in for you guys yet?”

“Not a thing,” Heather sighs, her shoulders slumping and her whole body deflating in a way that almost makes her look unrecognisable. Martha puts an arm around her and pulls her closer.

“Neither have I, and that doesn’t mean anything yet,” she tells her.

“I haven’t heard anything,” Veronica adds. “Not Harvard, not Duke, not Brown. Not even my reserves.” She hopes she sounds more casual than she feels. Like she doesn’t check the mail twice every morning and isn’t one step away from standing outside and getting it from the mailman herself to make sure he’s not leaving it in his bag.

Breathe. That’s what she tells herself every day.

“How many colleges did you apply to?” JD asks, continuing with his daisy chain.

“Just five,” she says. “I don’t really care about the other two. Just wanted my mom not to worry.”

“Oh well I haven’t heard anything either,” he remarks. “They probably didn’t get the application I never sent.”

“My dad will kill me if I don’t get into college,” Heather says, her words getting faster and faster. “And it means all the work would have been for nothing.”

“Nothing?” Martha echoes, running a hand up her arm. Heather smiles, even if it’s weak.

“Okay, not entirely nothing. I did get to spend a lot of time with my favourite tutor,” she remarks. But she pulls her knees close to her chest. “But my dad’s been telling everyone how good I’ve been at school. How I’m definitely getting into a good college.” She picks at her knee-length white socks and pulls at the yellow ribbon on them. “I think he’s about to buy me one just to get me into one.”

“If he does can we all share it?” JD asks. “Can we have sleepovers.”

“Um, I don’t know,” Heather says, chuckling. “My mom doesn’t let me have sleepovers with boys. She thinks I’m going to do stuff with them.”

“Like what, glitter art?” JD asks, reaching into his bag and pulling out a packet of red liquorice. “Okay, who wants one? Just don’t tell Claire I had them. She’s on my case about my sugar levels again.”

Heather and Martha take one each, the conversation taking an easy turn away from college anxiety and possibly more importantly, takes Heather away from the cliff edge. Veronica doesn’t miss the grateful look Martha shoots JD as she idly rubs Heather’s back.

“Nice save,” Veronica whispers. He pokes her cheek with his liquorice. Without a word, he gently lifts up the daisy crown he made and sets it on her head, his touch so light she can barely feel his fingers in her hair.

“You look pretty,” he says, making her grin. That alone earns him a kiss on the cheek.

Martha walks home with her after school, courtesy of both her parents working late tonight. It’s become such a common occurrence between them that even Martha, who thanks bus drivers twice, has managed to stop thanking Veronica and her parents for letting her stay there. At this point, Martha knows every creak and groan of Veronica’s house as well as she does her own.

“This whole college thing has Heather really shaken up,” she tells her as they walk. “She’s started chewing her nails now.”

“That’s bad?” Veronica looks down at her own nails, two close to non-existent, she’s worn them down so much.

“It is when you’re her. It just hurts, seeing her like this, you know?”

“Yeah, I do,” Veronica sighs, thinking about JD and his terrified eyes and him curled up unmoving in his bed. “Just makes you feel useless.”

“Exactly!” Martha agrees. “All I want to do is help her. But I don’t know how.” Despite the seriousness she feels, Veronica can’t help smiling, one of those proud smiles she hates on her own mom. She hopes to God she’s not turning into her. “What?”

“Nothing,” she squeaks. “Only… you really like her, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. She’s my girlfriend.”

“Yeah but you really, really like her,” Veronica points out. Martha’s cheeks turn pink, her smile growing by the second.

“Yeah,” she admits, her eyes soft. She reaches up and plays with the star charm around her neck, the one Heather got her for Valentine’s day. “I just want her to be happy. Like, really happy. Not just happy when we’re cuddling in her bedroom.”

“Trust me,” Veronica says, turning her key in her front door. “That girl is way happier with you than she would be in any college.” Martha blushes again as they step inside, her face the same colour as her sweater.

“Mom, we’re home!” Veronica calls, heading to the kitchen and tossing Martha a Twix before grabbing one for herself. Her mom’s footsteps can be heard from the top of the stairs and she appears in the kitchen in no time at all, beaming more at Martha than at her.

“Martha, it’s so nice to see you,” she says, as if she doesn’t see her at least twice a month.

“You too, Aunt Ella,” she says.

“We’re going to go do homework upstairs,” Veronica says, even though she’s leaning against the counter and grabbing two mugs and flicking on the kettle, rather than grabbing Martha by the arm and pulling her upstairs before her mom can say anything else. Which is what she had done with the Heathers and only just stopped doing with JD. But being self-conscious in front of Martha would be like being shocked that you failed a test you didn’t study for.

“Oh, Ronnie some mail came for you while you were at school,” her mom says, gesturing to the two brown envelopes on the kitchen table.

The word ‘mail’ comes with its own siren. And a flashing light. Big, red light that blinds her even from behind her eyelids. She only just manages to save the mugs from being dropped. Martha’s eyes meet hers and she finds the same wide-eyed anxiety reflected back at her.

“Ronnie?” her mom asks. “Everything okay? I didn’t open them. They just seem important.”

“I’m fine, Mom,” she says, pushing her hair away from her face with a shaking hand. “I’ll-I’ll get them thanks.” She crosses over to the table as normally as she can and picks them up.

The seals of Duke and Brown are looking back up at her.

“Are you going to open them?” Martha asks, taking a sip from her mug before putting it on the desk. Veronica sits cross-legged on her bed, forgetting about her nails and biting her knuckles instead. “I can wait in the bathroom if you want.”

“No. I don’t know,” she says, not sure which part of Martha’s question she’s answering. She falls back onto her bed, holding the two envelopes above her. They’re thinner than she thought they’d be. Maybe that’s a good thing. Or not. Maybe they’re thin because all they need to say is “you got in”. But if she got in they’d have sent orientation packs and welcome brochures and a schedule. Or maybe they send them later. Or maybe they’re thin because all they need to say is ‘no’.

“Veronica,” Martha says gently. “I don’t know if you know, but it’s been seventy five seconds and you haven’t moved.” She turns onto her side, Martha half-visible behind the Duke envelope. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Sorry,” she sighs, putting them on her table and shaking out her arms. “It’s just… my whole future is in those two envelopes.”

“Whole future?” Martha echoes, pulling her hands over her sleeves. “You really think that?”

“Kind of. A bit. Yeah.” She heaves a sigh, her chest pressing into the mattress. “Completely.” She turns onto her back, holding the letter in slightly-shaking hands. How long would it take to read? A minute? Maybe less. Everything she’s been dreaming about since she set foot in Westerberg high school is in that letter.

“That’s pretty fatalistic,” Martha comments weakly. Veronica hums in agreement, putting the envelopes on her table and sitting back up, facing Martha and her raised eyebrows. “So you’re not opening them?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“Hey,” Martha says, coming over to her side and taking her hand. “If you don’t get in… you know it’s not the end of the world, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” she replies. Her mom and even her teachers have said that, in between their lectures about how important getting into a good college is. It’s given her whiplash. She squeezes Martha’s hand tighter. The one thing that’s never changed as she got older, or at least kept changing with her. They used to think they were going to do everything together, go to the same college and work in the same town and marry best friends and their kids would be best friends and they’d live next door to each other. They don’t think that now, of course. They know better. Doesn’t mean she can’t wish they would. Veronica swallows past the lump in her tight throat. “We won’t change right? If-when we go to college?” She squeezes Martha’s hand tighter. “We’ll still be best friends, right?” The question feels stupid, the idea of a world where Martha isn’t her friend alien to her, but it pushed itself out of her, fuelled by a bout of insecurity and the lingering fear of opening the envelope.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” she asks, a slight laugh in her voice. She turns Veronica around so that she faces her head-on, a determined belief shining in her eyes, the kind that makes Veronica remember how much she loves her. How could she ever have traded that unwavering faith for popularity and parties? “Look, I’m always going to love you. Even when you’re off in North Carolina drinking tea with your professors. Always.” She holds up her hand, little finger stuck out. Shoulders shaking with laughter, Veronica wraps her own baby finger around hers.

“And you can never break a pinky promise,” she says.

“Never.” Martha raises her right hand in a three fingered salute. “Girl Scout’s honour for good measure.” Veronica once again mirrors her friend, their friendship solidified in the two most ironclad agreements known to man. “Now that we’ve cleared that, can you please open that envelope so I can stop waiting? You’re giving me heart palpitations over here.” Nodding and half-laughing, Veronica lifts the two envelopes from her table.

Two letters, two minutes, right?

Dear Miss Veronica Sawyer, she reads, the words just underneath the Dule University Seal. We are pleased to offer you a place in our undergraduate program for law-

“OH MY FREAKING GOD!”

Veronica throws her arms around Martha, sagging against her in a combination of relief and… well, shock. Shock that her dreams are now in her hand-literally, in her hand-and she doesn’t have to keep daydreaming about the smoky cafes and leaving Sherwood, Ohio in the dust.

In the back of her mind, she wonders why she isn’t as happy about that as she expected.

Still, she and Martha fall back onto the bed together, all giggles and flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. Every time one calms down, the other is set off, the light, musical sound erupting from both of them until they seem to exhaust themselves and are laying on the backs in a cloud of their own joy. Veronica holds the letter against her chest, panting weakly, and she grabs Martha’s hand with the other.

“Should go without saying,” Martha says breathlessly. “But I’m so proud of you.” She squeezes her hand warmly. “All that studying finally paid off.”

“Yeah,” she breathes, the letter still folded in half and clutched between her hands. She opens it up and smooths out the wrinkles and tries to read it in full, even if her eyes keep snapping back up to the opening sentences. Her brain vaguely registers start dates and dorm rooms and the long proud history of blah blah blah… She can read over all that later. Right now she’s punching the air, drumming her legs on the bed and humming a nonsensical song under her breath, her body squirming like the happiness is going to burst out of her in an explosion of rainbow coloured glitter and cover her walls.

Beside her, Martha lays her head on her cheek on her shoulder. Despite the smile on her face, Veronica feels her stiffen and it brings her right back down to Earth. A cold sensation creeps over her, beginning in her chest, not so much that she panics, but enough to cover up the clouds she was dancing on.

“Hey,” she says, poking Martha’s cheek. “You good?”

“Of course,” she says in false confusion. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because of your face,” she replies, tapping Martha’s nose. “Hey, what is it?” Her hair ruffles as Martha sighs deeply.

“It’s just… now you’ve got yours… it’s making this all real.” She closes her eyes and lets out a sigh. “Reminds me how haven’t got mine yet.” She shakes her head, giving a smile that doesn’t come close to reaching her eyes. “I’ll probably get mine soon anyway.”

“And there will be a big fat yes when you do,” Veronica says. She wraps her hand around Martha’s hand and squeezes tightly. “You’ve been in that library more than me.”

“Mainly because you and JD took quite a few breaks.” She wiggles her eyebrows, one word loaded with implication that’s not entirely untrue. At least she’s past the stage where she blushes at those.

“Oh, and your and Heather’s tutoring sessions were strictly schoolwork-only?” she teases. Unlike herself, Martha’s cheeks flush red, her mouth opening and closing. Veronica giggles into her bedsheets. “Trust me. Colleges are going to be tripping over themselves to let you in. And hand you scholarships.”

“Thank you,” she says, smiling softly and rubbing her thumb against Veronica’s hand. “Can we go back to being happy for you?”

“Just a little bit,” she says. “We’ll be fully happy when you get yours.”

And there’s that feeling again, right in the back of her mind. If nothing else, this is a convenient excuse. She’s not as happy as she should be, only because her best friend is still waiting for hers. Nothing else outside of that she tells herself, the acceptance letter still folded between her fingers and poking slightly at her wrist.

                                                                                            *****

When she wakes up the next morning, that feeling is almost forgotten. The letter sits on her bedside table, placed back inside the envelope, the slight rip and crumpled edge the only giveaway that it was ever opened to begin with.

Her parents’ joy is tangible as she enters the kitchen, her mother’s pride buzzing in her fingers as she squeezes Veronica’s shoulders and her father’s delight evident in the way his eyes light up as he hands her her breakfast. As for Veronica, she fights between the growing pride in herself and her own well-worn and familiar modesty, if she can call it that. Still, she lets herself smiles at the praise and embrace the proud, shining gaze of her parents before leaving. Her dad even puts in a pat in her head before she manages to sneak out the door, something she hasn’t felt since she was single digits. She laughs it off, not bothering to fix any damage done to her hair.

As per usual, JD is sitting on the wall in the front yard when she gets to school, one leg up on either side of it and a book in his hands. She comes up behind him in a similar way, her body pressed against him. Months ago he may have jumped, now her touch is so familiar to him that he shifts forwards to make room for her once he feels it. She presses against his back and reaches forwards to trace the outline of the page he’s on.

Truth be told, she’s unexpectedly anxious, a small flame slowly but steadily building in her chest since she spotted him. Behind him, she grabs the butterfly pendant around her neck, the cool metal calming her. It’s weird; they’ve been through more than she thought they would be as a couple. She spent more time than she would care to admit daydreaming about her future romance one day, especially in the first few months of high school. And she knew from TV and from her own life that it wouldn’t be all butterflies and rainbows and sunshine, and thought herself well-prepared for those days, ready for fights and disagreements. She hadn’t prepared herself for the hard talks in the courtyard that she and JD had had, about therapy and his mom and things she had only read in books. But they had them, and she likes to think she came out of them the better person, however difficult and scary they were in the moment.

And yet she is still nervous about this. Something every other half-of-a-couple in her school has had to deal with or will at some point. She can’t tell if she’s more excited to share or more anxious about… well she’s not quite sure. Of something changing, she guesses  

“Hey,” she whispers, her cold fingers creating circles in the fabric of his shirt. “So… something happened yesterday.”

“Something?” he repeats, sliding his bookmark in and closing the book. “That’s cryptic.”

“It was… fairly big.” He nods and swings his leg around so he can face her. She feels like the butterfly from her necklace is sitting in her heart and flapping its little wings as hard and fast as it possibly can. And despite the mounting nerves, she’s smiling, and he is too.

“What was it?” he asks.

“JD… I got into college.” Her smile grows over her face like an external force is tugging on the corners of her face. JD’s mouth falls open ad he lets out a delighted gasp. “It was Duke. Duke and Brown, but Duke was my first choice.”

“Ronnie,” he says. “That’s amazing.” He takes her with him as he stands and pulls her into a tight hug, a kiss pressed to the side of her temple. Her legs go weak in his embrace and it’s she melts into him, sighing. Stupidly happy, that’s what she feels right now. Kind of an oxymoron, but hey, a lot of great stories are built on contradiction. “I am so proud of you.” He rubs their noses together playfully. “I knew you’d do it.”

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I’m just so glad all this is over. All the stupid waiting around.”

“So a few months from now, can I brag to people that my girlfriend is a super genius who goes to Duke?” he asks as their hands clasp together and start walking into a building.

“Brag to who?” she replies. “You can’t brag to Martha because I already told her, so that only leaves Heather.”

“I can brag to people in the store. And to Claire,” he tells her. “Oh God she’s probably going to be even prouder than I am.”

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted by that.”

“Hey, I couldn’t be prouder that you if I tried,” he says, punctuating his point with a kiss to her cheekbone. “But Claire has a lot of proud parent energy she can’t always channel into me.” He swings their hands between them as he bits his lip slightly, an idea springing to life in his head. “I’m going to buy you a victory cupcake at lunch.”

“You don’t need to buy me a cupcake,” she sighs.

“It’s not just a cupcake,” he replies. “It’s a victory cupcake.” Veronica rolls her eyes, but the gesture doesn’t go any deeper than her face. This boy is a contradiction himself, the troubled bad boy/poetry lover who buys her cupcakes when she gets into college. “Or donut. Or cookie. Whatever you want and whatever the cafeteria has in stock.”

“If it’s a donut that shit better have sprinkles,” she tells him seriously. He laughs, plugging in his combination and opening his locker. Before he moves to take anything out or put anything in, he moves in and kisses her forehead with just a little more strength than they normally allow in the middle of the hallway. “Be proud of yourself.”

“I am proud,” she says indignantly. “More relieved than proud, but I’m proud.” He nods, taking her hand and walking her to her homeroom, grin never once leaving his face and his fingers moving minutely as he strokes the back of her hand. He rubs his cheek against her hair and tells her about his English essay and when they run into Heather he rather affectionately calls her ‘buttercup’. He and Veronica share a knowing look when Heather mentions that she was hoping to run into Martha earlier, and she groans at a dumb joke he makes,

It’s only when he opens the door that Veronica realises that one day, not too far away, she’ll be missing mornings like this.

                                                                                               ******

“Hey, JD?” A flash of yellow appears in his peripheral vision as Heather takes her place next to him at the very back of American history. At her arrival, he places his bookmark in between the pages and slips the book into his bag. Despite this being his second reading of, it’s taking him longer to get through it this time around. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did,” he says, only for Heather’s face to fall slightly. She’s almost constantly smiling, must be a cheerleader thing, but the way it falls and rises like a puppy’s ears is almost a clearer indication of her feelings than when she isn’t. “What’s up?”

“I just… how are you and Veronica going to do college?”

His first thought is that the question is way too deep for first period. He’s all for a good discussion (especially when it comes to his relationship, since it turns out the only things keeping him from rambling out his thoughts to Claire are self-preservation, a small shred of dignity and some compassion for her) but the question Heather posed is a little too much too soon. And if he’s honest...

“I… we haven’t talk about it,” he decides is the right way to put it. It’s not incorrect and is certainly much better than ‘well I don’t know, we never really thought about it’.

Except now he is.

Thanks, Heather, he thinks.

“Oh…” she says. “Sorry, I was just asking because… see me and Martha don’t know what we’re going to do when she goes away to college and I go wherever I go.”

“Still not convinced you’re getting in?” She shakes her head, lips rolled into a tight line. Despite the B+ quiz tucked in the back of her folder. “I wouldn’t count you out yet, Mac.”

“Thanks. I just want to be ready for whatever,” she says with feigned nonchalance. “And you’re not planning on going anywhere, right?”

“Right,” he says, even if the word feels clumsy and uncomfortable in his mouth. It’s more of a habitual answer than a truthful one.

“Do-do you ever worry about the long distance stuff?” Heather asks him. “I mean, I don’t really worry. I just think about it a lot sometimes.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I-I guess not. I didn’t really-” He bites his lip, drumming his fingers on the table. He didn’t really think he’d be around post-graduation. That’s what he means. He never expected any of this to last, Claire, Sherwood, Veronica, anything. He assumed he’d be sent off to another placement after his time here was up. This degree of certainty is alien to him, however much it might mean to him. This is the adjustment period. Still, he won’t say that. Too deep for this hour, and, much as he likes her, for Heather. So he shrugs his shoulders instead. “I didn’t really think about it before now.”

“Oh,” Heather says, disappointment evident. She tugs on the sleeve of her jacket as she looks away from him. Rows in front of them her old friends sit on their desks, heads clustered together in conversation.

“I hope we can do it though,” he adds, grabbing her attention again. “The long distance thing. I want to do it. I think we can.” It’s not an empty thought. He’s grown used to communicating by letters and long distance phone calls or even emails, even if it’s just correspondence with old foster siblings or his social workers. He grins to himself as it grows clearer in his mind, the two of them on opposite sides of a phone, drinking in the details of each other’s day, her in a college sweater and him in his pyjamas back in his room.

“You do?” she asks, the corners of her own mouth turning up.

“Of course I do,” he replies.

“Me too,” she says. “Not with Veronica. With Martha. But I still want to do like… long distance friendships too. With you too.” He huffs out a laugh but understands. For the first time, the crap teachers have spewed at every school he’s been to about ‘you’ll miss it when you’re gone’ resonate with him. Even if it’s just about three people. But he’s also grown used to missing people and that’s definitely a habit he wants to break.

                                                                                               *****

The new outside activities aren’t just confined to lunch. The sunshine and dry ground means the after school cheerleading practice is moved outside too. According to her girlfriend, Coach thinks that the jocks, practicing just across the field, will be the happiest kids in the state right about now. And while they certainly do seem to appreciate it, Martha suspects she might just take that title. How can she not be, sitting on in the bleachers with a book in her hands and the sun on her face while she waits for Heather to finish, and sneaking glances at her every now and then, watching her flip perfectly and kick her legs in that little skirt and her golden curls being lit up by the sun and flying behind her like a flag.

Sometimes she’s amazed that she never noticed Heather in that way before.

The girl in question bounds up to her almost the minute the Coach dismisses them, resting her chin on her shoulder, the rest of the student body too wrapped up in each other to notice how Martha’s hand wraps around hers.

“You did great today,” she tells her.

“You think so?” she asks.

“Definitely.” Heather grins and takes a look out over the emptying sports field. Martha used to hate this place and part of her still does, the ghosts of ‘Dumptruck’ echoing in her mind from when she ran laps around the field. But now she can tune those out, even if it takes some effort sometimes, as long as she’s with the right people. Two people to be exact and one of them is lazily rubbing her back.

“Coach likes you,” Heather says. “She likes when you come down to watch practice.”

“She said that?” Martha asks sceptically.

“Yeah,” she says. “Well, no. Well, sort of. She said she likes when people watch us. And she thinks you’re sweet for supporting me.”

“So she knows I’m watching?” she asks. “Guess I’m not as subtle as I thought.” She turns to face her, half-laughing. “Well, I’ll always support my special friend.” They chuckle together; ‘special friends’ is apparently what Heather’s mom refers to gay couples as, and they’ve since turned it into both a cover story and a private joke. The first word, at least, Martha would definitely apply to Heather.

Heather heaves a sigh next to her, the motion on her back drifting away from nonchalant and towards anxious.

“Are you okay?” she asks, running her thumb over her knuckles. She nods quickly, her hair bobbing with her, and it indicates the opposite of what it intends. Still, Martha doesn’t press, instead she presses a quick kiss to her head, thankful the field is deserted, and traces circles on the back of her hand, changing direction every once in a while as Heather’s breathing evens out beside her. Just as she begins to maybe pry a little, it’s Heather who opens her mouth, and what she says nearly knocks her off the bleachers.

“Are we going to do the whole long distance thing?”

“Long distance thing?”

“When you go off to college,” she explains. “And I go… somewhere. Is that what we’re going to do or should we break up before college?”  She winces at the last part. “I-that’s what my cousin did with her high school boyfriend.”

“Is that what you want?” she asks tentatively. Insecurity comes to her like an old friend, a friend she no longer wants around, but whose presence is so familiar she’s already listening to it.

“Oh my God, no!” Heather gasps, eyes going wide. She grasps Martha’s shoulders, tension burning in her fingers. “No I do not want to break up before college. Or after college!”

“O… Okay,” she sighs, a little relieved and a little startled. “Then we won’t. Break up I mean.”

“Really?” she squeaks, biting her lip as a smile takes over her face. “Really?”

“Yeah, really,” she promises. “I mean, if you want to, I want to.”

“I do,” she replies firmly. “I really, really do.”

“Okay.”  Grinning, Heather nuzzles into her shoulder as they look out on the expanse of grass and track in front of them, leading out to the doll-sized houses and stores beyond. Up this high, they’re not just students, they’re giants. Heather’s hand slides into hers and she gives it a gentle squeeze.

“I wonder what would have happened if we’d figured this… us out before now,” Heather remarks.

“Yeah,” she agrees a little sadly. She tries not to dwell on wishes too much anymore, but if she did have a fairy godmother who could grant them, she’d ask for more time with Heather. More time being herself, this version of herself. Maybe if she had known a year ago, maybe if Heather had been different a year ago. Who knows where they’d be now?

They only go inside when the parking lot starts emptying, knowing someone was coming soon enough to lock the gate. While the prospect of having Heather all to herself with a view like this and all this space isn’t unappealing, the heart attack she’d give her mother and the explanations she’d eventually have to give do. They end up sitting on the front steps, not quite the same feeling as being on top of the bleachers. Up there everything looks perfect, picturesque emerald grass and the town looks painted in. Here she can see the trash blowing around in the gentle breeze and knows the graffiti that’s scrawled just around the corner. It’s too real.

Still, Heather is stroking her hair as they talk nonsense and that’s more than enough to make this place work for her.

Her hand brushes against Martha’s just as the door opens and then it drop like a stone in a lake. Two people clad in heels come down the stairs, slowing down as they pass them, the red and the green coming into their vision.

“Heather,” Duke greets coldly. Moments pass without so much as an acknowledgement of Martha. It’s fair, she supposes. All else aside, they were friends, which isn’t a claim Martha has. Not since kindergarten anyway.

“Heather,” she replies, her voice so steady that Martha’s not sure the trembling hand on her leg could belong to the same body.

Behind Duke, Chandler looks down, her arms crossed over her chest. From the neck down, she’s every inch the iron queen of their school, clad in her red blazer, her shadow falling over them and the red scrunchie peeking on her wrist. However, her face is a carefully constructed snarl that’s nearly convincing… except for the way she bites her cheek and how her eyes jump from Heather to Martha to the ground. And how her mouth seems to be on the verge of opening, only to be sealed up again at the last moment. Despite having gone to school with her every day for thirteen years, she doesn’t look familiar at all. Despite her height, despite the way she looms over the two of them, she looks small.

“Come on,” Chandler says, shaking Duke’s shoulder a little. Up until now, Duke’s face had been the opposite of Chandler’s, a hardened mask fixed in one slightly annoyed grimace that’s a staple of their school life at this point. But at Chandler’s command, the cracks appear and she looks as foreign as Heather Chandler did. She obeys and follows at Chandler’s heels down the steps, but not before stalling for a moment, eyes landing on her Heather. Ten years seems to disappear from her for that one moment, and suddenly she’s Heather who clutched a Barbie doll and inched closer to Martha to ask to play.

“Hey,” Chandler snaps, waiting for Duke at the bottom of the steps. “Let’s go. They’re not worth it.”

“Agreed,” Duke replies and she quickens her pace to meet her, neither one of them looking back.

Heather’s looking after them though, her hand fidgeting in her lap. There’s a wistfulness in her gaze that Martha’s making a conscious effort not to be jealous of. Instead she reaches out and takes her restless hand in hers, pulling her back from wherever she is.

“Can I ask you something?” she asks quietly, before she can lose nerve.

“Sure.”

“Do you… do you ever miss them?” she asks, nodding in the direction of their disappearing classmates. Heather blinks, a little unsettled by her question, but despite the apologetic look she gives her, Martha can’t really bring herself to regret asking it. Even if she wishes she’d maybe saved it for later.

“I… don’t know,” she says after a while. “I mean I was friends with them for a really long time. Maybe not friends, okay no. See, I don’t really know.”

“It’s okay,” she says, running her hand through her hair. “I get it. It’s complicated.”

“I think… I don’t like the Heather I was with them,” she admits, turning to Martha. The setting sun bathes her in a delicate golden glow, but even without it, she’d still glow in her own right. Especially now with the way her eyes shine with sincerity and the smile that says so much despite being so small. She cups Martha’s cheek with her hand, her fingertips just meeting her hair. “I like the Heather I am with you. And Veronica. Even JD. That’s what I know.”

Martha hugs Heather tightly, guiding her head to the crook of her neck and squeezing her shoulders carefully. She could tell her that she feels the same, that she knows Heather made her better, that she’s braver and wiser because of her love. She could do that, and she will, one day, hopefully soon. But she doesn’t need to now and it’s beautiful. Now, all she needs and wants to do is hold her girlfriend and silently agree with her; she really likes this Heather.

                                                                                               *****

On Friday evening, Veronica is curled in the biggest chair in the living room, hands gripping the wides and legs poised to jump out. Her body twitches involuntarily each time a car that is even remotely close to silver comes into view, only for them to pass by without a glance. Taking advantage of the good weather, longer days and break in the school work, she and JD plan to take a walk around the park to let off steam.

“What’s this thing he had after school?” her mom asks.

“Just a doctor’s appointment,” she replies, crossing her fingers behind her back. She’s not ashamed, not of anything about him, but it’s also not her story to tell and she notices how he stiffens when Heather or Martha ask what he has planned the occasional Friday. She taps her knuckles against the change in her jacket pocket, she and JD intending to hit the small candy store on the corner before the park.

Another silver car comes around the corner and she slowly unfolds herself as it steadily drives down the road before bursting into a relieved grin when it stop outside her house, the passenger door opening.

“Okay I’m out!” she announces, swinging around the living room door.

“Are you sure he doesn’t want to come in for a minute?” her mom asks, following her out of the living room and leaning against the wall. “I’m making a pot roast.”

“Yep, we’re good,” she replies hastily, opening the front door. Down at the car, JD is probably having a similar conversation, only with far less withheld smothering. The sight of him talking to her so easily makes her slow down a little, a prickle of guilt in her chest, small, but present. She turns around and gives her own mom a smile. “Thanks Mom, but we just want to get out for a bit. I won’t be late, see you later.”

“Okay.” Her mom’s shoulders relax and she nods, smiling back at her. “Have fun, honey.”

Even though she saw him mere hours ago, she gives JD a light hug just as Claire is pulling out away from the kerb, and he responds in kind, adding in a kiss to her hair. She didn’t quite miss him, they’re not like that, but they’re far more free outside school, even with their moderate disregard for the PDA rules.

“Come on,” she says, lacing her fingers through his and pulling him along, making him laugh softly. His lose curls fall forwards over his forehead and dance in the light breeze. He twirls her around under his arm and pulls her closer to wrap his arm around her as they head to the store.

With candy in hand and miniature soda bottles in pockets, they stroll through the park together, Veronica’s arm linking through his and her cheek resting on his shoulder. While the park isn’t quite as full as it would be in the height of summer, they are fairly far from alone too, small kids running past them or wobbling on bikes with parents chasing after them, panic in their eyes despite their fond smiles. The pond glitters golden in the setting sun, families of ducks and ducklings splashing and flapping and creating ripples on the otherwise still water.

They find a spot on a grassy slope where they can looking over everything with the sun at their backs. Ever the gentleman, he even spreads his jacket out for her to sit on. They sit hip to hip, their little candy stash poised carefully between them and their drinks, lemonade for her, cherry Coke for him, cooling their legs.

She leans back on her elbows to stretch out her back tilts her head back, eyes closed, letting the sun warm her face. JD spies an opportunity and sneaks in, dropping a kiss on her lips without warning, not that he would need one, and sneaks an apple flavoured lace from her.

“Jerk,” she says with feigned annoyance, even if she’s giggling. “You owe me.”

“M&M or chocolate?” he asks.

“M&M.” She pulls herself forwards and kneels up to find him on one knee, green candy between his thumb and index finger and face screwed up in concentration. “You will not get that.”

“Want to bet?” he teases. “I bet you a cheek smooch that I can get this in your mouth on the first try.”

“Deal,” she agrees, rolling her eyes. She opens her mouth, only to let out an annoyed squeak when he moves over and lowers her head. “Cheat.”

“I’m making it more fair. Now come on, stay still.”

The candy bounces off her cheekbone and rolls across the grass, the impact just a step above nothing. Still, she laughs, falling back onto the grass and looking at him

“Pay up,” she sings.

“With pleasure,” he says dropping a swift kiss to her cheek. Giggling smugly, she lets him pull her up into a sit, her fingers stroking the inside of his arm, their foreheads close to touching. There’s a warm, slightly breathless feeling in her chest, one that she’s grown slightly used to and would like to get more used to. Butterflies, maybe, but they’re calm now. Like they’re flapping their little wings slowly and serenely in her chest. Breathless, but the good kind.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” he begins, looking down at his hands. She looks at him, listening and expectant, but his voice just trails off.

“You going to tell me what you were thinking of?” she asks, hoping to bring him back on track. “Or am I just going to have to guess.”

“Sorry,” he says, laughing a little. “Just… still thinking about it, I guess.” She runs her hand down his arm and takes his, lacing their fingers together.

“Want to let me in?” He nods, dimples forming in his cheeks as he grins. His free hand taps on his knee, his fingers moving in an agitated rhythm.

“It’s a little crazy.”

“I’m all for crazy,” she tells him.

“But… you know how I always said I don’t want to go to college? How I don’t see the point in it and all that crap?” She nods and he takes a deep breath in, his eyes lighting up as they meet her. His excitement passes from him to her as she slowly starts to see where he’s going. “Well, just you and your getting in and Martha and Heather, it all got me thinking… what if I actually went? Not this year, I mean I can’t, but next year. Do some volunteering and maybe retake a test or two and start applications and give it a real try.” He bites his lip sheepishly. “Is that dumb?”

“Dumb?” she echoes. “J, that’d be amazing!”

“Really?”

“Really!” she squeaks.

“I was thinking about majoring in English,” he explains, kneeling up, one hand gesturing wildly and the other holding onto her with a tight grip, his hand shaking a little, like his blood is buzzing. The words flow out of him one after the other with no break, almost leaving him panting. “You know? I mean, I’m good at it, according to all my assignments. I don’t think I want to be a writer or anything like that and definitely not a teacher, but maybe like a Professor or something. Or an editor.”

“You’d be amazing at that,” she tells him, cupping the side of his face. She touches her forehead to his, nuzzling into him, his shoulders shaking under him as he laughs. “When did you figure all this out?”

“Well…” He scratches behind his ear. “I sort of… I guess I always knew I wanted it. To go study poetry somewhere. But I never thought I could. I never thought I’d have some sort of permanent place with someone to get me through it.” He sighs, his eyes shining. “But now I do.”

Claire Veronica thinks. The woman who isn’t his mother but is the next best thing. He told her the next day at school with wide, slightly red eyes and an expression that was half-joy, half-disbelief, like he was expecting to wake up from this. All she could do was hug him as tight as she knew how to and tell him how happy she was for him, even if she could never understand how huge this is. And that’s okay with her. All she needs to know is that this means pretty much everything to him.

Veronica doesn’t really like thinking about what would have happened if she hadn’t adopted him, and he doesn’t like talking about it, so it had worked out well. Losing him once was bad enough, and that was when she was a kid and only loved him half as much as she does now. Now all she can do is be grateful she never has to think about that again. And be glad that he has someone forever now.

She leans in and kisses him, tasting cherry Coke and sugar on his lip, his joy infectious and making her dizzy. He pecks at her lips playfully until she tilts her head and slides her hand into his hair, murmuring contended nothings against him.

“Hey, Ronnie?” he asks.

“Mm-hm?”

“About college…” The initial bliss fades a little, not enough to disappear completely, but she feels the change in the air. She delicate touches the dimple on his cheek with her fingertip. “I just… are we going to do that long distance thing?”

“Long distance?” she echoes.

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean… you’re going to be in North Carolina, and much as I’d like to I doubt the Dean would let me come with you. I know some high school couples break up before college, but I don’t-I want to do it long distance. I think we can.” He shrugs, his eyes meeting hers with an unfamiliar insecurity in them. “I’m up for it if you are.”

She shakes her head at him, huffing out a laugh and pushes his hair away from his face, looking right into his eyes and making him do the same. Truthfully, she had thought about them post-high school, and she had worried up until a few days ago, when Martha calmed her fears about them. Now she just looks back in embarrassment, as if she’d ever let 600 miles shake the two things she loves most.

“Jason Dean,” she sighs, enjoying the taste of his name, his real name, on her lips. “I could go to college in Mars and still want to be with you.” His cheek shifts against her hand as he breaks out into a grin. “So yes, dumbass. I want to do the long distance thing with you. I always thought I would. Even if it means staying up to 2am to talk to you and racking up Claire’s phone bill beyond all recognition.”

“You might want to talk to her about that,” he whispers, laughter lacing the edges of his voice. He pulls her into another kiss, longer and deeper than the last one, occasionally interrupted by their contented chuckling. They fall back onto the ground, the soft grass tickling their faces, their hands clasped between them. JD looks at her, his mouth half open and his eyes bright. He pushes her hair back and traces her jaw, his thumb poking at her cheek.

“I’m so glad I met you,” he tells her quietly, his voice shaking a little. She presses a kitten-like kiss to the inside of his wrist.

“First or second time?” she teases.

Grinning, he takes her clasped hand and brings to her fingers to his lips to kiss it. A warm current sweeps through her body and her hands tingle, reminding her of the fairies weaving magic in her old picture books. Like there’s magic in his touch that can make her glimmer and shine.

“First,” he replies with more certainty in his voice than she’s ever heard before.

[damnitaddie]

In The Streets

“All the street lights, glowing, happen to be Just like moments, passing, in front of me So I hopped in the cab and I paid my fare See I know my destination, but I’m just not there…”

  It’s been so long since I’ve updated this site that I don’t even know what to say, looks like the last time I updated the site was in late March. In that time, I’ve changed jobs, I changed schools, and things are happening.

After leaving AT&T and drifting aimlessly for a while, I got hired at Spectrum. At first, I treated Spectrum like a bullshit job that I didn’t care about. I think it was mostly because of the entry pay. But after a decent raise and then a shift differential, I had found a place that I wanted to stay until I graduated from nursing school. However, they changed my schedule to a point where going to school during the day wasn’t going to be feasible.

At the same time that they announced the scheduling changes for the whole center, I had just completed my healthcare basics coursework, lab time, and clinical rotations. I sat for the written and skills test and earned my CNA, or as Kentucky calls it – State Registered Nurse Aide.

With that in mind, it seemed like a sign that if nursing was my focus and I wanted to be about that life, there was no better time than the present to jump in head first. Don’t talk about it, be about it. So I started applying. I went to an open interview event at Norton Healthcare and sat down with a nurse manager. I went on to have an interview at Audubon Hospital and then another at Norton Hospital. I had also applied at Jewish and Kindred. I accepted an interview at Jewish and was offered the job the next day. I accepted and proceeded to do the onboarding requirements. Before orientation could begin, I got a call back from Norton offering me a job at the downtown hospital. Because it had been my goal to work at Norton, I accepted this job and backed out of the position at Jewish with as much poise and grace as possible.

During this same time period, I ran afoul of the chair of the nursing program at JCTC, after calling out the school on Twitter. An issue had arisen when our teacher allowed people to leave early. Because the course had federal requirements for logged hours, this was a big no-no. On this fateful night, my teacher’s boss walked in at 7:30 pm. I was there, along with two other students, but the other 20 or so students were long gone. So, they forced all of us to make up those hours. Even the three of us who were still there.

It was implied that I had broken the school’s social media policy. However, when I asked what section of the policy, knowing full well that the policy only applied to staff and faculty, they pivoted to possibly not accepting me into the ADN program due to my posts. In my mind, they’d already decided not to accept me, so I told them there were plenty of nursing schools in this town and someone would take my money.

And so, that’s the story of how I ended up at Galen, basically a year further away from graduating than I would have been if I’d just started there from the beginning. But it’s been good. I think it’s a good, albeit expensive, program and the degree carries name recognition for being a quality school.

Since starting at Norton as a PCA — Patient Care Associate — I’ve learned a ton of things and I feel like I’m already ahead of many of my classmates, many of them who are decades younger and have never worked in healthcare. In only a couple months, I know how to do things that they may not learn for months or even years. In January, we’ll begin our clinical rotations for school, doing hands-on work, most likely in long-term care facilities or nursing homes.

At the same time, I’ll be shifting gears at Norton, hanging up my grey scrubs for green, as a Nurse Apprentice, having been accepted into SNAP, which is the Student Nurse Apprenticeship Program. The first federally recognized program of it’s type, it gives me the ability to continue to build my clinical skills, often working nearly at scope along side a registered nurse. Being already familiar with Norton’s Systems, policies, and operating standards, I’m excited to be able to do more hands-on work than I’m legally allowed to do currently. My participation will run parallel to school, wrapping up at graduation time, just in time to take the NCLEX.

School and work has become my personality, largely because I have time for nothing else. I think everyone gets this false impression that because I “only” work 3 days a week that I’ve got so much time, but I’m working 12 hour shifts, from 7pm to 7am, and then often going straight to campus. On days when I don’t work and don’t have school, I often sleep 12-18 hours just trying to get back to baseline.

I say all this as a way of getting to the point, I’ve been missing everything. Family events, my kid’s sporting events, spending time with my girlfriend, and generally being a living breathing human being. If you ask me when we’re going to hang out, I’m likely to reply, “When you show up at the hospital, at Galen, or in my bedroom.”

Beyond all that, nothing else has changed. I wish I could say that I was becoming a better version of myself, less obsessed, more focused on the future than the past, and all that — but I don’t want to lie to you. I’m still carrying all my torches and they’re lit like the beacons of Minas Tirith.

In June, in the gap between Spectrum and Norton, Nicole and I took a trip to Washington D.C. for an event put on by American Nurses Association to lobby legislators on Capitol Hill. I had never been to the district and it was a fairly exciting proposition. There was a certain level of anxiety in it though, as Laurel lives in the area. I didn’t have any intention of seeking her out or really making contact with her, but she remains in my thoughts even now.

Nicole, knowing my feelings and being Nicole, had tried to contact Laurel a couple times. These were ostensibly friendly and Nicole’s way of letting Laurel know I still had feelings for her. I’ll never know what actually happened there, because neither party would share the contents of those interactions, but suffice to say, they were received poorly by Laurel. Never the less, Nicole was adamant that I needed to see her while we were in town. I was vehemently opposed to this idea and we debated it through most of West and Non-West Virginia.

No matter my protests, we ended up at the bar where Laurel spends most of her time that night. Earlier in the day, she had posted on Facebook a sort of open invitation to area trans folk to come out for drinks. As we, at the time, were Facebook friends — I would assume this would apply to me. This ties into the concept of assumptions. And, if we’re being honest, I knew there was a 90% chance she’d not want to see me.

So, there we are, standing on the sidewalk out front. I can actually see Laurel through the windows and I start to hyperventilate, replete with tachycardia. A full fledged anxiety attack. I plead with Nicole to leave, like let’s not do this, this is going to end poorly, etc, etc, etc. She declines.

We end up going into the upstairs portion of the bar and we have a few drinks. With a bit of liquid courage and social lubrication flowing, I send Laurel a message telling her that I’m upstairs, asking if she’d like to come up and say hi. This way I don’t crash her gathering, and she can save face in front of her friends.

So we wait, and we wait, and wait some more. Drinking more and more as we go, having befriended the bartender. A nice guy that had moved from Texas to D.C., a previous EMS technician and Army medic. Nicole and him both had the same role and rank in the military. We chatted about this and that, until finally I had waited long enough and was going to be so bold as to venture downstairs. I’ll never forget what happened next, because in 39 years on this rock, I’ve never seen someone react so poorly to seeing me. Not even the transphobe at AT&T who turned on her heel out of the women’s room having seen me…

At the bottom of the steps, I came around the corner and basically ran right into Laurel. We were maybe three feet apart. The closest we’d been since she drove away from our home in April of 2017. You always hear that trope about the blood running out of someone’s face, but I’d never seen it in reality, until now. Paler than pale. So white she was nearly transparent.

We have just lost cabin pressure.

The whole exchange lasted less than two minutes. Aside from asking me what I was doing there, she really couldn’t seem to get words past her teeth. Which, if you’ve met Laurel, you’d know is a pretty impressive feat. I finally said that I would make it easy and just go.

I spent the rest of the night and the trip in a state wavering between sadness and disbelief. I wasn’t shocked and if anything, I expected worse. I knew that there was nothing there, that the well had run dry long ago, but I still had to lean over the edge and peer into the void. By morning, she had blocked me on every social media platform.

In the afternoon, her bestie was messaging me accusing me of ill intent that I didn’t have. I told her basically that I could put my feelings in a bottle on a shelf, but they never seem to stay there for long. Even now, five months later, I’m still thinking about that fateful night. Running it through my head, replaying the horrible look she gave me. Of course, with Thanksgiving upon us, the memory of my mistakes weigh upon me heavily.

I’m working on erasing you, I just don’t have the proper tools. I get hammered, forget that you exist There’s no way that I’m forgetting this.

You’re the shit and I’m knee-deep in it.

Other than that, everything is great!

In The Streets was originally published on TransVentures

[shallomofasa]

Flutterwave: The Innovative Digital Payments Platform

The underdevelopment of the financial service industry in Africa posed a very tough, important and widespread problem of payments across the continent. After more than 50 years of banking on the continent, only roughly about 34 percent of adults in sub-Saharan Africa have bank accounts or access to formal financial services.

It is clear the traditional model of banking is too slow, inflexible and incapable of spreading financial access across the continent, and so making payments across globally is proves even more difficult

Fortunately, with the spread of mobile phones and the Internet across Africa, more people are exposed to the better option of digital financial services, both for individuals and businesses. This is a very beneficial advancement as every day more and more people leverage this technology to have access to various online digital platforms to make payments across the globe in ways traditional banking never did as online transactions happen quickly and with ease.

Regardless of the popularity of online digital payments, many businesses, and individuals in Africa still feel very Insecure and do not trust these digital financial service providers.

With so many concerns about making secure and reliable payments online, problems with making payments for products and services both across the continent and globally, the general fear of being a victim of “fraudsters”, consumers are looking for a product and service they can trust.

This is exactly what Flutterwave, a fintech startup from Nigeria hoped to achieve when they came into the scene in May 2016 and completely revolutionized the online digital payment platforms in Africa.

What is this Flutterwave you may ask?

Flutterwave

 Flutterwave is an online digital payment platform that is set out to provide complete payment solutions to enable Africans to thrive in the global economy. The company started with a vision to first connect digital payments within Africa and then connecting Africa to the rest of the world. Flutterwave has been to able provide with its various products advance financial technologies and solutions for efficient, reliable and swift and payments across Africa and the globe.

Since they commenced business three years ago, Flutterwave has processed over $2.5 billion in payments, 100million transactions, and is partnered with over 50 African banks like Standard Bank, Ecobank, United Bank for Africa, Guaranty Trust Bank, Zenith Bank, First Bank, and Access Bank and many more to ensure that it provides top-notch service to the ever-growing African market.

Flutterwave raised one of the highest Series A round investments for an African startup and to date has raised over $20 million in investments from companies such as Mastercard, CRE Ventures Fintech Collective, 4DX Ventures, Raba Capital among others. Also as part of the deal, Green Visor Capital Chairman & General Partner and former CEO of Visa, Joseph Saunders, has joined the Flutterwave Board of Directors. Joe, an experienced Venture Capitalist and Chief Executive Officer of a multibillion-dollar financial Services Company added an important factor to the readiness of the company to effectively continue operations post-funding phase.

Flutterwave currently has over 1200 developers that build on its Developer’s playground with a focus on building technology that is not only flexible with awesome user experience but also provides a payment technology that is reliable and secure thereby easing the fears of the average user.

Flutterwave is building digital payments infrastructure accessible via APIs that enable all available payment options across different African countries. This API allows businesses to carry out transactions from MasterCard, Visa, Verve, Mobile Money, ACH — and even cash tokens and e-wallets in different African countries by integrating one API. This is very important because it incorporates the already existing and preferred means of payment by its consumers into its platform. So in plain words, you make and accept payments with methods you are already familiar with and comfortable with. The company currently has its headquarters at San Francisco and also operates out of offices in Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, and Johannesburg.

Flutterwave has built an innovative technology that has been able to connect Africans and African businesses with the global economy in ways never before attained.

Flutterwave products

  Flutterwave has been able to open up, and disrupt the traditional financial services in African and improve trust between African businesses and its global consumers with its innovative products, some of which are Rave and Barter

Rave

Rave by Flutterwave

Rave is a payment solution offered by Flutterwave which enables merchants to accept global payments from cards, mobile wallet payments, and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data(USSD) code. It is one of the easiest ways for businesses to accept a range of payment methods from customers around the globe

Rave by Flutterwave is  a product that can be integrated into various online websites for a better payment experience. One of such websites to incorporate this product is Megabet. It creates any type of payment flow, from e-commerce to recurring billing and everything in between. Using Rave you can set up an e-commerce store with Shopify in just minutes and begin to receive payments from customers. With a simple sign up on Rave, you have unlimited access to all its features.

Currently, Rave supports over 150+ currencies and its flexibility allow it to display prices and accept payments in its users’ preferred currency, improving their overall experience. With Rave, you avoid high conversion fees and can receive funds in your local currency. Rave payment gateway support payment in Naira, US Dollar, Euro, British Pound and many more.

Flutterwave Rave has various user-friendly features making users enjoy the experience of using the products it meets their specific needs and the ease of use is an added advantage.

Rave provides a payment gateway that is better than others in numerous ways. A payment gateway is a service that securely authorizes a customer’s payment on a website. It is used to accept payments on a website, app or even social media. Rave employs a slew of tools geared at protecting merchants from fraud to make transactions secure and reliable. The instant settlement also assures no delay in money availability once customer made payment

Flutterwave is also PCI DSS Level 1 certified which is the highest level of security and ensures that its user’s information is kept safe and private.

Secure payments in Flutterwave

 The Pricing For Rave is listed Below:

Local Payments:

Payment method: MasterCard, Visa, Bank Account, USSD- 1.4%Processing fee

International Payments:

MasterCard, Visa, American Express-3.5% Processing fee

Some of the companies that use this products include Flywire, Arikair, Jumia, Uber, and Booking.com.

 To get started on Flutterwave Rave, click here.

Barter

Barter by Flutterwave

Flutterwave partnered with Visa to launch a consumer payment product called Barter. The product facilitates personal and small payments. Barter is a financial app not unlike your typical bank app, but it also gives users more options to manage their finances, make bill payments, pay for various subscriptions and generally just make everyday transactions as seamless and easy as can be. On their official website, the product is described as being designed to help you focus more on enjoying life and less on how to spend, spend and borrow money.

Barter lets the user know how he spends his money and also provides detailed reports that show their spending patterns and insights. This product also allows the user to add their bank account to their app dashboard and manage funds in their local currency. Users can also request for short-term loans on the app with ease. Funds can be added to your barter account from your local bank accounts or cards. With the GetBarter App, you can make and accept payments with just the touch of a few buttons across the continent.

Users who already own Visa cards can also send and receive money at both locally and internationally on the GetBarter App while non-card holders (people with accounts or mobile wallets on other platforms) can create a virtual card to link to the app.

.

Barter Classic plan

Barter classic is the regular Barter plan. Users on the Barter Classic plan can create a maximum of two Dollar cards and there is a ₦50,000 limit on daily bank transfers. Users do not get also cashback on airtime purchases, unlike the premium users. All other features like bank transfers, sending and receiving money, bill payments, all work effectively with very low transaction costs.

One amazing feature about this product is that when you add your Barter card to your Uber app (Naira or dollar), you get 0.5% cash-back after every ride, talk of rewarding your users.

GetBarter also lets you request and send money to any number saved on your phone. You can request as low as N50 or as high as N500,000. Whatever amount you are sent goes right into your Barter Balance.

The Pay with QR feature, which is powered by VISA, allows the user to scan a QR code to make payments with Barter. You can either scan the QR code with your camera directly or upload one from your photos. This feature has been publicly applauded globally.

The GetBarter App is available on Android and IOS

FLUTTERWAVE over time has made major strides in the financial technology space in Africa that has impacted thousands of businesses both in Africa and the global economy.

The recent Partnership of Flutterwave with Alipay has created access for Flutterwave merchants to over 1 billion potential customers in China and across the world. They had previously partnered with PayAttitude to enabled payments to be made using only your phone number. A very convenient method of payment for those without bank accounts.

As with all tech-driven solution providers in the continent, Flutterwave has had its share of difficulties but through it all, they have shown a commitment for excellence and a desire to give its consumers the best experience.

Flutterwave has gotten well deserved global recognition for its contribution to the financial technology industry. Flutterwave won the West Africa Mobile Awards in 2017 for the best commerce and retail service.

Flutterwave’s API is used by many of the payment service providers in Nigeria including Paystack, AmplifyPay, Paywithcapture, and others. With its easy to use and Flexible API that is able to conveniently process millions of transactions both locally and internationally, and with the dedication that the Flutterwave team has shown in just three years in the financial technology space, it is very obvious that this is a company set on changing the world and helping businesses in Africa progressively scale up and be a competition in the growing global economy

[stellacarrierimaginationbuilders]

Spirit Guide Communication Training Intent Creative Fiction Style Episode 2 and 3

Spirit Guide Communication Training Intent Creative Fiction Style Episode 3

Spirit Guide Name Ali Trance

Start time by 1043 pm to 1044pm Saturday September 21 2019

Completion time by 1117 pm to 1118 pm to 1119pm to 1121 pm  Saturday September 21 2019

My name is Ali Trance in the year 2121 and I am a career and money mentor spirit guide to hundreds of earth based psychics who are helping men and women from multiple backgrounds with their career and money goals across various parts of earth.  I am a spirit guide’s career and money assistant because I am still learning myself having resided in multiple non physical heavenly worlds of the last 700 years. My most recent earth incarnation was completed by the year 1300 and I completed another incarnation in another world with beings who resembled earth based men and women yet who were more spiritually and technologically advanced by the year 1421 a multiple number of some of the earth based science fiction books published by the year 2090 were partially inspired by multiple earth authors’ memories of their time residing in the particular world I exited by the year 1421 though that is something for another post.

I Ali Trance was offered a chance less than 2 earth based years ago to reincarnate into a family who has billionaire fortunes on both the east coast of the U.S. and the western coast of the U.S. with a great deal of these family members being billionaires from having stocks andor high level positions with Amazon and affiliated companies of Amazon who have opened theme parks complete with their own theme park towns consisting of  Amazon sponsored businesses-grocery stores, malls, libraries and other types of businesses by the year 2090.  Men and women from various socio-economic classes are allowed to reside there provided they agree to a couple of conditions I feel more comfortable elaborating on at a future post if I so wish-the first –regardless  of socio-economic level a license to be a parent has to be earned first though a person can apply even if they are just 17 or 18 years old, if already a parent an existing member of the theme park community town has to sponsor them-can voluntarily be a child free person , there is not yet a limit on the number of kids a person can have though it is understood that a person is only going to receive financial assistance, schooling and help for up to 4 kids regardless of the number of kids the person has, this is not to punish the person who has more kids rather to encourage the person to eventually find ways to make more money and for the community to also be socially accepting of both married and bachelor/bachelorette men and women who voluntarily decide to be child-free because a rotating 24 hour nanny service is also automatically supplied to every member who resides in the town regardless of their income, the nannies range in ages from 17 to 270 and are pooled from both parents and those who are voluntarily child-free. The reason for the rotating nanny service is to allow the nannies some days off during the week and time during their workdays to take care of other tasks if needed in addition to moderate the voluntarily child-free nannies from becoming workaholics. Anyhow, I was offered to reincarnate into a theme park town on the eastern coast of the U.S. into a billionaire family  though I politely allowed the offer to go to someone else because I Ali Trance have been enjoying my life in the nonphysical heavenly realms for the last 7 years

I Ali Trance obtain training to be better help as a wiser assistant to multiple celestial spirit guides by the millions of connections that I have to formerly earth based men and women who have mastered their career andor money game while on earth who want to help current earth based men and women who petition for their help. Why many of them are willing to help all who ask even if they were exclusive with their help during their most recent earth lifetimes is something I might address in a future communication.

I Ali Trance have also been going to celestial schools in celestial replicas of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC to learn more multiple ways on how to activate millions of earth based men and women in their sleeptime dreams via their intuitions and imaginations

For instance, suppose an earth based male or female has a sleeptime dream where they see a 2000s era Washington Post express newspaper holder and they are actually pulling this newspaper from there even though they later wake up in real life and realize they were pulling this in the sleeptime dream even after circulation of this particular newspaper is ancient history. Then another scene, they see a work based document with the last name of someone they knew from their past professionally/career speaking. 2 people having this similar sleeptime dream could have completely different meanings for each of them. However in real life neither of them hesitated to decide which newspapers to release and which ones to keep of this particular paper and the last name of the person they knew on a professional level appearing on a work document represents a time to them where they were courageous and more self confident when it came to more easily keeping and giving away items that they have. As one of their spirit guides I am far from telling them that they must do donating and giving away of their items tomorrow, however  I am trying to show them via their sleeptime dreams that something andor multiple things are  going to have to be eventually sold donated andor given away at some point in their immediate futures whether it is within 9 days from now andor 10 months from now andor sooner in order for them to make room for more money, love, happiness, creating heaven on earth, passion, fun, excitement etc. depending on the person experiencing the sleeptime dream

 I Ali Trance also stimulated an incident in a person’s waking life where they thought of a particular radio station to listen to within the next 23 hours and less than 2 to 3 minutes later they see something they wrote about a song related to that music genre got some positive feedback/positive energy. I Ali Trance was explaining to them through this situation and via their creative intuition that they heard correctly to listen to a particular genre of music for a day or more to at least better integrate the multiple messages that are actually being downloaded into their creative intuition.

Resources

https://www.pilotonline.com/food-drink/vp-db-captn-crabby-norfolk-brick-and-mortar-20190916-dypt3isthfh63ndxrkgnuwsxbe-story.html

Norfolk Will Soon Get a Spot Devoted to Baltimore Crabcakes and Beef From Pungo by Matthew Korfhage September 16, 2019

https://www.pilotonline.com/food-drink/vp-db-captn-crabby-norfolk-brick-and-mortar-20190916-dypt3isthfh63ndxrkgnuwsxbe-story.html

Perfect drug nine inch nails

https://www.virginia.org/PlacesToStay

https://www.instagram.com/virginianpilot/?fbclid=IwAR3xjeVpPjhF22k9IIgB8jviGBgtR2ap-eBjl_VnXG-XJni2a8NX77XwGiA

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/09/21/how-texas-barbecue-found-home-rural-sweden/?fbclid=IwAR3uJFcL6wVKfgsHYHdoIMkb0Rb9j6BGLykBMclEpxW2bJFl_XWpfHpiiC8

How Texas barbecue found a home in rural Sweden by Lisa Abend September 21 2019 926 am

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/09/21/how-texas-barbecue-found-home-rural-sweden/?fbclid=IwAR3uJFcL6wVKfgsHYHdoIMkb0Rb9j6BGLykBMclEpxW2bJFl_XWpfHpiiC8

https://www.pilotonline.com/food-drink/vp-db-mezcal-bar-taco-bars-perro-blanco-electric-circus-20190920-yy7th7ks7zd63j4x57udcebqaa-story.html?fbclid=IwAR0PTPIE-1W2RMFudtFORrwW2stnub4nD4XFlK-VyPHrj8PteozhN7NUsNI

A hidden mezcal bar, and a big new beer hall — each serving scratch-made tacos in Hampton Roads

By MATTHEW KORFHAGE

THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT |

SEP 20, 2019 | 10:28 AM

 https://www.pilotonline.com/food-drink/vp-db-mezcal-bar-taco-bars-perro-blanco-electric-circus-20190920-yy7th7ks7zd63j4x57udcebqaa-story.html?fbclid=IwAR0PTPIE-1W2RMFudtFORrwW2stnub4nD4XFlK-VyPHrj8PteozhN7NUsNI

https://www.pilotonline.com/food-drink/vp-db-kfcs-chicken-and-donuts-review-20190917-5cxct6d3mnegrapoe2372nez2e-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1MGocu4e2WbXYNg4Yrj5dye1HYvHNsG1732oBDCZS0SbZtlXwPSmzccM0

Review: We tried KFC’s new Chicken & Donuts sandwich and we have many feelings

By MATTHEW KORFHAGE

THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT |

SEP 17, 2019 | 1:20 PM

 https://www.pilotonline.com/food-drink/vp-db-kfcs-chicken-and-donuts-review-20190917-5cxct6d3mnegrapoe2372nez2e-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1MGocu4e2WbXYNg4Yrj5dye1HYvHNsG1732oBDCZS0SbZtlXwPSmzccM0

 I confess that I first heard the ardent club/electronic love song Burnin Love by Katie Jewels by the January 2011 timeframe some time after I purchased the Future Trance 40 music collection. This song is one of those songs that get better with time. . However, I admit that I intend to keep an open mind to eventually viewing andor obtaining Clubland 13 after noticing the Clubland 13 image on this youtube channel.

 Burnin Love

I remember first hearing a music variation of this enchanting song Deeper by Fragma via a Future Trance 41 music collection by the January 2011 timeframe. The lyrics and vocals to this song are very moving and express passionate emotions in a creative way.

Comment in regards to the youtube music channel Deeper Extended Mix by Fragma topic Kontor Records published on youtube January 30, 2019

This music version of I Surrender by Kate Ryan is similar to a version of the song that I heard via a Best of Dance 2008 music collection by the December 2008/January 2009 timeframe.  I am thrilled/excited to find the version of this song on this youtube music channel.

Regarding the youtube music channel I Surrender by Kate Ryan on Militariy Sniper channel via an image of Trance Volume 2 3 cd box

I remember this beautiful song Sunlight In The Rain by Kelli Ali from around the 2005 to 2007 timeframe because my angelic husband had us listening to a chillout music compilation and this gem of a song was one of the songs on this collection. I am happy/overjoyed that this gorgeous song is also available on youtube.

Regarding Kelli Ali Sunlight in the Rain youtube music video via Cape Tranquility youtube music channel published September 14 2011

I have to credit hearing a variation of this push the envelope yet one of a kind romantic/love song that is Endless Summer by Siria via a Future Trance 45 music compilation by the winter 2008 timeframe(sometime around the December 2008 timeframe). Even with the title of this sensual song, this is the type of electronic/club love song that can be enjoyed year round.

Comment in regard to bttp.TV youtube channel of the Endless Summer song by Siria

 https://upnorway.com/tailor-my-journey/get-started

For spiritually karmic reasons  I am following my creative intuition to avoid posting online comments on the yahoo comment board pertaining to yahoo article link stories though I do keep an open mind to looking at other people’s comments. The last time I personally posted an online comment to a yahoo article comment blog was December 2018 and I intend to lean towards keeping it that way for good reasons though once again I reserve my right to look at the comments of other online commenters who post on yahoo article link stories

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/meghan-mc-cain-storms-off-the-view-set-after-clash-with-ana-navarro-211334902.html

Meghan McCain storms off 'The View' set after clash with Ana Navarro

Todd Garin

September 20 2019

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/meghan-mc-cain-storms-off-the-view-set-after-clash-with-ana-navarro-211334902.html

This youtube music video for Waiting For You by Layla via the Femmes Fatales the 12 Leading Ladies of Electronica deserve more views. i first heard this bold and club like song around the autumn 2008 timeframe when hearing this song after buying the Femmes Fatales cd collection from the MacArthur Center mall in Norfolk Virginia, I enjoyed the collection so much that it was an easy decision for me to purchase the mp3 music collection from Amazon multiple years later.

Via youtube music video of Waiting for you by Layla

https://news.yahoo.com/elizabeth-hurley-bikini-denim-cutoff-shorts-daisy-duke-110927370.html

Elizabeth Hurley, 54, clings on to British summer in denim cut-offs and bikini top

 https://news.yahoo.com/elizabeth-hurley-bikini-denim-cutoff-shorts-daisy-duke-110927370.html

Spirit Guide Communication Training Intent Creative Fiction Style Episode 2

Start time by  653 am Friday September 20 2019 after gathering multiple resources

Completion time 718 am

My name is  Weiland Mea and I am a career mentor who divides his time between the Hampton Roads Virginia area and the metro Washington D.C. area for career reasons in the year 2120. I Weiland Mea help out a multiple number of culinary professionals who write on the side in both of these areas with their career goals, getting in touch with their spirit guides, their money goals, their writing goals and more. I Weiland Mea am currently 50 years old and even at this age I make a part time living as a model because my physical appearance is a combination of looks from my late father who looked similar to one of the musicians from the 1990s/2000s group the Stone Temple Pilots and my mother who looked similar to the female on the 2000s photo cover for the Femmes Fatales The 12 Leading Ladies of Electronica music collection.

I Weiland Mea am on my way to going to some cooking competition festivals this week inspired by the James Beard awards both in the Hampton Roads Virginia area and the metro Washington D.C. area to host some classes related to spirit guide communication and storytelling. I Weiland Mea have so much I can share including about some of my astral travels in my meditation and sleeptime dreams involving communications with my multiple spirit guides who have been giving me much career and money information to share  for my clients because there are a multiple number of spirits who have passed on to multiple heaven worlds of divine love and divine happiness who have mastered the career and money areas of their earth lives who are available and want to help other earth based men and women who are willing to both petition for their help and utilize it,  However I must utilize my time in the span of 5 minutes to share just one brief section of information given to me for multiple people given to me in one of my most recent sleeptime dreams from a family member who passed on and left a great deal of money to certain family members and wanted to make it up to me by at least giving me free advice to share with others because they know I would feel far from comfortable to demand the money from certain family members in real life. I have been asked to keep their identity a secret both to protect the surviving family members who benefited from the money and for what I reluctantly admit forgiveness lessons that I am still working through in regards to this

 Anyhow, I Weiland Mea have been told to share that many immigrants coming to America who are the most successful are also the ones who have an idea where they want to reside in the United States regardless of their career andor money  results even if they have to stay far from their home of origin for multiple years andor the rest of their current earth lifetimes. A very wealthy and famous friend who completed his most recent earth lifetime over 20 years ago explained that he noticed that the U.S. American born men and women who followed their hearts to reside wherever they want in the United States by the age of 40 even if very far from where they came from as a child experienced significant career money and spiritual evolution in multiple ways because of the spiritual and intuitive benefits of an American born person following their heart and passion where they want to reside is very helpful regardless of how many people are supportive of their decision, which brings me to my second point

I Weiland Mea have encountered multiple entry level culinary professionals and even other type of entry level minimum wage employees/professionals in the Hampton Roads Virginia area Norfolk Hampton Chesapeake who have decided to settle in this area long term for economic reasons some came from other parts of the U.S., world, and even greater numbers are coming from the metro Washington D.C. area for money reasons. What this has to do with my next message, many of these professionals who now reside in the Hampton Roads Virginia area both culinary and other fields are being followed to their next places andor current places of employment in the Hampton Roads Virginia area by their superiors managers bosses for reasons many of them who have relocated from the metro Washington DC area to the Hampton Roads Virginia area.  I Weiland Mea have been asked to be discreet about the multiple reasons these superiors managers bosses etc follow their former entry level employees andor entry level minimum wage employees to their current places of employment in the Hampton Roads Virginia area especially a higher number of these superiors mangers bosses following their entry level employees andor minimum wage employees from the metro DC area to the Hampton Roads Virginia area however the point is this regardless of how a minimum wage employee andor entry level employee is feeling about their money situation it is vital to show gratitude while allowing yourself to be magnetic to more money because there is a great chance your former culinary supervisor leader manager boss in the metro Washington DC area could become your current culinary supervisor leader manager boss in the Hampton Roads Virginia area-Norfolk Chesapeake Hampton Suffolk Virginia Beach Newport News etc.

 Resources

Bentley University

https://www.bentley.edu/

I admit that I only occasionally see grasshoppers and the most recent sighting occurred after an extremely brief time after I was carefully pondering about my future intuitively and logically understanding that I am probably going to have to work on being both more braver and more emotionally resilient than ever before. A positive note, I have some good and strong ideas on the type of present and future that I want when it comes to some goals in my personal and professional life. I have also experienced firsthand how life has a way to force me  via expected andor unexpected certain circumstances to listen to my intuition to at least get an idea of what my soul craves/soul nourishment though I am in the process of improving upon listening and taking action on that intuition when it is more pain-free and happier to do so. However,I do believe that there are also multiple benefits when taken action when one is obviously forced to do so even if the benefits are only seen andor experienced multiple years later. This video plus some online interpretations from online sources help remind me/help me understand that grasshopper symbolism  symbolizes the spiritual theme of taking a brave leap of life voluntarily.

Youtube video

Grasshopper Symbolism Is This Your Spirit Animal

Youtube video

https://trustedpsychicmediums.com/spirit-animals/grasshopper-spirit-animal/

The Grasshopper Spirit Animal

https://trustedpsychicmediums.com/spirit-animals/grasshopper-spirit-animal/

Thank goodness for one of the Future Trance cds (Germany music import) introducing me to Mr. Saxobeat by Alexandra Stan around the summer 2011 timeframe.

Alexandra Stan Mr. Saxobeat youtube video published on January 25, 2017

I had to double check about making a slight correction after originally posting the comment to youtube because it dawned on me less than 5 minutes ago that I was actually living in Norfolk Virginia autumn 2008 and that it was autumn 2009 when I was residing in Orlando Florida  because my husband and I temporarily lived in Orlando Florida from April 2009 until May 2010 (for me) and June 2010 (for him).Sex Type Thing by Stone Temple Pilots-I confess that this song first seeped into my mind when I first heard this song as a 90s teenager via radio andor television(sometime between the time I was between 14 to 17 years old). For whatever reason, I admit that this song crept back into my memory when I heard it again around the autumn 2008 timeframe when I saw a Stone Temple Pilots greatest hits cd at an Orlando Florida library (this particular library was a few miles from the University of Central Florida campus). Anyhow, the more I think of it the woman in that music video definitely plays whatever role she was given very well though for some reason her dress makes me think of a Cinderella vibe.

Sex Type Thing Stone Temple Pilots youtube music video

I had to double check about making a slight correction after originally posting the comment to youtube because it dawned on me less than 5 minutes ago that I was actually living in Norfolk Virginia autumn 2008 and that it was autumn 2009 when I was residing in Orlando Florida  because my husband and I temporarily lived in Orlando Florida from April 2009 until May 2010 (for me) and June 2010 (for him).Regarding Wicked Garden youtube by Stone Temple Pilots published September 29, 2017 – I admit Wicked Garden by Stone Temple Pilots is another song that made a mark on my music listening soul when  first heard it as a 90s teenager via local radio andor television and I started to enjoy this song much more after the autumn 2009 timeframe when I heard this song again after I had obtained one of the Stone Temple Pilots greatest hits collections from an Orlando Florida public library.

Regarding Red Light Go by Mea Fisher topic youtube music video published on July 25, 2018-I’m both so grateful and feeling happy/joyful that youtube has the image for the Femmes Fatales The 12 Leading Ladies of Electronica music collection because that music collection is where I first heard the electrifying and seductive Red Light Go song by Mea Fisher around the autumn 2008 timeframe and one of my earliest memories of hearing and enjoying this song was when this song was playing in a car that I had and drove in to work around this timeframe (I had purchased the music collection from some music store inside MacArthur Center mall in Norfolk Virginia by the autumn 2008 timeframe and the mp3 music collection from Amazon multiple years later). Anyhow,  the vocals and music to this Red Light Go song  by Mea Fisher are very memorable despite this song being definitely different from being a super cheerful type of electronic/club song.

https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/

https://www.spiritcruises.com/norfolk

https://upnorway.com/experiences

 Whisper Milk Inc youtube video-The vocals and music to this song are very sublime though I admit the music video was definitely something different than I expected.

This song No One Is To Blame by Howard Jones is a classic 80s song that I first heard multiple years ago, I have lived in multiple places since my 20s which makes it tricky for me to pinpoint where I first heard this song though I do know for sure it was at least over 4 to 5 years ago, regardless No One is To Blame  is a one of a kind song in the same vein of originality as Howard Jones Things Can Only Get Better song which has helped me get through multiple experiences and stages of my life.

No One Is To Blame Howard Jones youtube Dream in Action version

I confess that for whatever reason the song All I Wanna Do by Danni Minogue popped into my mind tonight. I am familiar with this song because I first heard this daring and provocative song some time after I had purchased Danni Minogue’s Hits & Beyond collection around the July 21, 2007 timeframe via Amazon. The vocals and music complement each other beautifully with this summery vibe music though I do feel that this song can also be enjoyed year round.

All I Wanna Do Song by Danni Minogue youtube video that I placed in my nostalgia city playlist

Regarding K7 I’ll Make You Feel Good song-I first heard this bold and innovative song during my teenage years during local radio and for whatever unexpected reason I got into this song again by around the 2008 timeframe when I was residing in Norfolk Virginia.

https://www.virginia.org/PlacesToStay

Busch Gardens Williamsburg Virginia https://buschgardens.com/williamsburg/

[douxreviews]

Manifest - ‘Contrails’ Review

"The government didn't start hiding things on the day we came back.  They started on the day we disappeared."

Even paranoids can have non-imaginary enemies, and sometimes the crazy conspiracy theory is not just a theory and nowhere near crazy.  Just ask Captain Bill Daly, who was the pilot of Montego Air Flight 828 when it left Jamaica on the evening of April 7, 2013.

Last week, we saw that Captain Daly was something of a mess, more so than most of the 828ers.  As the pilot, the safety of the passengers was his responsibility, one he took very seriously.  When the plane encountered the storm/wormhole/alien spaceship/wrath of God/whatever it was, he got them through it in one piece and landed everyone safely--only to find himself being blamed for whatever it was that kicked 828 five and a half years into the future.  Add that on top of all the other stress that the "average" 828er has to deal with--finding out you were presumed dead, your loved ones remarried, and your worldly possessions were given away to Goodwill years ago, and such--and, well, if that happened to you, you'd be a mess, too.

After Cal prophecies that "the man from the plane" will need his father's help, Ben gets a call from Capt. Daly, who enlists his help.  The good Captain has determined that the official government records of the crash investigation are deliberately misleading, or at best wildly inaccurate, regarding the weather conditions.  The crash investigation report is dated April 8, 2013, just one day after the disappearance.

Ben subjects the inquiry record to one of his trademark analytical binges and discovers that a meteorologist named Roger Mencin, who was conducting observations of "dark lightening" near where 828 disappeared, was supposed to testify at a hearing, but backed out, and almost immediately took early retirement and moved to Massapequa.  They go to visit Roger, who tells them that he was pressured into erasing his data--but saved a copy just in case.  They load Roger's weather data into a 737 cockpit simulator, which gives them a pretty good replica of the storm and turbulence, but registers a crash when Daly tries to repeat the maneuver that got them through the storm.  As Ben points out, the simulator probably doesn't model time travel--but Daly just gets even more frustrated at his inability to "prove" that what he did was right, and even more convinced that Fiona Clarke is behind it all.

Meanwhile, Michaela is babysitting Cal on her day off when Autumn shows up at the apartment, asking Michaela's help in locating someone she claims stole her identity and framed her.   While Autumn is there, Ben calls Michaela and she asks him "Hey, how was Massapequa?"

The next day, Roger Mencin turns up dead in a suspiciously-timed boating accident.  Ben and Michaela go to check up on Daly, and when going through his apartment discover that he's planning to steal an airplane and fly into a storm cell looking for more dark lightening.  When they get to the airport, they find out that the airplane isn't the only thing Daly is stealing--he's kidnapped Fiona and is taking her with him!

I should mention here that while Autumn is attempting to break away from The Major's operation, her new handler is refusing to accept her resignation and putting the squeeze on her.  (The new guy  gives off the same weasel-y vibe as Autumn's previous contact, the late Lawrence Belson., and will therefore be designated "Weasel 2.0.")  While Ben and Michaela are chasing after Captain Daly, Autumn breaks in to Michaela's apartment, takes photos of Ben's research documents, and steals a page out of Cal's sketchbook.

Though Ben and Michaela do their level best to talk him out of it, Daly goes roaring into the center of the storm, pursued by two Air National Guard F-16s.  The plane is either shot down or flung forward in time, take your pick.

In reviewing the events of the day, Michaela realizes that Autumn overheard her mention Massapequa, and realizes she's the Major's mole.

And then Grace discovers that the window to Cal's bedroom is open and Cal is missing.

"828" Watch

The flight number appears on the cover of the government report.  The tail number of the stolen plane is N728PH.

Also on the manifest.....

In further developments on the romantic-triangle front, Michaela, to her credit, tells Jared that it's over between them and she will not be "the other woman."

"Dark lightning" really exists.  The technical term for it is "terrestrial gamma ray flash," a phenomenon first detected in 1994, and still not all that well understood.  They seem to propagate in and around thunderstorms, though the exact cause is still the subject of some scientific debate. A typical "TGF" lasts from 0.2 to 3.5 milliseconds (don't blink or you'll miss it!) and kicks out up to 20 million electron volts.  While "20 million volts" sounds impressive, we're talking electron volts, which are a measure of energy (and mass and momentum) in particle physics.  (They have nothing to do with the volts in your 9-volt batteries and 110-volt electrical outlets, which measure electrical potential.)  An electron volt is so small that you'd need 249,660,461,771,990,093,472.9 of them to power a 40-watt light bulb for one second.  (That's the answer I got, anyway.  Please feel free to check my math.)  I imagine it would take a lot more than that to send a Boeing airliner hurtling five years into the future through the space-time continuum.

Captain Daly drives a C2 Corvette Stingray.  Definitely a pilot's kind of car.

In the first scene with Ben and Daly in the Corvette, the car radio is playing "Midnight Rider" by The Allman Brothers: Well, I've got to run to keep from hidin'/And I'm bound to keep on ridin'/And I've got one more silver dollar/But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no, not gonna let 'em catch the midnight rider. Fitting choice for Daly's theme song, given how his story arc plays out.

This week's gold star for acting goes to Frank Deal, who played Capt. Daly.  In the flashback scenes and the first act of the pilot episode, the character is snarky and supremely confident (as pilots usually are).  In the "present day" scenes in this episode and the previous one, he's a broken man--but still the same individual, and still sympathetic even at the end.  Honorable mention goes to Francesca Faridany, playing a terrified Fiona Clarke.

In the cockpit scenes during the storm, Daly says he's "increasing speed to 300 knots."  According to Wikipedia, a 737's cruise speed is in the neighborhood of 450 knots when at altitude, so how could he be increasing to 300?  He's referring to indicated airspeed, which is not the same thing as "true" airspeed.  A plane's airspeed indicator measures speed by measuring the difference between static air pressure around the plane and the pressure in the pitot tube, which points directly forward.  At cruising altitude, the air is thinner, and this causes the airspeed indicator to register something less than the speed the aircraft is actually travelling relative to a fixed point on the ground.  That 450 knot cruising speed therefore translates to something a bit below 300 knots IAS.

Massapequa is a town of 21,685 (2010 Census) on the south shore of Long Island.

According to the co-pilot, Kelly Taylor was demanding a hypo-allergenic blanket from the flight attendants.  She would do a thing like that.

I am very certain that I would not want to be Autumn Cox when Michaela catches up to her.

Quotes

Captain Daly, to his co-pilot: "I'm a cowboy.  Plane's my horse, and the sky an open desert."

Captain Daly, in his debriefing: "You don't understand.  There is no 'conventional maneuver' when a storm appears right on top of you.  And this storm was like nothing I've ever seen."

Airport guard: "Hey, hey, Captain Future! You gonna fly through the Bermuda Triangle again?"  A more prophetic statement than he realized.

Conclusion

Another good episode with a couple of annoying little details.  The Major's organization seemed uncharacteristically ham-fisted: kill the meteorologist the day after he talks to Ben Stone?  Way to draw attention to your secret operation that no one is supposed to know about and blow your mole's cover in the process!  Shoot down a plane and kill the hostage?  Not swift either, guys.  Also, I thought it a little too neat that Fiona, a neuroscientist in a narrow specialty with New Age leanings, would be conversant enough with high-end particle physics to know what dark lightening was in the first place.  (A quick scene of Fiona looking it up on Wikipedia would have been a nice touch.)  However, the episode did an excellent job portraying Captain Daly's descent into madness in a believable fashion, and I liked how Fiona Clarke, until now the very portrait of emotional equilibrium, completely lost it as she concluded she was about to die.  And the cliffhanger at the end--oh, boy!

Three out of four terrestrial gamma ray flashes.

Baby M avoids exposure to gamma rays whenever possible.