#watched too many documentaries on how many not good chemicals they put in everything

[dyad-tmesis]

Question...

Would you let a Victorian into your home? There is a follow up question if so.

Yeah, seeing them be in awe of modern appliances would amuse me.

….they’d possibly clutch their pearls if they saw my batim collection and some paintings I have in my room tho-

If it were me being let into a Victorian persons home? Mmmmmmmnope, curiosity would absolutely push me in there but I wouldn’t stick around for too long. While I love Victorian era interior design and such I’d prefer not to be exposed to lead, mercury, and arsenic.

[halfelven]

if this read more doesn’t work i swear to fucking god…

anyway don’t read this it’s stream of consciousness that went places i didn’t expect and it’s sad even though i say it’s funny at the top

homophobia and abuse and csa and lots of awful things warning

a funny thing about my mother is that she’s all oh you have to marry a man! and oh that’s not what is Intended. actually. correction. i have to marry a man if i want a family. (i do.) however she was always telling me to never marry and just focus on my career. in that old fashioned sort of well maybe you’re gay but just don’t act on it way.

but even more so in a you won’t be happy just being a housewife way. (i wouldn’t) which is interesting since she is very smart and was a stay at home mother (and homeschool teacher) (to a genius child) (maybe that made her more fulfilled) (i’m not saying that’s me i’m talking about my little brother. he was off the charts in mathematics. he died when he was only 8 and he was already doing advanced mathematics in his head. was obsessed with prime numbers. he was probably smarter than me though that’s hard to judge because we had slightly different strengths. he was better with mathematics. and i’m very good at mathematics.

(i miss him every day. i don’t like to say this out loud but it’s so hard to find people to have conversations with that span multiple subjects and draw conclusions from combining different fields. we were locked up in a house together but we had access to someone’s old the great lectures or something on VHS. so we’d watch those together. watched a million documentaries on PBS. read a million books. discussed it for hours.

(and oh that reminds me of how i still have a certain nostalgia for my childhood. we had a wood stove—cheaper than using oil during the coldest days—and we’d sit by the fire and read poetry and play chess and parcheesi and scrabble and put on skits and do improv and have hours long discussions or arguments about everything we’d read and recite poetry by candlelight and read through shakespeare’s complete works, each playing so many characters and every night even through high school our mother would read us a story and we’d draw or paint and she did the voices even when she moved from picture books to austen and dickens.

(and i can see why she said she thought we had a happy childhood. in another life where we had enough food and met with other friends and my father didn’t torture us and my brother didn’t die. it could have been summers of berry picking and watching the fireflies without the hideous weight of that man’s anger upon us. i could be doubly sick with longing for the winter days where we just read and played and didn’t long for an ending to this pain. and where me and my sister didn’t make up stories of girls being brutally tortured and murdered and raped. (in varying orders) at an age most children don’t know about sex.

(my mother doesn’t know that. he had her leave the room after the bible portion of our daily devotions. to make breakfast. she made porridge and he told us how women deserved to be raped just for existing. he also was a socialist. he was a pacifist. he voted republican because he was a single issue anti abortion voter. he believed that gay people should be killed for it. he said the world was ending and he stole my youth. but anyway. my mother didn’t know.

(i draw a goddamn diagram of my mother’s life to try to get people to understand. lived in a tiny little isolated village until she was 19. met him when she had dropped out of college because she wouldn’t be fulfilled working as a chemical output inspector. the ones who make sure companies aren’t lying and dumping pollutants. it was too boring. he was 39 and she was 19 and searching for meaning in life. they were married at 20 and 40. twice her age. convinced her the world was ending. hid the worst parts of him because he knew she wouldn’t accept it. still abused her. made it all about your immortal soul. it was a doomsday cult. he was a pedophile. there was never a time i was free.)

which is to say everything in my life is complicated and i was just trying to say something funny about my mother. that she has that oh but can’t you just pretend you aren’t kind of homophobia. she also doesn’t really watch movies since she falls asleep. BUT she knows which of my favourites have beautiful women in them and she comes running to see just that part. “tell me when arwen comes on” then she just stands and watches arwen til she’s gone and says she’s so beautiful and leaves. hmm. want to think about that, äiti?

[aclosetfan]

For the Salty asks: 1, 3, 5 and 6?

Thanks so much for playing along! Ima be real with you 2 out of the 4 questions you asked really opened up a can of worms for me, and I’m so sorry. I put the less stressful ones first, and the other two are under the cut! Anyway, these were super fun to answer, but plz don’t hate me for it!! 😂😂

for anyone wondering, here’s the ask list: Salty Asks List 

3. Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?

lmao yeah. It’s petty, but honestly, people’s personal morals really bleed through into their fandom opinions, and I’m not willing to put up with any unnecessary hate, especially in environments that are supposed to be fun. I’ve even blocked a few people. In the ppg fandom specifically, I’ve blocked a person who, I guess, thought it was necessary to try to gate-keep with racist/sexist/etc. terminology and ideologies, and I truly don’t have time for that 🤷‍♀️ (a lot of people probs know who I’m vaguing, but if you don’t, you’re lucky)

I can’t say I’ve ever unfollowed anyone for any innocent/not-in-conflict-with-my-morals fandom opinions. Usually, if I don’t agree with something, I just keep scrolling because lol whatever. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.

but ngl I have unfollowed people who just get annoying 😬😬 lol

6. Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?*

I went into this fandom without having too many preferences, so I didn’t have a pairing that I’ve previously hated!

I guess I could say that while I never really hated them, the color-mixing and color-clashing ships weren’t ever on my radar until I came across the fandom content. Now, I really like them! Particularly, Brick and Bubbles!

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?*

Before anyone gets pissed off at me, before you get into my answer for this question, I’d like to really stress that you’ve got to go into it with absolutely zero fanon context. Like, erase all your headcanons from your mind. I’m dead serious. Because I literally DO NOT get why ANY rrbxppg ship would realistically work ever.

Okay, canonically, these six little funky science experiments were dead set on ending each other. The boys were absolutely horrible to the girls. And the girls literally KILL the boys. I know in fairytale romances, nothing stops love, but bruh, it’s hard to come back from murder 😂 And yeah, I know Clipsville showed the girls and the boys together as older teenagers, and they weren’t trying to kill each other, but that was an obvious gag. In the documentary, it was revealed that that particular “clip” was made because a bunch of people wanted the boys and girls to interact again, and CN gave into the demand. (also, lol I know it super embarrassing, but I did watch the documentary. I just really like Craig McCracken) I just don’t think that realistically a canon pairing between the two sets of triplets would ever be considered a healthy relationship. 

Also, ethically, I just—okay listen, I go back and forth with this allllll the time, but the ppgxrrb ships make me confront the “Would I sleep with my clone?” question way too often. Depending on my self-esteem, the answer changes each time. Like sometimes I’m like fuck yeah I would! Other times I’m like, ew, no, I’d have to consider my clone as a twin! I know counterparts aren’t technically clones, BUT the boys really do come across as identical to the girls in the show. The only difference really is their moral alignment (I’m nixing any gender argument). So, I’m like, omg, can I honestly pair these six together in any way??? Are they too close to each other genetically in some sense for this to be morally right??? Like if you ship Brick and Buttercup together, would that just essentially be shipping Brick and Butch/Blossom and Buttercup together in some messed up way??? Is Brick just Blossom, and Blossom just Brick?? Is it better just to ship color-matching instead of mixing???  

On top of all of that, wouldn’t the boys and girls be pseudo cousins since Mojo was the Professor’s lab monkey? Technically, in canon, Mojo ends up being both sets of triplets “creator,” so could the rrb and the ppg be considered siblings of some sort? Some of you are probably like, wow, calm down. Stop thinking about it. They’re science experiments. It’s not so deep. Which I get, but I can’t stop, so let me hit you with something ten times worse: should the girls (or the boys) actually be considered biological siblings? Does sugar, spice, and everything nice make you genetically related? Nothing put in the stirring pot was organic—just a bunch of chemicals. If you ship the boys and girls together this could be a good thing! BUT, but, could some sick fuck use this information to somehow justify shipping siblings (ppgxppg or rrbxrrb) together??? This is a literal nightmare to think about!!

All in all, I can’t think about these pairings too much without getting caught up in the logistics of their existence even if they’re fictional lmaoooo! If it wasn’t for the fandom, I wouldn’t ship them together at all. I just think it’s amazing that the ships took off like they did lol, because their literal (fictional) existence is just one giant mind fuck for me. Anyway, I ship them at the end of the day, but tbh I do it with a bit of a guilty conscience. Is it morally correct to ship clone-like counterparts? Or should counterparts be treated like twins? Does it even fucking matter at the end of the day, it’s just fiction? I don’t know the right answer. But I do know the pairings don’t make sense. 

Aside from the ppgxrrb, I don’t think there are many other BIG fandom wide pairings. Still, I just want to say that I don’t get why people ship Ace and Buttercup together. The pairing sounds off a few major alarms in my head for obvious reasons. There’s also a bunch of crack ships that involve crossovers with other cartoons. Generally, I don’t mind them, but it seems popular to ship Aku (from Samurai Jack) and Blossom together. And I’m real sorry to those devoted shippers, but again I do NOT get it. I see a lot of romantic fan art depicting romantic situations with Blossom still drawn as a child, and like I get Aku is an immortal demon, so “age is just a number,” but again, BIG ALARMS go off in my head.

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?*

🙃 🙃 Kind of don’t want to answer this, but I will anyway because only a few people actually read my blog lolol, so lol, yep! And it’s the reds. Don’t shoot me lol. When I was in middle school, I got into this fandom, forgot about it, and then came back when I was hit by a round of nostalgia. I’m finishing up college now, and I can confidentially say that the fanon content for the reds hasn’t changed one bit. Or the demand for it.

I tended to find that a lot of red content follows many archetypes that I’m just not into. Their stories can get a real cringey, real fast. Blossom is always written like this “perfect, except she’s not (but she really is)” character. Like she’s the girl you WISH you could be, but she’s also going through a shit ton of stuff that no person IRL would be able to handle without having a mental breakdown. And sometimes, in some stories, Blossom does have a mental breakdown, but in a sexy way, so she’s still perfect. Generally, there’s still something problematic about Blossom that makes it easy for a reader to relate to her on some level, unlike the way people write Bubbles. And then there’s Brick, who’s broody, hyper-possessive or jealous, and hot figuratively and literally (gotta love the fire/ice trope). He’s the only boy—no! Wait!—the only person who could ever possibly outwit Blossom, and he is just so undeniably attracted to Blossom. They’re the smart power couple that should honestly just hook-up in Chapter One to save everybody time, but they don’t. Nah, they’ve got to survive at least two love triangles before they even consider admitting they’re attracted to each other.  

And don’t get me wrong, none of that’s bad, but there are a million fanfics that go through the same song and dance with these two. And it’s kind of easy to tell when someone’s hardcore projecting onto Blossom because the type of person they’re personally attracted to is the way they write Brick. And I’m not knocking anyone self-projecting onto characters, sometimes people got to do that to give themselves a fun mental break, but bro, I don’t want to read about it. For one, smart broody assholes aren’t my type. Maybe when I was in middle school, but not anymore. And two, it’s just not interesting to me, which is a real shame since the reds are a majority of the fanon content.

Maybe if I found more red stories where the plot isn’t character-driven but plot-driven, so I see the romance between these two characters in a context where it’s not the main focus of the story, it would solve my issue with the pairing. I haven’t found many fics like that, though.

I can’t really think of any reds fic where I’m like ey, this aint bad unless it has a “major character death” tag attached to it lmao (which are always plot driven stories). However, in all honesty, since I’ve stayed away from red content for a while now, I don’t know the current state of things. Maybe there’s been a load more development for these two, or people have broken away from the same plotlines, but I’m too busy to check. I do browse people’s fic rec lists from time to time, but it sort of feels like everyone just puts the same fics on their lists and moves on.

And before someone’s like, “well, you can say all this about the greens or the blues,” just know I’m fully aware. The greens make me cringe too because there’s a shit ton of possessive and abusive storylines filling their story tags. And what makes me super uncomfortable is how people make Buttercup hit Butch or call him derogatory names, oftentimes unprompted. I don’t know why people make Buttercup such an unlikeable and overly aggressive person. I also don’t get why they make Butch some perverted idiot, but to each their own, I guess? Still, I see these green-character patterns most often in red-focused stories, which is another reason why I avoid them. I’ve found a lot of green-focused content that strays from the abusive tropes I try to avoid. Considerably less than I’d like, but the greens are typically the b-plot pairing, so that’s to be expected. Personally, I’d really like to see more content with the greens finding some kind of inner peace, and recently, I’ve seen a few fics that have tried to tackle this concept.

And lol, if you’ve read some of my posts before, you already know that I think the blues are an underdeveloped fanon pairing. The fandom can’t ruin that pairing for me because it never does anything substantial with it.  

Anyway, at the end of the day, I’m just personally not into the way the reds are popularly written, but I get why people are and that’s good with me. 

[theunderdogwrites]

Headcheese Adjacent

To know me is to know my taste in music runs the full spectrum, minus country music and death metal. And anything Mariah Carey sings. Not dissing her talent, just her. Sometimes I will succumb to disposable music. Its music that’s popular for a little while, but then later discarded. Think the opposite of tunes like AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’. A song that has passed the test of time. Disposable music feels overly processed and is ultimately not good for you, but acceptable in small doses.

For example: Mariah Carey is like microwave popcorn. There’s nothing wrong with popcorn and there’s nothing wrong with microwaving food. The problem is the bag itself. Perfluoroalkyls are just one class of chemical found in microwave popcorn bags. Some studies have linked perfluoroalkyls with health problems as diverse as impaired kidney function and poor semen quality. Mariah Carey is the bag.

Ok, I really just wanted to find a way to compare Mariah Carey to a bag of microwave popcorn.

I will just assume you understand what I mean when I say disposable music.

Britney Spears. Not sure how this is going to sound, but I was never a fan of hers UNTIL she shaved her head and attacked people with an umbrella. I’m also a fan of when mistreated elephants in captivity snap and trample their oppressors. Something about a caged animal finally fighting back… really resonates with me. I’m sure one day my future therapist will have a blast unpacking that last sentence, but until then let’s focus.

I recently watched the documentary “Framing Britney Spears”. Here is a quick synopsis from IMDB:

“Her rise was a global phenomenon. Her downfall was a cruel national sport. People close to Britney Spears and lawyers tied to her conservatorship now reassess her career as she battles her father in court over who should control her life.”

I’m not going to talk about the documentary too much, but it appropriately chronicles her rise to fame and gives you an idea of what happens to these young performers when they become held captive by the very thing and the very people who made them famous in the first place. I found parts of it almost… sad and other parts suffocating. If you’re able to find it, give it a watch. Some of the people who have dedicated a great deal of their time to this ‘Free Britney’ movement are obnoxious, but their intentions don’t feel misplaced. Britney Spears had nothing to do with documentary but has acknowledged it and approved.

Now, I know some people take the stance of – “Oh poor you, you’re famous with lots of money and adoring fans and if you choose that life you deserve no privacy and no sympathy when people pester you for pictures and autographs. That is life in the public eye”. Well, I somewhat disagree. And I disagree because whether it be acting or singing or whatever, it’s only a J-O-B.

Imagine you’re an accountant and suddenly it becomes the least boring profession in the world. Every time you leave your house there are throngs of people scurrying to catch a glimpse of you in all your glory while you’re just going to the pharmacy to get that rash cream prescription refilled. Not only that, they get up in your face… crowding you, snapping 100’s of photos at close range hoping to get a cringe worthy picture to sell to the tabloids, pulling at your sweater vest and screaming “do me and then do my taxes!”. Doesn’t that sound awesome?

I don’t believe anyone is sitting at home at this very moment and wishing they had the life of Britney Spears.

One of the best moments in that documentary (and something I didn’t even know had happened because I don’t pay much attention to her career) is when she was supposed to announce her next residency in Vegas. It was a live streaming event in Vegas with loads of crazed people in attendance where she was to come out, perform a little on stage and then talk.  She came out. Walked down the steps to the stage and kept walking. She walked right past everyone without a word and disappeared. People were pissed. I laughed and cheered.

She then made a post stating that until her Father was removed as her conservator, she would no longer be working in any capacity. Full stop. A total walkout and strike.

If you’re not familiar with the situation with her Dad… the long and the short of it is – when her mental health became compromised due to MANY factors, he took over control of her life. Her career, her money… everything. And at that time, it was seriously the best thing for her. But now at 38 with two teenage sons, she wants her freedom. Her Father is insisting that he continues to manage her life because she is not capable of making healthy decisions for herself and fears the vultures are always waiting to pounce and take advantage of his daughter.

Honestly, I don’t have an opinion regarding her conservatorship. None of us should. We can sympathize / empathize but we don’t have any actual idea of what is really taking place behind closed doors. As a fellow human being just trying to make it to the end of toilet roll with all my marbles intact, I hope she is ok.

Does the world owe Britney an apology?

This question came to me after watching the documentary and hearing about how Justin Timberlake was called out to say sorry to her for weaponizing their break-up to his advantage; as well as Diane Sawyer and a number of others for their various questions, comments and jokes they’ve made at her expense over the years.

Funny thing about apologies… sometimes they don’t mean shit. Sometimes, without appropriate action, they’re just words people say to make themselves feel better about being instinctively terrible. Going on an apology tour for something you did a decade ago just seems inauthentic. Acknowledging your past mistakes and making concentrated efforts not to repeat poor behavior feels more appropriate. It’s called growth. It’s one thing to say your sorry to someone you feel you’ve wronged, it’s another to be pulled out and placed on display by the media and publicly forced to reconcile previous atrocities of character. For one thing, the media is hardly the yard stick for good morals. And the public… well if Twitter has taught us anything, it’s that everyone needs an enema of their soul. And it wouldn’t hurt if some people got their mouths washed out with soap for being callous little trolls looking for attention.

I write this to you as someone who has been both apologized to and done the apologizing. I fancy neither of these options. While it may be nice having someone tell you they’re sorry for something they did that didn’t exactly give you the feels, I struggle with the authenticity. That’s a me problem. I don’t scoff at any delivered apologies, but rather squirm, accept and want to move forward. I’ll tell you what is better than saying sorry to me – scotch. The silent peacemaker.

I don’t feel the world owes Britney Spears an apology in the same way I feel beets do NOT belong on a burger. Some will agree with me and some will argue that I’m wrong. Look, that documentary puts into focus how terribly she was treated by a wide range of people across the globe on multiple platforms. And the bottom line is – she’s not the first and won’t be the last. People love to see others fall and that is just the truth and people love to take cheap shots at them on the way down. Should they say sorry for being shitty humans? Nope. But they should not pretend they’re nothing more than headcheese adjacent. No one will be saying sorry today because WE DON’T LEARN. Maybe next decade?

The first time I had a burger with beets was when I lived in Australia. I asked the waiter why they put beetroot on a burger and he replied – “I don’t know… because it sounds good?”. Well so do apologies, but in reality, sometimes they just don’t taste right in our mouths.

[itsclydebitches]

This may be a serious question, but do you think it's possible to truly be 100% ethical living in a first world country? Tons of chocolate and bananas are made using slaves and child labor. Who knows how many devices we use daily use conflict minerals. Media gets our attention to these issues (like Amazon fires), but most can't do anything and still go about our lives as normal. Should we feel guilty or just be happy we weren't born in those poor circumstances?

This ask made me immediately think of The Good Place’s (SPOILERS) latest thesis, namely that truly ethical living is impossible when you’re just one small cog in the machine. A man buys flowers for his mom. What a nice gesture! Surely that has earned him Good Person points. Except that the flowers were harvested by slave labor, transported by corrupt corporations, doused in chemicals to preserve them… the good behind giving the flowers as a gift doesn’t come close to outweighing—or even equaling—the bad ripple-effect produced by buying the flowers in the first place. 

This is, sadly, the world we live in so no, I don’t think it’s possible to live a life where every choice you make has nothing but good effects attached to it. The ripples are too complex and, for the most part, too hidden. As you say, anon, we still need to live our lives. If you become so caught up in doing everything “perfectly” then you’ll end up paralyzed because I personally don’t think that perfection exists. Everything from buying a food to watching a show has the potential (and even the likelihood) to hurt someone else some way down the line, and often you don’t even realize it. 

Two things to keep in mind though: 1. The blame for certain world problems does not rest equally on every individual and 2. We should still combat ignorance because that can help in the long run. 

An example for point #1: the recent ‘ban plastic straws’ movement. We’re hardwired with a need for action, to feel like we’re doing something to fix a perceived problem, but sometimes that leads to us getting caught up in a “solution” because it’s easy and straight-forward, not because it actually makes a difference. That’s what we have here. Individual people using straws in their drinks are not the cause of our plastic problem; huge corporations producing and dumping unimaginable amounts of non-biodegradable plastics are. Will getting everyone to stop using straws help? Sure, but it’s the kind of help equivalent to a person getting water out of a sinking boat by using a spoon. The person on the other end using a galleon bucket to dump water back into the boat is the real problem and the spoon guy’s efforts are next to useless while bucket guy continues on as he is. Major changes need to be made on his end, not spoon guy’s. 

Just as important, banning straws has a huge repercussion: many disabled people need plastic straws in order to drink easily and safely. Banning them has a very large, negative impact on our community and a very small, positive impact on the problem we’re trying to fix. The danger of such “solutions” is that they’re not real solutions at all, but they feel like one. Doing something like banning plastic straws puts people and corporations into the position of going, “Yay! I did my part. Guess I’m done now” and wiping their hands of the situation, when in reality little—if anything—has been solved and they’ve actually created a new problem for a minority group. So when we think about such ripple effects we need to keep in mind that while individual changes may help to a certain degree and while they certainly make us feel better… they’re not the root problem. We can’t go blaming people for eating a banana when their lack of a purchase—I’m boycotting bananas. Look at the difference I’ve made—isn’t going to change the underlying system. Boycotting can certainly work for some things, but not all. And even if you do boycott—I’m going to eat apples instead of bananas—you’ll probably find that you’re now supporting another problem entirely. Oh. I’ve avoided the child labor but now I just supported a corporation that still treats its employees like shit. Apples aren’t safe either. Few (if any) things are. 

So what in the world do we do?? Point #2: which is where your documentary example comes in, anon. No, watching that probably won’t lead to direct action from you, but by educating yourself you’re setting up your own, more positive ripple effect. Maybe I watch a documentary about a Problem I didn’t know was a Problem before. But now I do. So I tell my friends about it. They watch too. I assign it in a class. I post to my followers. Everyone else is doing the same, spreading information where before there was ignorance. Now yes, most people are going to go on with their lives, making no true changes thanks to the documentary, but they passed the information on, setting up the possibility that a few—a minuscule, but very significant few out of the whole—might be in a position to make a difference. The millionaire who decides to donate. The scientist who thinks, “Hey, I could invent a Thing to help deal with that Problem.” Perhaps more importantly, spreading information helps the decision making process, which in turn impacts the shape of those who can make true change: the government. I, personally, may not be able to do much to solve the Problem, but by watching the documentary I’m now a) informed that it IS a problem and b) have some sense of how structures need to change in order to combat it. A year later I’m researching candidates and encounter one in support of fixing this issue. So I vote for them. And (hopefully) the thousands of other people who saw the documentary—as well as the thousands of other pieces of media we share and comment on—will vote for them too. The information keeps spreading, the information is passed down to kids… change takes time, but it needs to start with something as simple as, “Hey. How about you watch this thing that contains a perspective you never considered before?” To dumb down a very complex example: we can’t solve climate change so long as this many people, particularly people in power, believe that climate change doesn’t even exist. 

Ultimately it comes down to a balancing act: determining what good you want to do while acknowledging that, yes, something else bad will probably happen along the way. Maybe someone wants to support a film because it has a trans director, but the trade-off is supporting a corporation you detest. Maybe someone wants to switch to soy for health and environmental reasons, but the trade-off is hurting the farmers that depend on milk sales. Maybe someone makes an ignorant choice, like boycotting honey because they believe it hurts the bees, so education has to come into play. No, it doesn’t hurt them and beekeepers are now necessary to the health of the colonies, which in turn effects bee numbers, which effects pollination, which impacts literally all the flora and fauna around us. Everything is interconnected. All you can really do is be vocal, combat ignorance, vote for/demand change at the structural level, and try to choose day-to-day changes that do more good than harm. Maybe you’re a small store owner who says nah, we’re going to keep our straws because you’re donating to organizations working to help corporations establish better recyclable materials. And you’re passing on this education wherever you can. And you’re being vocal as a consumer about what changes you want to see. And, and, and. You’re still living your life with all those downsides—buying the chocolate, eating the banana, watching that Bad movie—but you have to. That’s life. Other choices though? Times when there are choices? You can work to make a difference there. 

[idonthaveanaccent]

Just a little rambling and then a few bands I really like and you should totally check out, so expand it if you wanna see them :)

I know this isn’t a normal update, I just have to talk about this with someone.

Music is a vital part of everyday life for me. Everything I do has a backtrack. If I’m not watching a show in my room, I have to have music playing. When I write I have headphones in, blasting music, like right now. To go to sleep and sleep easily I have to play music, ever since I was young I’ve done it. I can’t remember not falling asleep without music playing. Music even helps inspire what I write. 

Point is, I love music. 

However, I am extremely uncomfortable with sharing my music. My freshman year I was made fun of the type of music I listen to, which has evolved a bit in the 3-4 years since that time, however it hasn’t ventured too far. 

When I was eleven my parents gave me a windows phone with no sim card, but it had a music app. They downloaded a bunch of child friendly songs and it was the first time I could control what I listened to. Before I had an old MP3 which was filled with Disney songs, Anamaniacs tunes, and ABBA’s Golden Hits. I can sing all them by heart, dances are a fun time for me. Now, I could look up songs. 

My best friend was into the alternative scene as her sister is six years older than us and as such had a more ‘adult’ music sense. She introduced me to the classic bands, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! At the Disco, etc. I loved their music, we’d listen to it on the bus to middle school. However, as time went on, I began expanding my music taste. I got into My Three Days Grace, Shinedown, and other similar bands. Then, Freshman year came.

I remember the moment clear as day. I was working on my photography notebook the week before finals like the dumbass I was am, with Pandora open and listening to one of the many radios. Then, a song came on. It was by a band I hadn’t heard of before. It was called Bad Company, and the band was called Five Finger Death Punch. Now, little fourteen year old me was a little shocked by the name but the song wasn’t unlike anything I’d heard before. I decided I liked that song and favorited it.

A little while later more of their songs began popping up, but they were a little different. Heavier. Angrier. And I loved it. I don’t know what it was about the gruff vocals or pounding drum beats or glorious guitar solos, but I was hooked. I then moved onto Spotify and listened to their albums, headbanging all the way. This was my first experience with Metal, and you better believe I was a fan.

As time went on I explored more bands. Alesana, Asking Alexandria, Crown the Empire, A Day to Remember, Halestorm, Ghost, etc. I tried showing people my favorite bands but they made fun of my music taste, mimicking their screams whenever I looked up. It was disheartening, and I never wanted to share it again. Not until I knew they were okay with it. I had people tell me they were scared of that music, and asked me to never play it in front of them. You can see how that would make me never want to tell anyone about it, right? Well, I kept it to myself, electing to share music with only a few people, one being my friend. She always jokes about how she showed me Fall Out Boy and all them and then lost me along the way. 

During Junior year I discovered even more bands, including one of my favorites, Ice Nine Kills. Amazing band, you should definitely check them out, but the advertising comes later. My music taste also diversified a little and I began listening to softer bands, like grandson and The Ghost Club. 

Now, to the main show. My recent music taste.

It all began with one Instagram video. A meme video that really isn’t all that funny. I was actually just looking through what I saved and it happened to be in a  really small folder, so I clicked it. Here is the exact video

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by positive memes (@positive_and_negative_memes) on Feb 23, 2019 at 6:14pm PST

So I was interested the song and band and decided to look them up. What I found was simply...amazing.

Okay, here comes the advertising of my favorite bands :)

I. Gloryhammer

The first Power Metal band I discovered and still my favorite. Here’s how Gloryhammer describes themselves:

“And lo, Planet Earth had been destroyed by the Hootsman, with an explosion so powerful it ripped a hole in the very fabric of spacetime. And yet, Zargothrax was still not defeated, for he managed to use his last shreds of power to escape through the dimensional rift. Vowing to defeat the evil sorcerer, Angus McFife XIII followed him into the portal, with no idea where it might lead…“

That may seem confusing, and it is, but trust me, when I tell you a bit more, it will all make sense. 

So Gloryhammer is one of the best bands I have ever heard before. Their concept is absolute gold and is the only of its kind I’ve seen before. Basically, every single one of their songs tells a story of the Land of Fife. The Lead singer (Thomas Winkler) is Prince Angus McFife (the 1st and 13th), keyboard/backing vocals (Christopher Bowes) is the Evil Sorcerer Zargothrax, guitar/backing vocals (Paul Templing) is Sir Proletiues, leader of the warriors of Crail, drums (Ben Turk) is the Ancient Hermit Ralathor, and last but never least is bass/backing vocals (James Cartwright), the Mighty Hootsman! 

Each album follows a part in the epic saga, with three in total. The first album tells the story of the original Angus McFife the I whereas the next two follow his ancestor, Anguc McFife XIII. I don't want to give too much spoilers but let's just say that all three are filled with so much creativity and twists that it’s like listening to a movie! I cant even express how if you are looking for something to listen to that has dragons, goblin kings, evil sorcerers, hammers, and space, then this is the band for you! 

I am going to put one song by them down because you can only have five and I’m big mad about it.

Gloryhammer - Legends from Beyond the Galactic Terrorvortex

So yeah, that’s band numero uno!

II. Sabaton

What is there to say about Sabaton that hasn’t already been said... 

Unlike Gloryhammer, Sabaton is older, formed in the nineties. Here’s what they say about themselves on their website:

“In the nearly two decades since their launch, Swedish metallers Sabaton have carved out a reputation as one of the hardest working bands in the business – gaining a legion of loyal fans across the globe, delivering eight highly-rated studio albums (including two certified platinum-sellers), and scoring multiple industry award wins and nominations… not to mention launching their own annual festival and cruise.

Combining soaring power riffs with vocalist Joakim Brodén’s instantly-recognisable gruff baritone, the band refuses to be simply slotted into a genre. Fans need only know them as Sabaton: the heavy metal band that sings of real life wars and the people who played a part in them – of gruelling campaigns and dazzling acts of bravery, of magnificent victories and touching personal struggles – true stories more fantastic than any fiction,”

Sabaton is, as they stated, a band dedicated to sharing stories of true battles throughout history. On their website they even have a whole calendar dedicated to historic events, so you can see what happened in history on whatever day you’d like! 

As a huge history geek, this band is amazing. I would watch the World War documentary series before I went to bed in middle school because I thought all of that stuff was so interesting. If I didn’t love writing and English as much as I do then I’d go into a career where history was involved. They were actually a part of my Spotify Wrapped this year where I explored 27 of their songs, listened to six of their albums, and spent over 39 hours listening to just them this year. 

Unlike what I did before, I am just going to showcase three of my favorite songs by them because they have way too many albums and I’m sad to say I didn’t listen to all of them. 

The Lost Battalion - The Last Stand

Now, onto the third band and a good one too!

III. Powerwolf

I’m not a religious person, I grew up being taught all that stuff but I consider myself to be more agnostic rather than Christian or any of that stuff. But, if there’s one religious thing I don’t mind bumping its the Priests of Metal, Powerwolf! Here's what they have to say about themselves:

“After spilling gallons of blood and fighting tirelessly, after only two albums with Napalm Powerwolf shot straight to the pole position of the official German album charts (and another album made it into the top three!). After selling out venue after venue and thrilling bigger and bigger hordes of fans, the time is right for a new chapter: The Sacrament Of Sin which offers eleven metal psalms forged for all eternity!

Powerwolf entered Fascination Street Studios in Örebrö, Sweden starting in January 2018 to work on their seventh manifesto together with renowned producer Jens Bogren (Opeth, Arch Enemy, Amon Amarth). The result is brimming with the Germans` trademark sound, and yet the band have recorded their boldest and most adventurous album to date! ‘Where the wild wolves have gone‘ even marks the first ballad in Powerwolf history – whereas ‘Nightside of Siberia‘ does the exact opposite and turns out to be one of the heaviest tunes the fivepiece have ever written. ‘Incense And Iron‘ simply MUST be part of every future setlist with its folky nature and anthemic catchiness; and epic single ‘Fire & Forgive‘ brilliantly melts infectious melodies into timeless, heavy shredding. The Sacrament Of Sin overwhelms both with sophisticated songwriting and sheer aggression – and proves once more why Powerwolf are the one and only true high priests of heavy metal!,”

The band is made up of vocalist  Karsten Brill as "Attila Dorn", lead guitarist Benjamin Buss as "Matthew Greywolf", bassist/rhythm guitarist David Vogt as "Charles Greywolf", keyboardist Christian Jost as "Falk Maria Schlegel" and drummer Roel van Helden. 

They’re really awesome and here’s my favorite song by them.

Army of the Night - Blessed and Possessed 

Now onto the fourth band ;)...

IV. Brothers of Metal

Oh boy, if you thought the bands might’ve mellowed out a little then you are sorely unprepared for this glorious group...

When I was younger I was one of those Percy Jackson kids, but my love for mythology started long before I read one of those books. As I grew older I expanded my knowledge, moving away from Greek and Roman and into Norse and other mythologies. You can imagine my joy when I found Brothers of Metal. They have no Wikipedia or website so here’s what Spotify says about them:

“BROTHERS OF METAL consist of eight powerful Viking warriors that originates from the glorious kingdom of Falun, far up in the north. Falun is a mighty town that lies within the dark iron woods where only true metal warriors reside. BROTHERS OF METAL are known to most as the strongest metal band in the nine realms. 

Before time, our eight warriors would travel through the realms and protect the good folk against evil. It was one of those nights that the legacy of metal was born. They came home from some pretty intense giant slaying and felt the common urge for mead and entertainment. The mead was generously flowing from the teats of Heidrun, but the music was really bad. The warriors took what instruments they could find and started playing, thus they wrote their first song Son of Odin, creating a tribute hymn to the strongest god they knew. 

The mortals of the kingdom was so impressed with the music that they couldn't get enough, our warriors looked at each other and so a band was formed. Together they swor an oath to keep the flames of true metal burning and to continue to play until the earthlings had worthy entertainment of their own, it's yet to come,” 

They haven’t released a ton of music when compared to the bands I listed before them, but they are absolutely amazing! All their music videos make me chuckle and when I watch Q&A’s they’ve posted they feel so down to earth that a person whos probably a decade younger than them if not less/more can relate to them. All their music has to do with Norse Mythology, but here’s my favorite music video yet:

The Mead Song - Prophecy of Ragnarök

And yeah, that’s it!

I hope you all weren't too bored and I hope you at least somewhat enjoyed this. It feels good to talk about my favorite bands. I’d love to put more videos in but Tumblr won’t let you so I guess we’re stuck with only one per band. I planned on doing three each but I guess that’s dead in the water. 

Oh well.

If you like any of this music/band honestly just reach out and talk to me, I love chatting about music. I don’t know a ton about the logistics or anything like that but we can share bands or songs or whatever. I sound really lonely which is true but please don’t feel shy.

See you all later! 

-Paige

[bthenoise]

Q&A: Hear How Frank Iero Wants You To Become The Future Violents With Third Solo LP ‘Barriers’

All photos by Julius Aguilar

When you think of Frank Iero, we’re sure a lot of things come to mind. He’s a musician, he’s a dad, he’s an active user on Twitter. What most people might not realize is that Frank Iero is a huge music fan -- like, the guy knows way more about things you didn’t even know existed in the first place.

For example, take a certain guitar used by a late-60′s early-70′s band called The Wrecking Crew. Frank, being the musical factoid that he is, was able to spurt out knowledge dating back years from a recent documentary he had watched. Knowing this, we knew we had to take the former My Chemical Romance member to Arizona’s approximately 200,000 square-foot Musical Instrument Museum.

There, Frank and Noise contributor Jimmy Smith were able to walk the halls, discover instruments dating back to the 1800′s and discuss the upcoming Frank Iero And The Future Violents record Barriers. 

For a glimpse into the knowledgable and insightful hang out, which also dove deep into Frank’s life-changing car accident between a city bus and his tour van, be sure to look below. Afterward, make sure to pre-order Frank’s forthcoming LP Barriers before it hits stores May 31st via UNFD.   

Alright, so maybe the easiest or the hardest question I’ll ask you all day: What was the best thing you saw here at the Musical Instrument Museum?

Oh man, Tommy Tedesco’s [Telecaster]. That was unreal. I had no idea that [they] had that here. Like, I’ve seen documentaries on The Wrecking Crew and you learn about the incredible players they all were and how many songs that particular guitar has been on that you wouldn't even know. And just to kind of see it sitting there, it's like, “Wow.”

Were there any out-of-the-box instruments you would want to get on a record of yours?

That's the thing. Any chance you have to get an instrument in your hands and try to learn the inner workings of it and what kind of sound you can get out of it, that stuff's amazing. I like to sometimes try to take a step back and approach it from a side I don’t know and think about like, “How would I think of this instrument if I had never seen anyone else play it before? Like, how would I get a sound out of it that I’ve never heard?” And that’s kind of fun.

What do you think is the most unique instrument you've actually used on a record?

Well, early on in the My Chem days, a theremin was on [a record] but it's definitely not like one [that’s noticable]. Because it was just really a bit of a little sprinkle on top. That's an odd one to play. On this next record that we're releasing at the end of May, there's a song on Barriers called “Basement Eyes.” I wanted church bells, I wanted the chorus to have this Phil Spector kind of vibe with like percussion and almost like that feeling you get when you listen to The Crystals. “And Then He Kissed Me,” that kind of thing. So we rented this piano -- I guess, you’re not going to be able to see this reading this -- but it's like a desktop kind of thing, like maybe three-and-a-half feet tall, not a lot of keys and maybe an octave and a half. It's called a Viber-Charm and they sold it to churches that didn't have a lot of money and didn't have the pipe organ sort of church bells and they can play different things on this keyboard. And I mean, it had to be from like the 50s. [It had] braided cables, everything looked like it was going to catch on fire at any moment. And that made a resounding sound on that song. That's how we achieved that.

So obviously with every record you do you want to spice it up and do things differently. What else did you bring to the table this time around aside from adding new members?

Well, this was this is a fun one to do because I was able to really chase tones that I wanted to get. Usually, you don't have a lot of time in a studio, especially when you're a smaller artist or self-funding and stuff like that. [Usually,] you’re going into the studio with, you know, say 17 days or two weeks or something like that and you're trying to get 12 to 14 songs out. This record, we did 17 days and we did 17 songs. Steve Albini is the one that engineered this record. He’s just such a master of his craft. And I mean, he’s the only person that you work with that doesn't have any help, it’s just him in the studio. No ones there. Like someone goes and gets coffee sometimes. Other than that, like no one touches a microphone or anything. Like, he sets up everything himself. He's at the board. He does edits on tape, of course, it's like straight two-inch tape. You need someone that is so unbelievably versed in their craft to be able to make that time work. And we mixed in that amount of time as well.  

Wow. Did you enjoy having that kind of time crunch?

[Laughs] There's definitely a picture of me [and] the whole band at the end of the session I posted on my Instagram. I look like someone that is like, “Oh my god, I can't believe we finished this.” And yeah, I mean, it's hard. You sleep at the studio too. So you record [all day] and then you can go in after hours and work on stuff. But like, you're there a lot and it's the second time in my life that I had an episode of sleep paralysis. Like, one of the nights, I woke up and my brain had woken up first but my body didn't. And I was like, “Oh no!” It's the scariest experience ever. So I was definitely stressed. But we got it done.

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A post shared by frnkiero (@frankieromustdie) on Mar 29, 2019 at 2:06pm PDT

Did the sleep paralysis affect any of the songs at all? Did it make you think differently about your lyrics maybe?

No [laughs]. Like, I've had it twice. Once it happened, I was in My Chemical Romance at the time, and I don't know if we were recording but I was definitely stressed out. And I didn't know what it was. And that [time] was like, “Oh man, there must be” -- I was in a hotel, I was like, “This must be haunted.” Like, immediately I went to that because it feels like someone's pushing you down and you can't move at all but you're fully awake and aware that you can't move and that's why it’s so scary. The second time it happened during this recording, I woke up and I was on my side, and I remember being like, “Oh no, it's happened again” [laughs].

The ghost found you!

[Laughs] Yeah! The ghost found me! Like, “Oh great, he’s followed me now.” But I heard this -- it almost felt like a laser starting from the top my head and going all the way down and I heard “zzzzzzzzzzz” like I was being scanned. It was crazy. And then when it finally got to my feet, [snaps] I woke up. I was able to come out of it and I immediately Googled it like “What the fuck is this?!” So I saw this sleep paralysis thing that said sometimes when your brain wakes up before your body, you can carry through a dream that you're having. So if you're having a nightmare, you'll see things from your nightmare and that’s why people think it's like, “Oh no, it's a demon holding me” and it freaks you out. But it's like, “Oh my god” [laughs].

So just talking about the people you brought in for this record, some of them you’ve known for a very long time. Like Tucker Rule, for example. What is it like to get to play in a band with him?

Oh, man, it's a dream come true. Like Matt [Amrstrong] too, I've known both of those guys since maybe 2000 or 2001. I saw them play in respected bands that I thought were just unreal. I mean, Thursday was one of the greatest live bands, and still is, that I've ever seen. And I remember being like, “Wow, I would love to play with Tucker.” And I got to play with Tucker later on in the 2000s when our drummer from My Chem Bob [Bryar] got sick and had to go home. I think Tucker came in for an Australian tour and that was really awesome. He was fantastic. I mean, he's a fantastic drummer it was great to play with him. But I remember being like, “I wish I could write songs with him.” Like he's playing parts that someone else wrote. And that's always weird. It's almost like putting on your dad’s suit. Like, you could look good in it but you're never going to look like it's yours. 

So I was like, “Wouldn't it be cool to be able to write songs with this guy?” And then Matt, he was in a band called Murder By Death. And I remember them when they were Little Joe Gould. And they came into the Eyeball [Records] family through Tucker and Thursday. And I remember being like, “Wow, I thought Thursday was good. Like, holy shit, this band is unreal!” And I mean, there was completely different instrumentation. Of course, there was a cello player and keyboard player and just the things that they were doing, I think let everyone in our little microcosm know it's not just about “I got these four chords, I'm gonna write this song.” It's like, “You should and can do so much more.” And I think that kind of blew the doors off for everybody and that's when we started to really take it seriously and try to get better. I remember thinking like, “Oh man, how cool would it be to be in a band with that guy? That kid can play.”

So is it kind of weird to think in a weird way you’re sort of their boss since it’s your band?

It's weird to be in that position because I never wanted that. I've always had bands and always started bands and ended up in that position because I was the one that started it or no one else wanted to do that job so it was like, “Alright. Well, someone's got to do it, so I guess I'll do it.” But I very much love that idea of a community being like, “Alright, we're all in this together. We all have equal say.” I like the writing process of that where you bounce ideas off of each other.

So it was collaborative writing with all the members for this project?

For this one, a lot of the songs started just in my head and that's kind of how this solo project has gone. But on this record in particular, because I think we had such high caliber musicians, two songs started with ideas that my brother Even Nestor had. And two songs, one of which made the record, started with Matt. So that was a kind of a thing like, “Hey, I have this riff. Do you think we could use it?” And we would jam out on it and all of a sudden it’s a song.

Do you have a favorite song on the record?

I do [laughs].

Which one is it?

It's called “Medicine Square Garden.” It was one of those where I wrote it, had it in my head and I was like, “This is going to be really difficult to explain to someone how this song is supposed to go.” And it's either going to work or it's not. It's going to be one of those things where if it doesn't work, I'm going to be bummed because I think it's really good but I need people to like -- I don't think I could have done it with anybody else other than this bad. It's crazy. It's one of those songs that I really took a leap of faith on. And since it did pay off and it is still one of my favorite songs, I feel like that's how I knew it it was a successful record.

Getting to hear the record early, it’s interesting that after your accident, you could have gone two ways with how you wrote it: Angry and pissed off at the world or calm and just looking to get back to basics. Was that something you considered when writing Barriers?

Well I think for me, having that accident, I knew I couldn't write a record without addressing it because it was such a huge moment in my life and it changed everything. I knew I'm a different person because of it. And there was this huge elephant in the room that I knew I had to talk about and I had to address it and it had to be, if not a focal point of the record, it had to be -- just, it was there within everything I was writing so I needed something to be dedicated to it. But everything I started to write about just didn't feel right. Like I didn't feel like I was getting everything out the way you do, there's so much to say. And the words just weren't there. I would write something and be like, “that doesn't sum it up.” It's hard to sum up a life-changing experience like that. So that was kind of my wall that I had. And I didn't think I was going to be able to do a record. That's why too I was like, “You know, I'm just gonna take some time.” And it just so happened that Tucker ended up being free. Matt became free. Evan was free and then, Kayleigh Goldsworthy, who's the fifth member of the band. And that's when I was like, “Oh man, this is a sign. It’s like now or never. If I don't write the songs, then I'm gonna miss out.” So then all of a sudden, it all started to come out and this song called “Six Feet Down Under” emerged. And it's basically just my conversation with my therapist of trying to explain how I'm feeling and like, “I know you're trying to help and the things you're saying are very nice and they come from a good spot and I know you're really smart and that's really awesome but like it doesn't mean anything [laughs] if I can't believe that this is all real.” And getting that across, I think really opened the floodgates for me to be able to finish everything else.

Have you had a wall like that in your songwriting career before?

That was a huge one.

Was there anything similar to that previously?

Minor things. You know, there's some childhood things that you have a hard time fully grasping until you get older. Like the divorce of my parents and things of that nature, like trying to make sense of all that. Family, addiction and certain things that I went through. But nothing like this one, because I feel like this was -- it's weird. Childhood trauma evolves. You know, you start to see different sides of things and you've had the time -- there are some people that say “You have your entire life to write your first record” and then you have like maybe six months to write your second basically. With this one, it was still so fresh. And [the accident] happened to me in my adulthood. It happened at a time where I kind of felt like -- like, I had a family. I thought I had things figured out. And immediately [snaps] everything changed.

It shook you up a little.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like at 25 you go crazy. 30 you're like, “Alright, I'm okay with not knowing everything.” Around 35 you’re like, “Well, I'm starting to get my shit together. And then you get hit by a bus” [laughs]. And you're like, “Oh man, I know nothing again.”

Okay, so then just wrapping up. I was wondering if your three band names -- the Cellabration, the Patience, and The Future Violents -- have any sort of connection?

So the Cellabration was, in my head, it was my first time as a solo artist and I didn't feel comfortable in that role so I wanted to bring along something that felt boisterous and exciting so that would take away from my, you know, like, “It’s just me up here. It’s weird” [feeling]. And I spelled it differently because I like the idea of it being like a cellular thing, like this building block of life and it's going to start from here and evolve and grow and change. So that's where that came from. The Patience was me kind of getting over the idea that I needed something to take away from me. I really wanted something that would kind of even me out and just that self-fulfilling prophecy of bringing this virtue along where you kind of take a step back and appreciate the now. I've spent so much time like, “What's next, what's next? Alright, this tour is going, alright, cool. I'm gonna get home here and then when I'm home, the next tour I’m going to do is this.” And it's like, you live so fast that you don't appreciate what's actually happening. And I don't want that.

And then this time around, The Future Violents, I started to think about how life is kind of this -- it's like you're staring at a lake and you can passively take it all in and see the things swimming underneath and maybe how the wind kind of takes the current. And we do that sometimes, we live vicariously through other people and sometimes, you know, just having it be serene is nice. And then the “active” way to live by is to kind of pick up a stone on the side and throw it in and see the ripples that go on and really affect it. And I think that act is a violent act that disrupts things [but] doesn't have to necessarily have a negative connotation. You know, it's about leaving a footprint and changing things and being conscious enough to want to disrupt what's there and hopefully in a positive way and see that ripple go on and affect other people and like bellow out. So, collectively, I'd like to think that the band and the people that are listening to this record are The Future Violents, the ones that go out and create a change and hopefully listen to this record that we've made -- a record that I used to break down these walls and barriers that I had set up -- and use it to destroy their own barriers and go out there and do things that scare the fuck out of you. Because that's the only time that we do something really wonderful is when we're so frightened that we're not going to do it right. And that's the best part.

[anythingsaidproductions]

My song “Riot Grrrl Zine” is a long time coming from the way I grew up. Being a child in the 90’s put me in an odd spot with finding what it was to be empowered as a girl. Flooded with pop culture, I became immersed in a certain idea of “GIRL POWER” that would later drown me. I saw women who performed music in an entirely different way than I saw men. Therefore, as I grew into a young woman who, herself, wanted to be a singer, my idea of what I had to look like became my main focus.

I appreciated the large landscape of possibilities with music from a young age. I loved how it made me feel, without having to be touched. As I grew up, insecurities would set in, and self doubt would pave the way to self sabotage. The desire inside to sing and perform music has never been questioned. I simply didn’t see in the mirror what I saw on TV, or in magazines. The reality of being a pop singer felt like less of a possibility as time went on.

By the time I was 15, I had dealt with “normal” issues like parents divorcing, moving towns, and gaining emotional-eating weight. The end result left me unhappy with my body and unhappy with myself ultimately. At that age, I had made attempts at self-harm and being bulimic, but I wasn’t able to push past the physical pain of it. When a friend of mine gave me a burned CD of The Used’s self-titled album, I was reminded of how music numbed my emotional pain. I couldn’t get enough of this beautiful, angry and very sad music. Anything in this genre, I became obsessed with. Linkin Park, Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance became my remedy to life.

By the time I was 18, I was figuring out music was my only answer. I remembered how badly I wanted to be a pop star when I was younger, but I didn’t look like Britney or Christina. I started desperately seeking a woman to look to for guidance. Paramore became my rock. They embodied the music that got me through my years, but had a woman singer who I could relate to. I no longer wanted to be a popstar, I wanted to be able to sing. Sing my heart out with every bit of pain I was drowning in.

The problem was that every time I opened my mouth to sing, my childhood insecurities resurfaced. I was comparing myself to the level of talent and skill of experience Hayley Williams had herself. I just wanted to make music that felt good and sounded good, but I had no real understanding of what it took to become that level of singer.

I did what I knew I could, and I found a voice teacher who specialized in live-performance singing and rock music based training. I trained and I practiced and I visualized and I believed this was happening for me. I believed that my dreams were around the corner, and I was going to be on stage with Paramore themselves, singing a duet. I worked hard, and started writing a lot of music. I was able to write and record a 6 song EP entirely on my own.

As quickly as I believed it was happening, I just as quickly lost hope in my dream. The EP I put out didn’t get me signed, it didn’t blow up on soundcloud, and my youtube videos of song covers weren’t going viral. I blamed everything on not being “good enough.” Finally, the glorious day came when I watched the documentary called Miss Representation. I took the red pill, and I woke up from “the matrix” of the patriarchy. I had no idea how my mind was manipulated into seeing myself as a participant in this world.

Flashbacks to being 10 years old, in the locker room of the tennis club, as my grandmother stands me in front of a mirror. She pinches my tummy, which is exposed from my two piece bathing suit, and tells me “This is fat. You don’t want this.” She was a Hollywood starlet, and I know honestly it wasn’t her fault she believed this was the base of a woman’s value. She was looking out for me, the best way she knew how. In her industry, to be skinny, was to be liked. This is what fed my doubt for the next decade of my life.

At 25, I watched the documentary The Punk Singer, about Kathleen Hanna and her part in the Riot Grrrl movement. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had the green light to go after my dreams. I wanted to sing my pain, and these women knew how. The honesty of their experiences, being screamed through a microphone was a whole new world for me. Up until this point, I thought only men could do this, and definitely the only ones who were taken seriously. I finally saw that I could make my music, and not have to look or sound a certain way.

I desperately sought anyone who would want to join me in my crusade to make loud music. I struggled to find bandmates, and so I looked to my partner of 5 years. She had originally introduced me to Riot Grrrl music, so I asked if she’d be willing to learn the bass guitar. A short amount of time went by before our band, I Dream of Darlene, was created. We wanted the name to combine our passion for strong females in good sitcom television, and our “punk rock” attitude. Naming our band after Darlene Connor from the show Roseanne, we felt like we had plenty of inspiration to get us going. We wrote songs surprisingly well together, and made a set list we were both proud of.

I was too eager. I was too earnest. I wanted to be on stage creating an experience. I booked us shows, and before I knew it, we were on stage. Simple rhythms and easy chord progressions were trying to carry the meaningful message I felt like I was singing. When the show I had put the most time and thought into finally came, we played to a nearly empty venue. Drive and passion are important, but I was reluctant to do the work before putting it on display.

Hiend sight truly is the clear vision of our actions, and most definitely the mistakes. The self doubt was obviously still eating me from the inside, because I practiced music the same way I looked in the mirror, with blinders. I never really allowed myself to examine my body too closely, for fear of how badly I would tear myself apart. I never allowed myself to participate in my own music, for fear of hating what I was working on. I don’t think I ever truly gained the calluses on my fingers that would have led to proper guitar playing.

Like every other project up until this point in my life, I put it up on the shelf to be finished at another point. This was in 2016, and since then I stopped performing live. I went to my voice lessons, but still hiding away from the world. Until I got an invitation to audition for t.v. show The Voice. I thought to myself, this is it! Immediately, I began my training like I was going to the Olympics. I pushed myself farther than I ever had before, my own dedication actually inspired me. I sang so much, that come the audition, my throat and voice was shot. Regardless of not getting it, leaving the audition I was elated. I was actually doing what I had always wanted to do. Sing.

A lot of events happened in my life between 2016 to 2019 that molded me and helped me grow. For a year, my wife and I took care of our niece when she was just 10 months old. I grew patience, I grew understanding, but most of all I gained the faith in my capabilities to go after any dream of mine if I took the right steps.

My voice teacher set me up with his best friend’s son to produce a song together. For years, he had told me that he loved my song “Riot Grrrl Zine,” and promoted it more than I ever did. It needed some finishing touches before being sent off to be produced, so I sat down with my wife and asked her how she first discovered the music of the riot grrrl movement. I wanted the song to have these answers for people hearing it for the first time, and who don’t know about this movement. Filling in some new lyrics, and finding a bridge to complete the song, finally it was finished and sent off to the producer. Now I waited... Finally the day came to go to the studio. Things were finally moving forward and I was going to a real music studio to record my own song!

The hardest lesson to learn is that I needed to experience life to grow. No book or movie can give the full understanding it takes to make things happen. I sat back in my comfort zone for many years, hoping that enough wishing on stars was going to make things happen. Action has to take place, and the more times that action occurs, the stronger that dream becomes a reality.

“Riot Grrrl Zine” is my story of how I may not have grown up with riot grrrl music, but it eventually reached me and made its imprint on me. I may not embody the punk rock spirit entirely, but the music is a piece of me and I am excited to share this with the world.

[antoine-roquentin]

Pity the conservative film critic. Suffering through so many juvenile, raunchy flicks and mindless blockbusters. Why even the great films are marred. No matter how extraordinary the film, something comes along to spoil it. Something…politically correct.

Maybe it’s the villain, an evil giant multinational corporation dumping oceans of toxins into the local river, which also happens to be the town’s water supply.

Maybe it’s Mr. Potter’s bank threatening to foreclose on the old homestead.

Typical liberal pablum, snarls the conservative critic. All corporations are evil. Banks are foreclosing on everybody’s sick grandma’s farm.

It hardly matters that socially conscious films like A Civil Action, North Country, Norma Rae, Silkwood and Erin Brockovich are extraordinarily entertaining films with Oscar-level direction and performances. What matters to the conservative film critic is that they are mere whored-up vehicles for socialist propaganda. And only he (and it’s always a he) is wise enough to see it.

Whatever would American film audiences have done without the conservative film critic to enlighten them as to the “awfulness” of Jordan Peele’s Get Out? The film boasted a perfect 100 score from critics on the movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. That is until National Review’s Armond White reviewed the film. Where other critics saw the “satirical horror movie we’ve been waiting for, a mash-up of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? and The Stepford Wives that’s more fun than either and more illuminating, too,” Armand, who is African American, saw a film—which he dubbed “Get Whitey”—that was “tailored to please the liberal status quo.”

The Chicago Reader’s J.R. Jones must have been watching another horror-comedy called Get Out, because he saw a brilliant film “that sticks closely to genre convention even as its ribbing of white liberals hardens into a social point.”

Selma was another film with a 99 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes whose perfect score was spoiled by a critic from a conservative publication, this time Nigel Andrews of the Financial Times. Andrews, unlike every other reviewer, panned Selma as “a dead-as-a-plank re-enactment of a pietised ‘then’: a 50-year-old battle of ideals between Good Guys (MLK, LBJ in civil rights reform mode) and Bad Guys (Governor Wallace, keeping the Alabama hate fires burning) that seems exactly that: 50 years.”

Unsurprisingly, National Review’s White similarly hated the film (though he loved that jingoistic homage to endless war American Sniper). White called Selma “a mediocre and disingenuous film” and criticized the movie for “rubbing soft spots” and “sore spots” (i.e., depicting the murders of black children and white allies) instead of “making meaning.” (“Soft spot” is certainly a strange way to describe the murder of four black girls by a white supremacist.)

Until recently there was a paucity of films starring, written by or directed by African Americans. Blacks largely played the role of thugs or servants. As the role of blacks in Hollywood has slowly begun to broaden it has presented a unique problem for conservative magazines. How to criticize socially conscious African American films without sounding blatantly racist?

National Review seems to have hit on a successful solution when it hired Armond White. As an African American, White can freely trash socially conscious, historical “black  films” like Selma and Twelve Years a Slave with little fear of a racial backlash. White can say things that white conservative critics are thinking, that they would have easily spouted twenty years ago, but dare not say in public today. And he says a lot of such things. For instance: “Who can forget the throwback image of British director Steve McQueen jumping Jim Crow at this year’s Oscars?”

Then there was White’s depiction of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African American girls as “one of The Movement’s Greatest Hits.”

Not to mention his constant dog whistles that Hollywood Jews control the media’s image of black people.

When Twelve Years a Slave (Academy Award: Best Picture) came out National Review cautiously asked scholar Thomas Hibbs to review the film. Hibbs turned in a thoughtful piece which lauded the film. The editors tried again. In the print edition, conservative New York Times’ columnist Ross Douthat reviewed the film. Again, a positive review.

Soon after that, National Review hired White. He had dismissed Twelve Years a Slave in CityArts writing that it “belongs to the torture porn genre with ‘Hostel,’ ‘The Human Centipede’ and the ‘Saw’ franchise.”

Wrote White:

These tortures might satisfy the resentment some Black people feel about slave stories (“It makes me angry”), further aggravating their sense of helplessness, grievance–and martyrdom. It’s the flipside of the aberrant warmth some Blacks claim in response to the superficial uplift of ‘The Help’ and ‘The Butler.’ And the perversion continues among those whites and non-Blacks who need a shock fest like ‘12 Years a Slave’ to rouse them from complacency with American racism and American history. But, as with ‘The Exorcist,’ there is no victory in filmmaking this merciless. The fact that McQueen’s harshness was trending among Festivalgoers (in Toronto, Telluride and New York) suggests that denial still obscures the history of slavery: Northup’s travail merely make it possible for some viewers to feel good about feeling bad (as wags complained about Spielberg’s ‘Schindler’s List’ as an ‘official’ Holocaust movie–which very few people went to see twice). McQueen’s fraudulence further accustoms moviegoers to violence and brutality.

Just the thing National Review was looking for. A black reviewer who could spout highfaluting  hokum for its racist white audience.

White was immediately given a chance to write about the film. He went profoundly negative calling the film “decidedly unpleasant (and unpopular).” It was “awarded (Best Picture) purely to make the Academy feel good about itself as a defense against Hollywood’s standard segregated practices.” It “distorted the history of slavery while encouraging and continuing Hollywood’s malign neglect of slavery’s contemporary impact.”

Conservative film criticism is so easy any conservative can do it. Simply choose a film with a social justice theme (say, family farmers versus the bank), then ignore everything else about the film. National Review critic Kevin Williamson carried this off spectacularly when he was tasked with reviewing Hell and High Water. Again, the film garnered overwhelmingly glowing reviews, including a 96 top critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Hell and High Water, which pitted two rural everymen versus The Bank, seemed to resonate with everyone: snobby film critics and conservatism’s base in the boonies. One might think that in this day and age when conservatism’s base is rabidly anti-Wall Street, a conservative film critic would go ga-ga over Hell and High Water.

Wrong.

“[M]an, is this movie stupid,” wrote Williamson. Who then spends 700 words nitpicking ways other than bank robbery that the heroes could have raised enough money to save the family homestead. Like asking for a loan.

Conservative critics often seem unable to comprehend the basics of theme or characterization. One tried-and-true theme is that of the underdog battling some powerful entity–for example, the family farmers in Places of the Heart taking on The Bank, or the spunky legal assistant battling the giant chemical corporation poisoning a small town in Erin Brockovich. Conservatives would have us turn these themes on their head, so that we would root for the poor beleaguered chemical company that was only trying to maximize shareholder value like any true blue American company is expected to do.

Williamson offers an alternative movie pitch: Two brothers walk into a financial institution with an oil-lease document and say, “Hello, there, Mr. Banker! I’m about to have a passive income of $600,000 a year and would like a $40,000 loan to pay off the lien on my property until that first monthly check comes in. Would you like to be my banker?”

Perhaps this is why there are few conservative screenwriters in Hollywood. They think a man with a line of equity walking into a bank and getting a loan would make riveting drama.

This is not say conservative film critics hate every film. They love most Clint Eastwood movies. They love the Left Behind series. Not long ago National Review put out its own list of “greatest conservative films.” Among them, the amateurish B-movie Red Dawn, about the Soviet Union invading the US. Many of the films on the list have nothing to do with conservatism. A Simple Plan? It is hard to see what conservatives like about a greedy guy getting away with countless murders–unless they simply have a hard on for greedy guys. Braveheart? Why because of Mel “fucking Jews” Gibson? Team America: World Police. Conservatives don’t seem to realize this film was satire. Ghostbusters? Groundhog Day? Okay, fun films, but they are about as conservative as Bernie Sanders and far from the greatest anything.

It’s not all doom and gloom for the conservative film critic. Clint Eastwood still has a few movies left in him before he shuffles muttering and drooling into the sunset. As does Mel Gibson. And now that Steven Bannon has vacated the West Wing we will likely be treated to more documentaries about Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. But in the end it’s more fun to pan a great film than to praise a mediocre one. Besides, the base doesn’t tune into FOX News and Rush Limbaugh for good news or good reviews. It tunes in to feel angry. That’s why it reads conservative film reviews that begin “Man, is this movie stupid.”

They get off on it.

[chemorygunko]

The Money Problem Part 1 - Your Money Mindset

When money worries and anxiety set in, it seems to take over your whole world.

It’s overwhelming and all-consuming and you just don’t know how to stop thinking about it.

Worse than that though, it almost feels as if you are being cheated and deprived when you start having to make longer term lifestyle and budgetary adjustments, and when you feel cheated and victimized, you start getting despondent in other areas - like at work.

I mean why are you working so hard if you can’t even afford a decent lifestyle?

Please scroll down for the video version.

All of this is happening in your mind - and there are so many other thoughts to go with all this.

If you don’t make an inroad into understanding these mindset issues - and mitigating them - then you will keep falling over when it comes to making the practical decisions you need to to adjust your budget.

If you understand these concepts, and how they impact you, and you can then put them to one side, you will discover that you can go through the process of changing your lifestyle without pain, without feeling cheated, and with happiness and relaxation and ease.

I know it seems impossible to think that you can face money troubles and not panic, but you really can.

I know for a fact it’s possible because I did it - and I’ve never been happier in my life. And I’ve helped others cross that same barrier.

Survival needs & mode

Lack mentality

Level of comfort, lifestyle and the basics

Having enough

Instant gratification

Entitlement

Competition & parallels

FOMO - Fear of Missing Out

What ifs…

Survival needs & mode

When money stress kicks in, you often drop into survival mode.

You know what I mean - your whole mind and being seems to become immediately focused on making money, making a plan, or finding a solution. To the exclusion of pretty much everything else really.

Often you don’t even notice it until you’ve found the solution and relief sets in - and you feel the contrast of the relief.

What you don’t realize though is that this non-stop anxiety and thinking is a constant low-grade stress on your body and system, and this has a physical effect of releasing stress hormones like adrenalin and cortisol into your body on an ongoing basis.

This ongoing stress chemical build up keeps you at a constant grade of stress - and permanently keeps your body in the state of fight, flight or freeze.

These hormones make you breathe faster and through your mouth, activating your instinctive and terrestrial response, directing blood away from your forebrain. Your forebrain is what you use for thinking as you know it.

So the reason you’re foggy and you can’t think clearly and you’re forgetting even stupid little things? Stress hormones.

Also blood flow gets directed away from organs, like the bowel, and towards limbs - so you can flee. Your body doesn’t send blood to digest food when you need to flee - it’s using readily available energy to ensure you can run quickly.

So you start getting sick, commonly with some sort of gastric issue at first. How often have we heard that indigestion is linked to stress? And you gain weight around your belly.

The list of physical effects is staggering, but what matters is that you understand the link between the stress hormones and why you feel sick and constantly fatigued and run down.

The answer? Use the Go Ape process ( http://www.lifecoachestoolbox.com/index.php/go-ape ) to turn off the stress hormones in your system. You should feel immediate relief doing this just once, but it’s very effective to do daily for three weeks or so.

It will also help you shift the stubborn belly fat the stress hormones cause you to carry.

It’s the release equivalent of a good, hectic exercise session where you really pushed yourself. You may feel physically tired after the first time you do it in fact, as the relief washes over you.

Lack mentality

Lack mentality is going to double whammy you.

On the first level, lack mentality is about your baseline lifestyle that you are used to.

A wealth coach I followed for a while has this rule she teaches - establish a new level of broke, say USD 10,000.

When your account reaches that threshold, you can’t spend because you’re “broke”.

At face value, that does seem like good advice - until you understand that what you’re basically teaching yourself to do is look at 10,000 and say “I have nothing.”

So it teaches you to see what you have as being nothing.

The reason that concept seemed like a good idea to you when you first read it, is that most of us do this in our lives already - we consider what we have as being 'ours-already' - so basically nothing. Our zero point we are working FROM.

So we don’t consider what we’ve built up and accumulated. We’re so busy moving towards what we are going to get next that we forget about what we already have.

So, to use a very practical example, you don’t “see” yourself as having technology because you haven’t been able to REPLACE your devices for three years.

The second level that this attacks you on is that a reduction in income, or increase in expenses, means that you can no longer “do” and “get” everything that you are used to having as your baseline level of comfort.

This one nails you hard, because it’s small, repeated reminders: you have to bypass certain items in the store, so you get a bit depressed about that.

You repeatedly have to say no to social invitations because you can’t afford the expense, or can’t afford a gift if it’s a party.

So now, you’re not only reminded that your lifestyle is reduced, you’ve had to make excuses (and maybe lie), and you’re sitting alone at home on a Saturday, bored out of your mind, with nothing to do.

So you think about your loss that whole week - and the week after.

And you can’t even go shopping to alleviate your pain, because honestly, you either can’t afford an increase in monthly payments, or you’ve missed payments and you can’t use your cards.

Each little reminder adds to your accumulating stress levels, just a tiny bit more. And you edge ever closer and closer to a total meltdown.

You just don’t realize it until the moment you finally snap.

It’s that whole frog sitting in boiling water scenario - the stressors have been too small and low level for you to notice the devastating impact they have on you.

Level of comfort, lifestyle and the basics

Speaking of that baseline level of lifestyle - it’s too high when you’re thinking survival.

Here’s the thing: it’s great to have everything that opens and closes, and every new toy or gadget on the market, but when it comes to survival, you have to be practical.

You can’t think in terms of disposable income anymore - and you have to cut costs where and whenever you can.

The most practical place to cut costs? Unnecessary luxury items - and unnecessary monthly expenses.

There are so many of these, from insurances to beauty products, beauty treatments, shopping, gifts, dining out, gambling, entertainment, drugs, high vehicle costs, vacation homes and so much more.

And if you’re flinching right now at any of those, then you are exactly the person that this is aimed at.

Just because you are USED TO having something around, and it makes you comfortable, it doesn’t mean that you deserve it, or are entitled to it, or can’t live without it.

Comfort is a habit. A comfortable habit. And one that is very hard to unlearn.

Very little in life will make you feel as inadequate in our consumer-driven society, as the need to tighten your belt in a way that restricts your day-to-day life in a noticeable manner.

But if you don’t make these changes as quickly as possible yourself, you will face the pain - and potential public humiliation - of having those things taken from you.

Having Enough

Having enough is all about the standards of what you consider to be “enough.”

It’s about the minimum level of comfort you are willing to tolerate, and often that minimum level of comfort is that immediate lifestyle of what we are used to.

If you are truly honest about it, you need very little space and resources in order to survive - or even thrive.

But that’s not what we’re used to - and it’s certainly not what the consumer-driven society we live in tells us we need.

This concept was really driven home for me when watching an Alex Jones documentary the one day, where a group of Americans were walking past a Muslim Refugee Centre, looking at the well-kept and seemingly brand new building from the outside.

You can hear audio in the background of the two walkers talking, and the one says: “Oh shame, these poor refugees. They have to keep their windows open - they don’t even have air conditioning!”

Really? Air conditioning? When did we get to the point where air conditioning is a basic requirement for the functioning of life?

Our concepts of what WE NEED are very warped by media and marketing, and ideas like you need three healthy balanced meals a day.

We grade people in media and marketing by how much money and stuff they have, and how much they have available to spend.

You’re Living Standards Measurement or LSM 1 if you don’t really own anything electrical, or a house, aren’t educated and don’t have disposable income.

However you’re LSM 9 or 10 if you have multiple cars, multiple properties, multiple devices and electronic consumer goods - and lots of money to waste on stuff you don’t need.

Entitlement

So why would all this be a problem? It’s creating entitlement.

Concepts that have reached mainstream - like The Secret and manifestation - aren’t helping the situation either.

“God wants you to have everything you want.” “Your needs matter to God.” “Nothing’s too big or small for you to ask for.” “Work hard and you will achieve any dream.”

Oh and if it doesn’t work, then it’s your fault for not working hard enough. Or maybe it’s your fault for not being.

But that doesn’t mean the feeling of entitlement goes away… and unfulfilled expectation will always breed resentment eventually.

But the answer always remains that you aren’t doing something right - everyone is entitled to their version of success after all.

So you start this endless round of beating yourself up because you aren’t manifesting correctly - and then getting determined and going out again... and then failing again.

And each time you fail, you dip lower emotionally, and the psychic pain of failure grows.

Because you must be some special kind of failure if you can’t even get the basics that you are ENTITLED to.

Instant Gratification

Instant Gratification is such a killer, and it’s all about patience.

When you look at the cycle of entitlement mentioned above, one thing that’s not shown in the mix - but is crucially important to understanding why this all happens - is instant gratification.

Not only are people getting frustrated because they’re not getting what they’re entitled to, they’re upset because they’re not getting it immediately, and in the way that they want it to be delivered.

So the time from sending out the desire, and beginning to work towards it, until the time that people get depressed that they are not achieving it, is often too short for any real results to manifest or realize. And often, results do not arrive in the way that we expect them to arrive.

Nowadays you get instant everything - and people want that silver bullet of happiness.

Even seasoned seekers and journeyers are guilty of this: you will catch yourself waiting for that next healing or insight that will magically make everything fall into place.

This silver bullet, miracle syndrome, and wanting instant relief that fixes everything is a pipe dream. It doesn’t happen like that.

Results are often hard earned, and there are many years and years of feeling like you’re running on a treadmill and going nowhere fast.

Competition & Parallels

Even if the concept of Mirrors of Relationship still eludes you, it’s important to know that we see ourselves in relation to other people.

So when you walk in and look at someone and think they’re attractive, you subconsciously also compare them to yourself, deciding if they are more attractive or less attractive.

We see this commonly in society with concepts like “dating outside your league.”

Why it’s important to understand this is because it’s also one of those moment-to-moment things that we do every day, without realizing it.

As we go through the day, we compare what people have, and can do (by our perception), comparing it to the lack or loss we now face.

So you’re walking to the train and you pass your favorite coffee shop, and see someone walk out with your favorite drink - and you remember that you are now deprived of your favorite.

And then you wonder why that person is “better” than you because they can still afford the drink, and to be buying coffee.

The truth is that that person may never have bought from that store, or bought that drink before. They may NEVER spend money on drinks.

The mirror inside you however, is a mirror of treating yourself daily to that drink at that store.

So when you see someone else walking out with the drink, you transpose or project the relevant bits of your story onto their life, and the snapshot picture you are seeing.

Then, while you’re on the train, you watch the cars on the highway and wonder why you don’t have a car, or work closer to home.

And then your friend calls and says she’s just bought a new bag and is going out on a date with her gorgeous, wealthy boyfriend.

Again, it’s little low grade stressors, but constant. And you parallel yourself in each of those moments, because we project and apply bits of our story onto others - often the bits that make us look bad.

FOMO - Fear of Missing Out

When you are trying to cut costs and tighten your belt, you have to be aware of the trap of FOMO, or fear of missing out.

It’s easy to make a decision once at the beginning of the month to be careful and frugal…. but when your friend is excitedly calling and saying she can get (slightly) discounted tickets for your favorite band, it’s hard to resist the impulse buy.

After all, you’re already being careful this month, you’ll just tighten your belt a bit more.

And that’s all great and well until it’s ten days before payday, and you have no money left for food or transport.

If you think focusing on work and getting stuff done is hard when you’re worried about money, try doing it when you’re hungry and worried about money. And not sure how you’re going to make it home tonight - let alone back to work tomorrow.

Impulse buy moments like those catch us unawares and off guard - and some of them are worth taking. But most aren’t, and another opportunity will come around again.

What ifs…

What ifs will trip you up and keep delaying you if you let them.

What if I win the lottery? What if this person pays me back or I get a bonus?

What if I win at the casino tonight….?

If you let yourself get too caught up in what ifs, you may find that you start betting or banking on them and taking unnecessary risks.

There is very little as soul destroying as not being able to feed yourself or your family - or being homeless.

We will sometimes take a wild, uncalculated gamble when the odds are against us, but survival is never worth gambling with.

Sometimes in life you just have to tighten your belt

It doesn’t have to heartbreaking or soul destroying however, and can lead to enjoying renewed life like you’ve never actually experienced before.

There’s a reason the old cliche exists: I got poor and happy. There’s a reason so many people say it.

While money troubles are difficult to go through, they are not the end of everything.

And if you can keep your survival needs met, and make peace with meeting only those for a while, this will pass sooner than you realize.

[anothervldthingiemabibbie]

A Sixpence Song

Chapter 3: Ink

@klangst-week

Keith writes poems in a notebook, a hobby that he rarely partakes in. It’s strange imagining a brooding, dark-haired teen writing poems about flowers and feelings, but then again…

“I thought you could’ve been something great, but I guess you’re just a dropout.”

“It’s such a shame to see a young man throw his life away like that, without rational thought.”

“Oh what do you know, dropout?”

“You threw away your chance to be something good in this world, you know that? Threw it away on the hope for a dead man.”

“We can’t let him stay, he’s Galran! Who knows what he’ll do!”

“My family is gone because of his kind, my entire planet! All my people! I will not let one of them on my ship, as a Paladin!”

“We were supposed to be fighting Galrans. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing? What do we do now?”

Maybe it’s not difficult to imagine him doing that after all.

Keith’s personal hell is silence.

You wouldn’t think this from a boy who’d lived alone for a long time in the middle of nowhere, but there are many things that are unexpected about Keith.

But the desert isn’t nearly quite as empty as people would expect. There’s lizards that scuttle on the walls at night, distant barks and howls of wild dogs and coyotes on the wind. Owls hoot in the evening and raptors screech in the mornings. And on the rare days when even those are all silent, there’s the cheap shitty radio at the top of the metal drawer, tuned only to one of the few channels available to him.

It was country or static, so he took country.

But now, he didn’t even have the annoying twanging of guitars or gruff voices singing about beer, girls and trucks to comfort him. There’s nothing here but endless darkness and silence, a crushing quiet that sucks any hope out of him. There’s nothing for him here but him and his own head, and a million questions that he can’t answer, doesn’t want to answer, that tear and rip at the edges of his mind, like an itch that he can’t scratch.

Distractions come in the form of sinking into memories, good and bad, any one that is clear. He’s in his first flight class, riding the adrenaline high of piloting the shaking, bouncing flight simulator, stepping out with pride in his chest and one of the highest scores seen ever in the Garrison. He’s thirteen on his first bike, zooming down the street whooping to school, right before he hits a rock and skids nearly a yard on the pavement (there’s still a long, striped scar on his leg from that incident). He’s watching T.V, some documentary on Mothman, mumbling a goodbye as his dad leaves on an ‘errand’. The last time he’d ever see him again.

He bounces back to happier memories, though those are limited. Learning martial arts from Youtube videos and practicing his roundhouse kick in the dormitory alone, while everyone else was out to dinner. Feeling a sense of grim satisfaction in the next memory, when he knocked the front teeth out of that asshole kid who called him a ‘no good sonafabitch bastard fag’ and his bale gray shoes were stained red. A sensation of mild irritation when Iverson chewed him out for it, put him in detention where he was alone, save for the other kid.

The other kid, of course, was Lance. Sitting in the front corner by the door, tapping and doodling on the desk with his pencil. Keith sat on the opposite side, fidgeting awkwardly with the pen he’d ‘borrowed’ from Iverson’s desk earlier, taking it apart and putting it together again. Over and over, cap, spring, ink cartridge, nib, metal ring, outer case. Outer case, metal ring, nib, ink cartridge, spring, cap.

Tap, tap, tap. Goes Lance’s pencil. Keith glances up, and stares. No smile now, instead a rare look of patient serenity. No sign of anger, disappointment, sadness at his situation, but instead an aura of calm. If not for the slow blinks, long fluttering lashes that are the woman’s envy, he could be sleeping.

Snap. Keith had accidentally broke the ink cartridge while putting it back in, and now black ink gushed out over the desk, staining his hands, seeping into the cracks of the white linoleum floor. The teacher in charge, a tired, white matron with severe eyes and a hooked nose, glances up at the noise, sighs angrily, and motions towards the bottle of cleaner and paper towels by the window.

Lance snickers softly on the other end of the room, and Keith feels his neck flush with embarrassment and anger. Accompanied, for some reason, by a strain of pleasure.

For once, he made Lance laugh, not the other way around. And Lance didn’t even know him, earning a bittersweet victory.

As he mops up the chemical-smelling liquid up the floor, the tap-tap-tapping ensues, except now it’s not a simple monotonous pattern. It’s seemingly erratic, short clips there, pauses here, and occasionally he would still his hand and go completely still, as if listening, before continuing his tapping.

Morse. Keith realizes, and he nearly wants to laugh. He’s talking in Morse, probably to one of his friends by the door. And sure enough, when he looks up at the door, there’s that big dude Hunk, the kid that you couldn’t hate for the life of you and almost always had to accept hugs from-most of the time you didn’t have a choice anyway, the guy had arms like a bear. His hand raps out of sight, on the doorframe, a quiet muted series of thumps that took a keen ear to hear.

Keith watches as Lance listens intently, grins devilishly, and taps back a response. A laugh bubbles in his stomach; for a kid who was made of movement and was hardly still, here he was, able to learn Morse to talk to a friend through the door.

He starts wiping down the desk, scrubbing the ink off. In the few moments since it’s release, it was already sticky and hardening, and took a considerable amount of force to remove it. As he moves his hand in circular movements, he listens to the conversation.

Im so b-o-r-e-d Lance even took the time to add a second’s pause between letters, for emphasis. You had to admit, one had to admire the dedication to dramatic flair.

Cant do much for you there. Is Hunk’s faint reply. Movie night?

Uh hell yeah Jeez, he even took the time to communicate seemingly trivial thoughts. And for some reason, this makes him seem all the more likeable. He’s human, and he communicates this in stupid dorky ways. Pop the corn!

Hunk rolls his eyes. Hows detention

Eh not that bad just me here. He stops for a moment. Oh yeah me and keith

Hunk blinks in surprise. You mean top of class keith?

Only one keith i know dude Lance smirks. Man hes even more emo up close

I wouldnt say that fifteen feet away is close lance but whatever you say

Hunk seriously though hes so weird Keith’s blood seem to chill as he translates this. Like he just spilled ink everywhere and i think hes staring at me

All the teachers expect more out of him thatd turn me a little weird too tbh

Yeah but like hes so weird A brief moment of quiet where he contemplates for a choice of words, and during which Keith increases his attempts, lemony smell of the cleaner stinging his nose as he squeaks the towel against the table. Like what the hell is up with the haircut? And hes so quiet

Keith doesn’t catch Hunk’s response, but he does hear Lance’s, despite his attempts to drown it out. And he hardly talks to anyone. It’s like he has no friends

Pause for Hunk. Yeah but seriously hes sorta creepy Pause for Hunk. That wouldnt be surprising Pause for Hunk. He always one upping me and it pisses me off. Its bad enough that im barely scraping by but then here comes mr hotshot and suddenly hes teachers shining example. Its all keith this keith that and im sick of it. Everytime iverson says his name i want to barf

By now Keith was struggling not to shake. It was like being stabbed, except remembering a mishap he had a long time ago with a knife, stab wounds hurt less. When using a sharp enough knife, all you remember about it is that it's cold and everything's dizzy. Now, it felt like the air was a thousand times colder than a knife accident in the warm spring sunlight, and his head reeled violently. The desk, despite having been cleared away of ink several minutes ago, was still suffering Keith’s violent scrubbing.

“Keith. Keith Kogane!”

He blinks; the teacher is calling his name. “Yes?”

“You may go.” And with her final words, and he releases his hold on the world, watching it dissolve back into the eternal inky darkness. Lance, Hunk, and the teacher pay no mind as they vanish into specks of light that are quickly swallowed by the shadows.

Of all the memories he could have chosen to relive, it was that one. The one that haunts his dreams and tugs on his brain. But he needed it for the pain, the pain was what reminded him that he was still human, he was alive, he was real. He was still Keith Kogane, ingrate, dropout, excelled student, future fighter pilot, top of the class. Still Keith Kogane, Red Lion Paladin, tired sixteen year old, stupid teen with a crush on a boy, listened to country music. Still here. Still alive. Still real.

He chooses a nicer memory this time, one that’s soft and gentle. A lullaby he picked up somewhere, accompanied by soft guitar and warmth. His eyes are closed in this one, all fuzzy splotches of pink behind his eyelids, and he welcomes the feeling.

He doesn’t go back to the inky darkness for a long time.

[sometimes-ihavethoughts]

So, why are you a vegan?

A question I get asked more times than I can count. And my most honest answer is: because I can’t think of a single reason to eat meat, when I know the disastrous effects it has on every realm of our life.

Let’s start at square 1. My body. My body is the shell that will house me until the day my energy passes on to another realm. If I don’t keep this physical part of me in its best condition, how do I expect to live the best life I want? And so many people tell me, “you don’t get your protein, you don’t get x and y,” but the fact of the matter is, I get all of those things, and in their purest, most original form. Clearly many people do not understand scientific fact. The topic of my diet is no different, so allow me to explain. In order for you to get any nutrients from slaughtering a cow and eating its meat, that cow must first eat plants, in order to absorb its proteins. However, a cow can eat 1,000 grams of protein, and you would only receive 10% of that, and in a much more harmful and toxin-fulled form. Outside of people not understanding how nutrient consumption works, it’s been scientifically proven that a plant based diet will keep your body in its most healthy form. Don’t believe me? Watch Forks over Knives if you have a few hours, and if you only have a few minutes, head over to NutritionFacts.org and watch some of Dr. Gregor’s videos. 

Now, I used to be the first person to ignore things that were best for me, especially when it came to my health. So I understand if “health” just isn’t quite enough to make you want to make such a significant life change. So let’s move on to something much bigger than myself. Ethical treatment of animals. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust people that look at any sweet little furry face and don’t think, “this is the cutest and most amazing thing I’ve ever seen and how did we get so lucky as to have these lovable companions that show us unconditional love.” Now I get it, some people don’t have that intense love for animals, but then moment someone wants to hurt them, we call them sociopaths and serial killers. So, why do we let slaughter happen on a massive scale? Well for no other reason other than “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” 

There’s this thing called cognitive dissonance. If you have heard of it, you may know where I’m going with this. If not, let me explain. In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. Meaning, they perform an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values, or they are confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values. So for example, you claim to love your dog and all animals more than anything, but you have no problem scarfing down a hamburger that was raised for slaughter. You justify this by saying “well not all places are like that,” or “some of them are raised humanely,” as if that makes up for all the others that were not (and, by the way, farm-raised animal agriculture, while slightly more humane, is worse for the environment than factory raised, because you are using the same amount of resources and emitting the same amount of greenhouse gases, for less meat). This cognitive dissonance is so pervasive in our society that we actually convince ourselves that some animals lives matter more than others. This is dangerous and costs billions of lives every year. Why would you not want to do your part to help reduce the suffering in the world?

Okay. So, health isn’t a good enough reason for you, and you just don’t care about animals because they just “taste too good.” So how about your air? Do you care about breathing? What about water? Do you care about having clean water to drink? Animal agriculture emits more harmful greenhouse gases into the air than all methods of transportation: cars, trains, planes, etc, COMBINED. Let me tell you what has already happened and will continue if we do not get our animal consumption in check. 

Too many greenhouse gases are emitted into the air every second. These gases increase the intensity of the “greenhouse effect” that our Earth has in order to keep us alive. In response to this increased effect, the earth starts to warm on a global scale. Ice caps start to melt and have displaced thousands of refugees who used to call islands their home. Gases in the air get put into our oceans, causing it to acidify. Acidification has destroyed over 90% of our coral reefs in the last few decades. Without the abundant life in those reefs, ecosystems start to fall apart, causing mass extinction. Not to mention the earth we are destroying in order to make room for this animal agriculture. More than half of earth’s rainforests have been destroyed in the last decade to make room for MORE MORE MORE meat (because we have MORE MORE MORE people), causing thousands of species to go extinct. This throws food chains out of wack and makes conditions even more unstable. 

Raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops) now uses a staggering 30% of the Earth’s land mass. Out of all of that land, we could grow enough food to feed everyone in America on a plant-based diet using just 1 PERCENT of it. It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat. Fish on fish farms must be fed 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce one pound of farmed fish flesh.

The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth. Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food. It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat and only 25 gallons to produce one pound of wheat. Animals raised for food produce approximately 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population and animal farms pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Run-offs of animal waste, pesticides, chemicals, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics are contributing to dead zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reef and health problems. 

“By replacing your ‘regular car’ with a Toyota Prius, the average person can prevent the emission of about 1 tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere. By replacing an omnivorous diet with a vegan diet, the average person can prevent the emission of about 1.5 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s 50% more CO2 saved!”

So why do we continue to do this? Why, with all these facts glaring in our face do we continue to make this situation worse? And do you know why? It’s money. The powerful make money off of feeding you lies in order to make you think that this world is one way, when it is really something completely different. 

People have this tendency to believe whatever they have been told to be true. As a society, we have been taught that authority is the truth, rather than truth being the authority. I have watched way too many documentaries to be drinking the Kool-Aid our government gives us. Anything they are trying to tell us and convince us is good for us, I don’t believe, because everything they convince the people of has a motive, usually a monetary one. I have a general distrust in much of our government because they have billions of dollars of self-interested money from agri-business, big pharma, etc. Would you not rather give your body the nutrients to treat issues at the source and become a healthier, stronger, version of yourself, instead of paying for drugs just to mask the pain and make the rich richer? 

The more I educate myself and learn about this world, and the more I discover how things happened throughout history, and the interests behind world events and propaganda intended to sway public thought in order for the powerful to get what they want, the more I see that humans have really been lied to by those powerful people for all of history. We have been taught that just because this is how we’ve always done it, that it is right. That we must do what we are told, or there will be consequences. And we don’t even question it. But if we don’t learn from our mistakes, and quickly, we won’t have a future to argue about.

If you believe in God, I cannot imagine that you truly believe that this was his intention for us when he created a beautiful abundant, living, breathing, earth. For me, veganism all comes full circle when you begin to see these lies. “The more you begin to investigate what we think we understand, where we came from, what we think we’re doing, the more you begin to see we’ve been lied to. We’ve been lied to by every institution.”

To quote from a good friend of mine and an amazing human being, Morgan King, “The influence of money on politics impacts the way we live our lives. The dairy conspiracy is just one piece of this corrupt puzzle. An ideal citizen, in the minds of elite capitalists, is one who is misinformed, sick, and distracted. They misinform us and give us dietary guidelines that are formed with special interests in mind. Because the guidelines aren’t based in empirical evidence, we are sick from many preventable diseases and have to pay big pharma thousands of dollars to keep us “healthy”. And of course, we are too distracted to notice any of this because we are being constantly bombarded with advertisements and expectations of how we should act, and we are not taught mindfulness and meditation in school, which would help us see what is really going on. But to do the right thing ethically, to teach people ways of sustainable living and empower them to take care of their own health, this doesn’t make money for the powers in place. If you’re eating animal products, you are buying into the lies that the US government has bestowed upon its citizens in order to make money for special interests. The US government does not have your interests and well-being in mind when they tell you animal products are part of a healthy diet.” I think she just hit the nail on the head.

“The bottom line is that the government is getting what they have ordered. They do not want your children to be educated… they do not want you to think too much. That is why our country and our world has become so proliferated entertainments, mass media television shows, amusement parks, drugs, alcohol and every kind of entertainment - to keep the human entertained. So that you don’t get in the way of important people by doing too much thinking. You had better wake up and understand that there are people who are guiding your life and you don’t even know it.”

A new consciousness is developing among youth who see the earth as a single organism. Living, breathing, thriving. We all come from the cosmos and are a part of this beautifully interconnected and patterned earth, many just do not see it anymore because we do not connect with our roots. We do not connect with the earth and we surround ourselves with things that don’t matter. Taking time to just be in nature and experience all it has to offer will bring you clarity. Our mother earth is calling to us, we just have to be willing to answer her.

“The whole system that we live in, drills into us that we are powerless, that we are weak, that society is evil & crime ridden and so forth… it is all a big fat lie! We are powerful beautiful - extraordinary. There is no reason why we cannot understand who we truly are - where we are going. There is no reason why the average individual cannot be fully empowered - we are incredibly powerful beings.”

So I encourage you to learn for yourself. Empower yourself. Find the truth for yourself. Don’t just listen to what you see on TV and believe things because that’s how they’ve always been. Seek truth. Know truth. "You have to know the truth and seek the truth and the truth will set you free.”

Sources:

The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat by Mark Gold and Jonathon Porritt

“The Food Revolution” by John Robbins

Forks over Knives documentary (on Netflix)

Cowspiracy documentary (on Netflix)

Earthlings documentary (on Netflix)

Before the Flood documentary (on YouTube, NatGeo, and others)

NutritionFacts.org

Zeitgeist: The Movie

[bloghealthinterventions]

Episode #11 The Plant Based Diet "Prescription"

Hello again! This is the podcast show notes section of Health Interventions For Your Practice! The topic at hand is the plant-based diet.

 I truly do not believe that the answer to everything is pharmaceutical based. I also believe that we have gotten so far off track that it’s going to take extreme measures to turn things back around. Just look at our patient population. They are getting sicker and sicker. The comorbidity rates are climbing, as are the obesity rates. The inflammation that is brewing inside of us from our poor choices and environmental exposures is contributing to our current state of health or lack thereof. 

 One of the ways that you can reduce inflammation, lower blood pressure, treat diabetes and hyperlipidemia without medications is by adopting a plant-based diet. It is actually becoming more mainstream to adopt a plant-based diet.  Which is making it easier to find more plant-based options at restaurants and grocery stores. Which makes it easier to have this conversation with patients.

The plant-based diet is not one that everyone is going to want to participate in. I am completely aware of that. I am also aware that you were going to get objections about giving up meat and animal-based products in the beginning. I have been able to have patients agreeable to trying this for a few days per week or having only one meat-based meal per day. There are many ways to help implement a more plant focused diet into your patients’ lives. 

There are many views on plant-based and many objections to plant-based nutrition. And there are misconceptions about a plant-based diet. Almost anything can be taken from good to bad, depending on one’s interpretation.  Some of the misinterpretation that takes the plant-based diet from good to bad is actually what is perceived plant-based in the lay community. Some have adopted the view that just not eating meat or meat byproducts constitutes as a healthy plant-based diet. Not really so. Often, they are still consuming high amounts of sugar, saturated fats and other processed by- products from processed foods.

So here we go... into the plant-based world.

I’m going to start with the benefits of a plant-based diet, how to do this healthfully, some of the things to be aware of in a plant-based diet and how to start the conversation with your patients.

Just like most everyone else, I once upon a time scoffed at the thought of not eating meat or animal-based products. How can I go without dairy? How could I ever live without cheese? How could I possibly get enough protein?

After doing some research on plant-based diet, I decided to get on board. I have a very strong family history of diabetes, hyperlipidemia and heart disease. I do not want any of those diagnoses for myself. I also like to practice what I preach as you know. I cannot ask my patients to do some thing that I have not tried myself. I like to be able to experiment with myself or very close family members to monitor outcomes and safety. And also, to be able to give real life tips. What did I have to lose anyway? If it didn’t work out, if I felt terrible, if my labs didn’t show any improvement, it was only me that had to suffer.

Well......, guess what happened?

I have lost 25 pounds without even trying! I am never hungry; I do not crave anything. I do not feel deprived. I feel better, I sleep better, I have more energy. My skin is clearer, and I recently drew a lipid panel on myself. My total cholesterol was 194, my HDL 95, triglycerides 33 and my LDL 67. I wasn’t sure that those numbers were actually possible! My previous cholesterol was 194, triglycerides 115, HDL 80 and LDL 91. My glucose from 99 to 87. TPO antibodies from 15 to 0. 

For full disclosure, I will also admit that I have not been participating much in exercise lately, as I’ve been a bit busy with this new adventure in podcasting and online training program production. Which, I Feel has been a wonderful trade-off for a short period of time. I tell you this so that you know my numbers were not skewed by my exercise or some crazy relaxing, stress-free lifestyle. I AM a practicing provider you know. And we are currently in the midst of the Covid pandemic, which makes any practicing provider’s life a bit more insane trying to keep up with the guidelines and adjustments in everyday practice.

I am sure that many of you have seen the Netflix shows and documentaries on the plant-based diet by now. Many of them are pretty good at getting the general population to stop for a moment and think about what they might be eating, but shortly after they watch the show they go back to a normal regimen. And that is where, once you have learned some of the benefits, hopefully you will be able to give it a try yourself and encourage your patients to continue on a plant-based diet and support them.

Dr. Dean Ornish is one of the Pioneers in developing protocols for using a plant-based diet and other lifestyle modifications to reverse heart disease. The evidence is very clear of all of the benefits associated with reducing the intake of meat and animal-based products. Heart disease CAN be reversed with a plant-based diet!  I will save the soapbox of some of these things for future episodes, specifically one on dairy products. I don’t want to get on too much of a tangent with you. I want to introduce this to you slowly, so that you may consider doing the plant-based life yourself and having that discussion with your clients with a little bit of knowledge of what to be mindful of.

A plant-based diet is one that consists primarily of food from whole plants. This includes vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, legumes and whole grains.  There are many variants of the plant-based diet out there, including vegan, vegetarian, lactovegetarian, ovo-vegetarian, Mediterranean, and I’m sure many more.

 I am not trying to label specifically or get into those details, I am purely interested in giving you the overview of a solid plant-based nutritional program for your patients, that focuses on the vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes and whole grains.

The Benefits:

High fiber intake is inevitable if done right. This will show benefits by decreasing inflammation, increasing bowel regularity, clearing a fatty liver and stifling insulin surges. The outcomes from this include lower glucose levels, lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure and weight loss. Fiber is also great for increasing satiety.

A well-rounded plant-based diet will increase general health and wellness with the increased intake of phytonutrients. Phytonutrients are best gotten from our food, rather than from supplemental forms. Phytonutrients are known to be powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents to help fight and prevent cancer, chronic illness and to boost the immune system. And I think we could all use a little immune boost right now.

 Wait! Did I mention weight loss? Did I mention that was one of the major benefits of adopting a plant-based diet?

A Few Considerations…

When one is doing a plant-based diet, they must still be very aware of what they are eating. You have to be sure to include certain nutrients that you may not get in abundance from all plant-based foods. Iron and B12 are two of the most commonly depleted nutrients on a plant-based diet. If you are aware of this, you can adjust your diet accordingly. Vitamin B 12 can be easily gotten with nutritional yeast, which has a distinct taste, referred to as cheesy. It can be sprinkled onto foods.  I like to put it on my spaghetti squash, topped with tomato sauce and then nutritional yeast. A few other sources of iron include cashews, kidney beans and black beans, as well as spinach. So again, a well-rounded plant-based lifestyle can still include these nutrients you need. One of the modules in the wellness and weight management course that I offer is dedicated to phytonutrients, micronutrients and essential elements we require for optimal functioning.

Now let’s talk about the interpretation of, or some misconceptions of, a plant-based diet. A plant-based diet is high in nutrients. It is high in a variety of food sources that come from plants. A true plant-based diet DOES NOT include French fries, pastries, pasta and other chemically processed foods or food like substances. I have seen many say that they are plant-based that still inhale everything but meat without regard and are still perplexed at how they could be gaining weight and not getting control over their chronic diseases and still feeling extremely fatigued. That is not the intention of a plant-based diet. A plant-based diet is meant to be filled with good wholesome vegetables, legumes, grains, fruits and unprocessed food sources. It Does not include cheese, which is very high in saturated fat and comes from animals. There are vegan cheeses that are made from cashews and nutritional yeast. I have tried some of those. Some better than others, but I just choose not to even go that route. I save the calories.

How to start the discussion with your patients…

When you start a discussion with your patients, you may get a lot of kickback. Especially if you’re in a place like me, where we were raised on Home cooking, with meat and potatoes required at every dinner. And with grandmas trying to make you fatten up a little bit. 

As a side note, I’m not sure how many of you have a grandmother like this, but when I was growing up, mine kept a can of lard under the kitchen sink that she cooked with! Looking back, I am not sure how I live through that experience. I ate fried eggs in it every morning that I stayed with her, and it was used for gravy making and soup making to add flavor.  I have to laugh about it now or I would probably vomit.  I’m not sure how she lived to be 83, but she did. My theory is that she was a hard-working woman that never sat down to rest much and had eight children to chase after. I can also still see her using a sickle to knock down weeds on an embankment in front of her house every summer. That would definitely burn off a few extra calories, decrease stress and maybe ward off ill effects from that can of lard.

Ok, back to discussing the plant-based life with your patients.

The plant-based discussion is one worth having with patients. If you start by asking what they typically eat in a day, to see where they are on the scale of carnivore, you’ll have a pretty good idea how much work will be involved with this discussion. Review the benefits of going plant based. If they have multiple comorbidities, or is they are chronically fatigued or trying to lose weight, they may be willing to implement the strategy.

If they have IBS symptoms or chronic constipation and you discuss with them that increasing their fiber through a plant-based diet May help to regulate their bowels, they may be more willing to implement the strategy.

If they have chronic pain or fibromyalgia, that cannot be attributed to anything diagnostically, they may be more willing to implement the strategy.

If you’re about to add another medication to them to better control their diabetes, cholesterol or blood pressure, they might be willing to implement the strategy.

If all else fails, have a discussion with them about sexual dysfunction.  It is well documented that sexual dysfunction, most commonly erectile dysfunction, may be attributed to early cardiovascular disease. The arteries in our body are not selective to the effects of atherosclerosis and buildup of lipid Plaques. All of the arteries are being clogged up with saturated fats that come from meat and animals-based products. Dr. Ornish has shown that this could be reversed with a plant-based diet. There have also been studies to show that there will be a significant improvement in erections and sexual function with the adoption of a plant-based diet. After this discussion, they may definitely be willing to implement the strategy.

I have many ways to get my point across to patients. Or, maybe I should say to help them get what they need and want in a persuasive and effective manner. Remember, when you speak to someone from THEIR viewpoint of health, you’ll get a whole lot further in your conversations. If you are speaking with a gentleman that is suffering from erectile dysfunction, whether that dysfunction be from medication side effects or from physiologic disease processes, they are willing to listen to you about how to restore and improve function.

So how do we start the implementation process?

I start with, “can you decrease your red meat to once per week?” then, I move into “can you decrease all animal-based consumption to three days per week?” And then I asked them to pay attention to how they feel on the days that they didn’t eat meat.

On the days that they are not eating meat, I have to prepare them for what to eat and how to modify their usual intake so that they aren’t hungry, and they feel like they aren’t being deprived.

There is a lot of flavor in a plant-based diet. There’s food to eat. You’re not being deprived to be on a plant-based diet. You can substitute many things for meat.

I find it best to give examples, so they know they are not going to struggle. I have already mentioned to you that I use spaghetti squash instead of pasta, nutritional yeast instead of Parmesan cheese. How about black bean tacos? Instead of hamburger chop up black beans or don’t chop them up, depending on preference, season them with taco seasoning, as you would hamburger, heat them up and top them with your usuals, minus the sour cream and cheese of course! But you can use salsa and jalapeños. Maybe spinach instead of iceberg lettuce to add to the nutritional value. I have done the same with burgers. Using black beans or kidney beans, chopped up, adding in seasoning, some ground flax for additional fiber and omega fatty acids, pat them into a burger shape, put them on the grill or fry them in olive oil or avocado oil. There are many many ways to make substitutions!

I do offer a patient-based health interventions program that includes an online weight program loss for them. I do weekly videos of how to prepare meals for weight loss, from a plant-based standpoint, that are posted on the health interventions Facebook page. Feel free to utilize this for yourself or for your patients.

If you have been listening to the podcast or follow me on social media or my website, you know that I do offer a weight management program that you can implement into your practice right away that focuses on nutrition, lifestyle and modifiable factors. And that course covers a wide range of topics the attribute to overall health and wellness. It isn’t only about nutrition and what medication you can prescribe to make someone lose weight.

 I believe you need a full program and that we need to re-educate our population to bring ourselves back to a healthier place.  This weight management program can very easily be 100% plant based and you will learn further how to modify the plant-based diet into a keto form to get them to lose weight rather quickly. This is followed by a transition into a maintenance form of the plant-based diet that still allows for adequate amount of protein, healthy fats and high fiber carbohydrates without gaining back any weight. Once you are able to learn and perfect this, you will see energy levels sore The Inflammatory state their body is constantly in When on a diet high in animal-based products Will drop significantly with a plant based diet, as will the fatigue.  The program does include a downloadable recipe guide with recipes that you can give to your patients, including a plant-based meal plan to get them started. If you’re not interested in doing the whole program, but maybe have been intrigued by some of the phytonutrient discussion today, I will make that course available for you as an individual module. Just go to the notes from this episode on the website nphealthinterventions.com for access. you can also go to healthinterventions.com/phytonutrients for details on how to get that. 

I hope that I have been able to help you understand a bit more about the benefits of a plant-based diet and how to start the discussion of that with your patients.

Have a great week! May it be filled with many Health Interventions!

[eacci]

Fast-fashion has a toll on the environment

Sales, Black Friday, low prices! Textile companies always encourage us to buy more and more clothes. As a result, around 80 billion items of clothes are produced each year. And this number is only growing up… By 2050, global clothing sales could more than triple. The term “fast-fashion” refers to clothes that are inspired by recent style trends seen on celebrities and on the runway for an affordable price for the average consumer. To go faster and keep prices as low as possible, retailers often cut costs, an action that increases their carbon footprint. Consequently, these clothes are responsible for ecological damage and social issues. Cities Foundation is here to shed light on what is truly happening when you buy a 5$ T-shirt!

  The textile industry as the second largest industrial polluter worldwide

From production to recycling, the textile industry performs highly in destroying the planet. First of all, the production of raw materials – mainly cotton and polyester – is responsible for multiple ecological disasters. In 2017, 25 million tons of cotton were produced – mostly in India, the United States and China. The cotton production consumes most of the world’s freshwater resources, leading to their drying out. The case of Aral sea, in Uzbekistan, is significant: this lake used to be the fourth biggest lake on the planet. But, as the country slowly became the second biggest cotton producer, nowadays, there is almost no water left.

Step number 2: transforming raw materials into clothes. For that, textile industries use, most of the time, chemicals and toxic substances – such as chrome, mercury, lead or copper – to tint, wash-out or soften textile. In Europe, since 2007, the regulation REACH has been forcing producers and importers of chemicals to prove that their products do not put the consumer’s life in danger. However, that is not the case in the developing countries, where most production processes take place.

Thirdly, combined with transportation issues, clothes are responsible for 1,2 billion tons of greenhouse gas every year. For instance, a pair of jeans sold in France travels around 65000 kilometers before being sold : the cotton is produced in Uzbekistan, the pair of jeans is spined in India and tinted in Morocco and then sold in France.

Finally, once the clothes end up in your wardrobe, the pollution doesn’t stop. Actually, clothes in polyester are made from microfibers which come off in the washing machine. Yet, they are too small to be filtered by the water treatment plant, thus directly ending up in the oceans: about 500.000 tons of microplastics from polyester end in the oceans each year. As for the recycling part? Each year 4 million tons of clothes end up in landfills around Europe, with only 20% of these clothes being recycled.

  Behind the veil : social and health issues 

The exploitation of workers in developing countries is part of the fast-fashion system. Most clothes are produced in Bangladesh. In Dhaka, price rates for production and manufacturing are low: workers – mainly women and children – earn only 2-3$ a day. Apart from that, owners of textile fabrics have to cut down costs, thus ignoring security rules to meet the demands of big industries. This causes a lot of accidents, such as the collapse of a building of 8 floors in April 2013, when more than 1000 workers died.

« Each day we woke up early in the morning, we go to the factory, and we work very hard all day long. And we do all the hard work for clothes. People have no idea how hard it is for us to do the laundry. They only buy and use it. I think these clothes are produced with our blood. Many textile workers die in separate accidents.” Shima Akhter, garment worker (quote from the documentary The true cost)

In addition, a lot of people die due to chemicals and toxic substances used by the textile industry. In Texas, 80% of cotton production is produced with GMO cotton plants, which are proven to cause cancer. In developing countries, the rivers next to fabrics are also polluted by the chemicals. The case of the Ganges river next to Kanpur is a good illustration: each day, 50 million litres of residual toxic water are released into the river. Subsequently, the population living near textile factories suffers from diseases directly connected to the chemicals found in the water.

  Why should we keep sustaining the current textile system, since only the owners of the big textile industries gain something out of it? 

Advertisements about fast-fashion are nothing less than pure propaganda. In fact, they make us believe that the only way to solve problems in life is over-consumption. But the truth is that, according to multiple studies, people who are actually addicted to fashion and excessive buying of clothes are not happy at all. On the contrary, they have a higher stress level and are not satisfied with their life.

“But also from the consumer point of view, is it really democratic to buy a tee-shirt for 5$, a pair of jeans for 20$? Because they [the big fashion industries] are making us believe that we are rich or wealthy because we can buy a lot. But in fact they are making us poorer, and the only person who is getting richer is the owner of the fast-fashion brand.” Livia Firth (quote from the documentary The true cost)

So what can we do? Do we keep buying stuff we don’t even like or need, knowing that, in this way, we contribute to the destruction of the planet and exploitation of workers in developing countries? The answer is a big NO! At Cities foundation, we think that global issues can be tackled by local solutions.

  Alternatives to fast-fashion 

At the moment, there are a lot of alternatives and inspiring initiatives, which can help you turn into more sustainable ways of dressing. First of all, we could limit the amount of clothes in our wardrobe. Most of them are not even worn twice. A simple tip for this would be to go for casual clothes that you can mix with everything and wear in different circumstances. Original pieces are also cool but you will only wear them a few times. Secondly, we could choose the materials we mostly like: materials such as organic cotton and linen are natural and biodegradable, while polyester and cotton pollute the planet a lot.

An important effort is currently being made by some brands in order to minimize their effects on the environment (non-harmful dyes, natural fibres, protection of their workers interests). We should definitely support these brands, instead of buying from big textile companies. Speaking of which, Reformation is a brand you should keep an eye on! They follow sustainable practices, such as using recyclable and biodegradable packaging, and 100% compostable bags for instore purchases. Reformation also produces their clothes in green building infrastructures and tries to minimize their waste, water, and energy consumption.

Last but not least, not buying new clothes at all is another, though a bit extreme, solution. You can be part of the above-mentioned trend via some challenges, such as #noshoppingfor2020, where people assume that they have enough clothes in their wardrobe and they don’t need new ones. What’s more, if you really need something during the year, you still can buy from second-hand shops. Plus, second-hand clothes are usually cheaper! Oh, it is also possible to use a filter for your washing machine to filter out microplastics which come off from polyester clothes.

At a local scale, creative initiatives are flourishing too. If you live in Amsterdam, there are more and more alternatives to fast-fashion. Here are some few local initiatives to feel inspired!

The Lena fashion library is the place to borrow your wardrobe in Amsterdam. Renting your clothes is fun and you don’t hurt the planet each time you wear a new dress.

At Repaircafe, you can repair your damaged clothes in a good atmosphere and make connections with your neighbors.

Genaaid and De steek are offering sewing courses: learning how to sew could be the solution to change your wardrobe sustainably.

Long story short, as the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood said, “buy less, choose well, make it last”. We should think about our clothing as an investment and not as a consumption product that we use and then we just get rid of a few months later. As individuals, we have to turn into solutions that boycott big textile industries and force the end of this destructive circle.  Just find the alternative that suits you best! After all, there is no planet B!

  Sources :

The Economist. (2018, November 28). The true cost of fast-fashion. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLfNUD0-8ts&feature=youtu.be

Neelis Koly, “What is fast fashion and how does it impact the environment?”, https://www.greenmatters.com/, Greenmaters, May 2019, Web, 11 February 2020

Skus-Wah-Chung, “Fast-fashion is drowning the world. We need a Fashion revolution!”, https://www.greenpeace.org/, Greenpeace, 21 April 2016, Web, 11 February 2020

Michael Ross (producer), & Andrew Morgan (Director). (2015). The true cost, [documentary]. Retrieved from : https://truecostmovie.com/watch-now/

  The post Fast-fashion has a toll on the environment appeared first on CITIES Foundation.

[pauldeckerus]

5 Tips for Shooting Fashion Behind the Scenes

One of my favorite environments for photojournalism is the world of fashion, which I fell into almost accidentally when I first started out as a photographer. It has been one of the most interesting, rewarding experiences both artistically and personally, and I would like to share some thoughts on working in that scene.

I shot my first London Fashion Week in 2016, not long after graduating from university with a degree in Advertising. I researched and contacted the PR companies directly with my portfolio, as well as some notes on my intended coverage. At the time I never considered that there might be something to see other than the presentations and catwalks, but I was wrong.

At the first show I ever worked at, presented by Marta Jakubowski, I found that although I was having a great time securing editorial images of the actual presentation I was finding it far more interesting to shoot the moments between models changing positions or the designer altering the scene – these were far more dynamic and told more of a story than the simple posed portraits.

The “moneymaking” editorial shots were fairly easy and non-time consuming as everything including the lighting is already set up when you arrive. It’s just a matter of covering the room methodically to capture every model and every detail in the collection before most photographers are “done” and move to the next show. However, I wanted to come away with more than just editorial work and began to negotiate access to backstage at the events I was attending in the hopes of a better collection of storytelling images.

Since 2016 I’ve shot at over forty fashion shows, covering backstage on around half. I have a few series in the works from these, which I’ll hopefully run as books and in gallery spaces. Over that time my workflow has evolved, and there are a few tips I’d like to share with anyone interested in shooting in similar environments.

When you get backstage there are a number of factors that can limit the quality of images you come away with, most pressing of which is time. You’ll have maybe an hour if you’re lucky between arriving and the show starting, and unless you’re only there for the backstage images you’ll need to be heading out directly to get a good spot if it’s a catwalk, or to queue if it’s a presentation space. This means that your images will be limited, and every shot counts.

1. Look at Faces, not the Fashion

The best storytelling moments can be seen in people’s faces, and I think this is true in most forms of photojournalism. Photographing in a room full of the highest class of models wearing some of the most stylish or outlandish designs can be very distracting. It can be tempting to go for “easy” shots, not too dissimilar to editorial images you’d likely be duplicating later on during the show itself.

By watching peoples faces you can pre-empt these moments and take advantage of the unique moments and expressions occurring in this informal setting to capture some genuine interactions – laughter, stress, the frantic movement of the make-up team and the designers.

2. Know Your Lenses

Backstage environments are often very cramped, and it helps to carry the smallest gear possible. This will mean having less of a physical footprint, making it easier and faster to navigate the room. It will also mean fewer lens changes and more time spent concentrating on the scene than worrying about gear.

I prefer to use a 50mm but will also use a 90mm to really isolate my subjects.

However, I know many other photographers who will use anything from 24mm to 35mm in order to photograph a bit more of the context. I’ve even worked next to photographers shooting with large fisheye type lenses paired with creative flashes and gels, and even prisms for special effects.

It really is a matter of personal preference, and I do urge you to experiment with different options. When it comes to taking it seriously however you must put that experimentation to practice and use lenses you have a deep literacy with.

3. Situational Awareness

Backstage, especially during early prep, is one of the most hectic and crowded environments I have ever worked in, and that includes riots and protests. Maintaining situational awareness while working is always important, but even more so in such enclosed spaces. Trip hazards like wires, makeup stands, and other people will be prevalent. It’s also good to keep out of the line of view of fellow photographers, to be mindful that they have just as much right to be there as you.

It can also be good to keep track of who is good to be shot and who may be busy or unready for the camera. Some models may be waiting for things on their face to dry or for a fitting to be completed and so they may be unable to react to the camera.

4. Use a UV Filter

This is a slightly more technical tip, but still very useful for keeping your gear safe and ready to shoot. The air backstage is often full of chemicals, all kinds of hairspray, perfumes, and other substances. Keeping the front of your lens covered with a clear element makes it easy to quickly clean and keeps the actual front element free from anything that may corrode the coatings or glass.

I usually keep a UV filter on my lenses as a transparent lens cap so I never have to fumble with anything and risk losing a shot.

5. Respect Everyone

Although this tip applies to basically every genre I think the stakes can be much higher in a fashion environment. As a photographer, there is an implicit threat that a “bad” photograph could show someone in a poor light, which could affect a models career.

You are there by invitation, in someone else’s workspace, and usually one of the least important people in the grand scheme of the preparation going on. Mutual respect can go a long way to helping everyone around you feel comfortable with your role and leads to people being more likely to help you by giving you space or being patient while you frame an image.

Recently I’ve made more of an effort to help people feel more at ease with my presence, and it’s really paid off in my images. Usually, when I arrive I’ll go around to the models and introduce myself with a smile, tell them I’ll be floating around taking photos, and that they can feel free to wave me away if they don’t want one taken at that time. By identifying myself, I become part of the scenery rather than just being the abstract idea of a photographer moving around the room.

I think that because the event does not end at the BTS – there is the actual show afterward – having these interactions early on means that it becomes easier to apply a storytelling approach to the editorial images as well. Interacting with the models in a showroom means you can nail images with more expression, and more precise poses than the other photographers in the room.

One of the best things about shooting this kind of environment is that there are so many different styles and approaches that can be used by different documentarians. I’ve seen videographers, podcasters recording audio, and even painters rendering these backstage scenes. Just because I approach things a certain way doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to explore different methodology to improve the way my images communicate.

My recent BTS projects have all involved the use of my Hasselblad XPan and Ilford black and white film, which has given me some really unique results. I’ve even shot BTS for my own editorial shoots, including for the Toni & Guy Academy, which I found fun – switching between BTS and editorial as and when models were finished with the stylist.

I look forward to seeing how my work continues to develop in this field and to sharing my future work with you! Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts on shooting BTS for fashion events!

About the author: Simon King is a London based photographer and photojournalist, currently working on a number of long-term documentary and street photography projects. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can follow his work on Instagram. Simon also teaches a short course in Street Photography at UAL, which can be read about here.

from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2018/12/27/5-tips-for-shooting-fashion-behind-the-scenes/

[boney-king-of-nowhere-blog]

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia by Peter Pomerantsev

Recently I’ve had quite a few conversations with friends about Putin’s Russia. I realised that I was really not very informed about the subject, but was finding myself annoyed at hearing what I felt was a complacent apology for a corrupt, murderous oligarch.

In one of many memorable sketches from this book Pomerantsev describes his then colleagues at  the state-controlled Ostankino channels. These producers, when asked how they square their liberal private lives with the fact of working at the state-controlled Ostankino Technical Center, reply that ‘everything is PR’ and reject the author’s ‘Western attachment to such vague notions as ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom’ as a blunder’. Elsewhere Pomerantsev characterises this type of attitude as ‘easy relativism’, referring to a Western journalist’s justification for taking a job at Russia Today.

The conversation with the Ostankino producers falls within the context of a chapter on Putin’s personal adviser, Vladislav Surkov. I’d first heard of him through an Adam Curtis segment included on Charlie Brooker’s end of year Newswipe. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4MWs7qTr8) The filmmaker later developed these ideas in Bitter Lake and Hypernormalisation, again drawing heavily on Pomerantsev’s work. As Putin’s adviser Surkov has been credited with creating a state of constant confusion in Russian society. By funding the creation of extremist political parties on both the left and right, lending support to conservative and liberal media, and generally stirring up as many competing causes as possible Surkov created an atmosphere in which Putin alone appears as reliable. Moreover, Surkov maintains a similar policy of obfuscation with regard to his own image. Most famously he is thought to have written the satirical novel, Close to Zero, which Pomerantsev describes as ‘the sort of book Surkov’s youth groups burn on Red Square’. Surkov himself teases this dual identity by writing the novel’s preface!

After watching those Adam Curtis documentaries and while browsing follow-up material, I quickly realised that this was a book pitched at my level. (With its 100 page bibliography Putin’s Kleptocracy by Karen Dawisha feels like a step too far at this point). Dizzying and druggy, though held together by a focus on Moscow, the book bounds quickly through its diverse cast of characters. Indeed Pomerantsev gives the shapeshifting Surkov a run for his money in the speed with which his gaze moves from one figure to another. Yet ultimately the book is held together as much by scepticism about Surkov’s brand of unrestrained, postmodern relativism as by its focus on Moscow. This combination of a postmodern style in order to critique postmodernism also underpins Adam Curtis’ Hypernormalisation, which again takes much of its subject matter from Pomerantsev. (Though Curtis places the origins of this postmodern conception of reality within the Soviet era, whereas Pomerantsev seems to regard states like the USSR and Korea as ‘classic’ (modernist?) totalitarian states.)

Of these several vignettes one which seemed particularly revealing of how power is delegated within Putin’s oligarchy was the story of Yana Yakovleva. The head of a drug company importing diethyl ether, an organic compound commonly used as a laboratory solvent, Yana in 2006 was arrested by the Federal Drug Control Service and detained for 7 months while awaiting trial. She was charged with the illegal sale of the diethyl ether without a license. An absurd charge against the head of a company whose entire business had for years hinged upon the sale of this very drug. More terrifying, however, than the Kafkaesque story of the arrest itself, is Pomerantsev’s account of the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring which led to her release.

One of the key themes of the book is the interplay between the actors of Russia’s “liberal” drama and the super-rich stage managers behind the scenes. In Yakovleva’s case it becomes clear that the most important factor in her acquittal was not the bravery of her industrious lawyer Evgeny Chernousov or the inherent ridiculousness of the prosecution’s attempt to prove that diethyl ether was a narcotic. The real battle was not between prosecution and defence, but between two rival factions on ‘the Olympus of the Kremlin’. On either side were Viktor Cherkesov and Nikolaj Patrushev. It became known as ‘the war of the Chekists’ (the KGB men) and arose after a perceived snub to Cherkesov, a close friend of Putin’s who, expecting to become head of the FSB (successor to the KGB) upon Putin’s inauguration as president, instead found himself appointed to the Federal Drug Control Service (considered the least important security organ). Patrushev was chosen as head of the FSB and in retaliation Cherkesov launched an investigation into illegal smuggling at the Chinese border, overseen by the FSB. This in turn prompted Patrushev to make sure that cases such as Yana’s, part of the FDCS’ wider attempt to take control of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, received intensive media coverage and that the police allowed protests to continue against her unjust detainment. Ultimately both men were fired by Putin, who remained silent and inscrutable throughout the battle, but in the chaos of the conflict her lawyer was able to engineer an acquittal.

I hope what I’ve written so far doesn’t sound completely self-satisfied. I started off convinced that Putin’s Russia was a profoundly alienating post-mafia regime in which human rights abuse goes unchecked whilst true democracy remains elusive and I reached for a book which could confirm all of these preconceived notions. (Of course, there was the added sweetener of its fast-paced, picaresque style and a subject matter of shady political puppetry designed to appeal to the same stoner demographic as that of Adam Curtis*). In fact I think that Pomerantsev gives a very even-handed account of the West’s role (or complicity) in Putin’s Russia without ever veering into an apology. In the book’s penultimate chapter ‘Offshore’, he details the way in which areas such as Mayfair, Belgravia, and Knightsbridge have been bought up by Russian money to the extent that the traditional binary of ‘Russia and the West’ might now seem irrelevant.

In light of recent revelations about the poisoning attempt carried out by GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) agents against their one-time colleague Sergei Skripal the question of how to impose sanctions on Putin takes on greater urgency. Any serious retribution should surely include some kind of check on Russian assets in London. To put it in Pomerantsev’s terms, can we really afford to just ‘keep all that bad stuff up in the spare room of our culture’? Jeremy Corbyn, writing in the Guardian in March, voiced support for sanctions of this sort. It remains baffling, however, that he refuses to condemn the Russian state outright for its involvement in the attack. Whilst France, Germany, Canada and the USA pledged to support Britain and its assessment that Russian officers were behind the attack, Jeremy Corbyn still refused to say anything more than that the ‘evidence points strongly’ to Russian involvement.

The parallels with Trump are worrying - it seems that for the hard-right and hard-left alike in 2018 Russia and Putin represent an antidote to the corrupt centrist mainstream. But it is an image which surely says more about Corbyn and Trump’s own projection than it does about the actual functioning of Russian society. It is an extreme isolationist response to the Iraq war which runs that ‘because we intervened hastily and unsuccessfully once, we should never intervene anywhere in any form again.’ The all-or-nothing logic of the grumpy adolescent dominates and transforms Putin into a kind of anti-hero, onto whom the hard left and right can project their own sense of nobility.

In this way they start to look very much like Pomerantsev’s cynical colleagues at Ostankino. Easy relativism provides a justification for political apathy and the truth (in this case that Russian agents were sent to carry out an assassination on British soil) becomes lost, hidden in plain sight amongst countless equally valid, though obviously contradictory, versions of reality.

*I don’t mean to sound so down on Adam Curtis. I really like his use of music and archive footage - I think you can see the way that recently this has influenced more traditionally “objective” documentarians like Ken Burns. I also think he is a provocative and assured speaker. But not long ago I listened to his interview with Adam Buxton, whose podcast I follow religiously, and he came across as a bit of a tosser. Normally on that podcast I’m looking to see a different side to people and an ability to relax into a friendly chat, but he sounded like a prerecording, offering long, humourless lectures often only tangentially related to the question asked and generally sounding like a smug Oxbridge student bullshitting his way through a tutorial after one too many glasses of port the night before. I also think that he, like many journalists, is very good at convincing himself and his audience that he is presenting original research, when in fact his “subjective” style is often a means of avoiding references or bringing in voices other than his own.