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timextoxhajima · 4 years

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Part 1: Crying In The Club

Member: Juyeon (ft. Hyunjae/changmin????)

Genre: idk man. angst/chill/slice of life/fluff????? irdk

A/N: this was requested. no, i’m not like, posting/asking openly for requests BUT if you happen to see this, then you’re in luck. the only reason why i haven’t opened for requests is because i don’t have a large pool of followers, so if you like my style of writing and you have faith in me (because i’m not the greatest writer out there), feel free to drop me a dm/ask. i’m currently writing for tbz/nct/ateez/maybe txt idk, if you’re really interested, we can work something out :D

A/N part 2: i’m a very emotional (?) person when it comes to writing (otherwise i’m a stone cold bitch lol), so when i was asked if i could write a part 2 to this juyeon piece, i was quite surprised. the first reason being: i didn’t think the request would be for this particular piece of work for juyeon, because it got like 8 notes at the point of time i got the ask. the second reason is that i wrote the first part for me to release my feelings. whatever i wrote in the first part mirrors my feelings/situation in real life (yeah, i may or may not be worried about an ex-boyfriend stalking me welp, and yeah i may or may not have caught feelings for someone i know who stays in my dorm. unfortunately, it’s only in my imagination that he comes to my rescue, ha.). i just found it very mysterious (?) and strange about all these coincidences and it also made me really happy that people enjoy reading what i write :D

to the person who requested this, i hope you won’t be disappointed!

“what?” your friend nearly screams in your face. thank god the drinking crowd doesn’t come in until around 10pm, else the whole bar would be looking at the both of you. “like-- the lee juyeon? the one that’s got a fucking billion girls on his tail? and he kissed you?”

you look up over the rim of your spectacles and the edge of your laptop screen, and your friend completely loses it at the sight of your face that was void of emotion.

“the hell’s wrong with you?! didn’t you confess to the man like, a month ago? now, he’s god done kissed you, stayed over in your room when your crazy, psycho ex-boyfriend’s following you, and you have no feelings or opinion to account for that?”

your eyes were half-hooded from the cider, though not nearly enough to even make you tipsy, it was enough to make your eyelids droop a little lower than if you were wide awake.

“just because i liked him, doesn’t mean i need to warrant him any more attention. i’m too tired of this stuff anyway, especially with what happened to the relationship with my crazy, psycho ex-boyfriend,” you say with a lack of affection, only looking back to your laptop screen and resuming your furious typing. your friend has her hands on both sides of her face, nearly squishing all her features while she stares wide-eyed at you.

it felt so long ago that juyeon kissed you for the sake of scaring your stalker away, when it was merely a week ago. since then, you prayed every day not to run into juyeon or your stalker.

thank god you’ve seen neither. your prayers have been heard.

“whatever happened with your crazy ex-boyfriend shouldn’t have anything to do with whatever you want to do with your feelings now. are you really going to let him ruin your chances of being with freakin’ lee juyeon?”

“easy for you to say, you weren’t the one being threatened and stalked,” you retorted, not even bothering to look at her. you were lucky your friend knew the whole story, because any other person would’ve shut you down for being so rude and blunt. truth was, she knew you were emotionally exhausted, to the point where you were emotionally unavailable. even if lee juyeon really had a thing for you, it was going to take a lot of effort to encourage you to try building something out of a relationship with one of the school’s most popular boys.

you hear her sigh before finishing her own bottle of cider.

“i just want my feelings for juyeon to go away. i don’t want anything to do with the man, not when he’s got so many girls after him, not when i obviously don’t stand a chance at winning him over even if i was interested.”

your friend glares at you, with the words “really?” printed into her forehead.

“i’m not even gonna bother anymore. you do what you want with juyeon,” you smile at her final announcement to leave the case. you watch with softer eyes, your arms perched on the table and your chin resting on your clasped hands while she packed her stuff. “but mark my words, if it’s anything i know, lee juyeon doesn’t go around kissing people.”

you roll your eyes, pulling away from the table as she picks up her bag.

“haven’t we established that he only did it because i was being followed--”

“my girl, you don’t get a say in this. you’re too emotionally occupied... or shut down, to see what’s really happening. but from what my cousin tells me, juyeon’s not the kind to offer such intimate acts to people he doesn’t know well. that, you can trust my cousin.”

you bare your teeth in disgust at her final blow. if she hadn’t reminded you, you would’ve forgotten that changmin, who was part of juyeon’s popular boy clique, was a cousin of hers.

“i gotta bolt, you have fun and please don’t go back too late. i doubt juyeon’s going to magically appear again at one thirty in the morning to save your ass,” she looks back over her shoulder and raises a brow at you. nodding your head gently, you wave her off.

you mirror your friend’s actions from before and press your hands to the sides of your face, your fingers pressing against your temple. you shut your eyes gently, listening to the soft ‘clink clanks’ from the counter near the kitchen, and the soft shuffle and distant talking from other students in the bar.

“lee juyeon doesn’t go around kissing people”

you shake yourself out of it, drinking some water before resuming your work on your laptop. whatever your friend said about you being emotionally unavailable was true, but you had no clue how to get over it, and frankly, even if you did know how, it was going to take a lot of courage and a lot of patience.

you work on your stuff for about an hour, making a deal with yourself to head back to your room before midnight while the bar would be at its busiest. you thank the student staff who recognised you from the previous week, pulling out your phone from your pocket and empty-mindedly scrolling through your social media.

then, someone calls out to you.

instantly, all the blood rushes from every part of your body and into your chest. that voice... there was no way you were ever going to forget it.

your grip on your phone gets tighter, and your heart begins to race. your mind screams ‘run’ but your body reacts exactly like how every dumb white girl acts in a horror movie.

“i was wondering where you’ve been. i didn’t think you’d be back here after... well, last week,” you hear him scoff, and the sound of his shoes against the floor translates into a smaller gap between the two of you. “smart move, i must say. big reverse-psyche move right there.”

your breathing gets heavier, and your eyes were no longer tired from the alcohol. the fact that he was standing right behind you was making you feel trapped, and even though you could’ve taken off in any direction, the memory of what he did completely rendered your ability to move, useless.

“i don’t want to see you again, please. i stand by what i said last year, i’ll ruin your fucking life if i see you again.”

you take a step forward, but he grabs your arm from behind, harshly pulling you around so you were facing him.

nothing about him changed. his facial features, his height, his hair might’ve grown a little longer, but the look that you stole your will to love was still in his eyes. you wince as you try to pull away, but he doesn’t budge.

“ruin my life?” he smirks, and it makes you want to slap him across the face. “sure, but not after i ruin yours too.”

you felt your gut twisting like crazy inside of you, and your legs were losing their energy to even let you stand. you wince at his tightening grip on your forearm, and all you wanted to do was to kick him in the nuts, but you just couldn’t move.

“you’ve already ruined mine...” you quietly inform, remembering the feeling of being completely worthless, completely destroyed by him. “why are you doing this? you’ve already ruined my life, what benefit do you get from it?”

“oh?” his eyes widen, and a smug look pulls up on his face. “what about that kiss in the lift last week? didn’t he sleep over as well? i was there till four am, and he never left the building. i thought you’ve already moved on.”

you grit your teeth as both anger and fear runs through your blood.

you open your mouth, ready to hurl a string of vulgarities at him and protest against him being the world’s worst person, but someone beats you to it.

“pretty sure she already did, man.”

the psycho looks up from you and looks over your head, the smug smile completely wiped away and was replaced with a look of despise and anger.

you shut your eyes tightly, sucking your lips in between your teeth as you tilt your head like you were in pain.

it was hyunjae’s voice, and there was an almost close to zero possibility that he wasn’t with juyeon.

“mind letting my girl go?”

there it was.

you frown to yourself at juyeon’s words, still being held in an awkward position while you faced the psycho’s chest, and his eyes still glued to the two boys behind you.

“are you deaf or do you not understand simple instructions?” you finally see hyunjae reach your footing, and hyunjae lays a hand on the psycho’s grip on you. the psycho only lets go because he couldn’t read hyunjae.

you shift away quickly, rubbing your arm where his grip on you was marked with reddening lines. you back away and bump into juyeon, who only stretched out his arm in front of you, pushing you backwards behind him.

“did he hurt you?” juyeon turns to the side, only showing you his side profile.

“no...” you trail off, still rubbing your arm. the lines turn into light bruises, and you can only tell yourself that you were going to wear long-sleeved tops until they healed.

juyeon turns back to hyunjae, who now had his arm pressed against the psycho’s chest. for a moment, the psycho looked like he was ready to eat you like a lion hunting its prey, and the only things in his way were hyunjae and juyeon.

“go back to the dorms. i’ll come check up on you afterwards,” juyeon instructs. you watch as he takes large steps towards hyunjae and the psycho. you were already backing off, but his eyes never leave you while juyeon and hyunjae try to talk him out of being crazy.

your view of the psycho was almost completely obstructed by juyeon, and hyunjae was talking to him by his side. all of a sudden, the psycho lunges forward, pushing past juyeon and towards you. the sight causes you to jerk backwards and stumble to turn and run.

hyunjae grabs him by the arm while juyeon’s first instinct was to run back to your side, and before you knew it, juyeon has fingers intertwined with the collar of the psycho’s shirt, his fists balled up and their faces inches away from one another.

hyunjae watches on from a short distance away, hands on his hips as he scans the situation.

“does she look like she still belongs to you? does she look like she’s got your name plastered to her forehead? last i checked, i was the one who kissed her and spent the night with her, not you,” juyeon’s voice was low, and strangely calm. you wonder if he’s truly ever lost his temper at anybody. “oh, i forgot. you know, right?”

you were backed up enough to see the look on your stalker’s face, which was now contorted into an ugly mess of distaste, anger and disgust.

“after all we went through, you take one year to get over it? so quickly?” your stalker scoffs, loud enough for you to hear, loud enough to push all the wrong buttons.

juyeon shoves him backwards and pushes him so hard that he falls to the floor. before he could get up, juyeon has his foot on his chest, weighing him down.

“you really need to think twice about what you do around here. not only did you choose to be a crazy, psychotic stalker in a public area, but you just had to choose the one corner with a fully functioning CCTV.”

your stalker, who was on the ground, looks up and around the area, and you could see the intensity of panic that filled him the moment he saw the blinking red dot on the camera mounted to the corner where the ceiling met the wall.

“and unlike you, i’m not dumb enough to pick a fight with you,” juyeon retracts his legs and exchanged quick glances with hyunjae. “you can wait for your letter of expulsion to come in your letter box wherever you’re staying in school. and you better believe that if i see you anywhere near her, i’ll make sure you spend the rest of your life locked up behind bars.”

hyunjae turns and looks at you, allowing juyeon to finish his statement. he pats him on the shoulder, telling him to leave him alone. after a few moments of intense glaring between the psycho and juyeon, he finally backs away and follows behind hyunjae as they approach you.

you were back in your room, rocking back and forth with your rear mounted to the floor. hyunjae was on the phone telling the other boys that he and juyeon were sitting out from tonight’s drink session because ‘juyeon wasn’t feeling well’, while juyeon was sitting opposite you, watching you spiral into your own hole of thoughts and despair.

“they’re not gonna buy the excuse, but they let us off the hook,” hyunjae locks his phone and shoves it into his pocket, crossing his arms across his chest. juyeon nods at hyunjae, and the older boy takes his leave.

he shuffles nearer to you upon the door shutting, his legs on either sides of your hips and his feet under your bed. you were nearly leaning on it, with your knees hugged tightly against your chest. you were stuck between him and your bed, but who even cared anymore?

your vision was zoning out, but you feel him trying to take your arm when he notices the light bruises on your skin.

“i’m fine,” you muttered sharply, hiding your hand between your stomach and your thighs.

“why do you stay out so late? and alone?” he lowers his head, matching his eye level with yours. “i thought you would’ve learnt your lesson from last week.”

“i didn’t think he was going to circle back and find me at the bar again. i thought he’d scour the whole school looking for me, then give up once he realises i’m hiding from him.”

juyeon pokes the inside of his cheek with his tongue and runs a hand through his blue hair. “but he knows where you stay.”

“and i thought he’d back off after seeing us--” you straighten yourself to finish the sentence, frustrated that juyeon was interrogating you and speaking the obvious. but then you realise you couldn’t say it without feeling butterflies in your stomach.

damn these feelings.

juyeon raises a cocky brow, though not obvious, but it was easy to notice. a soft smile creeps up on the corners of his lips.

“so you were riding on the hope that he’d buy our skit?” juyeon shuffles forward again, now that you were sitting up straight and that movement created extra space between the two of you. you crane your neck backwards, the lack of distance between his nose and your eyes becoming painfully difficult to ignore.

“i mean...” you look away, annoyed at his ability to turn such a horrible night into one of his little talking games. “if hyunjae or changmin saw it, maybe they’d buy it. i know i would, especially if i didn’t know the situation.”

“changmin?” juyeon was now grinning, his eyes halving into crescents. “all of a sudden, why changmin?”

“i was with a friend earlier tonight at the bar. she’s changmin’s cousin and i know the both of you are close.”

juyeon hums in acknowledgement, now scratching a spot on his cheek.

there was an awkward silence in the air, and you couldn’t hear much besides your heavy breathing, split second flashes of whatever happened just about half an hour ago still running on repeat in your head.

“do you want to know something?”

you look up at him through the corners of your eyes, slightly afraid to look at him all too directly. there was something in his voice that was so alluring, like he was about to tell you a world-class secret.

“do i want to know?” you cautiously returned a question. juyeon chuckles and stretches both his arms forwards, resting his hands on the mattress behind your shoulders. your eyes widen as the change in position further narrows whatever distance you previously had, and if you weren’t already dying at the fact that you were caged between his arms, you were combusting at how close he was to you.

so close, that you could feel his breath on your forehead.

“changmin and hyunjae would totally buy it.”

huh?

“do you want to know why? or are you capable of deciphering ‘why’ yourself?”

oh, god, no. please, no.

“if i said no, could you spare me the information?” you ask, still refusing to look at him. juyeon chuckles again.

time seemed to pass extremely slowly as you fail to react to him removing one of his hands from the bed, now reaching up to your chin and pulling it to face him.

your heart picks up its pace again, and instead of fear that ran through you previously, you couldn’t ignore the butterflies that were filling your stomach.

“if you’re about to confess, i’m begging you not to.”

juyeon’s smile disappears, and an overwhelming feeling of vulnerability and pity washes over you. your eyes don’t falter despite looking straight into juyeon’s. your words came out almost like a whisper, and if he wasn’t this close to you, he probably wouldn’t have heard it.

“why?” he asks quietly.

you feel your eye brow twitch, and your nose turn slightly sour.

oh, no, why do you choose to cry now?

“i can’t afford another heartbreak. i can’t afford feeling like i’m nothing again. not after i chose to give him my time, my heart... my body. only for him to use it against me, only for him to say that nobody will love me because of how depressed i am all the damn time...”

you shake your chin out of juyeon’s fingers, looking away as you feel the tears welling up in your eyes again.

you feel your tears dribble down over your cheeks, and before you could reach up to your face to wipe them away, juyeon beats you to it. but instead of wiping your tears, you found yourself stuck in another kiss.

this time, it wasn’t for show.

there was nobody else around for him to ‘scare off’.

you shut your eyes upon the contact, allowing all the cooped up tears to wash out from the crevices of your lids. juyeon has your cheeks cupped in his large hands that were probably the size of your face.

the touch reminds you of when you first kissed your ex-boyfriend. the feeling of melting chocolate fondue, the feeling of coming home to a warm cup of tea on a cold day--

you hurriedly pull away, panic slowly filling your heart again. “juyeon--”

“you begged me not to confess, but i hope that was enough to show you what i wanted to say.” juyeon interrupts, his thumbs now wiping away the droplets of tears hanging from your jawline and the trails left on your cheeks.

“but i’m never going to be able to act like i’m in a normal relationshi--”

“so be it,” he holds up your face so you had no choice but to look at him. “whoever said i wanted a ‘normal relationship’? it was my choice to choose you, and so it’s my choice to be with you as you are.”

you feel the panic slowly wear away, and his words warm your heart.

“give me time and i’ll prove that you’re the one i want to be with. i know it’s not easy to believe that with all the... girls chasing us around all the time... but i hope you’ll still give me a chance. one month ago, you told me you didn’t want an answer and all you wanted to do was to get it off your chest and get over me. i hope you haven’t succeeded.”

you feel your facial muscles relax at his confession, and the warmth radiating from his hands on your face made you feel so safe, so protected, in a long, long time.

“i haven’t,” you gently shake your head, reaching up to pull his hand away from your face and draw circles on the back of his hand.

juyeon gives you the warmest smile you’ve ever seen on him. he pulls you into his chest as you exhale all the worries from your heart.

it was definitely going to take a lot of courage and patience, but if juyeon was going to do whatever he said he would, then you couldn’t be any more happier to try.

#timetohajima #timetohajima playlist feels #juyeon #lee juyeon #the boyz #the boyz juyeon #angst #drama #tw abuse #tw depression #juyeon fanfic #juyeon imagine #juyeon scenario #the boyz fanfic #the boyz scenario #argh #my hearteu dieded

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whimsically-ominously-auspice · 5 years

Text

This is the last human mimic alien we have to fight.

He's realized he's lost because you people aren't running wild having orgies and you're listening to the DNA4U

And further more You all don't want to share.

When i posted the video of Miss Shawntae telling snoop it was time to snoop her body up... And then Snoop went all seductive to the camera...

122895x1000= men that said "Nigga ima beat your ass you know my wo/man gonna see that. You ain't need to be showing yourself!".

76584284×1000= said "ew i hope i don't have my any asking me to do anything tonight after what i just seen. My imagination gonna kill myself! And i know that's just wrong wrong wrong!"

Now multiply the digits together before the multiplication sign and that is approximately minus 1000 That supported Snoops message.

I did all 3. I had to advert my eyes even. Although he couldn't even see me.

Now Snoop and i know each other over 8000zillion years. So i can easily put myself in his shoes.

So he would walk in and I be having sex and he just sit down and start having a conversation. Like we having BBQ ribs and not sexual intercourse.

His wife tho .... He would make sure "the white boy was covered" and tease her don't look. She look at the carpet... Eventually it kept going on so i took a picture off the wall and put it on the floor where she always sat.

She said "why you do that?"

"I realize the kids keep jumping on the bed and knock it off. Snoop stare at you If you move your face. And unless you're on LSD it's no fun staring at the carpet. So i gave it to you where it seems you always be looking although i had to take a pretty healthy guess. I just felt you was having the most miserable time of all and as my friend it was my honor to trip out and give you a gift"

She used the reflection to put on her makeup and slept in bed later.,Snoop quit being so paranoid. Cause she would face the wall and lean against him.

Point is... Snoop be all like he was watching sports to make sure we got the score.

I mean. Man. Earth. We tried everything we could to stop these aliens from wanting to habe orgies. Even,took,away,their dicks!!!

We did everything. Planet.

Y'all locked up with your soulmates made little difference on this kick of his.

I been doing it. I been riding like I been going around the world 500 times. I love sex.

82% of y'all all around the Earth been having sex.

4% have watched porno

18% have had 1 wild orgies of those 18% -- 32% had s second one. Of those 0.00004981% have gone onto a third.

Of those having 2 or more orgies 92% were aliens

Leaving 8% Of 18% of the entire world interested enough in watching or having sex with other people than their soulmate.

Who saved the world?

100% of humans.

You all get $5 and that includes children.

He's done all he could and he's failed. 100%

I think Edgar might be human... Looking at his alien structure in the film.

But he treated me like an alien. Im still a POW.

Alex had to sell a bed because he acted non human. And Alex worked hard on it to make it perfect for me.

I would been fine gloating from it. Fighting and being sassy to aliens.

But then someone claiming to care about me,most of all abandoned his son and law and daughter. And i hear stories of him being evil.

Some time ago they asked me "do you want a dad or mom?"

"No"

"We need to know because the future of the,Earth,depends on it. And the future of you. Now do you want a dad or,not?!"

"The question is will i remain needing a dad or father figure in the future. No i am fine. I have male role models to keep the species alive. Males. (Species not gender) I also have my mom in Mrs Harriet Tubmam. And if that fails then at that time i should be able to get the rest of me. But she's fine. I'm fine. I just got to remain stable. But adding a father or another mother i don't know just yet can remain disasterous."

Luckily Alex didn't burn the bed down. But it was,bugged and bombed by "Edgar", to me 'its just another one of those things we have to clean"

Do i care? Nothing. He doesn't affect me. I worry about Alex having to,deal with it. But,hes being,and,staying clean,and,then when he's,scared he stays by other cold turkey or non users. He was,around Crystal meth yesterday and he tasted 1/4 of a gram. Like when you would put your finger in the sugar jar. Then lick it. The other guy smoked 4.9876 ounces and blew it all in their faces including the babies. Thus Alex got 7.698 grams ingested via second hand smoke.

I didn't notice but we got in a fight with each other. Just like we always do.

Alex and i power punched him and his eye socket -- ocular bone -- was crushed like glass in 17 cracks.

His jaw I punched more alone but with Alex and total both sides he lost 9 teeth. And had to be wired shut after 72 stiches because i split his upper palate in two. I cracked his lower palate in 8072 places. So if you found a skull it would rest on powder of his lower jaw and then you'll find the upper. After decaying..

Then Alex on the top of his head had 49 stitches to repair his soft tissue from his frontal lobe when he crashed to the floor after the super punch to eye hit the coffee table.

He did get one "good" punch in -- his skull hit Alex right in the right eye.

It fucking hurt but it hurts in a good way. Its weird it's like "reward!" Pain. No suffering. Fucking got him good tho. We feel it every now and again. May be it is when he realises we will kill him for good. He keeps remembering that sudden silence of death.

He's currently on life support. "Medically induced coma" is our non panic code words. But it's basically life support but usually not full life support. It isn't 100% life support medical machines. Its 75% or less.

So technically it's life support and coma mixed. So we csll it medically induced coma. This way you understand if your family is the one on the machines -- it's only 25% body life.... However there's a 75% of recovery via healing machines.

The CIA. Willl decide when to pull the plug. Usually medically induced coma is someone evil or someone bad with the ability to be good. Usually aliens go straight to coma status.

If an alien will die it's 1st life support then coma. Your friend or family will die.

They said medically induced coma. But at this time. His brain is incapable of human thought so I am putting him on life support.

This makes it the family's wishes.

Most of the time "next of kin" is spouse then parents/siblings. Then children last.

Which is wrong. It should be the future. Thus Erica and Steven will ask the babies. And together they will decide.

Last night as a CIA operative while he was in a medically induced coma i was told by at least 1 child and 2 adults to pull. I reviewed. While they spoke from shock and relief their true feelings.

Knowing that the children escaped life with Eric once. I don't feel the right to allow Eric to live. I know the consequences of his actions caused two children to leave my planet in fear and terror and disgust because of Eric.

Erica was my 3rd pregnancy to abort and hold souls.

I hate Eric. That's why i punched him in the fucking face. I was happily surprised that Alex did it. Too in person.

Since the infants are involved and already resurrected. And had a nightmare of a time in less than 36 hours on Eaerth.

I allow them to be there to pull the plug, they can actually yank and pull the plug themselves.

So that is what i want and what the children need.

It will show Eric he doesn't belong here and has no,reason to,be at 25%

It makes life easier for all of us.

Eric was an outdoor kid. Like John and Jason and Greg. Etc. He never went into my school.

They didn't have to. And actually weren't ever enrolled. They liked the man work to learn to survive on their own.

While i taught the children the indoor stuff. The expansion of the mind.

I taught them the economy so the men working to increase their own economical structure could be helped to be taken in under their wings.

I left no one behind.

But he refused confirming.

1. Alcoholic system to drop other drugs. -- he uses crystal meth. Without cut backs. Without moderation

$5 if yoh remember and realized i said make smoothies without alcohol to share with your kids.

2. He blew it in their faces on purpose them injesting over 2.4 grams each.

Erica and Alex would cover their faces with thick blankets when the smoke came towards them.

It was quite a hostage situation. Knowing he could take the newborns and kill them in front of them.

Its happened to me 985 Point 2 times. I'm 35 years old.

875.8 times it's been with a knife.

Take the numbers and multiply by 10 million. For the last some kinda lots of 8 thousand zillion years.

It even happened to Alex. He he has the scars. From,this and last life., it,has happened.

So for me they're terrifying. Unless I'm there... I have saved 900 billion times 30 thousand. I those situations.

But i always remember the ones i lost.

So don't worry when I'm suicidal. Just leave me alone. Don't talk to me. I need silence.

So dead babies y'all.

Dead aliens.

It will be done

I seen that actually quite beautiful meme of April 2020 the clouds and UFO.

I don't get mad or violent because I'm stepped back to watch y'all cope.

But I say to y'all "fuck no that's not happening" I say to that UFO "Fucking try it you will all die" i just scroll on because I get so angry. I get so mad. Its a beautiful photo but i refused to repost it because it isn't something i support.

Most reposts of memes are supported unless i type something on the bottom. Saying it's not.

So my dad. I didn't care until i saw The Rock, "her dad is alive" all happy and in support.

Then i was bothered. Then I cared. Then i felt something about it. But until then i felt nothing.

I didn't feel shame..i felt that were all made of glass.

Because I was happy to have a dad.. One that seemed good. I was actually happy.

And it was kept personal to me... But then I saw the Rock felt it. Then I began to feel..

Broken. But Alex kept it together and started getting rid of the bed. Taking it down. Removing bombs. And fixing all that ass hole did "my dad"

I know the Rock.. He can handle. His dad just died. And we did a lot for him.

So for him to be elated. I get through the day thinking no one really cares what i feel and they don't pay kuch attention..but the Rock in that moment in time.

He was happy. And i knew then i had to Destroy a light of happiness inside him and he looked away from the camera to say "we are all happy. The while world"

DNA4U list one person as my father. He's my uncle..

Edgar claimed it was his 18th cousin.

You know, it doesn't matter.

Donate. Mr Lee Tubman. And more. They're my dads. They kept me safe. Taught me to be wiser and more caring about myself. Donte was 2 years younger than me. But he was a father figure. Guy was the fun dad. Fred Flintstone i called one friend's dad was the fishing buddy. We were not close but he was a silent father figure.

I stole all my friends dads. Borrowed them. Their moms, too.

I have 1800 moms that I call mom.

I know who my moms and dads are.

Just like Erica called me mom the other day and Brittany will too. And Alex my cousin's son. Candy. Brandy. Declan.

So i know i have a family that understands it doesn't matter how I got here. It matters who treated me well. Matthew McCognohey. Kid rocks. They're like my dad's and my kids. Uncles and Cousins.

Blood doesn't matter. Shit half the time Snoop is my God or dad or bother or husband or little kid i have to save. He's my friend.

Snoop is too much of everything. He is my co-nigger. My partner in many crimes against humanity (practical jokes)

I call him my Friend. But my family wouldn't be complete without him and Shawntae.

Harriet. I call her momma all the time. It feels natural. Sometimes i call her old lady.

So while i was joyful for a moment thinking I found someone that actually cared to find out he didn't.

I myself wasn't affected until i knew others would be

Its just a lesson in life. Don't trust people.

I told Alex abandon ship, fuck that place. Ain't no one can go in there!!

He understood and agreed then took the role "no,one is driving me and her from our home." He decided to defend the homestead. That is the role a man takes

Im all you gotta sweep the whole place,then,rest and do,it again,2 more times at least.,Then,again when,I,get there. If i get there.

But i feel good to know my lover isn't gonna let anyone drive him down. Just turn around. Learn a lesson. Clean the mess.

Why do i need a father when i have a man?

Clearly i am an independent woman and always have been.

But i need a family. Otherwise I have no point to live.

And that is why i am suicidal.

I don't see s point to live. Not when Alex and i fight and i don't want him to talk to me cause some alien got in our way once again.

He was double attacked by aliens.

So if their desire is for me to die... Then they should keep,doing it.

If,not they need to stay out of my way so i can,get my family,together again.,in,real life.

My family that I know is my family. Not aliens. Not fans. Not someone that needs to apologize to me or needs an explanation.

People that can think on their own and not be reminded they need to have love in their spirit.

Now Snoop sometimes plays the role of my brother. And we are competitive. It just makes us proud of each other and ourselves for surviving a challenge. I do it to him too but I play old hard skill. He plays old new remember when. I do ancient V-Ball and he does pop and country experience.

So his spirit is of an ego -- which salutes the fact we will grow.

Often we do the spirit of mischievous. To remind danger still exists but we will have fun and love in the end.

Friend. Someone that is gonna fry you but the end od what matters.

Sometimes we relax and chill. But them old cogwheels of the mind never quit rolling. Advance. Advance. Lets keep it going don't stop.

He's like me. Suicidal.

But he used to release his inner poison. Now he makes it not exist by doing something else ....

But me? Nothing helps but the mimic of death itself. Silence.

People are what causes it. Alien people.

So you humans. Keep on being you.

Its you that is gonna save the world

I gave you guidelines to help us out this mess.

Because I can't even see y'all because the aliens surrounding me trying to get my last breath.

Show me you. Save us. You're doing good

I got $5 on y'all that we make it.

3 notes · View notes

calcifermovesthecastle · 5 years

Text

Absent in Body- Chapter 7

Chapter 6- https://calcifermovesthecastle.tumblr.com/post/185588753270/absent-in-body-chapter-6

https://calcifermovesthecastle.tumblr.com/post/615756135930183680/absent-in-body-chapter-8

You look from Asra to the tree, stepping forward. The chains surrounding the tree strain to reach you, and Asra pulls you back by your hand.

“Lets find another way in, hm?” He eyes the chains warily, turning to smile softly at you. You look up at him, thinking hard.

“How about…” You glance at the tree, looking down at the ground. “How about you go left, and I’ll go right. That should tangle the chains enough that they wont be able to reach us. R-right?” You look up at him again, unsure if you said the right thing, and he smiles and plants a kiss right on your mouth.

“That sounds like the perfect plan.” He squeezes your hand, pulling back to go his own way around the tree. You stumble when he lets go, but he smiles encouragingly at you, so you square your shoulders and go right. One, two, three, four, five times around the tree, and the chains are wrapped up in a tangled ball, straining to reach you and Asra, but unable to. Asra slips his hand into yours again and kisses your temple.

“Let’s see what’s behind that door,” He grins, walking forward with you. The golden doors swing open, and a flash of white light blinds you momentarily. You back away from the light source, gripping Asra’s hand tighter than a lifeline.

When your vision clears, you see two figures standing in the doorway, staring slack-jawed at the two of you. You turn to Asra, only to see him with the same look of shock on his face. Nervousness creeps up into your throat, and you tug on his hand, trying to get his attention.

“Asra? Are you- d- do you know them?”

“Mom? Dad?” Asra’s voice is hushed, as if they’ll disappear if he says it any louder. He takes a step forward, tightening his grip on your hand. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” You reply, squeezing his hand. His grip tightens as you two walk towards the doorway. A warm rush of air pulls you through the door together. The darkness gives way to a dozen hot springs and billions of stars. The two figures still stare wide eyed.

“Asra?” It sounds like a trick of the wind, but you soon realize they had whispered his name. “....Asra!!” Both of them race forward, and only then does Asra let go of you, running towards them at the same time. You stumble again, backing up ever so slightly. Tears stream down all of their faces, and they collide into an embrace.

“I thought you were gone forever! I- I thought…” Asra’s voice catches, and the man strokes Asra’s hair, murmuring something softly to him that you can’t hear. You take another step back, uncertainty bubbling in your gut. “Dad…”

“We always hoped we’d see you again… Asra…” The woman cups Asra’s face in her hands, kissing his forehead. He buries his face in her shoulder, his pained voice barely reaching your ears.

“Is- is this a dream?”

Your heart pangs, and a very real fear starts to creep up your spine, a lump forming in your throat. Is he going to stay here with them? Is he going to stop the search for your body? These are his parents. You don’t realize the tears that spring to your eyes, as you take another step back.

“I feared the same, but when you spoke… we knew.” She smiles softly, peering into his eyes. The man- Asra’s dad- speaks up.

“Have you been safe? Have you been happy?”

Another pang to your heart, and you look down before closing your eyes and sighing, casting a sad smile to the scene before turning and resting against the door frame, sliding down to a sitting position, your hands trembling. Anxieties creep in, and you try to reason with yourself. Asra wouldn’t just give up on you now that he’s found his parents. It’s not in his nature. You watch the scene, your eyes glazed over as you wage war on yourself. Asra turns and smiles, leading his parents over to where you sit.

“At least I haven’t been alone all this time,” His voice, which is so close, snaps you out of your stupor, and your eyes clear to see his hand held out to you. Your heart swells as you take it, and he pulls you to your feet, his eyes flickering in worry as he realizes the swirling emotions rushing through your body. The woman smiles, looking from you to Asra.

“Hearing that warms my heart. Would you introduce us?”

Asra’s cheeks flush, glancing down at the- er- rather visible bruises on your neck before smiling back at his mom.

“Mom, this is Mc. Mc, this is my mother, Aisha. And that’s my father, Salim.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mc,” Aisha smiles warmly. Salim smiles, also greeting you. Words fail you, your mind racing a mile a minute. You haltingly offer your hand, which Aisha takes firmly, smiling. “I’m glad you’re here with him. Of all the ways to meet his parents!” She laughs, the corners of her eyes crinkling. Just like Asra. Thankfully, he speaks up, his hand wrapping around your waist. You lean against him, trying to calm down. He’s not leaving. He’s staying here. He’s with you. The rush of relief from those thoughts makes you lightheaded, making you thankful that Asra’s arm is around you so securely.

“I thought you were dead! But- obviously you aren’t, so what happened? Why was your gate sealed with burning chains? Is this where you’ve been? Can you come home?”

Salim sighs heavily. “We’ll explain everything, I promise. But, we can’t go home yet. The chains weren’t the only part of our imprisonment. We need to find our familiars. They were separated from us, and I’m sure they’re trapped somewhere in this world. We can’t leave without them.”

“If- if you can’t leave without your familiars,” Asra reaches for Faust’s spot on his shoulder. “Then we’ll come with you to find them.”

Both of his parents faces flood with relief. Salim speaks again, his eyes shining with a thousand smiles. “Thank you. We’d better hurry. Breaking those chains might attract...his attention.”

“Who’s attention?” Asra looks from his mother to his father, at a loss. Salim doesn’t answer.

Aisha holds her hand over a hot spring, forming an image from the steam. When you see it, you sink deeper into the crook of Asra’s arm, pressing your body tight against his. He tightens his arm around you comfortingly, glaring at the image.

“The devil trapped you here?”

Aisha nods, her voice trembling. “It’s a long story. We’ll tell it as we go.” She starts walking, her pace quick. The rest of you follow, you and Asra in the middle and Salim at the rear.

“How do we even explain? It all started so long ago…”

“We can’t dwell on our regrets, dear,” Aisha sighs. Asra keeps glancing at you, and you know he wants to talk to you privately about the anxieties that are continuing to swirl inside you, but he bites his tongue and listens to his parents. They start their tale by reminding him of their work at the palace, and Asra nods, recalling a distant memory. They go on to explain how Lucio threw them in separate, magic-snuffing dungeons for ruining his gauntlet. As they continue their story, A geyser erupts inches from your body, causing you to flinch back and stumble into Asra, who catches you and pulls you back as a crater opens up, seeping scalding steam.

Aisha frowns, tapping her chin. “As much as I hate to say it, we should take separate paths for a little while. I’m not sure if the ground will support four people at once. There’s a longer, safer path down there that the two of you can take. Wait for us at the deep green stream at the end of the path.”

Asra looks from the path to his parents, nervousness etched into his features. “What about you?”

“We’ll stay up here. We know it well enough by now. I promise, we’ll see you soon.” Aisha smiles, nodding as you two pick your way down to the path. Asra’s reluctance to leave is obvious, as he keeps glancing up at them until you reach the correct path, finally turning to you as they disappear.

“Are you okay? You’ve been awfully quiet.”

“I-...” You glance at him before swallowing, pressing against a tree and sliding down to a sitting position. “I’m happy for you.” You smile sadly at him, your voice catching in your throat. “It’s not fair for me to say, but- but” You gasp, looking down at your trembling hands. “I feel like I’m losing you. The minute you let go of me and ran, I felt it, and I know it’s not true but I can’t stop this feeling. And I know they’re your parents and I won’t take that from you! So if you want to-” You halt, a deep, shuddering breath cutting your words off. Tears block your vision, and you stare blindly at your hands, your whole body trembling now. “If you want to-” You can’t seem to get these words out, and you put your face in your hands, taking a few deep breaths. “When we find their familiars, if you want to go home with them, you can. I won’t stop you. Because you deserve that! You should get to be with your parents! You haven’t seen them in how long? Asra, you don’t have to help me get my body back! You can go home if you want!”

Asra looks down at you, absolutely tongue-tied. He opens his mouth several times to say something, but can’t seem to form the words. Eventually, he drops down to a sitting position and pulls you into his lap, his arms tight around you.

“Mc…” He begins, stroking your hair. “This must be hard for you, and I’m sorry for not realizing. I-”

“But it’s hard for you and I shouldn’t be crying and feeling this way when you have it worse-” You cut him off, your shoulders shaking, but he places a finger to your lips, cutting you off.

“I know that you don’t have any memories from before you died. Who your parents were even who you were, and here I am, finding my parents after years of thinking they were dead. And I know you want to get back into your body, but-” He gasps, and you look up in horror to see him crying, too. “What do I even say, Mc? You want me to go back on my promise to you? I can’t even think about that! There’s no way I would or could ever do that to you. You are the love of my life!” He pulls back and seizes your face between his hands, staring into your eyes with such intensity that your heart stops. “I love you so much I brought you back from death! And I will never let you go! So we are going to save my parent’s familiars, send them home, and get you back into your own body so we can get you home. And we’ll close the shop for weeks or months or a year or however long you need and we will just live together and be domestic and visit my parents and be happy! I love you. I love you, I wouldn’t let death take you, and I won’t let this!”

With an anguished cry, you launch forward and bury your face in his chest, sobbing yourself hoarse. He trembles against you, his arms wrapped tight around your body, shedding his own tears. Long after you’ve spent yourself, he pulls back to take a good look at your face.

“Are we okay now?” His voice is quiet, gentle, and kind. The grief completely gone from his face, a smile plays on his lips, and he runs his fingers idly through you hair. You nod and smile back, and he kisses you softly, lingering for a moment longer.

“What about you? Are you okay?” Your voice comes out in barely a whisper. He pauses for a moment.

“I don’t know. I should be happy, finding my parents, and I am, but truth is I’m not sure if I even know them anymore.” He leans his forehead against yours, his eyes drifting shut. “I know it’s a hard question, considering the conversation we just had, but what do you think of all of this? How would you feel in my place?”

“Er…” You pause, a great sigh exiting your chest. “I- I really don’t know. There’d be a lot of… complicated emotions… Kind of what you’re going through right now.”

“...Oh. I suppose part of me was hoping for a simple answer. Maybe something you could see that I couldn’t. But you’re right. It is complicated. I’m happy, sad, scared, even angry.” He pauses, looking past you, lost in thought.

“This is a lot to take in. Anybody would be overwhelmed. I mean, look at me,” You laugh quietly. “They aren’t even my parents, and here I was, sobbing because of it.”

Asra takes a moment to think, continuing to run his fingers through your hair absentmindedly.

“You know, I gave up on the hope of finding my parents years ago. It was just...too painful. Mc, I already lost them once. What if they aren’t at the end of this path? What if something happens before we find Chimes and Flamel?”

Chimes and Flamel? Oh… the familiars. You must have missed that part of the conversation.

Asra continues, meeting your eyes. “I don’t know if I could handle losing my parents all over again.” He sighs, then smiles again. “No matter what happens, I know we’ll be together. You can keep me going through anything, Mc.”

He hugs you tightly one last time, getting to his feet and helping you up, looking down the stone-lined path.

“The green stream. Lets go.”

#The Arcana #The arcana fanfic #Asra x mc #Asra x reader #Asra alnazar

30 notes · View notes

preciousmetals0 · 5 years

Text

Aurora-Coke Rumors: All Smoke and No Toke

Aurora-Coke Rumors: All Smoke and No Toke:

Share a Coke With Aurora Cannabis?

Are you well rested from the holiday break?

I hope so, because I have a doozy of a conspiracy theory in the cannabis sector for you today. It involves the most widely held stock on Robinhood and the world’s largest soft drink maker.

Before we get to the speculation, let’s start with the facts.

On Monday, Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NYSE: ACB) announced that Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Cam Battley was leaving the company. Battley was considered the face of Aurora, so his leaving hit investor sentiment hard.

What’s more, analysts at Jefferies downgraded Aurora to hold from buy on the news. “It is clear to us that the market is lacking conviction in Aurora, and this update will do little to help that,” the ratings firm said in a note to clients.

ACB plunged 8% on Monday as a result.

Now for the speculation. A gentleman by the name of “Gabor the Blind Guy” posted a video to YouTube earlier this week where he tries to open a new childproof lid his father designed for Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO). According to Gabor, this childproof lid is for a new cannabidiol (CBD) drink that Coke is releasing in Canada.

Coke childproof lids? Coke CBD drinks?

There’s nothing in the news about any of this … save for one article over at TheCannabisStock.com.

Anyone else remember the last company Coke was talking with to produce CBD drinks?

That’s right: Aurora Cannabis.

The Takeaway:

Don’t go looking on YouTube for the video — it’s gone.

In fact, Gabor’s entire YouTube account is gone. So are his Facebook and Twitter accounts. I’m thinking someone accidentally broke a nondisclosure agreement here. Oops.

But this is the digital information age. Nothing is ever truly gone. In fact, you can find a mirror of the video here (while it lasts).

Now, I don’t need to tell you that Aurora could really use a boost … and a deal with Coke would be a major coup for the cannabis company. Aurora just rolled out its Cannabis 2.0 products in Canada, including a long list of edibles, vapes and drinks. A Coke-backed Cannabis 2.0 drink could send ACB to the moon.

What’s more, what if CCO Battley only moved out of Aurora (and into an Aurora subsidiary) to make way for a Coke representative ahead of a CBD drink deal?

The possibilities are tantalizing, aren’t they?

For an expert’s take on the situation, I reached out to Banyan Hill’s resident pot stocks guru, Anthony Planas. Here’s what he had to say:

I saw it on Reddit. I think it’s BS.

Clearly not the take we anticipated, but it’s a stark reminder that any potential tie-up between Aurora and Coke is purely speculation at this point.

Thank you, Anthony, for bringing us all back to earth on this one.

As it turns out, Anthony was right. Just before Great Stuff hit the presses, Coke issued a statement: “As we have stated many times, we have no plans to enter the CBD market.” Bummer.

Remember, the cannabis sector is quite volatile right at the moment. You need an expert to help guide you through the rumors and speculation. To that end, Anthony and Real Wealth Strategist editor Matt Badiali have come up with five pot stocks you “must own” right now … before more states legalize.

Click here to find out more!

Good: Tesla Smokes $420

It was bound to happen … and when it did, CEO Elon Musk was just itching to make a joke.

On Monday, Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) hit $420 per share. The milestone prompted Musk to tweet out: “Whoa … the stock is so high lol.”

All jokes aside, Tesla is smoking right now. The shares are up a whopping 1,600% since their initial public offering, with optimism over the new Chinese Gigafactory driving bullish sentiment right through that burning Walmart roof.

Analysts are even jumping on board, albeit reluctantly. Today, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives lifted his price target on TSLA to $370 from $270, citing strong demand for the Model 3. While Ives gave a nod to “massive short covering” for Tesla’s recent resurgence, he also pointed out “underlying fundamental improvement” at the company. After all, Tesla turned a surprise profit last quarter.

But the short squeeze story can’t be ignored. Tesla shorts have … well … lost their shorts by betting against the company. And there’s more to come. ShortSqueeze.com reports that 27.5 million TSLA shares remain sold short after a 4% decline in the latest reporting period.

Those remaining 27.5 million shares still account for about 20.5% of Tesla’s total float (or shares available for public trading). With TSLA still climbing, how much longer can these remaining bears hold out before they’re forced to buy as well?

Better: Riveting Competition

When Tesla unveiled its new Cybertruck, the internet had a field day making fun of the “truck’s” odd design features. Not since the Pontiac Aztek have we seen a vehicle so, well … ugly.

With so few true competitors, it looked like energy-conscious truck enthusiasts (yes, they do exist) were stuck driving a truck designed by a six-year-old. That is, until Rivian secured a massive amount of funding.

Rivian is an electric vehicle startup that’s drawn considerable interest from backers as of late, especially after Tesla’s Cybertruck made its debut. Rivian’s trucks and SUVs look more like traditional vehicles than anything Tesla makes, providing a level of confidence to key backers.

So much so that the company announced it raked in $1.3 billion in funding in its latest investment drive — its largest to date. Big names are lining up behind Rivian, including Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN).

Rivian is expected to start delivering trucks and SUVs next year. Are we witnessing the emergence of a true competitor in the electric vehicle market?

Best: Breaking Records

I honestly don’t know why more people don’t shop online during the holiday season … or at any point during the year, for that matter. It’s like y’all didn’t get the memo: You don’t have to fight hordes of people to buy things anymore.

This year, online shopping saw more converts than ever. According to data from Mastercard, e-commerce sales surged to a record high, rising 18.8% from 2018 to account for 14.6% of total retail sales in the U.S.

Naturally, the big winner here is Amazon. The e-commerce giant said this past holiday shopping season was “record-breaking.” The company reported 5 million new Prime subscriptions (free trial and paid). What’s more, traffic at Amazon pickup points was up 60% year over year.

Here’s the surprising thing: Amazon stock is actually down more than 6% in the past six months. The shares lag the S&P 500 Index by about 8% for the past 12 months.

So, what gives? Amazon’s spending spree, that’s what. After the company posted its first profit drop in two years back in October, investors have been reluctant to push AMZN higher.

That’s a mistake. Amazon has proven time and time again that it knows how to invest in itself. This latest spending round was on one-day shipping and content for Prime TV. These investments will pay for themselves. We’ll see proof of that in Amazon’s holiday quarter earnings report.

Before I sign off and try to steal another Hawaiian roll — the King’s Hawaiian ones are OK, but homemade rolls help me feast like an emperor — it’s time for a helping of Reader Feedback.

But Great Stuff, you didn’t even ask us for any feedback this week!

No, but “readers gonna read” … and write in.

And I’m grateful for all the feedback and comments you send in.

This week, y’all got personal with the questions. The holidays bring out all kinds of folks. (Especially out on the roads by me … jeez, how many of you really went last-minute with the shopping?)

So, I thought it’d be a wholesome, festive Kodak moment to respond to some of your questions about the great stuff behind Great Stuff.

Brian E. asked:

When and why did you get into trading? I’m trying to convince my son to turn off Counter-Strike and start investing. Any advice?

Well, Brian, at least it’s Counter-Strike and not Fortnite. I don’t have the … umm … poetic license here at Great Stuff to tell you how I truly feel about Fortnite.

As a lifelong video game fan, I initially saw trading as yet another type of “game” to master. It was a challenge. With the right knowledge, I too could win this game played by billionaires.

Yes, I was young and naïve, but I never shrank from that challenge. To this day, I continue to search for that edge — that “cheat code,” if you will — that will help me (and now you) make it big.

Gwenn M. wanted to know:

Your movie references are all over the place (in the best way)! Any one favorite?

As you know, Gwenn, I have an affinity for ’80s movies — everything from Top Gun and E.T. to Indiana Jones and anything made by the great John Hughes. I also have a big weak spot for Monty Python and dry British humor.

But my real favorite, the pièce de résistance, is Star Wars. The Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. It was a masterpiece. So, for better or for worse, Great Stuff readers get more Star Wars memes than any other.

I have spoken.

Short and sweet, Suze said:

Do you have a quote you live by?

Suze, there are, in fact, three quotes that I live by … one for investing in the market and two for life.

For the market, I live by the words of John Maynard Keynes: “Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”

For life, my favorite is by Robin William’s character, John Keating, in Dead Poets Society: “But only in their dreams can men be truly free. ‘Twas always thus, and always thus will be.”

But equally important is one my grandfather told me jokingly decades ago: “Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things.”

I don’t think you can go wrong with any of those quotes.

And on that note, you can look forward to more meme-fueled festivities tomorrow.

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

0 notes

goldira01 · 5 years

Link

Share a Coke With Aurora Cannabis?

Are you well rested from the holiday break?

I hope so, because I have a doozy of a conspiracy theory in the cannabis sector for you today. It involves the most widely held stock on Robinhood and the world’s largest soft drink maker.

Before we get to the speculation, let’s start with the facts.

ACB plunged 8% on Monday as a result.

Coke childproof lids? Coke CBD drinks?

There’s nothing in the news about any of this … save for one article over at TheCannabisStock.com.

Anyone else remember the last company Coke was talking with to produce CBD drinks?

That’s right: Aurora Cannabis.

The Takeaway:

Don’t go looking on YouTube for the video — it’s gone.

In fact, Gabor’s entire YouTube account is gone. So are his Facebook and Twitter accounts. I’m thinking someone accidentally broke a nondisclosure agreement here. Oops.

But this is the digital information age. Nothing is ever truly gone. In fact, you can find a mirror of the video here (while it lasts).

What’s more, what if CCO Battley only moved out of Aurora (and into an Aurora subsidiary) to make way for a Coke representative ahead of a CBD drink deal?

The possibilities are tantalizing, aren’t they?

For an expert’s take on the situation, I reached out to Banyan Hill’s resident pot stocks guru, Anthony Planas. Here’s what he had to say:

I saw it on Reddit. I think it’s BS.

Clearly not the take we anticipated, but it’s a stark reminder that any potential tie-up between Aurora and Coke is purely speculation at this point.

Thank you, Anthony, for bringing us all back to earth on this one.

As it turns out, Anthony was right. Just before Great Stuff hit the presses, Coke issued a statement: “As we have stated many times, we have no plans to enter the CBD market.” Bummer.

Click here to find out more!

Good: Tesla Smokes $420

It was bound to happen … and when it did, CEO Elon Musk was just itching to make a joke.

On Monday, Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) hit $420 per share. The milestone prompted Musk to tweet out: “Whoa … the stock is so high lol.”

Better: Riveting Competition

When Tesla unveiled its new Cybertruck, the internet had a field day making fun of the “truck’s” odd design features. Not since the Pontiac Aztek have we seen a vehicle so, well … ugly.

Rivian is expected to start delivering trucks and SUVs next year. Are we witnessing the emergence of a true competitor in the electric vehicle market?

Best: Breaking Records

Here’s the surprising thing: Amazon stock is actually down more than 6% in the past six months. The shares lag the S&P 500 Index by about 8% for the past 12 months.

So, what gives? Amazon’s spending spree, that’s what. After the company posted its first profit drop in two years back in October, investors have been reluctant to push AMZN higher.

Before I sign off and try to steal another Hawaiian roll — the King’s Hawaiian ones are OK, but homemade rolls help me feast like an emperor — it’s time for a helping of Reader Feedback.

But Great Stuff, you didn’t even ask us for any feedback this week!

No, but “readers gonna read” … and write in.

And I’m grateful for all the feedback and comments you send in.

This week, y’all got personal with the questions. The holidays bring out all kinds of folks. (Especially out on the roads by me … jeez, how many of you really went last-minute with the shopping?)

So, I thought it’d be a wholesome, festive Kodak moment to respond to some of your questions about the great stuff behind Great Stuff.

Brian E. asked:

When and why did you get into trading? I’m trying to convince my son to turn off Counter-Strike and start investing. Any advice?

Well, Brian, at least it’s Counter-Strike and not Fortnite. I don’t have the … umm … poetic license here at Great Stuff to tell you how I truly feel about Fortnite.

As a lifelong video game fan, I initially saw trading as yet another type of “game” to master. It was a challenge. With the right knowledge, I too could win this game played by billionaires.

Gwenn M. wanted to know:

Your movie references are all over the place (in the best way)! Any one favorite?

I have spoken.

Short and sweet, Suze said:

Do you have a quote you live by?

Suze, there are, in fact, three quotes that I live by … one for investing in the market and two for life.

For the market, I live by the words of John Maynard Keynes: “Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”

For life, my favorite is by Robin William’s character, John Keating, in Dead Poets Society: “But only in their dreams can men be truly free. ‘Twas always thus, and always thus will be.”

But equally important is one my grandfather told me jokingly decades ago: “Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things.”

I don’t think you can go wrong with any of those quotes.

And on that note, you can look forward to more meme-fueled festivities tomorrow.

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

#Timor Invest

0 notes

devilsadvocate007 · 5 years

Text

Facebook Posts July 2010 - December 2010

4th July 2010

The illusion that everybody's opinion matters has created a society in which stupidity must be considered just as seriously as brilliance. Gone are the days where stupid people weren't allowed to talk while big people were talking. Now they have their own facebook pages.... On the bright side, we no longer have to rely on television for entertainment

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10th July 2010

♫ Just gonna stand there and watch me burn....well that's alright because I like the way it hurts......Just gonna stand there and hear me cry....well that's alright because I love the way you lie...♫ - ‘Love the way you lie’, Rihanna ft. Eminem

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14th July 2010

If there's no such thing as no such thing, then there is such a thing as no such thing, which means that there really is no such thing as no such thing.

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15th July 2010

Bad?: So I was standing next to a fat girl and I turned to her and said "moo". At first she started to cuss and call me names and tell me about my mother. I quietly said "moo" again without lifting my gaze. This time she started screaming and clawing at me. For the last time...I said "moo". She stopped and looked at me, then after a minute of silence she said "father?"

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25th July 2010

You know you're doing something wrong when your fiancée tells you "I'd rather be his whore than your wife"... ♥ Titanic

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30th July 2010

You ever meet someone so dumb that you think they're up to something? "What?....no....what you playing at?....wait.....you're serious?"

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5th August 2010

The 1st tao of Jarid: {For all those in a relationship...the sentence "It doesn't matter anymore, I have a man, I'm gonna let loose" is not acceptable unless you're talking about a party or sex.}

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6th August 2010

I know I'm not the only person that finds irony in the fact that the guy that recently beat the JAMAICAN Bolt, is called Mr. Gay. lol "Gay shocks Bolt in Stockholm" is the Headline....So what did we learn? U can run from gays all u want my Jamaican brethren, but it'll catch up with you eventually...

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15th August 2010

Life is too short to waste on people who don't realize how awesome you are. I knew an awesome person who never followed the crowd or did what was 'expected'. She's gone now, but I can say she lived her life the way she wanted to, surrounded by people she liked who definitely liked her. When my time comes, I want someone to say the same about me. So fuck off and thank you.

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17th August 2010

Can someone explain to me how purposely doing something that makes your guy friends happy and like u, but at the same time leaves ur woman unhappy and unsatisfied, isn't gay? "Bow cat" it would seem is the opposite of "battyman"....not synonymous.

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20th August 2010

"Ur like a giant fucking cock blocking robot developed in a secret government lab or something" - Zombieland (lmao)

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21st August 2010

♫ That's alright, thats ok....g'on head believe what ur home girls say...a nigga like me drink alotta liquor, meet alotta bitches, take alotta pictures....I might break bread with 1 or 2 strippers, but that don't mean u gotta pull my zipper...thinkin that I dicked down the whole town, even tho I got dick to go round ♫ - ‘Smell yo dick’, Kay Luv

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22nd August 2010

♫ You say its my fault, ok then I'll go...its better to know...how theres nobody to argue with...cuz im not home...dont care who ur with....dont call my phone...or did u forget...u know you're wrong...I'm gone....and you're all alone....hearing your own damn...eh echo eh echo ♫ - ‘Echo’, Gorilla Zoe

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8th September 2010

♫ A penny for my thoughts, oh no I'll sell them for a dollar, They're worth so much more after I'm a goner, And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin', Funny when your dead how people start listenin'...If I die young ♫ - ‘If I die young’, The Band Perry

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10th September 2010

The tao of Jarid: "Facebook is not a place to publish things you wish to remain private. By its very nature, anything put on here voluntarily is for people to notice, see, and by extension comment or ask about. Getting defensive when asked about something YOU put up in the public domain makes no sense."

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11th September 2010

The tao of Jarid: "Women treat the male gene pool like a real pool. They all jump in and splash around the shallow end in their youth...then wade out to the deeper end as they get older."

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15th September 2010

“Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar [violin] to a gorilla.” - Jim Bishop

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17th September 2010

Taxi driver on the way home today: "You see men? Especially young men like you? You need to eat raw foods. Lemme tell u the other night I was with my gf and no matter WHAT position I put her in...me deya fight fi cum! FIRST time me haffu TRY cum. All when me done, cocky stiff stiff"

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22nd September 2010

Birthdays on facebook are really opportunities for people that never speak to you to subtly say "I care! Don't delete me! Look how I wrote on ur wall!" lol

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23rd September 2010

The tao of Jarid: The lawyer most people know is the American lawyer. That's why lawyers have a bad name. Caribbean lawyers are nothing like their American counterparts (the laws and practices here are vastly different). People should remember that before they band all "lawyers" together.

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23rd September 2010

Listen, I understand that having a BB means that u can talk to anyone at anytime for free, but seriously...10 grown ppl sitting in a room engrossed in their phones not speaking to each other, is ridiculous. What happend to common courtesy, what happened to meeting new people and saying hi to a stranger? Sheesh. U remind me of little kids in church playing their gameboys.

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26th September 2010

U know what I hate? The fact that hypocrisy is so prevalent. Any time you see someone stand up and strongly take a stand against something...9/10 times they do it. If they vehemently denounce homosexuals, 9/10 times, they're sleeping with little boys. Its SO common now, that I never want to take a strong stand against anything, lest ppl think I secretly do it. Chupz.

The tao of Jarid: For those of you who believe that "no means no, but unconscious means yes".....a prison cell awaits.

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28th September 2010

The legal way of saying “nigga stole my bike”: “ A human being of the male gender wth black pigmentation on his skin appears 2 have acquired without my consent my 2-wheeled, non-motorized private and/or recreational transportation, also known as "bike", and appears 2 have driven away with said 2-wheeled, non-motorized private and/or recreational transportation, despite my attempt of chasing the said human being, completely ignoring my request 2 give sed item bk” - username iani103. Man, I love my profession.

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1st October 2010

I think women should develop the same "fuck it" mechanism guys have. If there's a baby in the house crying for hours on end...what you will not find is a man around. Y? Cuz we can't fix it and its driving us crazy, so we roll out and go by Tony's house to watch football, i.e. fuk it. More women should do that instead of staying in the stress and snapping and shaking their babies to death or driving them into a river.

The tao of Jarid: Facebook should have a 'WHO CARES?!?' button....and make my page immune to it.

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2nd October 2010

The tao of Jarid: The more "LMAO"s and "LOLOLOL"s your status contains, the less funny the actual subject matter is. Contrary to popular belief, nothing gets funnier the more you laugh at it by yourself.

Grown men's fascination with penitentiary pussy confuses me... Sex with it = go to prison. What's the problem? Where's the option? All I see is "Sex with prison". No thanks. That's like the "option" 'get in this dark van so I can drive u to my abandoned cabin in the woods or I shoot you'. All I should be hearing is *gunshot*.

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4th October 2010

The tao of Jarid: Drama vampires are not cool. While the rest of us need food and water to live, these creatures survive solely off drama and other people viewing it. The only effective way to deal with them is to block and delete them from everything. If you can't see their drama, they weaken and die. True story.

“I think when you put sex and spirituality in the same bottle and shake it up, bad things happen. Yes, I said I kissed a girl. But I didn’t say I kissed a girl while f-ing a crucifix.” - Katy Perry (on why she dislikes Lady Gaga’s music video for ‘Alejandro’)

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5th October 2010

"This is my facade of civility; do not mistake for complacency, for once this veil is taken down, you'll see a vicious turn around...of all you grew to know and love...the hand lying beneath the glove.... An animal living in a shell. A beast who's come to raise all hell."

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6th October 2010

The tao of Jarid: Forget CNN, BBC or any other news organisation....nowhere else are world issues more discussed than on YouTube's comments section

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8th October 2010

You are one person, out of 7 billion people, on one planet, out of 8 planets, in one solar system out of a hundred billion solar systems, in one galaxy out of a hundred billion galaxies.......you are ENORMOUSLY insignificant, and don't let facebook ever make you forget that. [De-motivational Speech for the day]

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11th October 2010

Anybody remember when they FIRST came on fb YEARS ago? How it used to be? How Fb made hi5 look like the social networking ghetto? It was so clean and neat and classy. "Jarid Hewlett", likes, interests, lil about myself. Send ur friends who u havent seen since primary school messages. It was a magical innocent time. Why did you people have to rape facebook? Why?

Now? as NC17 says, no more "Jarid Hewlett", we have "Jarid fuckspussyallday Hewlett", we have "What kind of telly tubby would u have sex with?" quizzes, we have people fighting over who their baby's daddy is for the world to see. (Btw when did this shit become acceptable? Not knowing which guy ejaculated inside and impregnated you is something people used to be ashamed of and settle in private...why is it cool to broadcast this now?), we have break ups where guys blatantly put their numbers under "X is no longer in a relationship"..... What happened to CLASS??? I understand they don't teach that in school, but they bloody well should. No one comes on fb to keep in touch with people anymore. And the ones that do, spend 20% of their total fb time doing that. The rest of us laugh or bow our heads in sadness at the ridiculous shit people post. I'm black and I hate racists and racism, but goddamn it....sometimes, as much as I hate to admit it.....I see where they're coming from. <sigh>

_________________________

15th October 2010

♫ We're going out tonight...to kick out every light, take anything we want, drink everything in sight, we're going till the world stops turning while we burn it to the ground tonight! ♫ - ‘Burn it to the ground’, Nickelback

_________________________

21st October 2010

The tao: Men get bitter, just as women do. The difference is, a bitter woman will say "fuck men" and never have sex again. A bitter man will say "fuck women" and do just that.

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26th October 2010

The tao: "All inclusive" does not mean "free cheap rum and vodka with juice". Stop the false advertising.

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27th October 2010

The tao: Having high standards doesn't necessarily exempt you from whoredom. While we all agree that having low to no standards makes one a ho, having high, meaningless standards makes one a ho too. "I only sleep with guys that drive BMWs" is a high standard. It is not a substantive standard.

♫ And who do you think you are? Running round leaving scars....Collecting your jar of hearts, tearing love apart........You’re gonna catch a cold, from the ice inside your soul.........So don’t come back for me, who do you think you are? ♫ - ‘Jar of Hearts’, Christina Perri

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28th October 2010

"Labour all de way"? "UPP all de way?".....come on, man. I'm "all the way" with whoever makes Antigua a better country. Politics has come to mean arbitrary following of a party that makes your immediate life better regardless of the long term. Don't even get me started on 'patriotism'.

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31st October 2010

The tao: He who is slow to anger gets annoyed the longest.

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1st November 2010

♫....you just hurt my goddamn feelings, and that was the last one I had ♫ - ‘Here we go’, Eminem

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2nd November 2010

Lawyer talk: My Lord, my client was not anywhere near the building when the window was broken, and if he was, he did not break the window, and if he did break the window, he did so by accident, and if he didn't break it by accident, it wasn't the complainant's window, and if it was their window, it was their fault for putting it where my client throws stones.

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8th November 2010

Mr. Kartel, you sir, have lied to me.....apparently women do not want a man whose "buddy long like a thousand match stick line up"....apparently that hurts and more than 90% of it will be outside anyway. You have misled me sir, and I demand an apology.

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10th November 2010

On a serious note.....which do you think is more "loving" and less "heartless"? (Option A) Being in a relationship and cheating gratuitously on your significant other? Or (Option B) breaking up with your significant other who probably didn't see it coming, because you want to sleep with someone else?

_________________________

11th November 2010

The tao: No one really sees anything. Everyone thinks they see something. I might think I see a pudgy, ugly woman, you might think you see a curvy goddess. Who knows whats actually there...The difference between sane and insane people is that insane people are just a little more creative with what they think they see....and nothing can change their mind.

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14th November 2010

The tao: If someone tells you something you don't understand, don't repeat it. It might have been wisdom when they told you...but after your brain is done with it, there's a high chance it comes back out as crap.

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15th November 2010

"You're Cuban AND Jamaican?? That's a really.....illegal mix, lol. So you speak Spanish and bloodclaat?" - Mike Yard (*dead*)

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17th November 2010

The tao: One should never let emotions get in the way of reality. Sometimes people just don't appreciate you no matter how you feel about them. That's ok. Someone does.

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19th November 2010

♫ Well I'm a poet to some, a regular modern day Shakespeare.....Jesus Christ, the King of these latter day saints here ♫ - ‘Renegade’, Jay-Z & Eminem

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25th November 2010

The tao: Whenever you think "don't let a good thing pass you by"....remember that many things are only good now BECAUSE you let them pass you by at first. Don't be afraid to let go.

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26th November 2010

"If my wanting to see you was on a scale of 1-10.....I'd still say no". It takes a while to fully appreciate just how horrible this statement is.

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27th November 2010

U know what I just realized..?..The first time I listened to the Marshall Mathers LP was on *cassette*...in my * Walkman*....that Michael Henry had copied for me.....I'm gonna reserve my rocking chair in the old folks home from now, see...

The tao: Stop saying "I'm just me". Everyone is just them. If you choose to be someone who tries to be like other people, that's still who you are. You are just a personalityless ninny, but it's still who YOU are. You can't ever be anything else but you. "I'm just me" is like saying "I breathe oxygen". No shit.

♫ Me start da day wit a flask, cranberry an ice inna glass....satellite can't find me me lost....buy me own liquor cuz me a me own boss....drink fi drunk dat me endorse....OH ♫ - ‘Rum & Red Bull’, Beenie Man &Future Fambo

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30th November 2010

Seriously....if I read one more comment under a political story with someone urging people to "wake up", I'm going to slap somebody. I always find it fascinating that politics turns otherwise sensible people into jackasses. "Belief is the enemy of reality".

Lesbians have life so easy.....girls are very gay normally, lol. Dressing in front of each other, dancing up with one another, feeling up one another etc.....you could pretty much spend ur whole life being a lesbian and no one would ever know once u lie every now and again about some boy u find hot.

"The fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us and not because they think we can keep secrets," - US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. If that's not gangsta, I dunno what is...

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2nd December 2010

♫ I love my life....none a we don't know wey tomorrow might bring cuz the future deh hours away...so me go live my life today...me ah live my life today...so lowe me mek me talk what me want fi talk, me have nuff fi say...so me go live my life today...me ah go live my life today ♫ - ‘I love my life’, Demarco

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7th December 2010

The tao: Never overestimate the power of friendship.

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9th December 2010

♫ De boy ketch me a stamp up him gyal postcard....want arrest me but....him anna sarge....he nah stop tell me how him a camouflage....never voice ya hear from him vocal cord because.....a we mek nuff man start drink Guinness ♫ - ‘A we’, Hawkeye

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11th December 2010

The tao: The next time someone you thought you mattered to lets you down, always remember that its not their fault you don't have better friends.

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17th December 2010

Men beware: "Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes" will never ever stand up in court.

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19th December 2010

The tao: Stop bitching about the 'true meaning' of Christmas. People like presents. Deal with it.

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21st December 2010

The tao: Put on a jamaican accent and include "bloodclaat" or "bumboclaat" and any sentence becomes five times funnier. E.g. "Where are u going, u unhygienic homosexual?" "Yow, a where dis dutty skin, yellow teet, shitty draws BUMBOCLAAT battybwoy a go?" Same message. Five times funnier.

_________________________

25th December 2010

The tao: "I have a boyfriend".........."Babes....you can have ALL the boyfriends you want...not "a", not "some".....ALL.....me still want u". - This conversation will always go like this. Saying you have a boyfriend is not a substitute for saying no.

_________________________

30th December 2010

New year new me! "Are u getting a sex change?" What? no..... "Are you changing careers?" Um..no.. "Are you radically overhauling your entire personality?" Not really... "Shut up and sit down"

0 notes

samuelpboswell · 6 years

Text

Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics

“Step up on the railing. Hold on, hold on. Keep your eyes closed.” Jack is holding Rose around her waist, cautiously lifting her up to the Titanic’s bow. “Do you trust me?” He was a stranger up until days earlier, but still, her response is almost instantaneous. “I trust you.” Moments later, Rose opens her eyes and she’s flying, arms outstretched as the mighty liner propels her forward. She and Jack hold hands; they kiss. Celine Dion’s music wafts in the background. Teenage boys in the theater start gagging, while romantic types swoon. There’s a good chance you lived through this very experience. James Cameron’s 1997 cinematic landmark Titanic was an unprecedented hit, holding the title as highest-grossing film of all time for 14 years. The scene described above is perhaps its most famous — the linchpin in a love story sparked by deep, genuine trust that materialized almost out nowhere. When I say, “Everyone and their mom saw this movie,” I mean it a bit too literally because I actually saw it with my mom, as a 12-year-old, and it was… awkward. With that embarrassing story out of the way (I swear there’s a reason I mentioned it, and we’ll get back to it later), let’s move on to one you might actually care about: The state of trust in marketing. Strap on your lifejacket and prepare for a journey through these choppy waters...

By the Numbers: The State of Trust in Marketing

At the outset of 2016, trust toward all four institutions measured by Edelman Trust Barometer reached their highest levels since the Great Recession, with businesses seeing the largest spike.

(Source)

Things looked good. Confidence was high. We were all cruising merrily along. Then, we hit the iceberg that was 2016. You might remember that year not-so-fondly, for any number of reasons. The following year, Edelman declared that “trust is in crisis around the world,” citing an unprecedented drop across all four institutions. The 2018 research revealed “a world of seemingly stagnant distrust,” with no rebound to be seen. Things weren’t merely stagnating everywhere, though... In 2018, only 48% of people in the United States said they trust businesses, down from 58% in 2017. (Edelman)

(Source)

This was a point where people were frantically piling into lifeboats. I think I just saw Billy Zane kick a little kid off one. What a jerk. Anyway, this is a problem. [Side note: If you’re noticing a lot of Edelman citations thus far, it’s because their Trust Barometer is such a valuable resource for the topic, and offers a consistent baseline to show the progression of trust. But there are plenty of other sources to come.] 63% of people agree with this statement: “A good reputation may get me to try a product—but unless I come to trust the company behind the product I will soon stop buying it, regardless of its reputation.” (Edelman) Oh, and: 68% of adults in the U.S. say that trust in a brand has "a great deal" or "a lot" of influence on their decision when making a big purchase. (SurveyMonkey) I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between “a great deal” and “a lot,” but alas... We've reached an era where people at large are digitally adept and savvy. They know they have a world of options at their literal fingertips, and can thusly hold brands to the highest of standards. Trust strikes a deep emotional chord. “The digital era has fundamentally shifted assumptions for how individuals will do business and engage with companies," Kevin Cochrane, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP, wrote at Harvard Business Review last year. "Once trust has been lost, it’s nearly impossible for brands to rebuild sustainable, honest relationships with their customers." In other words: once the ship has sunk, it ain't coming back up. [bctt tweet="Once #trust has been lost, it’s nearly impossible for brands to rebuild sustainable, honest relationships with their customers. - @kevinc2003 #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] Some of the damage has already been done. A few months ago, Accenture released its Bottom Line on Trust report, which uses an "Accenture Strategy Competitive Agility Index” to “quantify the impact of trust on a company’s bottom line." Scoring more than 7,000 companies, this system found that... 54% have experienced a material drop in trust at some point during the past two and a half years, "conservatively" losing out on $104 billion in revenue. (Bottom Line on Trust) "In today’s world, it is no longer a question of if a company will experience a trust incident, but when," the report asserted. This is getting grim, I know. But we're not underwater yet. There is time yet to turn this troubling tide, and as the primary conduits between customers and brands, marketers can and must be at the forefront. Marketing executives at B2B and B2C service firms rank “trusting relationships” ahead of “low price” and “superior innovation” among their customers' priorities. (The CMO Survey)

(Source)

As we build relationships, we build trust. Edelman's 2018 report found that company content is twice as trusted after a customer-brand relationship has been formed. Marketing has a lot of functions (even a great deal of functions?) but this one will be most vital in the months ahead. All of our efforts are doomed without this crucial piece of the puzzle. So, how do we stay on course and prevent relationships from sinking? Well... 65% of business buyers say they’re likely to switch brands if vendors don’t make an effort to personalize communications to their company. 52% of consumers say the same. (State of the Connected Customer) This seems to be the the sweet spot. Personalization is the surest way to build a rapport in the digital space. When we fail to connect, it sets off immediate alarms. Personalization comes in many forms. It can be as sophisticated as using adaptive AI, or as simple as narrowing the scope and voice of your content to resonate with very specific audiences. Whatever the approach, customers clearly want it. And the potential revenue benefits are undeniable. [bctt tweet="#Personalization is the surest way to build a rapport in the digital space. When we fail to connect, it sets off immediate alarms. @NickNelsonMN #ContentMarketing" username="toprank"] Personalization can deliver 5-8 times the ROI on marketing spend, and can lift sales by 10% or more. (McKinsey & Company) Now that sounds like smooth sailing. Research makes clear that marketers are wise to chart a course for more personalized waters. Granted, that’ll mean different things to different organizations and strategies, but it simply must be a central focus if we are to stay afloat. Personalized marketing is the byproduct of turning customer data into useful insights. It’s the industry’s prime directive as we speak. I’m excited to see what we can accomplish on this front in 2019 and beyond. I will leave you with one final word (statistic) of caution, however. 79% of consumers will leave a brand if their personal data is used without their knowledge. (SAP Hybris Consumer Insights Report) Let’s steer clear of that. Transparency is now more essential than ever in marketing. Using data is not wrong — in fact, it’s requisite for personalization — but the last thing you want to come off as is sneaky or underhanded about it (just ask Facebook). Something as simple as a friendly, casual pop-up message on your website informing visitors that you use cookies (and why) can go a long way. By following the principles of responsible personalization, we as marketers can right the ship and play our part in building sturdy relationships that ensure customers...

via GIPHY

Moral of the Story: Steer Toward Trustful Shores

A bit of good news: in the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer results, released a couple of weeks ago, trust toward business increased in 21 of 26 markets, including the U.S. where 54% of respondents voiced confidence — one of the biggest jumps. Now, we need to stay that course. At a high level, personalization should be the true-north on every marketer's strategic compass. But on a day-to-day tactical basis, I believe there are three focal areas for continually building trust. As it happens, I've attempted to incorporate each into this blog post you're reading. Storytelling. My goal here was to take a set of statistics and craft them into a coherent narrative. For added effect, I juxtaposed it against another extremely recognizable story. Your mileage may vary on the wisdom and effectiveness of this particular approach. Authenticity. For better or worse, this is who I am. I’m the kind of guy who intertwines 20-year-old movies with blog posts about marketing. (More seriously, I have a genuine passion for the subject of trust in marketing, which is why I write about it so frequently here.) Transparency. Even — no, especially — when it’s information you’re not entirely jazzed to be sharing. I didn’t love telling you all about sitting uncomfortably next to my mom during the infamous “Draw me like one of your French girls” scene at age 12, but I did so with the hopes it’d signal an openness and candor in the writing to come. Recently I highlighted a company called Lemonade that runs a “Transparency Chronicles” series, in which they speak very frankly about their experiences as a growing business — including their failures and shortcomings. Customers are tired of hearing how great and perfect brands are. They want realness. Content marketing strategies founded on personalization, with storytelling, authenticity, and transparency as cornerstones, will be primed to stand the test of time in an age of digital disorientation. Maybe, one day, we can finally restore the fundamental trust that’s been shattered ever since some genius marketing mind came up with the “Unsinkable Ship” slogan. Did you like this post? Want to read more from me on trust and transparency in marketing? Check out these past articles:

Two Key Marketing Opportunities Amid Stories of Fake Traffic and Fraudulent Metrics

In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide

Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling

How Brands Can Avoid the Dreaded Fauxthenticity Pitfall

The post Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2019/02/trust-marketing-statistics/

0 notes

befoundonlinemarketing · 6 years

Text

Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics

By the Numbers: The State of Trust in Marketing

At the outset of 2016, trust toward all four institutions measured by Edelman Trust Barometer reached their highest levels since the Great Recession, with businesses seeing the largest spike.

(Source)

via GIPHY

Moral of the Story: Steer Toward Trustful Shores

Two Key Marketing Opportunities Amid Stories of Fake Traffic and Fraudulent Metrics

In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide

Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling

How Brands Can Avoid the Dreaded Fauxthenticity Pitfall

The post Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics posted first on http://www.toprankblog.com/

0 notes

christopheruearle · 6 years

Text

Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics

By the Numbers: The State of Trust in Marketing

At the outset of 2016, trust toward all four institutions measured by Edelman Trust Barometer reached their highest levels since the Great Recession, with businesses seeing the largest spike.

(Source)

via GIPHY

Moral of the Story: Steer Toward Trustful Shores

Two Key Marketing Opportunities Amid Stories of Fake Traffic and Fraudulent Metrics

In a World of Diminishing Trust, Data-Driven Marketers Can Turn the Tide

Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling

How Brands Can Avoid the Dreaded Fauxthenticity Pitfall

The post Tip of the Iceberg: A Story of Trust in Marketing as Told by Statistics appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

0 notes

garkomedia1 · 6 years

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3 scenarios for Trump-Xi meeting

Editor’s Note: This edition of Free Morning Money is published weekdays at 8 a.m. POLITICO Pro Financial Services subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 5:15 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

3 POSSIBLE TRUMP-XI OUTCOMES — T-minus one day until President Trump leaves for the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires for a critical sit-down with Chinese President Xi Jinping. MM has spent the last few days talking to administration officials, market participants and trade experts about both the stakes and the potential outcomes of the summit and repeatedly heard three potential scenarios which we will lay out here with odds for each.

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SCENARIO 1: THE BIG DEAL — The odds of this are the lowest at around 5 percent. Under this scenario, Xi presents Trump with significant “deliverables” on key topics including joint venture rules, intellectual property and the trade deficit. In response, Trump agrees to hold off on increasing the current 10 percent tariff rate to 25 percent on Jan. 1 and halts the process of adding another $267 billion to the list of Chinese goods subject to U.S. tariffs.

People inside and outside the White House see this as highly unlikely given the lack of significant prep work done before the meetings and Xi’s desire to avoid losing face with quick and dramatic concessions to Trump. If it were to happen, global markets would likely celebrate as soon as they re-open on Monday and Trump would take a massive victory lap.

SCENARIO 2: THE SMALL STEP FORWARD — This one is mostly likely (65 percent) and would include positive interactions between Trump and Xi and perhaps a small statement in which both sides agree to further talks and the Chinese agree to some steps including buying more American goods including natural gas. Under this scenario, Trump would send some positive tweets about his relationship with Xi while cautioning that all tariff options remain on the table.

There are many variants to this scenario based on what the Chinese offer. If the offers are better than expected, the January tariff increase could be put on hold. This outcome, depending on the particulars, would also likely goose global stock princes.

SCENARIO 3: THE DISASTER — Non-hardline White House advisers worry about this one a lot and it clocks in at 30 percent. In this scenario, Trump and Xi don’t get along at all, the Chinese offer nothing and Trump leaves angry and pledging to go through with the 25 percent and move as swiftly as possible to add the remaining $267 billion, hitting everything China exports to the U.S. and inviting further non-tariff retaliation from the Chinese.

This scenario ends with mean tweets from Trump and gloating from Peter Navarro. It also ends with sharp declines across global stock and commodities markets and increased recession risk in the United States. White House advisers worry that Trump’s mood and external events (Mueller news etc.) could turn the Xi meeting sour though they don’t see a disaster as very likely given how much the president cares about market reaction.

KUDLOW SETS MODEST EXPECTATIONS — In remarks to reporters on Tuesday, NEC Director Larry Kudlow spoke of newly energized talks between the U.S. and China “at all levels” headed into the Xi meetings but also tamped down hopes for a major deal out of the G20 meeting. “This is an opportunity, with the two presidents, to break through what have been disappointing discussions,” Kudlow said. “This is a big deal, this meeting. And the stakes are very high.” POLITICO’s Andrew Restuccia and Doug Palmer have more on Kudlow’s comments here.

From their piece: “The logistics of the Trump-Xi meeting, which is scheduled for Saturday, are still coming together, according to White House aides. The guest list has not been finalized, and a senior administration official said it’s unclear if the meeting will feature a more intimate discussion with Xi, his wife, Trump and the first lady — or a broader meeting with other top-level aides.” …

“In addition, the president will join the leaders of Mexico and Canada on Friday to sign a newly negotiated trade deal between the two countries, Kudlow said, adding that the logistics of the event are still being ironed out.”

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WHAT BOTH SIDES WANT — POLITICO’s Adam Behsudi: “U.S. demands center on Beijing’s policies that force U.S. firms to hand over technology to do business in China. The Trump administration released an updated report last week that found Beijing has done little to address the initial complaints that have led to tariffs on more than $250 billion worth of Chinese goods. … At best, China could be looking for the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting to result in a detente in the tariff war as a broader deal is worked out.”

TRUMP SWINGS WILDLY AT POWELL … AGAIN — In an interview with WP’s Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey Trump leveled perhaps has wildest attacks on Fed Chair Jay Powell to date, blaming him for job and plant cuts at GM despite absolutely no evidence that the central bank’s modest and fully anticipated rate cuts had anything to do with the moves. GM says Trump’s tariffs, by contrast, will cost the company $1 billion this year.

Here’s what he said: “I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed. They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.” …

“So far, I’m not even a little bit happy with my selection of Jay. Not even a little bit. And I’m not blaming anybody [message to Mnuchin], but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they’re doing.” …

“I disagree with the Fed. I’ve been open about that. I think the Fed is a much bigger problem than China. I think that China wants to make a deal very badly. I think we’ll either make a deal or we’ll be taking in billions and billions of dollars a month in tariffs and I’m okay with either one of those two situations.”

It didn’t make the main story but Trump also went after the Fed’s efforts to very slowly reduce a balance sheet that swelled to over $4 trillion during the financial crisis and recession: “We’re not getting any accommodation, and we’re also paying $50 billion, we’re paying down our liquidity, is — you can make the case it’s a positive thing in one way, but another thing it snaps your liquidity.” Transcript.

TRUMP THOUGHT YELLEN WAS TOO SHORT — Also this little gem from Rucker/Dawsey: “Trump considered reappointing Yellen to the post, and she impressed him greatly during an interview, according to people briefed on their encounter. But advisers steered him away from renominating her, telling him that he should have his own person in the job.

“The president also appeared hung up on Yellen’s height. He told aides on the National Economic Council on several occasions that the 5-foot-3-inch economist was not tall enough to lead the central bank, quizzing them on whether they agreed, current and former officials said.

SPEAKING OF POWELL — The Fed Chair speaks at noon on Wednesday at the Economic Club of New York. His topic is “The Federal Reserve’s Framework for Monitoring Financial Stability.” He’s already obliquely responded to Trump and asserted the Fed’s independence and said the central bank is just trying to do its job. He’s not likely to address Trump at all in his prepared remarks but the subject could certainly come up in questioning by Peter Henry and Marty Feldstein. But he probably won’t go much beyond what he’s already said.

HURTING HIS OWN CASE — We’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating that every time Trump attacks Powell and the Fed he makes it LESS likely that the central bank will pause its rate increases next year. The Fed, as always, will make decisions based on incoming data but if it’s a very close call, protecting the institution’s political independence against Trump’s pressure tactics would argue in favor of staying the course rather than appearing to cave.

MM also wrote back when he was nominated that anyone who thought Powell would be a patsy for Trump were in for significant disappointment. And that is so far proving to be true.

POWELL PREVIEW — Via Pantheon’s Ian Shepherdson: “[W]e very much doubt he wants to give the impression that the Fed is seriously contemplating skipping either the December or March hikes. We’re sure policymakers at this point would prefer not to see turmoil in the stock market, or the manufacturing sector losing steam as a result of the tariff wars with China.

“But these forces aren’t powerful enough yet to ease the downward pressure on the unemployment rate. Accordingly, we were not at all surprised to hear Vice Chair Rich Clarida emphasizing [Tuesday] that downside risks to the economy have diminished in recent years and that gradual rate hikes are appropriate given the uncertainty over the level of the neutral funds rate. … This was not a dovish speech.”

REQUIEM FOR THE G-20 — Mohamed A. El-Erian on Bloomberg View: “Despite weakening and diverging global economic growth, the aspiration for the larger discussions among leaders representing about three-quarters of global gross domestic product has been reduced to issuing bland joint communiques — and that’s assuming an agreement on this can be achieved. … Created with the hope to reflect new global economic realities, the G-20 has been on a downward trend since its successful London summit in April 2009.” Read more.

ONE GOP SENATOR’S PLAN TO SAVE RURAL AMERICA — The latest POLITICO Money podcast features my conversation with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on his Opportunity Zones plan, included in the tax cut bill, to offer significant tax incentives for investment in rural and small town areas largely left behind in the economic recovery from the Great Recession.

Scott: “In the Opportunity Zones, the poverty rate is over 30 percent. I look at it from a common-sense perspective and I ask myself, ‘Is there a way for me to positively impact the lives of 50 million Americans by providing an incentive to unlock investments for those areas?’” Sign up here.

GOOD WEDNESDAY MORNING — Big thanks to Victoria Guida for the one-day fill in while MM was in transportation hell. Email me at [email protected] and follow me on Twitter @morningmoneyben. Email Aubree Eliza Weaver at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @AubreeEWeaver..

Let Women Rule your inbox: The Women Rule Newsletter is a weekly email that shares original content, practical advice, backstage stories, special events and impactful resources for women at any stage of their career. If you are a woman looking to lead or grow your professional network, look no further than Women Rule. No one rises to the top alone, so sign up for our newsletter and get started today.

THE ADAGE “WORK HARD AND GET AHEAD” is a waning reality in America today. The question is: What can Washington do to foster more opportunity and prosperity in struggling communities across the country? POLITICO convened a bipartisan group of 14 business leaders, thinkers and policymakers to explore the problem and identify solutions that have a realistic path forward with political leaders of both parties. Read the latest issue of The Agenda to learn more.

GOP HOLDS MISSISSIPPI SENATE SEAT — Via @NBCNews at 10:14 p.m.: BREAKING: Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) wins US Senate runoff in Mississippi, @NBCNews projects.” Read more.

DRIVING THE DAY — President Trump has lunch with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and attends the National Christmas Tree Lighting at 5:00 p.m. … Big day for economic news and data with the Powell speech leading the docket at noon … Third estimate of Q3 GDP at 8:30 a.m. expected to be unchanged at 3.5 percent …

Trade numbers at 8:30 a.m. expected to rise to $77 billion from $76.3 billion … New home sales at 10:00 a.m. expected to rise to 575K from 553K … FOMC minutes at 2:00 p.m.

MORE ON CLARIDA — Victoria for Pros: “Clarida … emphasized the strength of the U.S. economy but argued that business investment needs to increase to boost productivity growth. … Clarida also pointed to productivity growth as an important dynamic in why inflation is running at or close to the Fed’s 2 percent target ‘and not well above it, when growth is strong and the labor market robust.’” Read more.

BROWN WANTS GM ADDRESSED IN ANY TAX BILL — Our Brian Faler: “Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is demanding that any year-end tax legislation address General Motors’ announcement that it is laying off thousands of workers. Brown, a tax writer and potential 2020 presidential candidate whose state is home to some of those workers, blamed GM’s decision on provisions in the new tax law, H.R. 1 (115), allowing companies to pay a lower tax rate on their overseas earnings than they are charged on their domestic profits.

“He wants to end that as part of any tax legislation lawmakers move before the end of the year — a likely impossible demand given time constraints and the complexities of the issue. ‘This bill is meaningless unless [President Donald Trump] actually addresses the real issues of the day,’ Brown told reporters on Tuesday. ‘I can’t think of anything more important.’” Read more.

More from Brian for Pros on details of the last minute tax effort: “House Republicans Monday evening unexpectedly released a 297-page tax bill they hope to move during the lame-duck session of Congress. The legislation would revive a number of expired tax ‘extenders,’ address glitches in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and make a range of changes to savings- and retirement-related tax provisions.

“Other parts of the bill would revamp the IRS, provide new tax breaks for start-up businesses and offer assistance to disaster victims. The measure amounts to House Republicans’ opening bid in negotiations with the Senate. They’ll need Democratic support there to move any changes, and it’s unclear lawmakers will agree to any of the provisions before adjourning for the year.” Read more.

BANKERS PUT PUSH GETS GROOVY VIBES FROM BLUE WAVE — Our Zachary Warmbrodt: “Banks haven’t been able to cash in on marijuana money, but there’s new momentum to change that with Democrats about to take charge of the House. With anti-pot Attorney General Jeff Sessions gone and even more states legalizing weed, bankers who have grown increasingly frustrated by legal restrictions on the cannabis business are working with Democrats and Republicans to change laws curtailing transactions that deal with marijuana.

“The new push by banks to handle financial transactions for the pot industry is the latest sign that politics of marijuana are rapidly changing in the nation’s capital, as voters across the country back legalization. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat who has taken the lead on legislation in the House, said there was ‘a real opportunity’ to move a bill aligning federal and state marijuana laws for banks and credit unions.” Read more.

STOCK INDEXES EDGE HIGHER — AP’s Marley Jay: “Stocks wobbled Tuesday as large high-dividend stocks rose and smaller companies sank. Major indexes were coming off big gains the day before. Big health care companies including Johnson & Johnson rallied, as did telecommunications and household goods makers. Steel and other materials makers skidded, and a steep loss for United Technologies pulled defense contractors lower.

“Technology companies rose even though President Donald Trump said he expects more tariffs on goods imported from China, some of which would hit products like computers and smartphones. Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Group of 20 summit in Argentina later this week.” Read more.

INVESTORS CONFRONT FEARS AHEAD OF G-20 — WSJ’s Amrith Ramkumar: “Softening economic data are adding to investor anxiety ahead of the Group of 20 summit that starts Friday in Buenos Aires. The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index for developed markets, a measure that tracks whether economic reports are meeting projections, has fallen to its lowest level in almost six months. The gauge is in negative territory, meaning data are broadly starting to come in below economists’ expectations. A similar index for emerging markets has been in mostly negative territory since June.” Read more.

GOODBYE APPLE, HELLO MICROSOFT — Bloomberg’s Jeran Wittenstein and Dina Bass: “Microsoft Corp. surpassed Apple Inc. to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. All it took was a $300 billion rout. After briefly claiming the top spot on Monday, Microsoft shares rose 0.6 percent Tuesday, pushing the company’s market value to $828.1 billion at the close. That exceeded by more than $1 billion the value of Apple, which has tumbled this month on concern about iPhone unit sales. The last time Microsoft’s market capitalization was bigger than Apple was in 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.” Read more.

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years

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Chinese Tourists Seeking Out the Wild West Are Heading to Wyoming

Quilian Shi, left, and Longcheng Zheng and look at pictures on a phone after posing with a John Wayne cutout at Cody Firearms Experience in Cody, Wyoming. Buses carrying perhaps 50 tourists making one-night stopovers or lunch-time pauses make up the majority of Chinese tourists to Cody, but more families are flying to large regional cities such as Salt Lake City or Denver, renting cars and touring on their own. Raymond Hillegas / The Cody Enterprise via Associated Press

Skift Take: Chinese tourists aren't just drawn to the big coastal cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York, anymore. It's good news for U.S. destinations hoping to draw more of the world's largest traveler market.

— Deanna Ting

Kenneth Zheng and his vacationing family dropped into the Cody Firearms Experience to shoot guns and hang out with John Wayne.

There was much bang-bang and admiring of the American western icon’s life-sized cutout, both symbols of the American West, but for the visitors from China, revelation, disbelief and amusement accompanied the stopover.

There were five members of the Zheng party on its tightly scheduled June swing through the region that included visits to Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, a meal at China Town in Cody, a hop into the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s gift shop and the Firearms Experience.

Zheng, a Ph.D. professor of business at the University of Wyoming, was the tour guide since he is fluent in English. His parents, Longcheng Zheng and Quilian Shi, live in Laramie but don’t speak English, and he translated for cousins Ke Bian and Xi Gai from Xian, the city of 8.7 million people famous for the Terracotta Army statues.

For cowboys and Indians balance, when he was planning the Cody side trip, Zheng said, “I did consider staying in a teepee.”

Buses carrying perhaps 50 tourists making one-night stopovers or lunch-time pauses make up the majority of Chinese tourists to Cody, but more families are flying to large regional cities such as Salt Lake City or Denver, renting cars and touring on their own.

“We are seeing more multi-generational families taking trips that are more experientially based,” said Cody Country Chamber of Commerce executive director Tina Hoebelheinrich.

That means the tourists might fire guns instead of merely gazing out windows at sagebrush.

Those on their own pick up brochures and see what they can see in Cody.

That’s in addition to Yellowstone, the main destination for the region, its status secure as the jewel enticing travelers to the gateway communities.

Increase in Visitors

The triggering event for the influx of more Chinese tourists to the United States and Wyoming was the November 2014 agreement between President Barack Obama and Chinese leadership at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Beijing.

There, the U.S. and China adopted a 10-year, reciprocal visa program for tourists and businesspeople. That elevated China to the first rank of tourism partners alongside European nations, replacing a previous one-year visa travel limitation.

“Now they are getting more visas easily,” said Chris Lam, operator of the Hong Kong Restaurant in Cody for 30 years. In the three years since the agreement, he has seen huge growth in Chinese visitors to Cody.

“Now we get more and more individuals,” Lam said. “Every year it is more and more.”

That is the case all over the U.S. In 2005, there were 270,000 Chinese visitors. In 2013, it was 1.8 million. This year the total is projected to be nearly 3.5 million by Statista.com.

The Communist revolution took control of China in 1949 under Mao Tse-tung who instituted iron-fisted rule until his death in 1976.

For Americans 40 and older, China was mostly the enemy, a looming, dark presence in international affairs.

The man most responsible for China’s evolution to a freer society and its dramatic economic revolution was Deng Xiaoping, who consolidated power in 1978. The economic juggernaut China is today stems from his market reforms.

American writer Orville Schell, 77, who has reported on China since 1970, neatly encapsulated China’s shift from Communism to a more capitalistic society in an aptly named 1984 book called “To Get Rich Is Glorious.”

And glorious it has been for many of China’s 1.4 billion people. The country that makes up 18.5 percent of the world’s population was projected on Business Insider’s website last year to be endowed with a middle class of 550 million people by 2022, dwarfing the entire current U.S. population of 326 million.

Millions of people formerly trapped in a rural existence, with no freedom to travel only a generation ago, now have money to wander and spend lavishly on souvenirs.

Older Chinese with the means sign up for a bus tour and seek the comforting aid of a guide.

A tour guide named Ray, 33, who wrote his last name in a Chinese character, is based in Los Angeles after growing up in China. He was passing through Cody, leading a group of 40 Chinese men and women on a tour of Los Angeles, Arizona, Las Vegas, Utah and Wyoming that included national park stops in Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon.

“Eighty percent of the people are over 50 or 60,” Ray said. “They are older people who don’t speak English.”

China and The Center

In November of 2014, as President Obama was loosening the American visa policy, Bruce Eldredge, executive director and CEO of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, led an eight-person contingent to China to explore future ties. Back in Wyoming, after two weeks in China, Eldredge declared, “China is an opening market.”

In the three years since, the boom in Chinese travel Eldredge foresaw by reading the characters on the Great Wall has come true.

Buffalo Bill Cody traveled more miles than Marco Polo, but he did not bring his Wild West show to China.

Somehow, Cody transported a cast of hundreds of people and hundreds of livestock to far-off lands, but China was too preoccupied with its own affairs to become much enamored of the Old West. Cody spread the word about cowboys and Indians, Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Deadwood Stage throughout Europe.

But it is only much more recently Chinese people, accustomed to hoeing land from dawn to dusk and riding bicycles, acquired free time, automobiles and television sets.

“Independent television is showing 1950s and 1960s westerns,” Eldredge said.

That’s how Zheng’s parents know who John Wayne is.

Even if the Chinese weren’t on the Buffalo Bill bandwagon now, the Center is trying to woo them.

Marketing director Bruce Sauers said he learned on that China journey of 2014, “Everyone knew where Yellowstone was.”

Eldredge and Sauers recognized with that bridge crossed the rest was up to them.

A glossy Chinese travel magazine “Escape” includes a full-page Center ad, duplicating an old Buffalo Bill Wild West poster.

The museum has maps and brochures in Chinese and the gift shop can ship anywhere in the world, Sauers said.

For many years a goods-deprived society, now “the Chinese are the No. 1 spenders in international travel,” he said.

Sauers estimated the Center gets 1,000 Chinese tourists annually, 75 percent arriving by motor coach, representing “a slight increase” each year recently. “It’s just trending up.”

As attendance grows, the Center may hire a Chinese speaker as a summer employee, he said.

The cowboy and Buffalo Bill element is not yet a driving force bringing Chinese to Cody.

“They’re interested in the West, the wide, open spaces,” Eldredge said. “We sure do have a lot of that here.”

True. The population density of Wyoming is six people per square mile. Even though China is the largest country in the world with 3.7 million square miles, its population density is 383 and rapid growth in Chinese cities led to industrial pollution.

Kenneth Zheng’s relatives remarked upon those things.

“For them to come here and see blue sky, they were impressed,” he said. “They also thought, ‘Why are there so few people?’ Wyoming has 500,000 people. That’s like a township in China.”

regional Shift

Cody is not the only place on the outskirts of Yellowstone experiencing this changing tourist demographic.

Many buses to Yellowstone approach the Park from Jackson Hole, especially if they stop in Grand Teton first. Part of the wealthiest county in America, Jackson Hole has more high-end shopping, jewelry stores and art galleries than Cody.

West Yellowstone, Montana, currently has seven Chinese restaurants, a number that has expanded rapidly.

“There are a lot,” said Marysue Costello, executive director of West Yellowstone’s Chamber of Commerce.

Her chamber has a website in Mandarin Chinese. Signs posted in shop windows around town are in Chinese and business is good.

“It has meant hotels and vacation rentals, fairly strong retail, and good business for restaurants,” she said.

West Yellowstone, long known as a snowmobiling hub, has recently fielded inquiries about its snowy season, Costello added.

“We are starting to hear from winter tour groups,” she said. “People are looking for less crowded times.”

Cody competes for hotel stays with Jackson Hole and West Yellowstone and Chinese tour buses generally spend more time, often two nights, in those other communities.

In Cody, it is basically one-and-done, with a bus-load of perhaps 50 Chinese tourists arriving in early evening, chowing down, sleeping, and being on the highway to Yellowstone by 8 a.m.

One main Cody hotel in the China trade is the Holiday Inn.

“We’ve been in the group tour game for a long time,” said operator Quentin Blair of the business.

He said he was tipped to the change on the visa policy and jumped into the China market.

“Three years ago Chinese visitors represented 2 percent of our business,” Blair said. “Two years ago it was 5 percent. Now it is 8 percent. We will probably cap it at 12-to-15 percent.”

Lam, whose Hong Kong restaurant hours are 3 p.m.-midnight, gets customers walking over from the nearby Holiday Inn.

He recommends tour guides extend their visits in Cody to see the museum and attend a rodeo in the Rodeo Capital of the World.

“People want to stay longer in the Park,” Lam said. “But when it’s dark, you go nowhere. I always push them to do other things.”

There is no obvious outpouring of Chinese tourists at the rodeo. However, one night in June half-dozen Chinese men showed up decked out in new cowboys hats and boots, and climbed on Mongo the bull for $10 photo ops.

John Zhang, operator of China Town restaurant with wife Lu Yi, said customers are showing increased interest in the Cowboy Way.

“They want to know where they can buy cowboy boots,” he said. “They like the cowboy style.”

That includes guns and Paul Brock welcomes tourists at the Firearms Experience.

“We have the 10 commandments of safety in Chinese,” Brock said. “Usually, there is one English speaker per family.”

Everything from Winchesters to Glocks are popular.

“It’s all over the map,” Brock said, “but they’ve never held a firearm.”

Zheng said even during military training he hardly ever fired guns and family members never.

“My cousin said, ‘Are those real bullets?'” Zheng said. “They were so surprised they could buy guns in Walmart.”

It was a welcome-to-Wyoming moment.

Information from: The Cody Enterprise

This article was written by Lew Freedman from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].

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naheemc · 7 years

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Y Combinator was a heretic among venture capitalists when it backed its first eight companies in 2005. Co-founder Paul Graham later wrote that his philosophy was that “investors should be making more, smaller investments, they should be funding hackers instead of suits, and they should be willing to fund younger founders.” Heresies piled up from there. Graham, along with his wife and co-founder Jessica Livingston, accepted applications from anyone, not just via personal introductions, as almost all venture capitalists do today. They chose inexperienced college students over startup veterans. The “batches” of startups were given small investments and expected to work wherever they could find near Harvard University, where YC was born. Y Combinator, which has since relocated to California, was virtually ignored at the time. Today, its approach is practically conventional wisdom. The accelerator-turned-venture fund values ranks among the most successful in Silicon Valley. Its mission to mint new startups is copied by hundreds of accelerators around the world. YC says its portfolio is worth about $80 billion 1 with more than 50 companies worth at least $100 million and several above $1 billion, such as Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. But ask YC president Sam Altman if the program has achieved its vision, and the answer is no. That will require one more apostasy: start thousands of new startups without ever coming to Silicon Valley. Altman says he’s trying to prove it’s possible later this year by accepting 10,000 new companies into its new online Startup School. “The original, long-standing goal of YC is that startups are good for the world and individual, and how can we get more of them?” said Altman in an interview in early May. Today, the assumption is that Silicon Valley enjoys an alchemy of talent, ambition, money, and mentality few can replicate (though not for lack of trying). This Silicon Valley terroir, this theory goes, is as unique to startups as Napa’s wine country up the road is for great vintages. Countries and cities struggling to recreate Silicon Valley shouldn’t waste their time. And neither should accelerators that don’t offer funding, exclusivity, or the potential for serendipitous encounters with the powerful and influential players of the Valley. Another school of thought sees this as nonsense. In this theory, we’re accustomed to thinking about startups and entrepreneurialism as magic, but we’re better off seeing it as engineering. Raw talent and startup potential are distributed everywhere in the world. Finding the right way to support them can unlock Silicon Valley-style success. Naval Ravikant, co-founder of AngelList, a platform matching investors with early-stage startups, subscribes to this second view. As technology visits the same turmoil on venture capital it has on other industries, this will become clear. “Venture capitalists like to say there’s only a few good new companies every year. I looked at my physics textbook but couldn’t find that law of nature,” he said. “The idea that innovation is limited to small number of people who gather in Silicon Valley is ludicrous. … The number of startups is only limited by human ingenuity and the market’s ability to absorb them.” Scaling the Y Combinator way For now, YC can only turn out about 200 companies per year through its bi-annual program in Mountain View, California. In technology terms, YC itself has not really scaled. Most of what it does remains analog and manual: mentoring in classrooms, weekly dinners, and a program requiring everyone to live in California for months at a time. So a few years ago, Altman and Graham began plotting ways to expand YC. One of the first attempts was a series of 20 lectures on starting companies, taught by Altman and guest speakers at Stanford in 2014. That was followed by an 8-week fellowship program in 2016 (now discontinued) offering a light-weight version of YC with $12,000 grants and access to advice from the YC community. Although none were breakout hits, the experiments were promising. In April 2017, StartupSchool.org was born. The 10-week massively open online course (MOOC), billed as a free online version of YC, promised to “teach people about how to start a startup, and equip them with the needed resources.” The first cohort was made up of 3,000 companies from 141 countries. Participants are not offered YC’s standard deal of $120,000 for a 7% ownership stake, but are given a chance to “replicate much of the YC experience” through a virtual program with mentors, collaboration with peers, and video lectures, as well as receive discounts on services worth thousands of dollars from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and other companies. YC also encourages the startups to apply to its core program, where they would get financial backing as well. A screenshot from Y Combinator’s software showing active companies in Startup School. (Y Combinator)Now, Startup School will accept about 10,000 companies in early 2018, says Altman, and potentially more after that. The companies use custom-built software to collaborate, pour over their weekly metrics, and attend weekly mentoring sessions with YC alumni (200 volunteered to meet with participants). Lectures by executives and employees from WhatsApp, Stripe, Reddit, Facebook, Khosla Ventures, and Sequoia Capital are taped and broadcast through Stanford’s CS 183F class “Startup School: The First 100 Days.” Mentors hold group sessions with founders on Google Hangouts to hash out problems. VIDEO YC claims Startup School has cracked the code on a new type of educational institution to start companies (only without “runaway costs and declining educational standards” of universities, says Altman). It claims only 20% of participants have dropped out after eight weeks (companies must complete 90% of weekly updates and office hours to stay in the program) compared to a typical attrition rate in MOOCS of 87% (pdf). “I think we’ve stumbled on this free, lightweight online version of YC,” says Altman. “We’ve really been able to replicate a significant fraction of the YC experience.” Sandiep Medisetti, founder of alumni relations startup Almabase in the first cohort, said half the value comes from interacting with peers at their own companies over video and text chat. His mentor, a YC graduate who volunteers several hours per week, has been instrumental in solving customer-relations challenges for Almabase’s 100 or so clients. “A couple of my friends in India are doing startups who are just going clueless and do not know what to do,” he said. If Startup School works, YC wants to grow its model to global proportions. Theoretically, there’s no inherent limit to how many companies can join YC if its core value is collaboration and online advice (the ratio of mentors to startups at the moment is 30:1, although YC plans to increase this). For Avichal Garg, a former director of product management at Facebook, the not-so-secret sauce is YC’s methodology. “There’s a bunch of things that YC got right which are still true,” he said after a Startup School lecture on a sunny afternoon on Stanford’s campus this May. Garg said the handful of principles that YC shares freely online are simple but proven to work—from identifying a clear problem to constant experimentation and reporting weekly results. “Lots of what they are doing is teaching the same thing to people over and over again. That’s the really interesting bit about this,” he said, referencing countless blog posts, videos and slide decks. “The content you can find on the internet. But putting the structure around it to deliver it and create the right incentive structures around it—you get that right and it can scale.” The difference, he argues, is like reading an exercise book versus hiring a personal trainer. Give the whole world a startup Accelerators supply young companies with education, mentorship, and financing for a few months to speed up their growth. But is YC (or any accelerator) the right way to mass-produce more companies? Researchers who study accelerator programs have a tentative answer: it depends. The best accelerators do work, says Susan Cohen, a management professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, but buyer beware. Cohen tracks accelerator performance at Seed Rankings. She found that top firms generally deliver on the promise of speeding up a company’s fundraising and customer growth, but there is a wide range and the lowest performing accelerators can even harm a young company’s growth. Simply adding more zeros behind the number of companies in accelerators will not work. Cohen calls YC’s Startup School “a phenomenal experiment,” but she believes to succeed YC will need to sustain traits she’s seen in all great accelerators. “The best are able to help even the most confident entrepreneurs understand that, while they have a very promising idea, they still have quite a ways to go to fulfill their vision,” she said. “Then, back up that motivation with resources for the entrepreneur to learn what they need to achieve their goals.” If it does fail, she suggested, founders will catch on soon enough. “The market is efficient,” says Cohen. “There’s a sorting: successful [accelerator] programs will survive, and the other programs may not.” The heart of YC’s philosophy is that world has too few people solving fixable problems, a “bottleneck in society,” says Garg. “If you fundamentally believe that, then [Startup School] is exactly the right thing to do. You are empowering a bunch of people to just try and it’ll turn out it’s going to be way easier than they thought it was going to be. And there’ll be more progress.” Most Popular

https://qz.com/987043/y-combinator-will-back-10000-startups-to-prove-theres-nothing-magical-about-silicon-valley/

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whatisonthemoonarchive · 6 years

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Moon's most important speech revisited

The following was a post here over one year ago. It is excerpts from Moon's speech to the members after Nan Sook Hong and his daughter Un Jin appeared on the 60 Minutes show with Mike Wallace. It is rather revealing especially in light of what we now know about Moon's personal life.

http://whatisonthemoon.tumblr.com/post/154863073384/the-most-important-speech-of-sun-myung-moon-the#notes

I will list the excerpts below with my own comments in Parentheses. Enjoy.

Frank F

http://www.tparents.org/UNews/PDF/Unws9810.pdf

Rev. Sun Myung Moon - September 21, 1998 (EXCERPTS)

What does truth mean? Does it change? (No) Do you know truth? (Yes) What is it? (DP) Yes, but the DP itself is a written text, not perfect truth.

Can we find any perfect, righteous person in the world? We judge each other as nice and honest, or cold, but is that right to do?

Those who oppose the UC say it is satanic, with a lot of secrets, that I am the king of thieves and liars. After you have heard that, why do you still follow me?

(Excellent intro Moon. Good bye.)

The truth never changes.

We have five senses, each taking four years to form a perfect four position foundation, equaling twenty years.

What of the person who proclaims himself a great UC leader, and then turns into a great proponent of the position that the UC is a bad place? That person is Satan.

(Fair enough. Why should it take so long for someone to figure out they are being abused. We get it. Now please explain why church doctrine, policy, directives and even the name gets changed periodically?)

Have I ever criticized or blamed anyone? When it was the USA as plaintiff and I as the defendant, who criticized whom? The USA criticized me.

(Oh I can recall a lot of criticism and blame coming from Moon. Even in this speech. If the U.S. government didn't have a case, why did they bring it?)

Communists attacked me, but in the end they said I am innocent. I was imprisoned in the 1950s and the entire government mobilized to dig up crimes they could attribute to me, but they found nothing and I was released innocent.

(You were released but I hesitate to say....innocent.)

In Korea I was labeled a thief of women…Threats and persecution came to me. Men with rifles and bats came at me…the CIA tried to tempt me by sending women agents. Those agents wrote confessions to Father about it later.

(Why would men come after you if the CIA was sending women to tempt you?)

(the) True daughters see that Father cares more for western and oriental women members than them, so they do not like Father. They ask, “How can we call you our father?”

Even as I leave for South America, my children grab me and beg me to stay. I often stop overnight in New York and my children stand by to talk with me, but I cannot even give them ten or twenty minutes.

(Yeah but how much time did you give your lawyers?)

Don’t worry about Nan Sook’s story. I never even spent one hour talking with her. Of course she came to the True Family at 17 and her life has been lonely, miserable and hard. [Note: she was 17 by Korean determination of age; 16 by western] So when she felt a lack of love from True Parents, she developed a bitter feeling. Now the time came that I made the 4.4 Commemoration [this September 8], which means I can embrace my family and enter heaven with them. If I had even spent a few hours with them, this problem would not have occurred.

(Hmmmm. So who's fault is that Father? The members?)

Nan Sook says I cannot be the messiah because I do not love my own family.

(Wrong. She says you cannot be the Messiah because you are an asshole.)

If True Family had stayed in Korea, this wouldn’t have happened. It is partly a result of the culture of extreme privacy and individualism, which is evil.

(I seem to recall that you invested a lot in your own individual privacy. We are still discovering all the secret dirty deals.)

In my life there have been and are many enemies trying to get rid of me. I try to forget and ignore them…If I had to deal with those billions of enemies, it would be endless. All families opposed me. It would take forever.

I had nothing to do with violating law, but I was put in jail.

If Christianity had accepted me at the start, there would have been no divorce.

( Sure Moon. Christianity would change the laws and force your wives to reconcile with you. It's just a huge misunderstanding.)

Why would I need a divorce? I violated no Korean laws, but because women followed me so fervently, their husbands plotted against me. This spread to put me in jail, but I am ashamed of nothing, because I taught those wives to be celibate. Naturally they separated from their husband. The husbands assumed they were in love with me.

(What? You taught these women to be celibate toward their husbands?)

There were many accidents or episodes due to curfew. They would climb over their house walls and our church walls at 4 am, and they would hurt themselves or dogs would bark, and this caused persecution.

(Well according to Chun Hwa Pak, Myung Hee Kim didn't climb over any walls. Her pregnancy probably wasn't an accident either. You got some more explaining to do.)

In those days, women felt as if I were their brother, fiancee, husband and father…They would know where to meet me.

(Huh?!)

Usually it was the males opposing…So persecution started because of women. I was threatened at gun-point, beaten. Because I had to restore women from Satan’s side, women of all ages. I came to restore the women’s side first, so that they would serve as a bridge. So women love Father. This is a worldwide phenomenon.

(Wait.....Pikerun is a worldwide phenomenon?)

As long as there is a feeling of enemy, it is impossible for God to see the ideal. So He teaches, love your enemy…So many enemies passed away and I forget their names. I forget forever, and only love remains.

(Uh huh. You loved your enemies to death.)

If it can be said of anyone, it can be said of me that I live my life for others.

(Well yeah, I suppose you could include the KCIA and the CIA in there.)

The opposition is perishing, one by one. Research shows this. 80 percent of opposers have perished or subsided.

(Oh we hope you aren't talking about your own family members here.)

The True Family is the center. It is the starting and returning point of every kingship.

There are people who are working against my family and me for a selfish purpose, despite the sacrifice of myself and my family for America.

We should challenge those who speak unrighteously against my family…Do not pray that they will perish; rather, have parental hearts. If your son were about to be executed for murder, you would wish there were no such law as the death penalty.

why is there trouble in my family and was there more than one woman involved?

(Oh Yes Moon, you obviously have a lot more on your mind than Nan Sook. Let's hear it all.)

God advocates absolute sex…True Parents only can fix it. The restored Adam came in the place of God, so when True Parents play the role of God practicing absolute sex, think of the cross they need to carry. God has trained them in the spirit of true love. So why was there a divorce? I was trained to control myself even with the most beautiful woman tempting me in bed, even if about to make love, I can turn around and cut it off.

(God advocates absolute sex and you are cutting it off. Which is it Moon?)

Women destroyed Adam’s family, Jesus’ family, and now are trying to destroy my family, the family of the Lord of the Second Advent. What shall I do? It is the course of the cross. True Parents are the only ones in history to make the road carrying the cross of love. Even after 1960, my first wife still loved me. I may have set the world’s record at dealing with attempted seductions.

(Whoa, slow down big boy. Were these attempted seductions providential by any chance?)

Crazy things happened. I had to put four locks on my bedroom door. A woman once tore down the door. A woman came in naked and took my blanket and said, please save me. Then, when I said no, she said, it takes only five minutes; aren’t you a man? I said, I am impotent. She tried to make it work, but I made it not work. This woman was the daughter of a tycoon, very influential. I knew that I would be putting God’s love organ into a trashcan. So I couldn’t do it.

(This appears to be a direct reference to Sammy Pak's Mother. Evidently, God's own love organ not only spent time in the trash can but produced a child there. A child of God. A lot of good it did to barricade yourself in your bedroom Moon.)

I had the responsibility to continue the true love lineage even at the cost of divorce. As with Jacob and like Muslims today, there were different stages of wives. For Jacob to have 12 sons, he had two wives and two concubines. In the restoration history through Jacob’s course, the lineage went through the second wife, the concubine. It is my responsibility to accomplish the true love lineage. This is the course of the love cross, for the sake of women.

(The love cross. It doesn't have the same ring as Golgotha. What comes first the True Love Lineage or the Concubines?)

Women killed Adam and Jesus, and are ready to kill the Lord of the Second Advent. Because of this chaos created by women, my family was destroyed and I married a second time.

(Poor Moon. So misunderstood and so betrayed by so many women. But what the heck does that have to do with Adam and Jesus?)

Korea was divided and the world suffered. Eight years elapsed before I could choose a teenage girl as my wife…The entire spirit world was against me, preventing me from going back the original way. At one point I spent 43 days fighting the entire spirit world. All the creation was against me as well. Finally God approved and the entire spirit world bowed down…Finally the Cain and Abel worlds connected and made the foundation to choose a bride.

(Uhhh.....are you suggesting that the world objected to you choosing a teenager for a bride?)

you may not believe what I’ve said today, but God is using True Parents to create pure love and true families. At Madison Square Garden I blessed Sung Jin Nim’s mother and grandmother.

(That must be some consolation for the suffering they endured. Was there any financial consideration involved?)

Dozens of women offered themselves as candidates to be True Mother. They are still waiting for me to hold their hand or kiss them, but I never will. They know me as cold as a rock or tree stump, a man with no feelings. But if I ask them for their honest answer as to whether I should love them…they cry tears, bow down and say that what I am doing is right, and that is why they like me. There are many like that.

(Yes Moon. They represent your most ardent supporters and probably the most exploited.)

Please remember that there are millions of opponents of the Unification Church…Concerning the secular world, say, “I don’t care!”

(There are even more that don't care about the Unification Church)

I don’t care about the media. So send me to South America with a comfortable heart, by reassuring me that you will be strong to deal with this media…

(Why are you running off to South America? Oh well.....)

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