#would do the whole mix as ‘adult standard’ tunes

[kazimakuwabara]

Fever, Fever, Go Away

Summary: Usopp dreams. Gets in an argument. Hallucinates. And then passes out. Post-time skip.

(So this is chapter two from a sick Usopp fic I’m working on, on A03. I really liked this chapter so I thought I’d post it here as a stand alone. The rest is on A03 under the same title if you’re interested ^^)

****

He was sleeping.

He wasn't sure how he knew he was sleeping, but he was.

A peal of breezy laughter floated in the air, light and soft, but somehow still able to cut through any noise. A laugh, which Usopp had not heard the likes of sense...

 Ah.

There it was.

That was why he knew it was a dream.

It was her laughter.

 Her.

His mother only existed in dreams.

Feelings and colors clarified; sounds smoothed out and settled into something understandable, and then the scene came into clarity.

Banchina, his perfect mother, was skipping down a hill. Not just any hill, but the hill below Usopp's family home. Syrup Village. This was Syrup village. He was home, no... no he was not home. He was just... remembering, or dreaming, or both, as the case was. He focused on his mother, her back so recognizable. From her strong posture, to her thin limbs, and her charming large hands which she used to make food, or make pottery, or when she was feeling especially industrious...

Mix chemicals.

She'd been a chemist, or something like it when he was a child. She even had a shed in the back, behind their house, that she used to mix all sorts of things together in. She had even taught him how to mix smoke bombs. There was a lot Usopp had gotten from his father... but there was a lot he'd gotten from his mother too. Usopp pulled himself back to the scene; back to his mother.

She hummed a tune as she skipped down the hill. One that Usopp hadn't thought about in a long time, but recognized immediately. Her hands were behind her back, one clasping her wrist loosely as she skipped and hummed, a few words slipping out as she half sang:

 "As the son of a son of a sailor    I went out on the sea for adventure...

   ...As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin' man    I have chalked up many a mile..."    

She did not sing the whole song, she stuck with humming mostly, seemingly only singing out her favorite parts or the song. But when she got to the chorus, her half meandering, half humming voice rose up, and she belted it out:

"Son of a son, son of a son Son of a son of a sailor Son of a gun, load the last ton One step ahead of the jailer!"

Behind her, screaming more than singing, a small child's voice echoed her. It was him. Little him.

He turned, or at least the scene shifted and then, a small boy, no more than five came running after his mother, tearing down this hill at a speed too fast for the slope. He was belting out the chorus too, eyes alight with delight as he thought of his father. The boy kicked up his heels when he got to, 'Ahead of the jailer,' and Usopp winced, knowing what would happen next. Little Usopp... tripped. And then, in a spectacular display of flailing, Little Usopp tumbled down, end over end, moving like a wild wheel down the hill, until his mother had stepped in front of him and caught him. Her face had been terrified during the moment, but now that she'd managed to stop the little boy's stumble, it smoothed out into a mask of calm.

She knelt to the ground, settling the little boy down about her lap, and in a soft voice asked, "Usopp! Are you alright?"

Little Usopp was shaking, half from fear, and the rest, from pain. The tumble had been quite dramatic, and would only get worse. Little Usopp hadn't seen it yet, but Usopp's knee was bleeding, and where it wasn't bleeding, it was scraped up raw, this skin stinging and irritated red.

Usopp, all grown up now, and nearing his twenties, still had the scar from this fall.

Banchina's eyes were on it, and she frowned with deep concern, and then Little Usopp spotted the injury. His eyes flooded with tears, and he took in a gulping breath---

But Banchina clapped her hands dramatically, and shouted, "Banchina... SPELL!!" She bellowed the word with a dramatic flourish, and then closed her eyes in deep concentration, and wiggled her fingers.

Little Usopp's head snapped to his mother, caught in rapt attention. Tears were still spilling down his cheeks, but his wail had been halted.

With an exaggerated grab at the air around Usopp's knee, and in a completely serious voice, Banchina began to chant, "Pain, Pain, fly away! Come again some other day!" She chanted these words over and over, each time her voice growing louder, more fervent, and more dramatic until she made a huge throwing motion, and tossed an unseen heavy load away from her son. Little Usopp sniffled and clapped for his mother's performance, and while he clapped, she removed a scarf from her neck and quickly tied it to his leg.

"Did that help?" She asked, still focusing on his bloodied knee.

"Yes," Little Usopp whispered, wincing as she tightened her makeshift bandage, "It still hurts."

"Yes... I think it will a little while yet!" Banchina whispered seriously, "You had a very big fall!" Once his knee was tied up, she scooped him up into her arms, and turned back towards the hill, "I shall have to cast more spells, but Usopp, you did very well! Brave boy!"

Little Usopp wrapped his arms around her, and buried his face in her neck. She was hurrying on up the hill, where she would treat his knee, but it would still scar.

Usopp, the big one who was watching his younger self with envy, knew this to be true. Absently, he touched the pant leg, knowing under it was the slightly hooked raised scar. As a child, he used to draw on it, and turn it into a yawning crocodile's mouth.

This was a nice dream. A nice memory to have. But it was sweet agony. Nice to see his mother... terrible to know that when he woke up... she would be gone.

He couldn't recall the last time he had dreamed of his mother.

As she reached the top of the hill, she paused, and turned around.

It was as if the distance between them had faded away. She stared at him. A young mother staring into her adult, or at least something like it, son's face. In reality, she'd never know his aged face, but she was looking now. Maybe she could see it, and know it.

Usopp stood a little straighter, puffed up his chest, and held out his arms. Would she like what she saw? Be proud of it? Even recognize it?

"Wh-what do you think?" He stammered. He hadn't meant to stammer.

Banchina looked him up and down appraisingly, in the way Robin might look at an ancient item, and then she whispered, "Wake up Usopp."

He blinked.

That was not her voice.

Banchina opened her mouth again, and Zoro's angry voice emerged, "Oi! Usopp! Wake up!"

                                                        *******

Usopp took in a ragged breath, startled into alertness. No. No, he was not startled into alertness, he was terrified into it. He was thrust, terrifyingly into alertness, and even screamed as the hands at his shoulders, clamped harder.

"Ah! Come on Usopp! Shut up!" Zoro barked, shaking Usopp once more.

Usopp took in a deep breath, and coughed, choking on the scream he'd been about to let loose. When he managed to catch his breath, he rubbed his eyes. Looking about, Usopp felt confused by his place of sleep. This was not the men's room, nor was it his workshop.

"Where....?" He began to question and then stopped. He knew where he was. The answer had suddenly popped into his head.

This was the crow's nest, and he had been on duty. He... had slept on duty... and been awoken by Zoro.

 Oh, no!

Even though they had been docked at Marah (The name of the island, which Robin liked quite a lot for some historical reason Usopp could not recall) for over a week, Zoro had insisted they still keep up their night watch routine. There'd been a few begrudging moans, but everyone had agreed. Seemingly, nice tourist location or not, the Straw Hats needed to be vigilant. They were all wanted people after all.

And Usopp had fallen asleep on his watch, a huge slight by the crew's first mate's, standards.

Zoro crossed his arms and glared, letting Usopp know he was due for a lecture. And then probably a punishment, in the form of some workout routine.

And any other day, Usopp would agree. He took watch very seriously. He had never fallen asleep at watch, well, at least not since his Sabaody days, where the care of the group's well-being seemed to be taken a little more seriously overall. And Zoro, despite how often he napped, never fell asleep on watch, and was not one to let it go if any one else happened to fall asleep on a watch. Even Chopper had gotten a stern scolding from Zoro when the little doctor had fallen asleep, and Zoro was soft on him plenty.

Any other day, Usopp would accept a scolding from Zoro, and he'd whine, but he'd accept a punishment too.

But today was different.

He had dreamt of his mother and seen her with such aching clarity. Because of that, Usopp couldn't bear to be yelled at, scolded, or punished today. He needed to go hide, and... and... and something. Mourn maybe? But he needed to do something, and he needed to do it alone.

Remembering his mother was as painful as it was wonderful, and for the momentary joy he got in having that dream, his day was now ruined. Zoro needn't punish him... he was punished enough.

Because now he was back in a reality where she was dead and gone.

And it was such a bitter thing, worse than any pain Zoro could give him.

And so, with a bit of tremor to his voice, Usopp got up and muttered, "I recognize I fell asleep, and that was wrong, but I can't be yelled at just now."

Zoro raised an eyebrow and scoffed, "What was that?"

Usopp grit his teeth, but forced himself to unclench and relax his jaw. Not meeting Zoro's eye, Usopp cleared his throat and said louder, "I was wrong for falling asleep, there's no excuse for that. But lecture me tomorrow-"

"So you admit to being in the wrong, but want to weasel out of the punishment?" Zoro snapped, talking over Usopp.

Usopp rubbed his head, a vein in his brow pulsing. His head hurt. His heart hurt. The scar on his knee, long recovered, hurt.

"Not now, Zoro," Usopp muttered, trying to get himself back into the present. Trying to readjust to being motherless. Why did it still have to hurt so much, years later? Why did tears still prickle at his eyes?

"What?" Zoro growled, his eyes narrowing as he tried to take on a frightening countenance.

But Usopp couldn't do with it today. He brushed past Zoro, and without a word, began to descend the rigging.

That was the wrong move apparently, because Zoro was soon descending after him, making a scene. Shouting his name over and over, and demanding for Usppp to stop. Usopp did stop, when his feet hit the deck, his teeth grit hard, and his head throbbing as Zoro continued to yell. The rest of the crew was looking from their own positions, and a few were starting to drift towards the scene, clearly curious as to what was going on.

"Do you think you can just walk away from this?" Zoro barked out when he was on deck. But he did not stop when his feet hit the deck, he kept walking, shoving his chest against Usopp's and glaring into the Sniper's eyes when he, at last, looked up.

Usopp had not been expecting the contact, and when he was met by Zoro's chest, he pressed back, surprising himself by doing it. Zoro too, looked surprised.

And it was probably Usopp pressing back against the riled-up Zoro that had Sanji calling out, "Oi! Moss-head! What are you doing over there to Usopp?"

Sanji's face was set in a protective frown, and he was stomping over, Luffy already ahead of him, although he only looked interested at the scene, and not upset.

"Usopp," Zoro spat, poking a hard finger to Usopp's bare chest, "Fell asleep on watch."

Sanji's eyebrows shot up, and he set his mouth in a hard line. He didn't have anything to say to defend Usopp, but his face said he clearly didn't like Zoro being so angry about it.

Usopp's head throbbed more, now embarrassed and ashamed to have the whole crew hear his missive.

"Usopp fell asleep?" Luffy asked, coming to stand near his First mate and Sniper. His voice held that innocence it usually did, but it had an edge. An edge that he was listening in now as a Captain, and not as a friend.

Usopp swore under his breath, shoulders sagging. This day was turning out into a real mess, "I know. I know I fell asleep. It was wrong. And I'll take full responsibility-"

"You'll take it, now!" Zoro snapped, "Not tomorrow, or not later when you feel like it!" He jabbed Usopp several more times with his finger as if driving a point into Usopp.

Usopp's jaw was beginning to hurt from how hard he was gritting his teeth, and Zoro's last jab, actually made Usopp stagger.

"Oi! Marimo, quit being a prick!" Sanji snapped, making a move to walk forward, but Luffy held out his hand and stopped the irate cook.

"If Usopp fell asleep, he needs to get scolded," Luffy said his tone cool but authoritative in that way that only Luffy could manage. He was staring unblinkingly at Zoro and Usopp, peeling back the layers of the scene, assessing something Sanji could not. There was something suspicious in Luffy's gaze, like he had an idea forming, but wasn't quite sure of it yet.

"This isn't about me trying to avoid responsibility-" Usopp tried to say, his chest hurting as his anger built. His heart was rattling inside his chest, and it felt like a panic attack was brewing inside of him.

 "Pain, Pain, fly away!" His mother sang in his ear.

"You, will stand there and listen to me!" Zoro said folding his arms, his voice leaving no more room for argument, "You fell asleep on watch, which is as stupid as it is dangerous. Anyone could have picked you off, or snuck on the ship and picked us off! Your life, and our lives are in your care when you are on watch. And do you know how terrifying it was for me to wake up to the dawn? I had third watch! You were supposed to change out with me, and so when I woke up, I thought something had happened to you! I thought you were hurt, or sick, or anything but asleep on the job!"

 "Come again some other day!" Usopp's mother sang.

Usopp, whose head was barely lifted as it was, sagged downwards. His head was pounding. His mother was still dead. He had made a mistake, but could Zoro just wait? His mother had been long dead. It shouldn't still hurt. His heart felt too small in his ribcage. It was tight. Why did Zoro have to chew him out in front of everyone? Couldn't he wait. Just a little while longer? He was so embarrassed already, so ashamed, he was not his mother's brave boy.

"Usopp!" Zoro barked for attention.

"Hey..." Sanji began to talk, his hand reaching for Zoro's shoulder, "Stop! I think-"

"Usopp!" Luffy breathed, voice sure, and eyes knowing something, in the way he always knew, "Do you feel sick?"

Usopp lifted his pounding head to look at his Captain, confused by the question. Looking at Luffy took a strange amount of effort, and it made Usopp's head hurt worse. He squinted at his Captain, confused by his change of voice, when a loud, heavy wet sound caught his ear.

The deck went silent, and the air got heavy.

Usopp looked down at the deck below his feet. A startling large amount of blood was at his feet, and there were clumps in it. Great big clots were in the wet puddle, and Usopp cringed in disgust taking half a step back. It was then, he realized the blood was coming from his nose, as his movement caused his still dripping nose to be at the right angle to drip onto his chest. This was not the only problem. That half a step back, had also thrown off his equilibrium, and he was falling.

"Usopp!"

He was falling... but everything has already gone white anyways so... so...

 Oh.

Usopp was unconscious.

[animatedminds]

Pixar’s Soul: Review and Reaction

The first sentence I’ve always used to describe Pete Docter and Pixar’s Soul since watching it has nothing to do with the plot. It’s instead is a starstruck comment about the music: the movie begins with a cover of a Duke Ellington classic - Mercer Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What they Used to Be.” It ends with a jazz rendition of a classic from several decades later - but still quite a bit in our past - Curtis Mayfield’s soul classic “It’s Alright.” On a personal level, this would say way more about Soul that most other descriptions of it might to get me to watch it - were I not the kind of person who was absolutely intent on watching the movie day one regardless. Though I am myself a few generations after either of those artists were around, their music has been a part of my life since I was a kid and are essential on any playlist in my opinion. Curtis Mayfield’s music, especially, deserves all the love in the world, and hearing by surprise someone cover his work in a Disney movie made my entire day - and it would have, even if the film weren’t the meaningful ride it is.

But before we get into all that, lets also look at those songs. “Things Aren’t What They Used To Be” is played a la a teacher and a higher school band class: the students are learning and a bit difficult to listen to, while the music-loving teacher cringes at the front. But the choice of song tells us a lot. It’s a jazz standard: which means when it comes to jazz, it’s one of the essentials - a tune every band learns to play, and every jazz fan has heard before. The teacher is a jazzman - you can probably guess who - and the whole time he’s listening to the song you can hear him wanting to sit down and make it sound as perfectly as he hears it in his head. Remember that analogy. Heck, when you watch or rewatch the movie, remember the mindset Joe - because that’s who that teacher is, Joe Gardner, is in for that whole teaching scene in the first place: and remember how important the desire to make things perfect is to the greater story the movie is trying to tell.

“Things Aren’t The Way They Used To Be,” indeed. By the end, you have to wonder: isn’t that the point? Now the second song. “It’s All Right” is a smooth number for dancing to - not frenetic and wild dancing, but more a slow jam sort of vibe. BUt it’s the lyrics that are the most befitting the themes of the movie. Like several of Curtis Mayfield’s tunes “It’s All Right” is an ear worm of an R&B number that’s actually about being a peace with yourself. “You’ve got soul” - ha, I get it - “and everybody knows, that it’s all right.” Or, to quote instead my favorite verse of the song (I did say Mayfield was one of my favorites): “when you wake up early in the morning feeling sad like so many of us do, hum a little soul, make life your goal, and surely something’s gonna come to you.” This is before the spoilery part of the review, but they could not have picked a better song for the movie’s themes if they wrote it themselves.

Soul, after all, is ultimately a movie about how the things we do, the things we love, even the things that define us and should make us feel good in and of themselves, can become a shackle that prevents us from feeling the things that we adopt them to feel. Dreams - especially dreams deferred - can consume us rather than uplift us, and sometimes in pursuing them we may forget to live, and forget that others are living in this world and dreaming alongside us.

This, as you might be able to tell from the way I’ve described it, is a movie with a very strong, and most importantly very well related message that - as we’ve come to expect from Pixar’s output at this point - touches us in our jaded adult hearts. As a creative person with lofty dreams who has almost literally been where the protagonist is in this film - and as many in my generation also have gone through - it definitely feels like a film that was directed straight at the generation that first watched Toy Story as kids decades ago, and now feel somewhat unfulfilled as adults going into the world. Same as Inside Out (a movie specifically designed to make adults cry, in my opinion), the SparkShorts and arguably Onward (I definitely related to Bailey, some). So much like my review of Jingle Jangle, you have something of an idea where this review is going to go before the jump, but that’s okay. This movie did have ups and downs, but its just the kind of up Pixar is good at: they know they’re audience, and especially did for this gem. By the end, it can definitely make you feel as though you too can make it through, as long as you have a little Soul. However, it is not just the message, but the nuances and skill in which they relate that message (and they do come close to making decisions that could have ruined it, at times), which means it’s very difficult for me to put why this movie works into a review without SPOILERS. If you want to avoid SPOILERS, don’t hop over the pic and instead treat the above as your non-SPOILER review.

Soul is the story of one Joe Gardner, played by Jamie Foxx a brilliant early middle-aged pianist with lifelong dreams of becoming a jazz musician, who we first meet teaching part time band at a local high school. The inciting incident is an interesting choice: Joe gets a major offer - he can come on as a full time teacher, making his occupation a career! But Joe believes very much in the adage that “those who cannot do, teach” - in the sense that he wants to do. He cannot accept the position - over the advice of his mother - because that would mean giving up on his dream of being out there playing music for a living: a dream that has consumed him his entire life but which has given him nothing in return. Until now. While agonizing over the decision to take the position, Joe's life then gets a big twist: a former student of his, remembering him fondly years after they knew each other, has a hook for him to join the band of a famous jazz singer and saxophonist - played by Angela Basset (side note, here: jazz has long had a reputation for being something of a boys club, especially for certain instruments, and the choice to have the lead saxophonist and famous idol whose band Joe wants to join be a woman is a great choice that my entire jazz-loving and living family took note of). Joe is instantly elated - he rushes over and naturally aces the audition for the part in the band, and so is on cloud nine...

Until he dies. That’s when the plot really starts. Joe falls down a manhole like an astronomer in an aesop fable, and is now stuck on the slow escalator to The Great Beyond. Naturally, he’s not for that and tries to escape - pursued by overeager spiritual soul-accountant Terry - ending up in the Great Before instead, and leaving his body in a still-living coma (the implications that coma patients in general are people who are choosing not to die when they’re “supposed” to is something I’m sure the writers didn’t intend, so I’ll let it slide). There, Joe is pressganged into mentoring a pre-prepared soul for birth, helping them find their Spark for life - which Joe interprets as the one true purpose and dream they are meant to fulfill. Once he gets them their Spark, he will be able to steal a badge his mentee earns as fully fledged souls and . Luckily for his intended very morally suspect intent on spiritual larceny, he ends up with Soul #22 - and that’s #22 out of hundreds of billions - a soul who has simply never found a Spark despite having been in the Great Before for thousands of years. #22 doesn’t want to live, so she agrees to give him her patch when they’re done. But no mentor before has been able to inspire her (well, technically #22 is genderless, as she demonstrates in the story at Joe’s request, but she is voiced by Tina Fey), so how can Joe? When that proves to be too hard indeed, #22 instead decides to help Joe get back - mostly because she’s intrigued at why anyone would want to cling to life so badly - with the help of some mystics who astral project while in the Zone: where everyone goes when they’re fully immersed in what they do. This almost works, but at the last second everything goes awry: #22 gets mixed up with Joe when he returns, and so he doesn’t quite get back the way he wants to...

That’s enough plot summary for now. That’s all just the set-up anyway, for the choices in writing and concept that I’m about to talk about. As you might have been able to tell from that ominous last note, the middle chunk of Soul - almost right up until the climax, in fact - is actually a body-swap movie, a la Freaky Friday. #22 ends up in Joe’s body, so he has to get her to do the things he needs to get ready for his gig and get through the day while they wait for the mystic to bring a way to set everything right. And did I mention he’s in the body of a cat? Having been following the movie, this wasn’t entirely a surprise, but it was still not something I was entirely ready for coming in. I tend to shy away from that kind of story on a personal level, as body-swap narratives are nearly predominantly based on cringe moments and awkward misconceptions - and that sort of thing usually tends to make me want to leave the scene in question and get a cup of water until after the awkwardness passes. However, this isn’t really part of the review in the sense that I perceive that the movie being in that genre is a flaw - because ultimately that’s just an aspect of my personal taste. Rather, I use it to show just how strong a movie Soul was and how well its narrative choices resonated with its themes that ultimately while it did indeed partake in your typical body-swap narrative cringe moments - “look, the [redacted] in Joe’s body just ran into his boss / mom!” / “look, the [redacted] is having a bizarre conversation with Joe’s friends!” / etc - those moments actually add to the narrative rather than take you out of it. Joe as “friends,” as exemplified by the barber he goes to to get his hair ready for the gig when it inevitably gets ruined in a bout of hijinks (the barber being that extremely well-designed bearded character the internet went wild over). He goes to that barber all the time, talks with him constantly, and believes he knows him well. But it turns out that Joe’s so wrapped up in his wants and desires that he’s never even asked him about his life - he just assumed that the barber was like him, born to do that one thing he was good at. It takes #22′s innocent, slightly off-kilter and occasional philosophical questions about what the heck all this “life” stuff is about for Joe to learn that this person in his life didn’t even want to be where he ended up initially, he ended up there because that’s the way his life turned, but he loves it because it’s life and he appreciates the world he’s come to create around himself. Likewise, he runs into his mom, but while Joe has come to expect his mother to be dismissive of him and his dreams, it takes an accident with #22 for him to realize that he’s been so caught up in his desires and her in her preconceptions that neither of them have ever had a real talk about their relationship, nor given a chance to grow in each other’s eyes. You might notice a trend. One of Joe’s students - a brilliant trombonist - comes to tell him she’s quitting band, but she doesn’t really. She’s just insecure because the other students make fun of her. Joe knows this already - it’s become commonplace to him - so the doesn’t feel the need to do anything about it and instead focuses on his own needs. But #22 decides to talk to her on a whim, and this push and pull of insecurity but joy in what one is good at fascinates her, while it bores Joe. While - like any other New Yorker - public transit is a chore to Joe, the melting pot of people and music draws #22 in: best evidenced by the moment where Joe and #22 meet another great musician playing for tips in the subway. Joe, despite being capable of relating as a musician, just walks past him after appreciating the sound for a sec, while #22, entranced by the things people do, leaves something for him. The world is drab and lacking in vibrancy from Joe’s point of view, as evidenced by the very accurate grimy look of the high school he work at - but from #22′s seemingly jaded eyes seeing it for the first time, it’s full of wonder.

This actually creates an interesting character contrast on top of the one we already know: Joe is the idealist, and #22 is the cynic... right? Well, it turns out Joe doesn’t have much of an appreciation for the world around him - not intentionally, but still to a very strong degree - whereas #22 simply hasn’t had the chance to experience life yet and thus never knew what it was that made people want to be part of it. Life itself becomes her Spark, though neither of them realize it at the time. Lets just get the aesop out of the way now. Your dream is not your life: that’s what Soul wants to say. Things that compel you as a person may consume you, even embitter you, and prevent you from seeing the world around you for what it is. But that doesn��t make dreams a bad thing: people everywhere find that Spark from the dreams to keep moving forward - it’s just that it shouldn’t preclude living, nor should living preclude your dreams. Life is a delicate balance, and man is this movie serving up some complicated life lessons here. I immediately took this as a far more mature take on the message The Princess and the Frog stumbled somewhat through years ago (man, I’m turning out to be pretty hard on that movie in this blog). My biggest issue with PATF is that it tells us that Tiana should be less intent on her dream and find love instead, but doesn’t show us. It’s just characters chiding her for not settling down until the plot ultimately pushes a man in front of her and she realizes she should’ve been finding one all along. That’s a very harsh way of putting it, but it condenses what I’m trying to say: ultimately PATF pushes Tiana to realizations she doesn’t seem to need, whereas Soul has a similar message about life and does so by focusing on character development, about how the protagonist doesn’t have as firm a handle on his life as he thought, and thus brings us a take on the lesson that’s far less cut and dry.

If you’re a fan of The Incredibles, the comparison to Mr. Incredible is fairly easy. Joe, though well meaning and decent overall, is a very self-centered person who happens to be so for very sympathetic and relatable reasons. He just wants to do the thing he feels he was born to. He'll do anything to get back to life and do that thing, even for a single night. He’s consumed by this desire so much that he's oblivious to the people around him, unable to connect to the people he loves, and unable to find joy in anything but his dream. And man, as a young writer who knows in their heart of hearts they can do great things and feels pain at the idea of not doing so, that hits different let me tell you.

The lessons Joe learns from #22 even stick. It turns out that part of what caused Joe’s dream to fail all those time was because of that lack of connection with life. He never presented himself in a way that got people to take notice of him, he never pushed for that position he wanted even though people said no, he never made himself and his life so vibrant that he glowed in the eyes of others (and again, that hits different). That’s maybe the most simplistic message of the bunch, but as a person in the creative field it’s true that sometimes being the smartest person in the room isn’t enough: it’s making himself shine that ultimately clinches Joe the gig even after he almost lost it thanks to the day’s shenanigans.

But in the end, it doesn’t feel like he thought he would.

Remember when I said there are parts where the movie comes perilously close to kiboshing its message? That moment is one, it’s the one. Not that that moment is bad - far from it, it’s the best moment in the entire movie (and you can fight me on that if you want to). It’s because it’s the crossroads, the pin, the core of the entire film: depending on the choice they made after that point, that moment could have either been the best moment in the entire movie, or the moment that toppled everything.

The realization of Joe’s dream doesn’t feel like the explosion of confetti and catharsis that he expected. It was just another moment of his life, a great one, but it’s still just part of his life. So what does Joe do? Does he panic? Does he keep going until it feels good? Does he - as he would in a lesser movie trying to give a cookie cutter aesop - immediately quit and realize he should’ve been teaching all along? No, he does none of those things. He absorbs the moment. He realizes that at the end of the dream you’re still just living life, and that you have to appreciate that. Joe isn’t wrong for pursuit of his dream. He’s not wrong for believing that hopes and dreams make life so much more worthwhile. He’s wrong in thinking that those dreams are all that define us, and that their realization is all that makes people themselves worthwhile at all.

And in the end - though I may be getting a bit too referential for this - the unexamined life is just so much less fulfilling than the alternative.

And all that a message and a half! It hits different. It’s mature as all heck. It’s something people my age (especially in my generation), twice my age, half my age never learn. It’s a callsign that sometimes Pixar is still make movies for the people who were kids way back when Toy Story was released, and are now insecure adults wondering why the world isn’t as wonderful as they saw on the screen. It’s brilliant. I said before that Joe interprets the “Spark” to be one’s purpose in life. The one thing that makes them who they are, that they are on the planet to do. He is wrong, absolutely and utterly. And in that misconception, when #22 finally does get their Spark just from being on Earth and seeing what its life, he accuses them of leeching self-actualization over his own personal ambitions, fully believing that they didn’t find a “purpose" on her own, but just copied his. But the Spark, as it turns out, is just the joy of living, the thing that makes people want to live. It can come from a dream, or just from watching the beauty of the sun set over a leaf drifting in the wind. Only in understanding this can Joe finally understand what he’s been missing in life, only then can he reconcile with #22 and help her finally be born, only then can he walk into the world and know how he’s going to live it.

We never find out what Joe decides, whether he goes back to teaching, or continues with the band. The choice is open to him, but we never find out which one he takes - another choice that keeps the aesop from falling apart. The point of all of that wasn’t that Joe has to do one thing or another to be happy, it was that Joe needs to be happy and secure in himself before he chooses what his life should be. Either of those could make him happy. Neither of those could. But now he’s in a much better place to see it, and do what he can.

We also never find out what #22 is like when she (or he, etc) is born. The two of them never meet past the point where #22 goes to Earth. Their time together has passed, and #22′s life is now their own. And that’s a great choice either. I’ve seen the occasional person feel that the choice made in this paragraph or noted in the previous one made the story confusing, but they’re ultimately what make the story what it is. The answer isn’t the necessity of resolution, its the reaffirmation of the journey. It reminds me somewhat of Wreck-It Ralph (an example of the main Disney Studio delivering a complex aesop, rather Pixar delivering them all), where being a villain wasn’t Ralph’s problem - it was that he wasn’t happy doing the thing he loved. You have to live, from living you will learn, and from learning you will do. The sheer incredible execution of this message (as you may have guessed, it’s a fairly difficult one to relay adequately in a film narrative, and the movie goes non-traditional in conclusion to maintain it) would have made this film a recommend for me even if it wasn't also beautifully animated, very well acted, funny (there’s a Knicks joke that floored me), heartwarming and relatable. But it’s also all of those things, so I have to recommend it twice as much. It is, regrettably, another movie with a black lead where the lead spends most of it transfigured into a form that’s not a black person (a soul, and then a cat), and I’ve already seen some grumbling that instead for much of it a character explicitly coded as a white woman is in his body instead, but I perceive that as an issue that’s endemic to the industry than a fault in this movie specifically. Everyone does that, but this is the only movie I’ve seen where doing that is an essential part of how the narrative develops the characters (Joe has to not be himself in order to understand his life from an outside perspective, a la Scrooge as a ghost watching his own history), and so I don’t scorn the movie for it. I, however, would very much like Hollywood to start doing that less, and - hey - as a prospective writer that’s one of those things I plan to do my part to combat. This movie, however, gets a pass in my book in ways that the general usage of this concept does not. In short, you should see it. If you get the chance to see it right now, you should take it to feel good at the end of this incredibly insane year. If you don’t want to have to sign up for Disney+ to see it now, I get you and understand, but if you get a chance to see it later do not pass it up. It’s one of the few movies I’ve watched that are an instant buy when it becomes available on digital - and the last time a movie did that for me was BlacKKKlansman. Whatever you choose to do, do it well. Keep the spirit alive, always keep searching for the real you - because it’s not always easy to find, but it’s worth looking for - and always remember that you could always have a little soul.

[fmdkiana]

【✧】━━━━━ 🌿 k i a n a     i n t r o     p l a y l i s t 🌿 ━━━━━【✧】

these are nineteen songs that i’ve been listening to while making kiana’s blog [x] some i came across, some randomly thought of, and some suggested by lovely muns i’ve been chatting about kiana to. since she’s a character that i’ve adapted for the purpose of famed, these songs have helped ground me in the person she is. i hope the songs and descriptions below will help you learn kiana a little better too

1. to be torn by kyla la grange

this first song was a suggestion from someone, and i think set the tune for the rest of my choices. apparently it’s from beauty and the beast? lol anyway it describes this desire to be torn, a carnal need to be used. the heavy sound of it is kind of haunting, a bit sad, but also strong. the emotion can be felt even without the lyrics. kiana has this part of her that deeply craves being important, whether it comes at her own expense -her own tearing- or not. also forewarning that a lot of these overlap on the same concepts. shrug emoji

2. intertwined by dodie

intertwined is a song that immediately came to mind for kiana after to be torn. when this song came out, many people saw it as a cute love story, wanting to be intertwined with a lover, and have them be the safe space when you have a troubled head. however, dodie made a video debunking this, against her natural inclination, because the song describes something severely unhealthy. the following music video also helped many people to see the gore that’s strung throughout the lyrics. it Actually describes a relationship where the participants have put all of their source of happiness in one another, and it’s left them codependent, but ever seeking more. kiana has this perpetual trouble in relationships, especially romantic ones

3. bite by troye sivan

i can be the subjective of your dreams, your sickening desire is a pretty good sum up of where the inspo comes from. it’s difficult, when talking about the negative parts of kiana, to not talk about her ex-boyfriend. i have lots planned to talk on so i won’t go on forever here, but it reminds me of how all it took was the tiniest invitation for kiana to “become his.” that’s how she works. come here puppy, don’t bite, and she’ll heel at your side forever. at least, back then. she’s someone who seems difficult, because she’s very asocial, but with the right formula, it could be so easy to slip her into your arms

4. hell in heaven by twice wish

this song is a bit similar to intertwined, i would say? someone who feels stuck, drowning in a “hell” that is only saved by a piece of “heaven/paradise.” yet they’re in between the place of hell and heaven, constantly confused of where they land, because they’ve placed their hope for salvation in this one, singular place/person. they want to be freer than they are, yet their salvation keeps them locked away. open the door to heaven, let me walk on the cloud. the day i’m trapped in you, save me, hold me tight

5. dinner & diatribes by hozier

a few different levels come from this song. while it was created with the idea of how tedious social gatherings are, the story that comes from it makes another world. kiana is asocial, and struggles with fear over social situations, which make something like dinner parties quite stressful for her. she’s also someone who isn’t fond of small talk, and more likely that type to say ‘talk to me about your deepest fears,’ but... she actually means it and isn’t saying it to be pretentious. she would much rather see the sickest, nastiest parts of someone, soak all of that up, than talk about whether the food was good. the music video describes this in part, but also gives a hades/persephone but worse type of story that is also quite kiana aligned. that’s the kind of love i’ve been dreaming of

6. creep by radiohead

i want you to notice when i’m not around. so fuckin special, i wish i was special, but i’m a creep. not to ‘have you ever seen me without this hat’ on you, but lissen! kiana is forever convinced she’s an outsider. the things she likes are more Cool these days than they were when she was a kid, but the feeling of being ostracized for liking them back then will always live with her. she’s an insecure overthinking fuck at times too. and also desperately wants to be someone special, and unique, as if having that would make her pain of feeling different worth it

7. seigfried by frank ocean

the meaning of this song is pretty different from how i view it in relation to kiana. for her, the focus is on the idea of ‘settling down’ being... acceptance of normality? her whole life, she’s been searching for someone and/or something that makes her feel special. she became an idol for this exact reason, dated her ex for that reason, seeks the relationships she does, thinks she could still have superpowers for this reason. but the truth is that she’s pretty normal. her hobbies are very normal people type things. her talents aren’t anything that would have her being called top of the line. her thoughts are all things other people have thought of. her booksmart intelligence isn’t any stronger than the average. she is very normal, and the tiny part of her that acknowledges that usually shoves it away. but on occasion, she wonders if she should accept it, and settle

8. gimme love by joji

gimme gimme love is all you really need to know lol kiana doesn’t stick around easily when she’s not being given the same kind of world-ending affection from those she’s chosen to share that with that she gives out. she gives at Least 110% of her love, affection, and loyalty into anyone that she has chosen to keep closest to her heart, and if she isn’t getting that back, she can feel dejected, unloved, and unimportant. she may give people like this a few chances to change, but her expectations, or “standards,” won’t change

9. pain by king princess

cos i can’t help turning my love into pain is the strongest lyric that ties back to kiana. the overall message isn’t as strong because king princess has a different view on a relationship as described than kiana. for her, it’s yet another kiana will put herself in the face of terrible parts of relationships. the trouble is that she enjoys it, and seeks it, thinking it’s the ultimate show of love. not to pain one another, but to be pained without them. also realizing after all these i should be saying this applies to her inner circle friendships as well, but the standards are just a little less heavy

10. any song by zico sun

not one for big gatherings, kiana likes to have her social interaction either through the wire, or in small groups (duos are best to her tbh) the song has an upbeat tune that contrasts against the lyrical meaning of something more about... any song will do, something to drag away the sadness that’s living inside. kiana functions a bit like that, always seeking her uniqueness to bust out and save her from her own mind thinking she’s not good enough

11. why won’t they talk to me? by tame impala

she is asocial, but that doesn’t mean being a hermit,, an otaku,, whatever you want to call her, is a life full of happiness. she functions very well on her own, but when she has that for too long, it can be damaging to her head as well, especially when she has inner circle friends or a romantic relationship. when not speaking to these people, the need for human connection seems unbearable to deal with, and anxiety runs rampant

12. alien by lee suhyun

her mama told her she’s alien, but actually it was herself telling herself she’s alien mixed with influence from pop culture making her want to be a superhero and kids who told her she was a freak, all coming together in the desire for weirdness to be a Cool thing. kiana will wish til the day she croaks that she will have a realization that she has a special power

13. stressed out by twenty one pilots

ki doesn’t care about the core message of this song. many people relate to oh no bills~ adult stress~ but kiana doesn’t. even if she wasn’t born into a family that could live comfortably, and didn’t become an idol making phat stacks, she would feel the same. to her, it’s an inevitability. HOWEVA the beginning lines are 1:1 for how she wishes to be something extraordinary, and is supa insecure that she isn’t. i wish found some better sounds that no one’s ever heard. i wish i had a better voice that sang some better words ... i was told when i get older all my fears would shrink but now i’m insecure and i care what people think

14. true crime by epik high ft. miso

not exactly 1:1 word by word, since there’s several perspectives coming in one song, however, the overall message i think can be summed in it’s a true crime to be without you. other lines like i’d open up my chest for your entertainment, that was the line that drew me to originally put this in the playlist. i’m not sure on a story behind the song, but it strikes me as something bonnie & clyde-esque? there’s themes of being on the run, lying on the pavement dying, stuff like that. that kind of relationship is strongly the ideals kiana holds for her romantic and close platonic relationships

15. shine by pentagon (shouldve been knight but bad bois image PLAYIN)

i cannot explain to u the random joy this dumb song gave me when it came out. it’s similar to power up like i just?? get so happy lol anyway the whole premise is like nerdy person has a crush n theyre like oh my god~ why would u like me~ i cant say i like u~ it’s super fucking cute. i’m a loser who loves you. yes, i’m a misery. to you, i’m a nuisance, i’m an outsider, but in this world, i only need you. that’s where the kiana part comes in strongest, or explains it in one sentence. she worries she isn’t enough for others but her affections are always incredibly strong. also she’s cute

16. tail by sunmi dimensions soloist 2

when i first heard this song, i needed to play it again to pay attention to the lyrics because i had the feeling it was kiana-esque. i was right, but i would say that it’s where kiana could go at her worst. has she been there? i’m not so sure. perhaps teetering on the edge of having her claws out, but really, for now, it’s just that the potential is there

17. she’s my religion by pale waves

so as to not repeat myself too much and because this is so much fookin writing already, this is another song that talks about how deeply and dangerously kiana falls into others. she’s no angel, but she’s my religion, always finding ways to numb the pain ... made me feel like i was finally enough ... she needs this love just as much as me

18. space cadet by beabadoobee

this song has similar themes to alien, but rather than about being special, it’s about being in a shitty place and letting your mind wander to create a better reality. ki has her interests, her extreme love of her fandoms, because it’s an escape for her. that’s not something i personally approve of, however, it’s a common reality for many people. living in these online spaces and thinking of these fictional worlds gives her a place to go to when the irl world is too difficult for her to handle

19. me! me! me! by teddyloid

you might think this is a meme addition and sure! to a degree it is! but i’m also going to talk about it as an actual piece of music and visuals. first we’ll talk about the music video. kiana feels complicated about the type of anime fans that oversexualize everything, so in general, she likes a message that’s against those types. the message of addiction tearing real life relationships apart also is something kiana sorta needs to hear. the lyrics of the song itself talk about an all consuming type of relationship, and dissects it to explain how it wasn’t love, but worship, which was dangerous to them both. it’s a song that kiana perhaps would need to take to heart, but i, as her mun, am unsure if she ever will. that depends on the connections she forms, and what types of people are goading her on, or trying to get her to stop

[calliecat93]

Top 5 Things I Disliked About Red vs Blue: Season 2

When I decided to do this series, I knew it was gonna be hard to do lists for Blood Gulch. Not because I can’t think of anything I like or dislike specifically, but as I said before, BGC is mainly comedic driven. The worst I can say is ‘this isn’t funny’ and critique the earlier production standards. Which that’s kinda mean since they were working with what they had and trying to learn to do the show. As such, I have to reach on Dislikes for these and S2 was a tough one in that regard. I managed to come up with five, but GOD I had to stretch haaaard on it.

But still, I did it. Just remember, take this with a grain of salt. So here we go, Top 5 Things I Disliked About RvB S2.

#5. Doc

If you asked me which of the BGC to write out and never bring back… I’d probably have to pick Doc. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate him, but I’ve also never loved him. He comes off more whiny than funny, and most of the time he’s only funny due to the back and forth with O’Malley. Otherwise, usually… he’s just there. Even here in S2, while having a pacifist medic in a cast where several are trigger happy could lead to some funny stuff, Doc was just an annoyance. The situations he got into were funny, like getting knocked into the Warthog when the Blues unknowingly made it go rogue, but he was literally just there for the ride. Something IDT later season really improved aside form 16 and 17, which tbh I think is stretching it.

IDK, I just find Doc whiny and kinda boring. Even if he’s meant to be the annoying, disrespected nice guy, doesn't Donut kinda fit that slot already? Heck, they both even have the recurring ‘disappear for seasons and then suddenly comes back’ joke. The only times that I feel invested in Doc is when he has O’Malley, which is how he re-entered the plot here. I’m gonna save more about that in the S3 posts, but on his own? Doc just… doesn’t really work and I didn’t really miss him in between the Reds dumping him and him reappearing when O’Malley infected him. It’s also a flaw IDT recent seasons have really fixed, though they are trying. Plus I don’t hate Doc and some jokes with him do work (the gag of his naming made me giggle), I'm just… indifferent. But that’s why he’s at the top of the list since the most I can say is I find him whiny and not as funny,

#4. The Cyborg Subplot

So due to losing Lopez and because he’s Sarge, Sarge decides to turn one of the Reds into a cyborg to do all the stuff that Lopez did. He settles on Simmons. Now in and of itself, the subplot is fine. It leads to a good few jokes, like Grif trying to ruin Simmons’ parts after the surgery or a few gags like Simmons shooting his own foot and of course, faxass. While IDT the season would have been hurt without it, it has plenty of funny bits. Sow hat’s the problem. Well… like I said, cutting it wouldn’t have hurt anything. It kinda is just there to give the Reds something to do during the O’Malley and Tex stuff since otherwise, they’d just be standing around and taking… well, more than normal. Otherwise, it’s only significance plot-wise is Tucker tuning into their frequency, which is important in the finale when he picks up Vic and Sarge’s conversation.

So yeah, the subplot isn’t all that important. But it is still funny, so I don't mind it being there. But nowadays… how much so we see this come up? I mean Grif got mutilated by a tank and got another guy’s body/organs haphazardly stitched on. Simmons, while he possibly gave up those parts to Grif willingly, was otherwise forcibly converted into a cyborg. This… hasn’t really come up again. I mean the only time I think Simmons mentioned it in-show was as a brief joke in S11. Nine seasons later. I don’t think Grif’s side of it has come up at all ever again. Though… considering you can only get so many jokes out of this setup since everyone is always in armor, I do understand why. Though I feel with Simmons’ side at least, they could play with it some more, both comedically and maybe even storywise. But that may be my need for Simmons content talking…

So yeah, the subplot was okay. It’s at Number Four since I don’t hate it and it was funny. I just feel like nothing would be lost without it, especially since it pretty much never comes up again. Maybe one day though, who knows? At least the fanfic writers keep it alive XD

#3. The Caboose Forgetting Church Thing

Okay this is brief, but it does annoy me. During the whole trip into Caboose’s mind, Caboose’s memory of Church gets shot. As such, Caboose forgets who Church is. Makes sense, O’Malley killed the personification of Church in Caboose’s mind, so his mind would forget it. It also explains why Caboose got, well… for lack of a better way to put it, intellectually challenged later on due to having three AI’s in his brain and all the chaos that broke out. But Caboose forgetting Church lasts like… one episode? Maybe two? Anyways, Burnie explained on the commentary that it was just too hard to write out so they did one joke with it, and then just dropped it. Probably for the best... but then we have to figure out how this works in-continuity... damn it.

Really this is only on here because it forces me to try to figure out how this is possible in a show sense. Which yeah I probably don’t need to, but I am a continuity loser who tries to piece together these things. If I had to guess, maybe the memory of Church fixed itself somehow or Caboose was able to recall after being around Church for a little while. But I honestly really don’t know, and trying to think it through hurts my brain. It also did little to nothing either story-wise or comedy-wise, at least we got a few jokes out of the cyborg subplot. IDK, I feel like they gave up on it too soon. But then again this is the saga where they’ll break/ignore continuity for the sake of a joke and that’s just how these seasons worked. Hence why I put it smack-dab in the middle.

#2. Some Holdover S1 Issues

You can tell that there was a mass improvement in terms of production for Season Two. Pacing felt stronger, more was going on, characterizations began to settle in, and they even began to form more of a plot. They clearly had a much better idea of what they were doing now that they got through Season One and I think things like Matt becoming more involved in writing and production as well as Gus moving back to work on the show really helped as well. That being said, not everything got resolved. Most did, but there are still a few holdouts.

Audio mixing is a LOT better, especially when it comes to effects. The filter is still a little distracting, though better compared to S1. Not all the characterizations really set in. Grif and Donut are about 75% there and Simmons and Tucker are probably the least set in stone. The traits are there, like Simmons clinginess to Sarge and Tucker actually showing some competence when forced to, but nothing set in stone. Donut’s also on the right path with his hobbies and tendency to babble into TMI territory, but the voice is still off and his personality isn’t quite there yet. There’s some other, but I’ll touch on it in the Likes list. Some jokes could also still drag, like the whole switch joke where some of Church and Tucker’s back and forth went on a little too long.

We’re clearly making progress, but the mark hasn’t quite been hit. It’s still an improvement over S1 though, the pacing especially. This is nitpicky, but still it’s there. But hey it’s progress, and that is never a bad thing. So yeah, RvB is still evolving here, but the progress bar is loading steadily and trust me, by S3 I think we’ll be settled in… well, for the most part.

#1. Some Outdated Humor

The BGC was made from 2003 to 2007. Obviously, there’s gonna be some stuff that is outdated. Take the graphics themselves for example. Halo has evolved, so the game can look a little outdated, especially when you compare the original footage to the remastered footage. Let's put it this way, VIC is uncanny in the remaster… and is utterly horrifying in the original version. Thank God that the DVD is the remaster and I was spared of looking at that monstrosity. Visuals aren’t the only thing though, some pop culture references can also come off as outdated, like Creed joke in the RL vs Internet PSA. So can some of the humor that shows how stupid we were back only two decades ago.

There are… some jokes that are uncomfortable to listen to. For example, there’s the Grif shaming himself joked by saying he’s a girl and likes ribbons in his hair. It’s not the worst joke and clearly, it isn’t made to offend… but nowadays I think it could look offensive to certain individuals. It didn’t necessarily offend me, but it did kinda make me feel uncomfortable when I first watched it, but it could be me thinking it over too hard. There’s also the casual usage of the R word. Last season it came up a bit, but I noticed it came up more frequently here. Not excessively, but there were quite a few instances where it was treated as a casual curse word. Obviously back in 2004 we didn’t realize this was an offensive term, and I think they’ve even said that they regret the casual usage of it during the early years. You certainly would probably not hear that word used unless maybe to emphasize how terrible a character is, but even then I think they’d be more careful.

Now obviously RvB uses a lot of adult and offensive humor, especially in this era. I guess you can kinda call it the web version of South Park, only RvB has never really resorted to shock humor. It puts it above many, /many/ animated adult comedies in that regard. Still, when you run for this long, you’re gonna have some outdated elements. It’s not necessarily their fault, it just shows that times has changed. Still, it does make some stuff hard to look back on without cringing, and I imagine that the Founders would agree. So yeah… there’s just some stuff that wasn't fun to look back over and S2 isn’t the only offender, but this was where it stood out to me and took me out of the moment. As such, it is Number One.

(Top 5 Likes)

[makistar2018]

All 125 Taylor Swift Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best

By NATE JONES April 30, 2019

In this business, there are two subjects that will boost your page views like nothing else: Game of Thrones and Taylor Swift. One of them is a massive, multi-million-dollar enterprise filled with violence and betrayal, and the other airs on HBO. I find it hard to explain why exactly, and I’m sure Swift would, too: Somehow, this one 27-year-old woman from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, keeps finding herself at the center of our national conversations about race, gender, celebrity, victimhood, even the economics of the tech industry. And, outside the legions of fans who eat up everything she puts out, no take on her ever stays solid for long. She was a precocious teenager, and the ultimate embodiment of white privilege. She’s been feminism’s worst nightmare, and an advocate for victims of sexual assault. Some people say she’s a goddess of the alt-right. Other people say she’s Jewish.

And yet, unlike Madonna or Bowie, Swift got through the first 11 years of her career without any major reinventions. (For 1989, she embraced feminism and threw away the last vestiges of her Nashville sound, but those were basically just aesthetic changes.) If the word on her has shifted since her debut, it’s because we’ve changed, not her. Swift — or at least the version of Swift on her albums — has remained largely the same person since her debut: a thin-skinned, bighearted obsessive, with a penchant for huge romantic moments. People don’t slowly ease into a relationship in her songs; they show up at each other’s doors late at night and they kiss in the rain. An unworthy suitor won’t just say something thoughtless; he’ll skip a birthday party or leave a teenage girl crying alone in a hotel room. Listen to her songs and you’ll ache at the resemblance to the most dramatic moments in your own private history. Listen to too many and you might ache again at the nagging feeling that those stories of yours have all been a bit uneventful and drab by comparison. What sort of real life can stand up against fantasies like these?

So, uh, I don’t recommend you listen to this list top to bottom.

But I do recommend sampling as many of these songs as you see fit. Even with the widespread critical embrace of poptimism — a development I suspect has as much to do with the economics of online media as it does with the shifting winds of taste — there are still those who see Swift as just another industry widget, a Miley or Katy with the tuner set to “girl with a guitar.” If this list does anything, I hope it convinces you that, underneath all the thinkpieces, exes, and feuds, she is one of our era’s great singer-songwriters. She may not have the raw vocal power of some of her competitors, but what she lacks in Mariah-level range she makes up for in versatility and personality. (A carpetbagger from the Pennsylvania suburbs, she became an expert code-switcher early in her career and never looked back.) And when it comes to writing instantly memorable pop songs, her only peers are a few anonymous Swedish guys, none of whom perform their own stuff. I count at least ten stone-cold classics in her discography. Others might see more. No matter how high your defenses, I guarantee you’ll find at least one that breaks them down. 

Some ground rules: We��re ranking every Taylor Swift song that’s ever been released with her name on it — which means we must sadly leave out the unreleased 9/11 song “Didn’t They” as well as Nils Sjöberg’s “This Is What You Came For” — excluding tracks where Swift is merely “featured” (no one’s reading this list for B.o.B.’s “Both of Us”) but including a few duets where she gets an “and” credit. Songwriting is an important part of Swift’s spellbook, so covers are treated more harshly than originals. Because Swift’s career began so young, we’re left in the awkward position of judging work done by a literal high-schooler, which can feel at times like punching down. I’ll try to make slight allowances for age, reserving the harshest criticism for the songs written when Swift was an adult millionaire.

125. “Look What You Made Me Do,” Reputation (2017): “There’s a mistake that I see artists make when they’re on their fourth or fifth record, and they think innovation is more important than solid songwriting,” Swift told New York back in 2013. “The most terrible letdown as a listener for me is when I’m listening to a song and I see what they were trying to do.” To Swift’s credit, it took her six records to get to this point. On a conceptual level, the mission here is clear: After the Kim-Kanye feud made her the thinking person’s least-favorite pop star, this comeback single would be her grand heel turn. But the villain costume sits uneasily on Swift’s shoulders, and even worse, the songwriting just isn’t there. The verses are vacuous, the insults have no teeth, and just when the whole thing seems to be leading up to a gigantic redemptive chorus, suddenly pop! The air goes out of it and we’re left with a taunting Right Said Fred reference — the musical equivalent of pulling a Looney Tunes gag on the listener. Other Swift songs have clunkier rhymes, or worse production values, but none of them have such a gaping hole at the center. (I do dig the gleeful “Cuz she’s dead!” though.)

124. “Umbrella,” iTunes Live From Soho (2008): Swift has recorded plenty of covers in her career, and none are less essential than this 90-second rendition of the Rihanna hit recorded at the peak of the song’s popularity. It’s pure college-campus coffeehouse.

123. “Christmas Must Mean Something More,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): One of two originals on Swift’s early-career Christmas album, “Something More” is a plea to put the Christ back in Christmas. Or as she puts it: “What if happiness came in a cardboard box? / Then I think there is something we all forgot.” In the future, Swift would get better at holding onto some empathy when she was casting a critical eye at the silly things people care about; here, the vibe is judgmental in a way that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever reread their teenage diary.

122. “Better Than Revenge,” Speak Now (2010): A nasty little song that has not aged well. Whether a straightforward imitation of Avril Lavigne’s style or an early attempt at “Blank Space”–style self-satirization, the barbs never go beyond bratty. (As in “Look What You Made Me Do,” the revenge turns out to be the song itself, which feels hollow.) Best known now for the line about “the things she does on the mattress,” which I suspect has been cited in blog posts more times than the song itself has been listened to lately.

121. “American Girl,” Non-album digital single (2009): Why would you cover this song and make it slower?

120. “I Want You Back,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2011): Another 90-second cover of a pop song that does not particularly benefit from a stripped-down arrangement.

119. “Santa Baby,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Before Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me,” there was only one holiday song about falling in love with Santa, and for some reason, we spent decades making all our young female singers cover it. Swift’s version leans out of the awkwardness by leaning into the materialism; she puts most of her vocal emphasis on the nice presents she hopes Santa will bring her. (The relationship seems to be fairly quid pro quo: She’ll believe in him if he gives her good gifts — even at this early stage, Swift possessed a savvy business sense.) Otherwise, this is a by-the-numbers holiday cover, complete with sleigh bells in the mix.

118. “Sweet Escape,” Speak Now World Tour – Live; Target edition DVD (2011): Swift’s sedate cover of the 2006 Gwen Stefani hit — those “ooh-ooh”s are pitched way down from Akon’s falsetto in the original — invests the song with a bittersweet vibe, though like anyone who’s ever tried the song at karaoke, she stumbles on the rapid-fire triplets in the first verse.

117. “Silent Night,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Swift’s cover of the Christmas classic veers significantly away from Franz Xaver Gruber’s original melody, and even gives it a Big Taylor Swift Finale. Points for ambition, but sometimes you just want to hear the old standards the way you remember them.

116. “The Last Time,” Red (2012): Red is Swift’s strongest album, but it suffers a bit from pacing issues: The back half is full of interminable ballads that you’ve got to slog through to get to the end. Worst of all is this duet with po-faced Ulsterman Gary Lightbody, which feels about ten minutes long.

115. “Invisible,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition (2006): A bonus track from the debut that plays like a proto–”You Belong With Me.” The “show you” / “know you” rhymes mark this as an early effort.

114. “…Ready for It?,” Reputation (2017): The second straight misfire off the Reputation rollout, this one sees Swift try her hand at rapping, with some ill-advised bars about Elizabeth Taylor and a flow she borrowed from Jay-Z. (Try to rap “Younger than my exes” without spilling into “rest in peace, Bob Marley.”) Bumped up a spot or two for the chorus, a big Swift hook that sounds just like her best work — in this case, because it bites heavily from “Wildest Dreams.”

113. “I Heart ?,” Beautiful Eyes EP (2008): Swift code-switches like a champ on this charmingly shallow country song, which comes from the Walmart-exclusive EP she released between her first two albums. Her vocals get pretty rough in the chorus, but at least we’re left with the delightful line, “Wake up and smell the breakup.”

112. “Bad Blood,” 1989 (2014): When Swift teamed up with Max Martin and Shellback, the marriage of their dark eldritch songcraft nearly broke the pop charts. But when they misfire, the results can be brutal. The lyric here indulges the worst habits of late-period Swift — an eagerness to play the victim, a slight lack of resemblance to anything approaching real life — attached to a schoolyard-chant melody that will never leave your head, even when you may want it to. The remix hollows out the production and replaces Swift’s verses with two from Kendrick Lamar; it’s less embarrassing than the original, which does not make it more memorable.

111. “White Christmas,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007):The most bluegrass of Swift’s Christmas tunes, this gentle rendition sees Swift’s vocals cede center stage to the mandolin and fiddle.

110. “Crazier,” Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack (2009): When approached by the filmmakers about contributing a song to the Hannah Montana movie, Swift sent in this track, seemingly a holdover from the Fearless sessions. In an admirable bit of dedication, she also showed up to play it in the film’s climax. It’s kind of a snooze on its own, but compared to the other songs on the soundtrack, even Swift’s leftovers shine.

109. “I’d Lie,” Taylor Swift (2006): A bonus track only available to people who bought Swift’s debut at Best Buy. It’s as cute as a study-hall MASH game, and just as easily disposable.

108. “Highway Don’t Care,” Tim McGraw’s Two Lanes of Freedom(2013): After joining Big Machine, McGraw gave Swift an “and” credit here as a professional courtesy. Though her backing vocals are very pleasant, this is 100 percent a Tim McGraw song.

107. “Superman,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): A bonus track that’s not gonna make anyone forget Five for Fighting any time soon.

106. “Change,” Fearless (2008): A bit of paint-by-numbers inspiration that apparently did its job of spurring the 2008 U.S. Olympic team to greatness. They won 36 gold medals!

105. “End Game,” Reputation (2017): Swift tries out her blaccent alongside Future and Ed Sheeran, on a track that sounds unmistakably like a Rihanna reject. The only silver lining? She’s better at rapping here than on “…Ready for It?”

104. “The Lucky One,” Red (2012): A plight-of-fame ballad from the back half of Red, with details that never rise above cliché and a melody that borrows from the one Swift cooked up for “Untouchable.”

103. “A Place in This World,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift’s version of “Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” this one feels like it missed its chance to be the theme tune for an ABC Family show.

102. “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack (2017): In Fifty Shades Darker, this wan duet soundtracks a scene where Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele go for a sunny boat ride while wearing fabulous sweaters. On brand!

101. “Last Christmas,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Swift does George Michael proud with this reverent cover of the Wham! classic.

100. “Breathless,” Hope for Haiti Now (2010): Swift covered this Better Than Ezra deep cut for the Hope for Haiti telethon. With only one take to get it right, she did not let the people of Haiti down.

99. “Bette Davis Eyes,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2012): “There’s some unbelievable music that has come out of artists who are from L.A., did you know that?” Swift asks the audience at the beginning of this live track. The crowd, not being idiots, responds with an enthusiastic yes. This cover loses the two most famous parts of Kim Carnes’s original — the synths and Carnes’s throaty delivery — but the acoustic arrangement and Swift’s intimate vocals bring out the best qualities of the tune.

98. “Eyes Open,” The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond (2012): One of two songs Swift contributed to the first Hunger Games soundtrack. With guitars seemingly ripped straight out of 1998 alt-rock radio, this one’s most interesting now as a preview of Swift’s Red sound.

97. “Beautiful Eyes,” Beautiful Eyes EP (2008): The title track of Swift’s early-career EP finds the young songwriter getting a lot of mileage out of one single vowel sound: Besides the eyes of the title, we’ve got I, why, fly, cry, lullaby, even sometimes. A spirited vocal performance in the outro saves the song from feeling like homework.

96. “The Outside,” Taylor Swift (2006): If you thought you felt weird judging songs by a high-schooler, here’s one by an actual sixth-grader. “The Outside” was the second song Swift ever wrote, and though the lyrics edge into self-pity at times, this is still probably the best song written by a 12-year-old since Mozart’s “Symphony No. 7 in D Major.”

95. “SuperStar,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): This bonus track is a relic of an unfamiliar time when Swift could conceivably be the less-famous person in a relationship.

94. “Starlight,” Red (2012): Never forget that one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2012 contains a piece of Ethel Kennedy fanfiction. The real story of Bobby and Ethel has more rough spots than you’ll find in this resolutely rose-colored track, but that’s what happens when you spend a summer hanging in Hyannis Port.

93. “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” Red (2012): Another glacially paced song from the back half of Red that somehow pulls off rhyming “magic” with “tragic.”

92. “Innocent,” Speak Now (2010): The disparate reactions to Kanye West stage-crashing Swift at the 2009 VMAs speaks to the Rorschachian nature of Swift’s star image. Was Swift a teenage girl whose moment was ruined by an older man who couldn’t control himself? Or was she a white woman playing the victim to demonize an outspoken black man? Both are correct, which is why everyone’s spent so much time arguing about it. Unfortunately, Swift did herself no favors when she premiered “Innocent” at the next year’s VMAs, opening with footage of the incident, which couldn’t help but feel like she was milking it. (Fairly or not, the comparison to West’s own artistic response hardly earns any points in the song’s favor.) Stripped of all this context, “Innocent” is fine: Swift turns in a tender vocal performance, though the lyrics could stand to be less patronizing.

91. “Girl at Home,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): This Red bonus track offers a foreshadowing of Swift’s interest in sparkly ’80s-style production. A singsongy melody accompanies a largely forgettable lyric, except for one hilariously blunt line: “It would be a fine proposition … if I was a stupid girl.”

90. “A Perfectly Good Heart,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition (2006): A pleading breakup song with one killer turn of phrase and not much else.

89. “Mary’s Song (Oh My Oh My),” Taylor Swift (2006): This early track was inspired by Swift’s elderly neighbors. Like “Starlight,” it’s a young person’s vision of lifelong love, skipping straight from proposal to old age.

88. “Come in With the Rain,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): An ode to a long-lost lover that follows the Swift template a tad too slavishly.

87. “Dancing With Our Hands Tied,” Reputation (2017): Reputation sags a bit in the middle, never more than on this forgettable ’80s-inspired track.

86. “Welcome to New York,” 1989 (2014): In retrospect, there could not have been a song more perfectly designed to tick off the authenticity police — didn’t Swift know that real New Yorkers stayed up till 3 a.m. doing drugs with Fabrizio Moretti in the bathroom of Mars Bar? I hope you’re sitting down when I tell you this, but it’s possible the initial response to a Taylor Swift song might have been a little reactionary. When it’s not taken as a mission statement, “Welcome to New York” is totally tolerable, a glimmering confetti throwaway with lovely synths.

85. “Tied Together With a Smile,” Taylor Swift (2006): When she was just a teenager with a development deal, Swift hooked up with veteran Nashville songwriter Liz Rose. The two would collaborate on much of Swift’s first two albums. “We wrote and figured out that it really worked. She figured out she could write Taylor Swift songs, and I wouldn’t get in the way,” Rose said later. “She’d say a line and I’d say, ‘What if we say it like this?’ It’s kind of like editing.” This early ballad about a friend with bulimia sees Swift and Rose experimenting with metaphor. Most of them work.

84. “King of My Heart,” Reputation (2017): Swift is fond of saying that “songs are what you think of on the drive home — you know, the Great Afterthought.” (She says it’s a Joni Mitchell quote, but I haven’t been able to find it.) Anyway, I think that’s why some of the love songs on Reputationdon’t quite land: Swift is writing about a relationship from inside of it, instead of with hindsight. It’s a different skill, which could explain why the boyfriend character here is less vividly sketched than some of her other ones.

83. “Come Back … Be Here,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): A vulnerable track about long-distance love, with simple sentiments overwhelmed by extravagant production.

82. “Breathe,” Fearless (2008): A Colbie Caillat collaboration that’s remarkable mostly for being a rare Swift song about a friend breakup. It’s like if “Bad Blood” contained actual human emotions.

81. “Stay Beautiful,” Taylor Swift (2006): Nathan Chapman was a Nashville session guitarist before he started working with Swift. He produced her early demos, and she fought for him to sit behind the controls on her debut; the two would work together on every Swift album until 1989, when his role was largely taken over by Max Martin and Shellback. Here, he brings a sprightly arrangement to Swift’s ode to an achingly good-looking man.

80. “Nashville,” Speak Now World Tour – Live; Target edition DVD (2011): Swift gives some shine to singer-songwriter David Mead with a cover of his 2004 ballad. (Listen to the screams during the chorus and try to guess where this one was recorded.) She treats it with a delicate respect, like she’s handling her grandmother’s china.

79. “So It Goes,” Reputation (2017): Unfortunately not a Nick Lowe cover, this one comes and goes without making much of an impact, but if you don’t love that whispered “1-2-3,” I don’t know what to tell you.

78. “You’re Not Sorry,” Fearless (2008): An unflinching kiss-off song that got a gothic remix for Swift’s appearance as an ill-fated teen on CSI. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

77. “Drops of Jupiter,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2012): The best of the covers on the live album sees Swift commit to the Train hit like she’d written it herself. If you had forgotten that this song came out in 2001, she keeps the line about Tae Bo.

76. “The Other Side of the Door,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): A bonus track saved from mediocrity by a gutsy outro that hints that Swift, like any good millennial, was a big fan of “Semi-Charmed Life.”

75. “Gorgeous,” Reputation (2017): In the misbegotten rollout for Reputation, “Gorgeous” righted the ship by not being completely terrible. Max Martin and Shellback pack the track with all sorts of amusing audio doodads, but the melody is a little too horizontal to stick, and the lyrics have a touch of first draft about them. (You’d be forgiven for preferring the actual first draft, which is slightly more open and real.)

74. “I Wish You Would,” 1989 (2014): Like “You Are in Love,” this one originated as a Jack Antonoff instrumental track, and the finished version retains his fingerprints. Perhaps too much — you get the sense it might work better as a Bleachers song.

73. “Cold As You,” Taylor Swift (2006): A dead-serious breakup song that proved the teenage Swift (with help from Rose, who’s got a co-writing credit) could produce barbs sharper than most adults: “You come away with a great little story / Of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you.” Jesus.

72. “Haunted,” Speak Now (2010): In which Swift tries her hand at Evanescence-style goth-rock. She almost pulls it off, but at this point in Swift’s career her voice wasn’t quite strong enough to give the unrestrained performance the song calls for.

71. “This Love,” 1989 (2014): Began life as a poem before evolving into an atmospheric 1989 deep cut. Like an imperfectly poached egg, it’s shapeless but still quite appetizing.

70. “Untouchable,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): Technically a Luna Halo cover (don’t worry about it), though Swift discards everything but the bones of the original. Her subsequent renovation job is worthy of HGTV: It’s nearly impossible to believe this was ever not a Taylor Swift song.

69. “Wonderland,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): A deranged bonus track that sees Swift doing the absolute most. This song has everything: Alice in Wonderland metaphors, Rihanna chants, a zigzag bridge that recalls “I Knew You Were Trouble,” screams. As she puts it, “It’s all fun and games ’til somebody loses their MIND!”

68. “Sweeter Than Fiction,” One Chance soundtrack (2013): Swift’s first collaboration with Jack Antonoff is appropriately ’80s-inspired, and so sugary that a well-placed key change in the chorus is the only thing that staves off a toothache.

67. “I’m Only Me When I’m With You,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition(2006): A rollicking pop-rock tune that recalls early Kelly Clarkson. As if to reassure nervous country fans, the fiddle goes absolutely nuts.

66. “Tell Me Why,” Fearless (2008): A bog-standard tale of an annoyingly clueless guy, but it’s paired with one of Swift and Rose’s most winning melodies.

65. “If This Was a Movie,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): The mirror image of “White Horse,” which makes it feel oddly superfluous.

64. “How You Get the Girl,” 1989 (2014): The breeziest and least complicated of Swift’s guy-standing-on-a-doorstep songs, which contributed to the feeling that 1989 was something of an emotional regression. You probably shouldn’t take it as an instruction manual unless you’re Harry Styles.

63. “Don’t Blame Me,” Reputation (2017): A woozy if slightly anonymous love song that comes off as a sexier “Take Me to Church.” [A dozen Hozier fans storm out of the room.]

62. “The Way I Loved You,” Fearless (2008): Written in collaboration with Big and Rich’s John Rich, which may explain how stately and mid-tempo this one is. (There’s even a martial drumbeat.) Here, she’s faced with a choice between a too-perfect guy — he’s close to her mother and talks business with her father — and a tempestuous relationship full of “screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain,” and if you don’t know which one she prefers I suggest you listen to more Taylor Swift songs. Swift often plays guessing games about which parts of her songs are autobiographical, but this one is explicitly a fantasy.

61. “New Romantics,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): Like “22,” an attempt at writing a big generational anthem. That it was left off the album proper suggests Swift didn’t think it quite got there, though it did its job of extending the singles cycle of 1989 a few more months. Despite what anyone says about “Welcome to New York,” the line here about waiting for “trains that just aren’t coming” indicates its writer has had at least one authentic New York experience.

60. “Sparks Fly,” Speak Now (2010): This one dates back to Swift’s high-school days, and was destined for obscurity until fans fell in love with the live version. After what seems like a lot of tinkering, it finally got a proper studio release on Swift’s third album. It’s like “True Love Waits,” but with more kissing in the rain.

59. “Me!,” Untitled Seventh Album (2019): Well, what did we expect? The run-up to “Me!” was preceded by a weeks-long guessing game about what precisely would be the nature of Swift’s April 26 announcement. Would she come out? Would she come out and reveal she had once dated Karlie Kloss? Cut to the fateful day, and the news was … Swift, who is a pop singer, was releasing a new pop song. After the Sturm und Drang of the Reputation era, “Me!” is a return to anodyne sweetness, a mission statement that says, “I’m through making mission statements.” The result is blandly inoffensive, emphasis on the bland.

58. “All You Had to Do Was Stay,” 1989 (2014): Just like the melody to “Yesterday” and the “Satisfaction” riff, the high-pitched “Stay!” here came to its writer in a dream. Inspiration works in mysterious ways.

57. “Delicate, Reputation (2017): With multitracked, breathy vocals, this is Swift at her most tentative. Would any other album’s Taylor be asking, “Is it cool that I said all that?”

56. “Stay Stay Stay,” Red (2012): Swift broke out her southern accent one last time for this attempt at homespun folk, which is marred by production that’s so clean it’s practically antiseptic. In an alternate universe where a less-ambitious Swift took a 9-to-5 job writing ad jingles, this one soundtracked a TV spot for the new AT&T family plan.

55. “Call It What You Want,” Reputation (2017): Many of the Reputationsingles aim at sexy; this airy slow jam about losing yourself in love after a scandal is the only one that gets there, though the saltiness in the verses (“all the liars are calling me one”) occasionally betrays the sentiment.

54. “Ours,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): It’s not this song’s fault that the extended version of Speak Now has songs called both “Mine” and “Ours,” and while “Ours” is good … well, it’s no “Mine.” Still, even if this song never rises above cuteness, it is incredibly cute. I think Dad’ll get over the tattoos.

53. “The Best Day,” Fearless (2008): Swift’s parents moved the family to Tennessee so she could follow her musical dreams, and she paid them back with this tender tribute. Mom gets the verses while Dad is relegated to the middle eight — even in song, the Mother’s Day–Father’s Day disparity holds up.

52. “Everything Has Changed,” Red (2012): “We good to go?” For many American listeners, this was the first introduction to a redheaded crooner named Ed Sheeran. It’s a sweet duet and Sheeran’s got a roughness that goes well with Swift’s cleaner vocals, but the harmonies are a bit bland.

51. “Today Was a Fairytale,” Valentine’s Day soundtrack (2010): How much of a roll was Swift on during the Fearless era? This song didn’t make the album, and sat in the vault for a year until Swift signed on for a small role in a Garry Marshall rom-com and offered it up for the soundtrack. Despite the extravagant title, the date described here is charmingly low-key: The dude wears a T-shirt, and his grand gestures are showing up on time and being nice.

50. “Last Kiss,” Speak Now (2010): A good-bye waltz with an understated arrangement that suits the starkness of the lyrics.

49. “You Are in Love,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): The best of Swift’s songs idealizing someone else’s love story (see “Starlight” and “Mary’s Song”), this bonus track sketches Jack Antonoff and Lena Dunham’s relationship in flashes of moments. The production and vocals are appropriately restrained — sometimes, simplicity works.

48. “The Story of Us,” Speak Now (2010): The deluxe edition of Speak Now features both U.S. and international versions of some of the singles, which gives you a sense of how fine-tuned Swift’s operation was by this point. My ears can’t quite hear the difference between the two versions of this exuberant breakup jam, but I suspect the U.S. mix contains some sort of ultrasonic frequencies designed to … sorry, I’ve already said too much.

47. “Clean,” 1989 (2014): Co-written with Imogen Heap, who contributes backup vocals. This is 1989’s big end-of-album-catharsis song, and the water imagery of the lyrics goes well with the drip-drip-drip production. I’d be curious to hear a version where Heap sings lead; the minimalist sound might be better suited for her voice, which has a little more texture.

46. “Getaway Car,” Reputation (2017): Another very Antonoff-y track, but I’m not mad at it. We start with a vocoder she must have stolen from Imogen Heap and end with one of Swift’s most rocking outros, and in between we even get a rare key change.

45. “I Almost Do,” Red (2012): The kind of plaintive breakup song Swift could write in her sleep at this point in her career, with standout guitar work and impressive vulnerability in both lyrics and performance.

44. “Long Live (We Will Be Remembered),” Speak Now (2010):Ostensibly written about Swift’s experiences touring with her band, but universal enough that it’s been taken as a graduation song by pretty much everyone else. Turns out, adolescent self-mythologizing is the same no matter where you are — no surprise that Swift could pull it off despite leaving school after sophomore year.

43. “The Moment I Knew,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): An epic account of being stood up that makes a terrible birthday party seem like something approximating the Fall of Troy. If you’re the type of person who stays up at night remembering every inconsiderate thing you’ve ever done, the level of excruciating detail here is like a needle to the heart.

42. “Jump Then Fall,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2006): An effervescent banjo-driven love song. I get a silly kick out of the gag in the chorus, when Swift’s voice leaps to the top of her register every time she says “jump.”

41. “Never Grow Up,” Speak Now (2010): Swift’s songs where she’s romanticizing childhood come off better than the ones where she’s romanticizing old age. (Possibly because she’s been a child before.) This one is so well-observed and wistful about the idea of children aging that you’d swear she was secretly a 39-year-old mom.

40. “Should’ve Said No,” Taylor Swift (2006): Written in a rush of emotion near the end of recording for the debut, what this early single lacks in nuance it makes up for in backbone. I appreciate the way the end of each verse holds out hope for the cheating ex — “given ooonnne chaaance, it was a moment of weeaaknesssss” — before the chorus slams the door in the dumb lunk’s face.

39. “Back to December,” Speak Now (2010): At the time, this one was billed as a big step for Swift: the first song where she’s the bad guy! Now that the novelty has worn off “Back to December” doesn’t feel so groundbreaking, but it does show her evolving sensitivity. The key to a good apology has always been sincerity, and whatever faults Swift may have, a lack of sincerity has never been one of them.

38. “Holy Ground,” Red (2012): This chugging rocker nails the feeling of reconnecting with an ex and romanticizing the times you shared, and it livens up the back half of Red a bit. Probably ranked too high, but this is my list and I’ll do what I want.

37. “Enchanted,” Speak Now (2010): Originally the title track for Swift’s third album until her label told her, more or less, to cut it with the fairy-tale stuff. It’s a glittery ode to a meet-cute that probably didn’t need to be six minutes long, but at least the extended length gives us extra time to soak up the heavenly coda, with its multi-tracked “Please don’t be in love in with someone else.”

36. “I Know Places,” 1989 (2014): No attempts of universality here — this trip-hop song about trying to find a place to make out when you’re a massive celebrity is only relatable to a couple dozen people. No matter. As a slice of gothic pop-star paranoia, it gives a much-needed bit of edge to 1989. Bumped up a couple of spots for the line about vultures, which I can only assume is a shout-out.

35. “Treacherous,” Red (2012): Swift has rarely been so tactile as on this intimate ballad, seemingly constructed entirely out of sighs.

34. “Dress,” Reputation (2017): An appropriately slinky track that gives us an unexpected payoff for years of lyrics about party dresses: “I only bought this dress so you could take it off,” she says in the chorus. The way the whole song starts and stops is an obvious trick, but I like it.

33. “Speak Now,” Speak Now (2010): The rest of the band plays it so straight that it might take a second listen to realize that this song is, frankly, bonkers. First, Swift sneaks into a wedding to find a bridezilla, “wearing a gown shaped like a pastry,” snarling at the bridesmaids. Then it turns out she’s been uninvited — oops — so she decides to hide in the curtains. Finally, at a pivotal moment she stands up in front of everyone and protests the impending union. Luckily the guy is cool with it, so we get a happy ending! All this nonsense undercuts the admittedly charming chorus, but it’s hard not to smile at the unabashed silliness.

32. “22,” Red (2012): Another collaboration with Martin and Shellback, another absurdly catchy single. Still, there’s enough personality in the machine for this to still feel like a Taylor song, for better (“breakfast at midnight” being the epitome of adult freedom) and for worse (the obsession with “cool kids”). Mostly for better.

31. “Christmases When You Were Mine,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): The clear standout of Swift’s Christmas album, with an endearingly winsome riff and lyrics that paint a poignant picture of yuletide heartbreak. If you’ve ever been alone on Christmas, this is your song.

30. “White Horse,” Fearless (2008): You’d never call Swift a genre deconstructionist, but her best work digs deeper into romantic tropes than she gets credit for. In just her second album, she and Rose gave us this clear-eyed look at the emptiness of symbolic gestures, allegedly finished in a mere 45 minutes. Almost left off the album, but saved thanks to Shonda Rhimes.

29. “I Knew You Were Trouble,” Red (2012): The guiding principle on much of Red seems to have been to throw absolutely every idea a person could think of into a song and see what worked. Here, we go from Kelly Clarkson verses to a roller-coaster chorus to a dubstep breakdown that dates the song as surely as radiocarbon — then back again. It shouldn’t hang together, but the gutsy vocals and vivid lyrics keep the track from going off the rails.

28. “Teardrops on My Guitar,” Taylor Swift (2006): An evocative portrait of high-school heartbreak, equal parts mundane — no adult songwriter would have named the crush “Drew” — and melodramatic. It’s also the best example of Swift and Rose’s early songwriting cheat code, when they switch the words of the chorus around at the end of the song. “It just makes the listener feel like the writer and the artist care about the song,” Rose told Billboard. “That they’re like, “Okay, you’ve heard it, but wait a minute — ’cause I want you know that this really affected me, I’m gonna dig the knife in just a little bit deeper.’” (In a fitting twist, “Teardrops” ended up inspiring a moment that could have come straight out of a Taylor Swift song, when the real Drew showed up outside her house one night. “I hadn’t talked to him in two-and-a-half years,” she told the Washington Post. “He was like: ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And I’m like: ‘Wow, you’re late? Good to see you?’”)

27. “Begin Again,” Red (2012): Swift’s sequencing genius strikes again: After the emotional roller coaster of Red, this gentle ballad plays like a cleansing shower. (It works so well she’d repeat the trick on 1989, slightly more obviously.) Of all Swift’s date songs, this one feels the most true to life; anyone who’s ever been on a good first date can recall the precise moment their nervousness melted into relief.

26. “New Year’s Day,” Reputation (2017): Like a prestige cable drama, Swift likes to use her final track as a kind of quiet summing-up of all that’s come before. Here, she saves the album’s most convincing love song for last: “I want your midnights / but I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day” is a great way to describe a healthy relationship. The lovely back-and-forth vocals in the outro help break the tie with “Begin Again.”

25. “Shake It Off,” 1989 (2014): Swift’s second No. 1 was greeted with widespread critical sighs: After the heights of Red, why was she serving up cotton-candy fluff about dancing your way past the haters? (Never mind that Red had its own sugary singles.) Now that we’ve all gotten some distance, the purpose of “Shake It Off” is clear: This is a wedding song, empty-headed fun designed to get both Grandma and Lil Jayden on the dance floor. Docked ten or so spots for the spoken-word bridge and cheerleader breakdown, which might be the worst 24 seconds of the entire album.

24. “Safe and Sound,” The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond (2012): Swift’s collaboration with folk duo the Civil Wars is her best soundtrack cut by a country mile. Freed from the constraints of her usual mode, her vocals paint in corners you didn’t think she could reach, especially when she tries out a high-pitched vibrato that blends beautifully with Joy Williams and John Paul White’s hushed harmonies. Swift has worked in a variety of emotional palettes in her career, but this is the only time she’s ever been spooky.

23. “Picture to Burn,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift’s breakup songs rarely get more acidic than they do in this country hit. By the time she’s twanging a line about dating all her ex’s friends, things have gotten downright rowdy. The original lyrics — “Go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay” — show how far standards for acceptable speech in nice young people have shifted in the past decade.

22. “Fearless,” Fearless (2008): The title track from Swift’s second album has more of her favorite images — in one memorable twofer, she’s dancing in the rain while wearing her best dress — but she invests them with so much emotion that you’d swear she was using them for the first time. The exuberance of the lyrics is matched in the way she tumbles from line to line into the chorus.

21. “Tim McGraw,” Taylor Swift (2006): If you by chance ever happen to meet Taylor Swift, there is one thing you should know: Do not, under any circumstances, call her “calculating.” “Am I shooting from the hip?” she once asked GQ when confronted with the word. “Would any of this have happened if I was? … You can be accidentally successful for three or four years. Accidents happen. But careers take hard work.” However, since the title of her first single apparently came from label head Scott Borchetta — “I told Taylor, ‘They won’t immediately remember your name, they’ll say who’s this young girl with this song about Tim McGraw?’” — I think we’re allowed to break out the c-word: Calling it “Tim McGraw” was the first genius calculation in a career that would turn out to be full of them. Still, there would have been no getting anywhere with it if the song weren’t good. Even as a teenager, Swift was savvy enough to know that country fans love nothing more than listening to songs about listening to country music. And the very first line marks her as more of a skeptic than you might expect: “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia pines to shame that night / I said, ‘That’s a lie.’”

20. “Dear John,” Speak Now (2010): “I’ve never named names,” Swift once told GQ. “The fact that I’ve never confirmed who those songs are about makes me feel like there is still one card I’m holding.” That may technically be true, but she came pretty dang close with this seven-minute epic. (John Mayer said he felt “humiliated” by the song, after which Swift told Glamour it was “presumptuous” of him to think that the song his ex wrote, that used his first name, was about him.) She sings the hell out of it, but when it comes to songs where Swift systematically outlines all the ways in which an older male celebrity is an inadequate partner, I think I prefer “All Too Well,” which is less wallow-y. I’ve seen it speculated that the guitar noodling on this track is meant as a parody of Mayer’s own late-’00s output, which if true would be deliciously petty.

19. “Red,” Red (2012): Re-eh-eh-ed, re-eh-eh-ed. Red’s title track sees the album’s maximalist style in full effect — who in their right mind would put Auto-Tune and banjos on the same track? But somehow, the overstuffing works here; it’s the audio equivalent of the lyrics’ synesthesia.

18. “I Did Something Bad,” Reputation (2017): It’s too bad Rihanna already has an album called Unapologetic, because that would have been a perfect title for Reputation, or maybe just this jubilant “Blank Space” sequel. Why the hell she didn’t release this one instead of “Look What You Made Me Do,” I’ll never know — not only does “Something Bad” sell the lack of remorse much better, it bangs harder than any other song on pop radio this summer except “Bodak Yellow.” Is that a raga chant? Are those fucking gunshots? Docked a spot or two for “They’re burning all the witches even if you aren’t one,” which doth protest too much, but bumped up just as much for Swift’s first on-the-record “shit.”

17. “Forever & Always,” Fearless (2008): This blistering breakup song was the one that solidified Swift’s image as the pop star you dump at your own peril. (The boys in the debut were just Nashville randos; this one was about a Jonas Brother, back when that really meant something.) Obligatory fiddles aside, the original version is just about a perfect piece of pop-rock — dig how the guitars drop out at a pivotal moment — though the extended edition of Fearless also contains a piano version if you feel like having your guts ripped out. I have no idea what the lines about “rain in your bedroom” mean, but like the best lyrics, they make sense on an instinctual level. And to top it off, the track marks the introduction of Swift’s colloquial style — “Where is this GOoO-ING?” — that would serve her so well in the years to come.

16. “Mean,” Speak Now (2010): It takes some chutzpah to put a song complaining about mean people on the same album as “Better Than Revenge,” but lack of chutzpah has never been Swift’s problem. Get past that and you’ll find one of Swift’s most naturally appealing melodies and the joyful catharsis that comes with giving a bully what’s coming to them. (Some listeners have interpreted the “big enough so you can’t hit me” line to mean the song’s about abuse, but I’ve always read it as a figure of speech, as in “hit piece.”)

15. “Wildest Dreams,” 1989 (2014): Swift is in full control of her instrument here, with so much yearning in her voice that you’d swear every breath was about to be her last. For a singer often slammed as being sexless, those sighs in the chorus tell us everything we need to know. Bumped up a few spots for the invigorating double-time bridge, the best on 1989.

14. “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” Reputation (2017): Put aside the title, which can’t help but remind me of the time Hillary Clinton tweeted “delete your account.” The same way “I Did Something Bad” is the best possible version of “Look What You Made Me Do,” this is a much better rewrite of “Bad Blood.” Swift brings back the school-yard voice in the chorus, but also so much more: She does exaggerated politeness in the bridge, she spins the “Runaway” toast, she says the words “Therein lies the issue” like she’s been listening to Hamilton. The high point comes when she contemplates forgiving a hater, then bursts into an incredulous guffaw. Reader, I laughed out loud.

13. “Style,” 1989 (2014): The much-ballyhooed ’80s sound on 1989 often turned out to just mean Swift was using more synths than usual, but she nailed the vibe on this slinky single, which could have soundtracked a particularly romantic episode of Miami Vice. Despite the dress-up games in the chorus, this is one of the rare Swift love songs to feel truly adult: Both she and the guy have been down this road too many times to bullshit anymore. That road imagery is haunted by the prospect of death lurking around every hairpin turn — what’s sex without a little danger?

12. “Hey Stephen,” Fearless (2008): Who knew so many words rhymed with Stephen? They all come so naturally here. Swift is in the zone as a writer, performer, and producer on this winning deep cut, which gives us some wonderful sideways rhymes (“look like an angel” goes with “kiss you in the rain, so”), a trusty Hammond organ in the background, and a bunch of endearing little ad-libs, to say nothing of the kicker: “All those other girls, well they’re beautiful / But would they write a song for you?” For once, the mid-song laugh is entirely appropriate.

11. “Out of the Woods,” 1989 (2014): Like Max Martin, Antonoff’s influence as a collaborator has not been wholly positive: His penchant for big anthemic sounds can drown out the subtlety of Swift, and he’s been at the controls for some of her biggest misfires. But boy, does his Jack Antonoff thing work here, bringing a whole forest of drums to support Swift’s rapid-fire string of memories. The song’s bridge was apparently inspired by a snowmobile accident Swift was in with Harry Styles, an incident that never made the tabloids despite what seemed like round-the-clock coverage of the couple — a subtler reminder of the limits of media narratives than anything on Reputation.

10. “Love Story,” Fearless (2008): Full disclosure: This was the first Taylor Swift song I ever heard. (It was a freezing day in early 2009; I was buying shoes; basically, the situation was the total antithesis of anything that’s ever happened in a Taylor Swift song.) I didn’t like it at first. Who’s this girl singing about Romeo and Juliet, and doesn’t she know they die in the end?What I would soon learn was: not here they don’t, as Swift employs a key change so powerful it literally rewrites Shakespeare. The jury’s still out on the question of if she’s ever read the play, but she definitely hasn’t read The Scarlet Letter.

9. “State of Grace,” Red (2012): Swift’s songs are always full of interesting little nuggets you don’t notice until your 11th listen or so — a lyrical twist, maybe, or an unconventional drum fill — but most of them are fundamentally meant to be heard on the radio, which demands a certain type of songwriting and a certain type of sound. What a surprise it was, then, that Red opened with this big, expansive rock track, which sent dozens of Joshua Tree fans searching for their nearest pair of headphones. Another surprise: that she never tried to sound like this again. Having proven she could nail it on her first try, Swift set out to find other giants to slay.

8. “Ronan,” non-album digital single (2012): A collage of lines pulled from the blog of Maya Thompson, whose 3-year-old son had died of cancer, this charity single sees Swift turn herself into an effective conduit for the other woman’s grief. (Thompson gets a co-writing credit.) One of the most empathetic songs in Swift’s catalogue, as well as her most reliable tearjerker.

7. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Red (2012): Flash back to 2012. Carly Rae Jepsen had a No. 1 hit. Freaking Gotye had a No. 1 hit. LMFAO had two. And yet Swift, arguably the biggest pop star in the country, had never had a No. 1 hit. (“You Belong With Me” and “Today Was a Fairytale” had both peaked at No. 2.) And so she called up Swedish pop cyborg Max Martin, the man who makes hits as regularly as you and I forget our car keys. The first song they wrote together is still their masterpiece, though it feels wrong to say that “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” was written; better to say that it was designed, as Swift and Martin turn almost every single second of the song’s 3:12 run time into a hook. Think of that guitar loop, the snippets of millennial-speak in the margins (“cuz like”), those spiraling “ooh”s, the spoken-word bit that could have been overheard at any brunch in America, and towering over it all, that gigantic “we.” Like all hyper-efficient products it feels like a visitor from some cold algorithmic future: The sense of joy here is so perfectly engineered that you get the sense it did not come entirely from human hands.

6. “Our Song,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift wrote this one for her ninth-grade talent show, and I have a lovely time imagining all the other competitors getting the disappointment of their lives once they realized what they were up against. (“But nice job with that Green Day cover, Andy.”) Even at this early stage Swift had a knack for matching her biggest melodic hooks to sentences that would make them soar; that “’cause it’s late and your mama don’t know” is absolutely ecstatic. She’s said she heard the entire production in her head while writing, and on the record Nathan Chapman brings out all the tricks in the Nashville handbook, and even some that aren’t, like the compressed hip-hop drums in the final refrain.

5. “Mine,” Speak Now (2010): As catchy as her Max Martin songs, but with more of a soul, “Mine” wins a narrow victory over “Our Song” on account of having a better bridge. This one’s another fantasy, and you can kind of tell, but who cares — Paul McCartney didn’t really fall in love with a meter maid, either. Swift packs in so many captivating turns of phrase here, and she does it so naturally: It’s hard to believe no one else got to “you are the best thing that’s ever been mine” before her, and the line about “a careless man’s careful daughter” is so perfect that you instantly know everything about the guy. Let’s give a special shout-out to Nathan Chapman again: His backup vocals are the secret weapon of Speak Now, and they’re at their very best here.

4. “Blank Space,” 1989 (2014): You know how almost every other song that’s even a little bit like “Blank Space” ranks very low on this list? Yeah, that’s how hard a trick Swift pulls off on this 1989 single, which manages to satirize her man-eater image while also demonstrating exactly what makes that image so appealing. The gag takes a perfectly tuned barometer for tone: “Look What You Made Me Do” collapsed under the weight of its own self-obsession; “Better Than Revenge” didn’t quite get the right amount of humor in. But Swift’s long history of code-switching works wonders for her here, as she gives each line just the right spin — enough irony for us to get the jokes, enough sincerity that we’ll all sing along anyway. Martin and Shellback bring their usual bells and whistles, but they leave enough empty space in the mix for the words to ring out. Who wouldn’t want to write their name?

3. “Fifteen,” Fearless (2008): For many young people, the real experience of romance is the thinking about it, not the actual doing it. (For an increasing number, the thinking about it is all they’re doing.) Swift gets this almost instinctively, and never more than on this early ballad about her freshman year of high school, which plays like a gentle memoir. Listen to how the emotional high point of the second verse is not something that happens, but her reaction to it: “He’s got a car and you feel like flyyying.” She knows that the real thing is awkward, occasionally unpleasant, and almost guaranteed to disappoint you — the first sentence she wrote for this one was “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind / We both cried,” a line that became exhibit B in the case of Taylor Swift v. Feminism — and she knows how fantasies can sustain you when nothing else will. “In your life you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team / but I didn’t know it at 15,” she sings, even though she’s only 18 herself. That there are plenty of people who spent their teenage years making out, smoking cigarettes, and reading Anaïs Nin doesn’t negate the fact that, for a lot of us squares, even the prospect of holding someone else’s hand could get us through an entire semester. Virgins need love songs, too.

2. “All Too Well,” Red (2012): It’s no wonder that music writers love this one: This is Swift at her most literary, with a string of impeccably observed details that could have come out of a New Yorker short story. “All Too Well” was the first song Swift wrote for Red; she hadn’t worked with Liz Rose since Fearless, but she called up her old collaborator to help her make sense of her jumble of memories from a relationship recently exploded. “She had a story and she wanted to say something specific. She had a lot of information,” Rose told Rolling Stone later. “I just let her go.” The original version featured something like eight verses; together the two women edited it down to a more manageable three, while still retaining its propulsive momentum. The finished song is a kaleidoscopic swirl of images — baby pictures at his parents’ house, “nights where you made me your own,” a scarf left in a drawer — always coming back to the insistence that these things happened, and they mattered: “I was there, I remember it all too well.” The words are so strong that the band mostly plays support; they don’t need anything flashier than a 4/4 thump and a big crescendo for each chorus. There are few moments on Red better than the one where Swift jumps into her upper register to deliver the knockout blow in the bridge. Just like the scarf, you can’t get rid of this song.

1. “You Belong With Me,” Fearless (2008): Swift was hanging out with a male friend one day when he took a call from his girlfriend. “He was completely on the defensive saying, ‘No, baby … I had to get off the phone really quickly … I tried to call you right back … Of course I love you. More than anything! Baby, I’m so sorry,’” she recalled. “She was just yelling at him! I felt so bad for him at that moment.” Out of that feeling, a classic was born. Swift had written great songs drawn from life before, but here she gave us a story of high school at its most archetypal: A sensitive underdog facing off with some prissy hot chick, in a battle to see which one of them really got a cute boy’s jokes. (Swift would play both women in the video; she had enough self-awareness to know that most outcasts are not tall, willowy blonde girls.) Rose says the song “just flowed out of” Swift, and you can feel that rush of inspiration in the way the lines bleed into each other, but there’s some subtle songcraft at work, too: Besides the lyrical switcheroos about who wears what, we also only get half the chorus the first go-round, just to save one more wallop for later. The line about short skirts and T-shirts will likely be mentioned in Swift’s obituary one day, and I think it’s key to the song’s, and by extension Swift’s, appeal: In my high school, even the most popular kids wore T-shirts.

Vulture

[prime-one-blog]

12 Takeaways From Michael Jackson’s Thriller

(DISCLAIMER:This is a bit of a read.If you enjoy reading and music,I think you’ll like this.)

1982 was a year in music where a telephone number could function as a catchy rock song chorus (Tommy Tutone's "867-5309/Jenny"),where continents could get mad love or representation via Billboard-worthy singles (Toto's "Africa" and Men At Work's "Down Under"),and where "the number of the beast" was less a harbinger of earth's impending apocalypse and more a heavy metal masterwork (Iron Maiden's album and song of the same name.) It was a year that announced the arrival and breaking through of two artists that,together with Michael Jackson,would form the trinity of Eighties musical titans (Madonna and Prince,respectively.) As a rapper,it would be shameful if I didn't mention that 1982 was also a year where hip-hop was given a good,hard,from-behind shove into the mainstream courtesy of Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five's seven-minute long rap treatise of ghetto life that was "The Message" and Afrika Bambaataa And The Soul Sonic Force's Kraftwerk-inspired piece of rap/electro bliss that was "Planet Rock." (The latter song also spawned the freestyle subgenre of electronic music due to its Roland TR-808 generated drum track that became freestyle's default rhythm setting.)

With 1982 having already served up more than a generous helping of killer tunes (enough to make for an extensive and excellent playlist in today's terms),a nice portion of tasty albums (Roxy Music's Avalon,Duran Duran's Rio,and the aforementioned Iron Maiden offering of Number Of The Beast,to name a few),and a few watershed moments for burgeoning styles of music,it was only appropriate that the King Of Pop enter into the arena and throw his hat in the ring.On November 30th of that year,Thriller was released and the album would go on to not only be a monster smash but a game-changer in the music industry.

As a kindergarten-age pup at the time of Thriller's release,I had no awareness or understanding of the significance of that moment in recorded music history.My concerns were not of the transpirations within pop music as they were with having fun with die-cast dinky cars.Fortunately,given that Thriller was a mammoth pop record and there was some adroit promotion of it,it was still scorching hot product nearly two years after its coming-out and,as such,ties into a few of my childhood memories that were made when the buzz about Thriller was at its loudest.After undergoing the lengthy transition from being a young boy who enjoyed looking through his father's collection of 45-rpm vinyl records and playing around with a Casio keyboard to a grown adult that had a fiery passion for music and who immersed himself in the making of it,Thriller became more than just something I listened to for pleasure and entertainment.Having become cognizant of how big Thriller was in terms of sales,production,impact on popular culture,and influence on future music acts,the album was an object of thorough and serious study as it provided me with valuable education on how to make great music.

All that aside,it's mind blowing that three-and-a-half decades have elapsed since Michael Jackson dropped the highest selling album of all-time on the world like a large nuclear warhead.On the anniversary of its release,I offer my twelve takeaways from what I deem to be the GOAT of all albums.

12."BRUUUUUCE!"  

Rarely,if ever,does a major-label recording artist or band make an album completely on their own.Looking at the personnel listing of Thriller,Michael Jackson had a small army of talented musicians to help him make the record.Among all of the names were three men whom-along with Jackson-formed an indomitable foursome.There was super-producer Quincy Jones (whom I'll get to later on),British songwriter extraordinaire Rod Temperton,and Bruce Swedien.

The mention of "Bruce Swedien" to your average Joe (or JoAnne) would probably get a "who's that?" in reply.If they ever saw him,they might think Swedien played in the movie Cocoon and did commercials for Quaker Oats and Liberty Medical (diabeetis!) In the music producer community,however,Swedien is something of an engineering O.G.that has probably forgotten more about recording and mixing than most people would ever come to know.When the man speaks,you listen because you might damn well end up learning something that will make you a better producer.But I digress.

Thriller was an ambitious project.Included within its lofty goals was-in Quincy Jones' words-to "save the music industry" and for the album to represent the gold standard of sound and production.With production credentials dating all the way back to Count Freakin' Basie,Swedien's experience and expertise made him the right man for a big job.And,boy,did Swedien ever deliver as the production value on Thriller is quite high.The uptempo tracks on the album have a Sugar Ray Leonard-type punch to them and it's that punch which makes them exciting and exuberant pieces of pop music.There's a clarity of elements in every cut off Thriller and good use of the stereo panorama where Michael Jackson's vocals are almost hugged by the backing instrumentation in a way that isn't suffocating.And something should be said about the convergence of Hollywood and pop music via the creepy and cinematic sound effects on Thriller's titular track.In short,Thriller is a fine example of what a pop record should sound like but rarely,if ever,does nowadays with loudness being prioritized over the preservation of dynamic range or the maintenance of good mixing work. Though the time that Thriller was made and vinyl records still being an absolutely necessary medium of music distribution played a large role in the album's production quality,Swedien's work enabled the record to hold up nicely against those of the future that would be combatants in "the loudness wars." It's pretty safe to say that Thriller might very well not be the album it is or possess the sound that it does without Bruce Swedien's miking and mixing prowess.That said,we should all give him the props that he deserves.

11.Getting sued sucks.But sometimes it isn't always so bad.

I know,it's easy to say when you've never been litigated against.I'm sure that no one in human history that has been made a defendant in a legal matter was overjoyed by the possibility of having to fork over some coin due to some allegation of negligence or infringement.That includes Michael Jackson,who was made subject to a lawsuit by Cameroonian artist Manu Dibango for the use of  "mama say,mama sa,ma ma coosa" in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

One can't fault Dibango for filing suit against Jackson.After all,recording artists tend to get anal if one of their contemporaries pilfer or appropriate material that was borne from their creativity without so much as a request for permission of use and pursue legal action in response.Though Jackson had to compensate Dibango with more than just a few Cameroonian francs in an out-of-court settlement,it was more of a gain than a loss.For starters,the moolah that Jackson gave Dibango was a drop in the bucket to the haul that Jackson would eventually receive from sales of Thriller.It was not a bank-breaker for Jackson by any means.If anything,it was an investment into what has to be the best part of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." Though there may not be a direct connection between the song's subject matter and the "mama say,mama sa,ma ma coosa" which is repeated several times near the song's ending,it's easy to overlook.This is mainly due to the fact that it's so damn catchy.If the chorus hook with its "yeah,yeah" doesn't embed the song in your grey matter for some time after hearing it,the inclusion of the "Soul Makossa" chant is insurance that it will.It's triumphant,joyous,and it's a stroke of genius that isn't restricted to achieving maximum catchiness to the song.In the something-for-everybody approach that Thriller seemed to take premeditatively,the borrowing of "Soul Makossa" for its opening jam infused a world music flavor-specifically of the West African variety-into a Western pop song and it may also be a young black artist's musical acknowledgement of his mother continent.That said,it was worth every franc that Jackson doled out.

10.Eddie Van Halen was a bowse.

Before 1978,there was no shortage of guitarists that axe enthusiasts could revere or be influenced by.Page,Clapton,Blackmore,Iommi,Hendrix,Richards,Gilmour,and Beck were just a few names within the pantheon of string-plucking deities.Then along came a Dutch guy with a bad ass last name whose incendiary and almost futuristic guitar playing put him atop Olympus.Edward Van Halen was on a whole 'nother level and no one,save for the equally gifted Randy Rhoads (Ozzy Osborne's guitarist),was in the same tier.Sadly,Rhoads' young life was cut short in a March 1982 plane crash and his death left Van Halen alone at the top.Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones needed a guitar solo for the pop-rock combo of "Beat It" and "VH" was the most logical guy to go to first.

Right from the get-go,Van Halen was in bowse mode.He hung up the phone on Quincy Jones assuming that it was a prank call.Then he defied the "no doing anything outside of the band" rule that he and his Van Halen bandmates had by going down to Westlake Studios in L.A. and contributing to "Beat It." Then he set one of the monitor speakers in the studio's control room on fire in the process of laying down a seventeen-bar guitar solo for the ages that he didn't even ask a dime for! However,the bowse didn't stop there.When his Van Halen mates found out about their guitarist's breaking of band rules and told him that he was foolish for doing pro bono work on someone else's project,Eddie fluffed it off and stated that he knew what he was doing and he wouldn't have done it if he didn't want to.

Behind the dazzling and superhuman guitar shredding is a real dude that does whatever the hell he wants and doesn't care.Bowse.

9."The Girl Is Mine" was a significant moment in music history.

Perhaps rightfully so to an extent,"The Girl Is Mine" deserved the flak that it got from music critics.Though not a terrible piece of music,it likely was a wasting of potential that a Paul McCartney-Michael Jackson duet could have otherwise yielded and it does require a suspension of disbelief to listen to (although that potential ended up being better met the following year on McCartney's "Say Say Say.") Two guys fighting over a girl often get violent with each other and don't use words like "doggone" in their exchange (maybe "goddamn" but not "doggone.") Furthermore,if you're going to make a song based upon that concept,it's better to give it the  crunchy,heavy,aggressive,and hard-edged sound of "Beat It" than it is to make it an ultra-sugary soft rock number.Nonetheless,it was a hit and probably so because it was aimed squarely at the older crowd,many whom indubitably met ex-Beatle McCartney and his fellow invaders from the British Isles with anything but resistance and rancor. 

When you look beyond the saccharine character of "The Girl Is Mine" and examine the whole of the song,the significance of it becomes more visible.Macca and MJ teaming up to do a song was not only significant in that it was a pairing of legends on the same track but that it was a symbolic "coming together" (Beatle pun intended) of two major pieces of twentieth century music history:The British Invasion and Motown.

8.If it wasn't for Peggy Lipton...

Let's first establish who Peggy Lipton is before I proceed.Lipton is an actress who's perhaps best known for serving up coffee and cherry pie as Norma Jennings on the iconic television series Twin Peaks.At the time of Thriller,Lipton was Quincy Jones' wifey-poo and,as such,her lingerie and Hollywood connections would result in her making a contribution to parts of the album.

Yes,Peggy Lipton's intimate wear did indeed contribute to Thriller.Jones noticed that the lingerie said "pretty young things" on them which,in turn,caused a light bulb to appear over his head.His spouse inadvertently gave him at the very least a title to a song that could go on a Michael Jackson album and eventually did with the James Ingram-penned "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." Aside from being a bouncy,relatively funky tune that perhaps gave a passing nod to the electro genre that was gaining steam at the time (with its vocoder elements),"P.Y.T." exists as a musical testament to artistic inspiration sometimes coming from the most unlikely or unexpected things.

Probably of more importance than her lingerie being the origin of "P.Y.T." was Lipton's role in having a big-named movie star do a feature on "Thriller." The song was already a danceable number that,at its surface,seemed like a celebration of the scary and horrific but there was something missing:A chilling spoken-word rap that gradually brought the song to its conclusion.Quincy Jones could envision horror-flick legend Vincent Price reciting this rap and Lipton did her part in making that a reality.Nowhere does Lipton's name show up on the Thriller personnel listing or in the songwriting credits but she helped in more than a small capacity,whether she intended to or not.

Speaking of Price...

7.Vincent Price sorta got shafted.

One would think that Price's evil,reverb-drenched laughter at the end of "Thriller" alone would have had the ducats coming into his estate even now never mind the rest of his masterful recitation of Rod Temperton's Edgar Allan Poe-like spoken-word rap.Nope.Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones paid a rather low "price" for Vincent's feature on "Thriller." $1,000 was what it cost to get the horror film star to be at his most creepy over top haunting and ominous pipe organ chords that have "Baroque period" written all over them.Obviously,the one-off deal was great for Jackson because he got a Hollywood icon on his record for cheap.The deal worked the other way around for Price whom,after seeing "Thriller" blow up the way it did,got salty about getting a measly grand for his feature.He attempted to reach out to Jackson with the intentions of appealing for a more generous compensation and was ignored.

On one hand,Price had no right to seek out more money for his cameo on "Thriller." After all,if he wanted a handsome sum of dolla,dolla bills,he could have used his celebrity and legacy to negotiate something with Jackson and Jones that was fair for all parties instead of agreeing to a one-off that would put only ten "benjamins" in his pocket.Price made the regrettable mistake of undervaluing his own talent and,rather than let it be a live-and-learn experience,he wanted to renegotiate a done deal.

However,it's hard to be devoid of sympathy for Price.He put down perhaps the most epic poetry reading ever through his magnificent voice-acting and gave "Thriller" the piece it needed to complete its spooky picture.The fact that neither Jackson or Jones revisited their deal with Price when the song had proven to be a hit and offered him more on the basis of it being the morally right thing to do was something of a douchebag move.It certainly wasn't one of Jackson's or Jones' shining moments,to say the least. 

6.It's a good thing that Quincy Jones let one particular demo casette play.

Toto guitarist Steve Lukather,drummer Jeff Porcaro,and keyboardists David Paich and Steve Porcaro were making contributions to Thriller while concurrently working on their own band's 1982 project Toto IV.En route to the recording studio,Steve Porcaro had gone to visit his young daughter that had been living with his "baby mama." After arriving,he'd been informed about his little girl's terrible day at school,one that saw her being pushed off a slide by a boy.When asked by his daughter "why" this boy would do that to her,Porcaro told her that the boy probably liked her and that it was "human nature." In trying to explain to the best of his ability to his emotional young child why a boy could be so mean to her,it inspired Porcaro to later come up with a song called "Human Nature." He recorded a demo of the song on a casette tape.

David Paich was working on some keyboard grooves for Quincy Jones in this time frame.Knowing that Jones' assistant was going to stop by,Paich asked Porcaro-whom was staying at Paich's house-if he could make a casette with what Paich had been working on for Jones.Realizing that they had run out of tapes,Porcaro recorded Paich's material on the A-side of the casette that he had put the "Human Nature" demo on and eventually gave it to Jones' assistant.Jones was listening to Paich's grooves and ended up becoming preoccupied with something in his office,which allowed the A-side to play all the way through and for the auto-reverse feature on Jones' casette player to run the B-side of the tape.Porcaro's demo caught Jones' attention and he asked Porcaro if "Human Nature" could be used on Thriller.After being given the green light from Porcaro,Jones enlisted songwriter John Bettis to replace Porcaro's original lyrics as Jones wasn't too keen on them (save for the "why,why" and "tell them that it's human nature" stuff.) The inclusion of "Human Nature" to Thriller gave a song called "Carousel" the swift boot off the album.Though "Carousel" (later released as a bonus track on a re-issue of Thriller) was a fairly decent track that was so wonderfully early-Eighties in its sound,"Human Nature" was leagues above it.Being my favorite cut off Thriller,there's so much right about "Human Nature." Jackson's vocal delivery is breathy and from a place deep in his soul.The song's lyrics,with its clever metaphors and its underlying meaning,are well-written.The synth melodies are aural candy and sound like they were composed in heaven.All in all,the song is a smooth R&B track that is perfect for something like a night drive in the city.

Quincy Jones was of the belief that a higher power had a hand in making Thriller the successful pop masterpiece that it is."Human Nature" making it on to the album could very well be an attestation that divine forces were at play.Had Jones not been involved in something,he may have stopped the tape after hearing Paich's music and "Human Nature" wouldn't have seen the light of day.Fortunately,things happened the way they did and a little girl's lousy day at school was turned into something great.

5."Billie Jean" was all types of crazy

According to Jackson,Billie Jean was purely a fictitious female that was MJ's composite of all the groupies that he and his Jackson 5 brothers had to deal with.However,according to Jackson's biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli,the song may have been inspired by an obsessed female fan that had taken her obsession with Jackson to great lengths.In 1981 (the year before Thriller),Jackson had been in receipt of a few letters from a chick claiming that he had been a father to one of her twins.In response to her paternity claims and her expressions of love for Jackson and her desire to have a family with him being ignored,she got angry and sent Jackson a parcel containing her photo,another letter,and a gun.In the letter,she instructed Jackson to commit suicide on a certain date and that she would do the same after murdering the baby that Jackson had supposedly impregnated her with.If Taraborrelli's theory was correct that "Billie Jean" derived from something so chilling as to induce goosebumps and cause the tiny hairs on the back of the neck to rise,the song was already crazy in the literal sense by who and what inspired it.

In the process of writing "Billie Jean," Jackson's life could have ended more prematurely than it did with his June 25,2009 death at the age of fifty.Being so absorbed in this song that he was working on,he was completely oblivious that the vehicle he was driving in had a fire going in it and he had to be made aware of the situation by an alert and concerned motorcyclist.Add another layer of crazy to the mix.

Then there was the song itself,which was a smash hit that went deep in the upper deck.Though "Human Nature" is my favorite MJ tune and personal bias could compel me to say that it's the finest work in Jackson's catalog,"Billie Jean" was perhaps Jackson's magnum opus.From a musical standpoint,it had all the necessary ingredients for it to be a high-charting pop joint.The rhythm could implore one to get on the dance floor the very instant that the solo drum break starting "Billie Jean" off sounds.The bassline-a rather simple repetitive eight note sequence-grooves and can lodge itself in the listener's head.The pre-chorus alone is hook-ish never mind the chorus itself,which is hook perfection.There's the gradual introduction of funky synth,punctuated guitar,and dramatic string elements that keep the song interesting.And,yet,for all of the sheer pop goodness that "Billie Jean" offers,it just might be more frightening than "Thriller" because the subject fare of the song is far more real than zombies could ever be."Billie Jean" may well be as much a song about paranoia as it is about what could result from being famous and messing with a girl that has "schemes and plans" behind her feminine wiles.Adding to the stark nature of the song is the conflict that Jackson seems to have within himself.On one hand,he declares with conviction that "Billie Jean is not my lover" and that her "kid is not my son." On the other hand,his vocal delivery when he speaks of looking at a photo of the little boy and realizing "his eyes look like mine" is one of shock,fear,and resignation.It arouses wonderment whether Jackson's repeating of "Billie Jean is not my lover" a number of times late in the song is an emphatic proclamation of his innocence or a convincing of everyone including himself that the truth is really a lie.It all makes "Billie Jean" a crazy good song.

If things weren't crazy enough,the video for "Billie Jean"-deserving of its own exegesis-helped the fledgling MTV to soar into the mainstream.Furthermore,it was also the song to which Jackson-at the Motown 25 television special watched by an estimated 50-million people-created a craze by performing his famed "moonwalk" dance move for the first time."Billie Jean" had every crazy base covered.

4.Thriller was almost as much Quincy Jones' project as it was Michael Jackson's

Michael Jackson is the only name that shows up on the cover of Thriller.And rightfully so,as he is the performer that's front and center on the album.When all the other musicians and producers were finished with their work on the album,it was Jackson that took the songs from out of the studio and brought them to concert venues around the world.However,Thriller could have easily borne both Jackson and Jones' names and it would have been fair.

Jones was in possession of some incredibly keen ears.One could have dropped a nickel on the ground from half a block away and Q would've likely heard it.Jones had an amazing acuity for sound that went to its deepest level.Maybe of greater importance was Jones' encyclopedic knowledge of music.From that,Q's instincts were more often than not trustworthy when it came to chasing down a hit song.He could discern what would make a musical work fly and what could cause it to flop.Michael Jackson wanted to make a killer album and he knew that Q would make the odds of him doing so quite favorable.It likely took no arm-twisting for Jones to get on board with Jackson's vision and become as invested in it as Jackson was.Part of Jones' investment may have been spurred by what he would stand to gain if this album had succeeded in meeting all of its goals:A boatload of money and a larger-than-life addition to his CV.But it's hard not to get the sense that Thriller was a labor of love for Q,one that not only involved a love for good music and the making of such but a love that he felt for the artist with whom he was working.The relationship between Jackson and Jones wasn't solely a professional one,which meant that Jones had a more deeply personal interest in making Thriller a big-time record and giving the young pop singer he had been mentor to with the needed fuel to be a superstar.In so doing,Jones-along with Jackson-had went through approximately 700 demo recordings and only committed what was felt to be the creme de la creme to the album.

It was Jones who,inspired by The Knack's "My Sharona," came up with the idea of having Jackson foray into rock territory and who could visualize Eddie Van Halen performing a guitar solo in the instrumental midbreak of what became "Beat It." It was Jones who felt that a recitation of a spoken-word rap in the outro of "Thriller" was needed and he could hear Vincent Price doing it.And,when the initial finished product of Thriller revealed a falling short of the desired goal for its sound upon play through,it was Jones who rallied the dejected troops to do what needed to be done to correct things with the deadline fast approaching.It was Jones who willingly took on the rigor and exhaustion that came with the production of a highly aspiring album.It's beyond difficult to fathom Thriller being as magical or scintillating without "Q" as its executive producer.

3.Even the non-singles on Thriller were great tunes.

Though it's a given that Thriller is a hit-laden,solid from first-to-last track album,saying that 77.8 percent of its songs were singles really illustrates how insanely good it is.(It bears a resemblance to a greatest hits compilation.) However,the other two cuts-or 22.2 percent-that weren't singles are by no means filler material."Baby Be Mine" is a danceable love tune that seemed to be a continuation of the Off The Wall sound,albeit in a punchy post-disco vein where synthesizers replaced the orchestral element (usually string sections) that was present in scads of disco tunes like Jackson's own "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough." With "Baby Be Mine," Jackson's pre-Thriller fan base were able to enjoy some degree of consistency in Jackson's sound while tweaks were made to it to veer away from disco and warmly embrace the Eighties.Then there's "The Lady Of My Life," a gorgeous love ballad that closes out Thriller.With Jackson's soulful vocals,its heartfelt lyrics,and its warm R&B-meets-smooth jazz character,it might just be the perfect song for a newlywed man to put on and do his bride to.

"Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady Of My Life" could have probably been hits in themselves had they been on someone else's album or not pitted against stiff competition on its own.However,despite being overshadowed by the more behemoth songs on Thriller,these two cuts were sparkling necessities for the whole of the record.

2.There is an irony in Thriller. 

If it's not an irony,maybe it's a paradox.If it's neither,I don't know what you would call it.

Prior to Thriller,Michael Jackson-inspired by Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" suite-wanted to make a colossal album that was the highest selling of all time and would launch him into the stratosphere of superstardom.And yet,something of a leitmotif is established on Thriller in the subject matter of 3 of the album's nine tracks:Jackson's dealings with the negative aspects of being a pop music luminary.Wasting no time,"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"-the lead off track on Thriller-is Jackson's ebullient counterstrike on media and their propensity for sensationalism and gossip.Long before Jackson had faced scrutiny for the lightening of his skin color and the surgical alterations to his face as well as allegations of sexual misconduct toward children,he had an issue with bad press and the spreading of rumors.He likens being a celebrity to being a vegetable that "they"-most likely the media but not limited to-will feed off for their own survival or gain.Then there was "Billie Jean," which I have already addressed in my fifth takeaway from Thriller. "Billie Jean" calls to mind Jackson's earlier celebrity/vegetable analogy from "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" (Jackson does mention the name "Billie Jean" on that song) but,on this occasion,the one trying to do the feeding is a girl claiming Jackson's paternity to her young child.Finally,on "Human Nature," Jackson touches on his longing to step out into the city night and walk around like an average person instead of being cooped up in his room and insulated from the world which he was known all over.Part of Thriller in essence was Jackson expressing the discontentment he had with life in the spotlight and letting his listeners know that fame and fortune wasn't all glitz and glamour.However,having been thrust into the spotlight as a young boy and being someone with an artistic soul,the possibility of giving up the life he'd known since his formative years and denying himself further opportunity to be creative wasn't realistic.Perhaps resigning himself to the notion that fame was inescapable,Jackson decided to embrace it to the best of his ability and make himself as huge a star as a human could be.

1.Thriller established why Michael Jackson was (and still is) the King Of Pop

If Jackson's fabulous 1979 effort Off The Wall wasn't his coronation as pop music royalty,Thriller saw the diadem placed atop his jheri curls.Jackson raised the bar so high with Thriller that he made it near impossible for anyone,including himself,to elevate.Though his death forced him to abdicate his throne,he was buried with his crown.

One only needs to reference Thriller to understand why Jackson is pop music's kingly figure.He was his harshest critic and a staunch perfectionist who never rested on his laurels.Though Off The Wall was a critically acclaimed album,he wasn't entirely happy with it.It was like he was constantly nagged by the thought do more,do better.He set huge goals and then pushed himself hard to accomplish them.He had the right people working with him to make his vision a reality.Jackson embodied indefatigable work and relentless drive.

Whereas we might refer to all pop music stars as being "artists," such a description of Jackson wasn't given to be polite but rather because it was befitting.He had such an appreciation for art.As previously mentioned,Jackson's inspiration for Thriller was Tchaikovsky,who had written suites like "The Nutcracker" filled with great music.He had instructed the musicians who had worked with him on Thriller to "think of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel" and to do what they felt was necessary to provide the right "colors" for his songs.Jackson's art was transcendent of the audio medium.The videos for songs from Thriller were iconic as the songs were themselves.

Michael Jackson made pop music that was palatable.Jackson's brand of pop was so much different.It was pop that sounded like pop but yet didn't.Though,like all popular music,Jackson's material had the largest possible listening audience in its crosshairs,it frequently didn't come off as being kitschy and that was especially the case with the cuts off Thriller.Jackson's music reached into the handy-dandy grab bag of tried-and-true musical devices without conveying the impression that it was trying too hard to be a hit pop song.It didn't need to encourage people through chorus hooks to get on the dance floor or shake what their mothers bestowed upon them.People just got on the dance floor.Most importantly,Jackson's pop was staunchly avoidant of placing a best-before date on itself.Though Thriller may be very Eighties in its sound and its premeditation to be humungous (because everything had to be big in the "decade of decadence"),it contained the necessary preservatives to keep itself fresh over a lengthy span of time and there's an awfully high probability that it will never grow stale or become a relic of the period in which it came out.A sizeable quantity of pop music simply isn't in Jackson's league.As such,it doesn't stand out from its ilk but rather sounds like simulacra of it.It tends to be corny and irritating instead of stylish and agreeable.It makes itself easily replaceable by future music that will inevitably use the same recipe from the musical cookbook to whip up something for the Hot 100.

Perhaps the only way that someone can take the King Of Pop distinction away from Michael Jackson is if Jackson's soul is reincarnated in someone else's body.Otherwise,Jackson continues to reign and it's due in large part to Thriller.Happy 35th!

[unheardradical]

How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting...

SkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... SkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting Community Ribald knitters teamed up with a neural-network creator to generate new types of tentacled, cozy shapes. A SkyKnit design as interpreted by michaela112358, a Ravelry user Ravelry / michaela112358 ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL | MAR 6, 2018 | TECHNOLOGY Like The Atlantic? Subscribe to The Atlantic Daily, our free weekday email newsletter. Email SIGN UP Janelle Shane is a humorist who creates and mines her material from 1 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... neural networks, the form of machine learning that has come to dominate the field of artificial intelligence over the last half-decade. Perhaps you’ve seen the candy-heart slogans she generated for Valentine’s Day: DEAR ME, MY MY, LOVE BOT, CUTE KISS, MY BEAR, and LOVE BUN. Or her new paint-color names: Parp Green, Shy Bather, Farty Red, and Bull Cream. Or her neural-net-generated Halloween costumes: Punk Tree, Disco Monster, Spartan Gandalf, Starfleet Shark, and A Masked Box. Her latest project, still ongoing, pushes the joke into a new, physical realm. Prodded by a knitter on the knitting forum Ravelry, Shane trained a type of neural network on a series of over 500 sets of knitting instructions. Then, she generated new instructions, which members of the Ravelry community have actually attempted to knit. “The knitting project has been a particularly fun one so far just because it ended up being a dialogue between this computer program and these knitters that went over my head in a lot of ways,” Shane told me. “The computer would spit out a whole bunch of instructions that I couldn’t read and the knitters would say, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever read.” The human-machine collaboration created configurations of yarn that you probably wouldn’t give to your in-laws for Christmas, but they were interesting. The user citikas was the first to post a try at one of the earliest patterns, “reverss shawl.” It was strange, but it did have some charisma. 2 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... Shane nicknamed the whole effort “Project Hilarious Disaster.” The community called it SkyKnit. The first yarn product of SkyKnit, by the Ravelry user citikas (Ravelry / citikas) The idea of using neural networks to do computer things has been around for decades. But it took until the last 10 years or so for the right mix of techniques, data sets, chips, and computing power to transform neural networks into deployable technical tools. There are many different kinds suited to different sorts of tasks. Some translate between different languages for Google. Others automatically label pictures. Still others are part of what powers Facebook’s News Feed software. In the tech world, they are now everywhere. The different networks all attempt to model the data they’ve been fed 3 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... by tuning a vast, funky flowchart. After you’ve created a statistical model that describes your real data, you can also roll the dice and generate new, never-before-seen data of the same kind. How this works—like, the math behind it—is very hard to visualize because values inside the model can have hundreds of dimensions and we are humble three-dimensional creatures moving through time. But as the neural-network enthusiast Robin Sloan puts it, “So what? It turns out imaginary spaces are useful even if you can’t, in fact, imagine them.” Out of that ferment, a new kind of art has emerged. Its practitioners use neural networks not to attain practical results, but to see what’s lurking in the these vast, opaque systems. What did the machines learn about the world as they attempted to understand the data they’d been fed? Famously, Google released DeepDream, which produced trippy visualizations that also demonstrated how that type of neural network processed the textures and objects in its source imagery. Google’s David Ha has been working with drawings. Sloan is working with sentences. Allison Parrish makes poetry. Ross Goodwin has tried several writerly forms. But all these experiments are happening inside the symbolic space of the computer. In that world, a letter is just a defined character. It is not dark ink on white paper in a certain shape. A picture is an arrangement of pixels, not oil on canvas. And that’s what makes the knitting project so fascinating. The outputs of the software had to be rendered in yarn. * * * 4 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... Knitting instructions are a bit like code. There are standard maneuvers, repetitive components, and lots of calculation involved. “My husband says knitting is just maths. It’s maths done with string and sticks. You have this many stitches,” said the Ravelry user Woolbeast in the thread about the project. “You do these things in these places that many times, and you have a design, or a shape.” In practice, knitting patterns contain a lot of abbreviations like k and p, for knit and purl (the two standard types of stitches), st for stitches, yo for yarn over, or sl1 for “slip one stitch purl-wise.” The patterns tend to take a form like this: row 1: sl1, k�, k1 (4 sts) o row 2: sl1, k�, k to end of row (5 sts) The neural network knows nothing of how these letters correspond to words like knit or the actual real-world action of knitting. It is just taking the literal text of patterns, and using them as strings of characters in its model of the data. Then, it’s spitting out new strings of characters, which are the patterns people tried to knit. The project began on December 13 of last year, when a Ravelry user, JohannaB, suggested to Shane that her neural net could be taught to write knitting patterns. The community responded enthusiastically, like the user agadbois, who proclaimed, “I will absolutely teach a computer to knit!!! Or at least help one design a scarf (or whatever godforsaken mangled bit of fabric will come out of this).” 5 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... Over the next couple of weeks, they crept toward a data set they could use to build the model. First, they were able to access a fairly standardized set of patterns from Stitch-maps.com, a service run by the knitter J. C. Briar. Then, Shane began to add submissions crowdsourced from Ravelry’s users. The latter data was messy and filled with oddities and even some NSFW knitted objects. When I expressed surprise at the ribaldry evident in the thread (Knitters! Who knew?), one Ravelry user wanted it noted that the particular forum on which the discussion took place (LSG) has a special role on the site. “LSG (lazy, stupid, and godless) is an 18+ group designed to be swearing-friendly,” the user LTHook told me. “The main forums are family-friendly, and the database tags mature patterns so people can tailor their browsing.” Thus, the neural network was being fed all kinds of things from this particular LSG community. “A few notable new additions: Opus the Octopus, Dice Bag of Doom, Doctor Who TARDIS Dishcloth, and something merely called ‘The Impaler,’” Shane wrote on the forum. “The number of patterns with tentacles is now alarmingly high,” she said in another post. When they hit 500 entries, Shane began training the neural network, and slowly feeding some of the new patterns back to the group. The instructions contained some text and some descriptions of rows that looked like actual patterns. For example, here’s the first 4 rows from one set of instructions that the neural net generated and named “fishcock.” 6 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... fishcock row 1 (rs): *k3, k2tog, [yo] twice, ssk, repeat from * to last st, k1. row 2: p1, *p2tog, yo, p2, repeat from * to last st, k1. row 3: *[p1, k1] twice, repeat from * to last st, p1. row 4: *p2, k1, p3, k1, repeat from * to last 2 sts, p2. The network was able to deduce the concept of numbered rows, solely from the texts basically being composed of rows. The system was able to produce patterns that were just on the edge of knittability. But they required substantial “debugging,” as Shane put it. One user, bevbh, described some of the errors as like “code that won’t compile.” For example, bevbh gave this scenario: “If you are knitting along and have 30 stitches in the row and the next row only gives you instructions for 25 stitches, you have to improvise what to do with your remaining five stitches.” But many of the instructions that were generated were flawed in complicated ways. They required the test knitters to apply a lot of human skill and intelligence. For example, here is the user BellaG, narrating her interpretation of the fishcock instructions, which I would say is just on the edge of understandability, if you’re not a knitter: 7 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... “There’s not a number of stitches that will work for all rows, so I started with 15 (the repeat done twice, plus the end stitch). Rows two, four, five, and seven didn’t have enough stitches, so I just worked the pattern until I got to the end stitch and worked that as written,” she posted to the forum. “Double yarn-overs can’t be just knit or just purled on the recovery rows; you have to knit one and purl the other, so I did that when I got to the double yarn-overs on rows two and six. The SkyKnit design “fishcock” as interpreted by the Ravelry user BellaG (Ravelry / BellaG) This kind of “fixing” of the pattern is not unique to the neural-network- generated designs. It is merely an extreme version of a process that knitters have to follow for many kinds of patterns. “My wrestling with the [SkyKnit-generated] ‘tiny baby whale Soto’ pattern was different from other patterns not so much in what needed to be done, as the 8 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... degree to which I needed to interpret and ‘read between the lines’ to fit it together,” the user GloriaHanlon told me. An attempt to knit the pattern “tiny baby whale Soto” by the user GloriaHanlon (Ravelry / gloriahanlon) Historically, knitting patterns have varied in the degree of detail they provided. New patterns are a little more foolproof. Old patterns do not suffer fools. “I agree that an analogy with 19th-century knitting patterns is quite fitting,” the user bevbh said. “Those patterns were often cryptic by our standards. Interpretation was expected.” But a core problem in knitting the neural-network designs is that there was no actual intent behind the instructions. And that intent is a major part of how knitters come to understand a given pattern. “When you start a knitting pattern, you know what it is that you’re trying to make (sock, sweater, blanket square) and the pattern often comes with a picture of the finished object, which allows you to see the details. You go into it knowing what the designer’s intention is,” BellaG 9 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AMSkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/... explained to me. “With the neural-network patterns, there’s no picture, and it doesn’t know what the finished object is supposed to be, which means you don’t know what you’re going to get until you start knitting it. And that affects how you adjust to the pattern ‘mistakes’: The neural network knows the stitch names, but it doesn’t understand what the stitches do. It doesn’t know that a k2tog is knitting two stitches together (a decrease) and a yo is a yarn-over (a lacy increase), so it doesn’t know to keep the stitch counts consistent, or to deliberately change them to make a particular shape.” Of course, that is what makes neural-network-inspired creativity so beguiling. The computers don’t understand the limitations of our fields, so they often create or ask the impossible. And in so doing, they might just reveal some new way of making or thinking, acting as a bridge into the future of these art forms. “I like to imagine that some of the techniques and stitch patterns used today [were] invented via a similar process of trying to decipher instructions written by knitters long since passed, on the back of an envelope, in faded ink, assuming all sorts of cultural knowledge that may or may not be available,” the user GloriaHanlon concluded. The creations of SkyKnit are fully cyborg artifacts, mixing human whimsy and intelligence with machine processing and ignorance. And the misapprehensions are, to a large extent, the point. ABOUT THE AUTHOR is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He's the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology. ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL  Twitter  Email 10 of 10 3/10/18, 5:37 AM

[positivederivative]

March 04, 2017 at 10:00PM

Today I Learned: Today is Nature Methods review day! This month's Nature Methods is fantastic. Let me share my favorite highlights, in order of appearance, chosen purely based on my interest: 1) In 2012, IBM held an open challenge to come up with programs that could automatically segment* EM images of neurons. These are extremely difficult images to automatically quantify, which is one the (many) big barriers to eventual whole-brain mapping. The challenge is still open, and this year a team from Heidelberg, Germany sumitted an algorithm with roughly half the error rate of the 2012 winner. Their algorithm is pretty sophisticated. It *starts* with a round of machine learning with either a random forest or a convolutional neural net, which assigns a probability of being a cell border to each pixel in the image. Convolutional neural nets are really powerful, so it makes sense to throw them at the segmentation problem. There is an issue, however, that convolutional neural nets (at least, the kind applied in this algorithm) aren't very good at seeing long-distance relationships in an image, so neural-net-only segmentation is a bit too local. The author's solution is to group pixels into "superpixels" using a watershed algorithm, which produces relatively large regions that are still no larger than a whole neuron (and very likely to be entirely contained within a *single* neuron). Watersheding is a pretty standard segmentation technique, and it's usually pretty good at separating cells but tends to overagressively cut them into multiple segments. The final step in this segmentation algorithm is to try to combine superpixels until they get the best possible region. This is done by treating superpixels as nodes in a graph, with borders between superpixels as edges between the corresponding nodes. Based on the pixels on the border, "attractive" or "repulsive" weights are assigned to the edges -- the more the pixels on a border look like an actual cell border, the more repulsive the weight between the nodes representing the corresponding superpixels. This graph representation gives what's known as the "Lifted Multicut" problem -- I'll have to direct the reader to their paper for the details (http://ift.tt/2lK6P7T, paywalled). In any case, they solve the lifted multicut problem on the graph (approximately -- it's an NP-hard problem), which gives a grouping of superpixels into individual segmented cells. * segmenting, in this case, means finding the borders of cells. 2) This issue features a simulation-based review of RNA-seq* aligners**. Perhaps unsurprisingly, which aligner is best depends a lot on the size and complexity of the genome being seq-ed. Distressingly enough, even the best algorithms in the best conditions rarely breached 90% accuracy. Also distressingly, some of the most popular aligners (tophat, I'm looking at you!) don't perform very well at all using default parameters, though they improve if you tune their parameters well. The best and most consistent aligners seem to be CLC, Novoalign, GSNAP, and STAR. No great surprises there, though I'm pleasantly surprised by how well CLC performs. * Quantitative sequencing of RNA -- basically tells you with very high precision how much of every RNA species is present in a cell or tissue ** Raw RNA-seq data consists of fragments ("reads") of 50-300 bp. Aligners are the programs that map those reads onto known or unknown RNA species. 3) The most distressing, cruel, and ultimately perhaps most important article long-term involves artificially inducing (reversibly!) targeted strokes in mice, using injectible magnetic nanoparticles. You inject the nanoparticles into the bloodstream, then put a magnet near a microvessel feeding some area of the brain. The nanoparticles aggregate in the vessel, closing it off and stroking everything downstream. This is one case where I, despite being generally vegan, wholeheartedly support targeted cruelty in the name of science. About one in twenty people in the US die from strokes. That's a lot of lives. If a few thousand mice with artificial strokes can help prevent just a few percent of those stroke deaths, it will easily make up the difference in suffering in the first year of prevention. There aren't many clearer-cut cases of moral calculus in my experience. 4) Non-amplified whole-genome single-cell sequencing! DNA sequencing today is typically done one of two ways -- either by pooling the DNA from many cells (usually from the same tissue), or by extracting DNA from a single cell and amplifying it with PCR. The former strategy gives much cleaner data, with better genome coverage, but loses information about single-cell variation (which is super important for understanding cancer biology). The single-cell strategy gives you information about cell-to-cell genome variations, but the amplification process can introduce a lot of coverage bias, and can add spurious single-nucleotide variations (SNPs). A team from the University of British Colombia had the bold idea of sequencing from single cells... WITHOUT amplifying! Through a combination of nanoliter volume reactions (done with microfluidics), direct tagging of genomic DNA (not particularly novel), and steel balls (metaphorically), they sequenced a few thousand cells, at a cost of about $0.50/cell and ~2.5 hours/192 cells. They only got about 0.05-0.1x coverage from each sequence run... but they can run a lot of them, which collectively can be used to analyze population variation in, say, a tumor. 5) A University of Freiburg team demonstrated a technique for tracking large-scale conformational changes in protein structure in real-time, using FRET networks. FRET is a technique that takes advantage of the fact that when placed close together, many fluorophores will transfer energy from one to another. So if you watch two fluorophores as they get closer together, they can shift pretty substantially in brightness... which means you can use the relative brightness of two fluorophores as a measure of how close together they are. The authors of this paper tagged a heat shock protein with a bunch of different FRETable fluorophores and watched them all simultaneously, giving them a real-time map of distances between different domains over time. Very cool technique! 6) UC Santa Barbera mechanical engineers, physicists, and biologists came up with a new way to measure mechanical forces in living tissues. Basically, they use ferrofluids (http://ift.tt/1h7q0GS) as a mechanical probe -- apply a changing magnetic field, and the ferrofluid will push against the tissue. By comparing how much the ferrofluid and tissue each deform to what you would expect from the amount of energy added to the ferrofluid, you can back out the internal forces at play in the tissue. 7) A HUGE question in microbiology -- and, indeed, biology at large -- is "what the heck do all those genes do?". Many, many sequenced genes have no known function (example -- until the paper I'm about to describe, 1,275 of the genes in E. coli were "functionally uncharacterized"), and it's notoriously difficult ot figure out what a gene does without some existing hint. Enter The Institute of Molecular Systems Biology in Zürich, and their new technique for identifying enzymes from pools of uncharacterized genes. The technique is almost stupidly simple in its basic principle. Here's what you do: 1) Purify or overexpress a ton of a protein with no known function; 2) Mix up a cocktail of lots of known metabolites found in the cell; 3) Add the protein to the cocktail; 4) Mass-spec the cocktail before and after protein addition to find out how much of each metabolite is there. If you see one molecular species reduced in the protein-added cocktail and another closely-related molecule go up, you can infer that the protein converted the former into the latter. Instant enzyme identification! The tricky part here seems to me to be the mass spec you do. The authors used flow injection time-of-flight mass spectrometry... which as far as I'm concerned, is definitely some kind of mass spec. By screening against about 960 pooled metabolites, they found about 250 new enzymes, with functions. 8) There's a new variant on the old CRISPR-based cell lineage tracing idea*, this one also out Church Lab, Harvard. It's a simple tweak of the idea of introducing a Cas9 target as a mutational hotspot -- the difference here being that they simultaneously target a guide RNA to a genomic target (the "hotspot") and to *itself*. The guide RNA and hotspot then evolve semi-independently. For a couple of different reasons, this gives you a lot more variation in the kind and number of mutations you can see. This technique provides about twice as many bits of identifying information per hotspot as a vanilla CRISPR-based lineage tracking array. * Here's the gist -- say you want to know the ancestry of every cell in an organism, from the fertilized egg to each cell of the adult. One way to get that information is to put the organism under a microscope and watch the whole thing grow -- that's how we mapped the C. elegans cell fate map (that's what developmental biologists call that sort of cellular family tree). It might work for some other species, like early-life fruit flies or zebrafish... but there's no way you're going to be able to trace the cell lineages of every cell in a mouse by microscopy. For one thing, it grows in a womb, so you can't just put it on a slide while it grows. For another thing, a mouse isn't see-through. And finally, it's just too damned big to watch the whole thing with the resolution required to track individual cells. What you *can* do is track mutations in the cells. Cells accumulate mutations as the organism grows, and you can use those mutations to reconstruct a lineage tree the same way evolutionary biologists reconstruct evolutionary trees. As in, it's literally the same thing. Same algorithms, at least. The problem with *that* is that it's pretty difficult to sequence a single cell's genome with enough precision and coverage to catch all of its mutations accurately (though see #4 above for some improvement in that area....), and it would be VERY difficult to do that for every single cell in a large organism. A way to simplify that kind of mutation-tracking is to introduce a mutational hotspot into the organism's genome. If it mutates at the right rate, you can just sequence *that* portion of the genome, which is much, much easier than sequencing the whole thing. A simple form of mutational hotspot is a target for an active CRISPR/Cas9 system -- Cas9 will cut the hotspot, which the cell can repair, but the repair process tends to introduce mutations. 9)

[uselesslilium]

polyship meme: roleswap tokyo trio?

You go it! For the sake of simplicity, this is assuming a Good Chaos Ending. Also, it’s way too long, so under a cut it goes!

1. A large spider has gotten into the house/apartment. How does each person react?

Naoya and Amane are completely unperturbed. If it’s big enough, Loki catches it and tries to make it a pet.

2. What are their sleeping arrangements? Do they get multiple mattresses, several rooms? Line a floor with mattresses and then make the entire room a bed? Who are the blanket hoggers? The ones who flail?

They’ve probably got a bed for themselves and a futon for guests in the closet. Loki is the clingiest sleeper, he can’t get to sleep without one of them around anymore once he starts. Naoya doesn’t really need to sleep much at all anymore, but the other two wind up being pretty deep sleepers, so he can bring his laptop to bed and work on things during the night while they’re out. Amane sleeps early and wakes up early, almost like clockwork. She and Naoya take turns getting breakfast started, depending on which one Loki’s clinging to that morning.

3. How do they celebrate the holidays? What are the favorite holidays in the household for each person? Are there ever any disagreements about which holiday is the best? Do any of them go all out with decorations and participation in events? Does anyone ever suffer in silent agony that they’re being forced into holiday sweaters or fed too many holiday foods, but out of love they keep their mouth shut?

Loki loves Halloween, especially because in Japan it’s more an excuse for adults to dress in costumes and have parties. He decks out the whole apartment and helps/makes Naoya and Amane pick out cool costumes and invites all their friends over for it. Amane’s complicated upbringing leaves her pretty indifferent to holidays as a whole, but she does enjoy New Years in a low-key way, as a time of reflection and thinking about the future. Naoya has to deal with his own cult trying to establish holidays for him and it weirds him out way too much to enjoy it. Especially since people’s belief keeps him powerful, so he can’t exactly dissuade them. Loki thinks it’s hilarious, though. He keeps trying to give the cult suggestions.

Also they do still celebrate Christmas since it’s more of a secular holiday in Japan, but they all have kind of a dark humor about it.

4. How do they all keep house? Do they assign chores, and if so, does anyone ever slack? Does anyone ever say, “let’s clean” and (most?) everyone suddenly hops off the furniture and pitches in?

They probably have a chore schedule, and surprisingly they’re all pretty good at staying on top of it. Amane used to take care of the apartment herself after her dad essentially disowned her, and Loki had to figure out ways to make chores interesting for his younger siblings to get them to help around the house when he was younger. Naoya’s the most likely to slack - he keeps a close eye on his own stuff and makes sure it’s where he wants it, but he loses focus on the bigger picture when he gets absorbed in his hobbies or Overlord-related work. Usually Amane giving him a vaguely disappointed look will prompt him to fix this.

5. Something contagious is going around! How will each of them handle being sick? Who are the ones who insist on working even when they’re not well? Who are the ones who stay away when they’re healthy? The ones who play nurse?

Naoya used to get sick really easily as a human, but as a demon there’s really nothing that affects him any more, so he winds up just taking care of the other two. Amane is like. Offended at being sick. How did this happen? She has things to do, she can’t get sick now. Naoya and Loki have to make her stay in bed and rest and not just get up and continue her day like she doesn’t have a fever. Loki’s had to take care of his own sick siblings more than once, so he knows the drill and is pretty good at making sure she eats right and stays comfortable.

Naturally, when Loki’s sick, he milks it for all it’s worth to get as much attention as possible, but neither of them really minds.

6. The mess that is deciding where to eat out and what to order.

Naoya is a really picky eater. He has a list of like, five places he actually likes and he orders the same thing every time. Amane says she doesn’t really have preferences, she’ll eat wherever and find something she enjoys, but every now and then she’ll get a craving for something and try hinting at it. Loki usually goes along with them, but every now and then he’ll just bring home take-out from a new place he found, and then keep bringing different things until Naoya finds something he likes.

7. One or more of them comes across a stray animal. How do the family members each react? Who tries to find the previous owner? Does anyone want the others to mind their own business? Do they end up keeping it?

Amane insists on looking for the real owner, and it’s probably for the best. I’m not sure how well an animal would do with these three. A cat might be okay, but a dog would probably need a little more attention and structure than they would be adept at giving. Loki would be affectionate, but careless and wouldn’t think to look up what he should and shouldn’t do with it. Naoya would get frustrated with how much time it needs and how it gets in the way of his work/habits. Amane would do her best to care for it, but she has so much else to do that a pet (especially one that she didn’t have time to prepare for) just wouldn’t seem a high priority. When they find the owner, it’s a relief for everyone.

8. They take a trip to the zoo. What is each person’s favorite animal, and who gets excited about seeing theirs? Who downplays it? Who is willing to wait while the other drags everyone off to their favorite animals, and who tries to tell everyone they’re going to stick to the set path from beginning to end, and everyone will get to see their favorites soon so calm down?

I feel like Amane would really like elephants, for some reason. She doesn’t say anything, because it’s important to see everything so they’ll get to the elephants eventually, but Loki and Naoya notice she keeps checking the map for how many exhibits are left. Loki starts insisting on detours and dragging his feet until Amane finally gets frustrated enough to actually say she wants to see them and they’re going to go now.

(Meanwhile, Naoya eyes the petting zoo sheep with mixed feelings.)

9. Describe everyone going on a camping trip. Who enjoys it? Which one(s) set up the tent? Who would get lost in the woods but is only a few feet away from a gas station?

It was probably Amane’s idea - she’d like the idea of getting out of the city for a while to relax in nature. None of them have camped before, but they’re all fairly smart and have certainly been through worse conditions, so they manage with only a few bumps along the way.

Doesn’t matter. Naoya hates it. He complains the whole time and keeps trying to futilely get a cell phone signal. He only lightens up and has some fun when Loki points out that in the wilderness he can relax and let more of his demonic features out since there’s no one but them to see. He winds up scaring a family going hiking and accidentally running into them. All in all, it’s a good day.

10. Who tells the ghost stories or watches the ghost stories, and who are the ones who need a cuddle sandwich to get through the night every time they encounter anything the least bit spooky?

All three of these kids are like. Immune to standard levels of fear after everything that’s happened to them. Loki loves listening to and telling ghost stories because he loves urban legends and spooky stuff, but it doesn’t scare him, and it doesn’t scare Amane or Naoya either. Amane sometimes enjoys the atmosphere of horror films, and Naoya does appreciate well-written horror, but it’s more of a cathartic thing than actually frightening for either. Also sometimes Loki will rent terrible horror so they can all mock it together.

11. Who steals everyone else’s clothing? Who can’t tell their own clothing from other people’s anymore?

Loki would, if Naoya’s wardrobe did not consist of six identical copies of the same boring outfit, and Amane wasn’t so tiny that he can’t fit into anything of her’s. What he does instead is buy them both accessories and then wears those when he feels like it.

12. One of them starts singing. Who joins in? Who absolutely refuses to join in? If any of them can’t sing, does everyone roll with it, or do they stop and beg that person to stop as well?

Amane probably starts humming along to Dolly’s music absentmindedly, and then Loki chimes in and drags Naoya into it too, despite Naoya having no musical talent at all. Sometimes Naoya sings along to his idol anime tunes when no one else is home, and if anyone ever found out he would die of embarrassment instantly.

13. Who is the warmest to cuddle with? Who is always cold? Who wants the heater up, who wants the heater down, who wants to save money but is cold as fuck and piles under layers of clothing and blankets in the house? Who dies in summer? Who wants to turn up the AC and wait out until winter?

Naoya would’ve been the one most sensitive to the temperature, but once he becomes a demon, he can probably regulate his own body temperature. Amane and Loki take advantage of this all year round. He’s very convenient. Except when they can’t decide whether they’d prefer him warmer or cooler and he gets fed up and moves to a different room.

14. When grocery shopping, who budgets and makes lists? Who happily throws things into the cart and figures it’ll work out? Who estimates their general spending as they pick up items, but they throw in a couple of splurges? Who oversees that the splurges don’t go too far and tells the other(s) to put some or all of the items back on the shelf?

Amane is in charge of groceries. She is very careful that they always have necessities in stock and that they don’t go over budget, and she’s usually very good at making sure the other two don’t go out of bounds. But whenever something comes up and she can’t be involved in the shopping, Naoya and Loki come home with like three bags of various desserts and two of cheap frozen food and store lunches that happened to look good. Their self-control is nonexistent.

15. Something broke down! Are any of them handy around the house with fixing things? Who thinks they can do it on their own and what level of success do they have? Who breaks down and calls a professional out?

Naoya can usually patch up household appliances and computers pretty well since he’s used to helping out Kazuya with them, and what he doesn’t know he looks up and can usually muddle his way through okay. Amane can handle simple repairs alright, but when it’s something that looks especially complicated, she waits to ask Naoya’s opinion. If Loki’s home by himself when something goes wrong, he will absolutely try to fix it himself, and only stop when he is a) bored, or b) he mangles it beyond repair. There is no third option where he succeeds in fixing it.

[dorothyx5282-blog]

Establish The Right State of mind With Proper Thanksgiving Table Setup.

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[senior70]

On the Slippery Problem of “Lap-slope”

After much thought I have come to the conclusion that I must have been born with a deformity which, in itself, is not a serious one, but has over the years been the source of much grief to me. The length of my thigh bones adequately provides me with a wide enough lap for all normal purposes, but the length of my shin bones is such that, with my feet flat on the ground, my lap is not horizontal but slopes towards my knees. 

I realize that of all the awful deformities with which one can be born, this is truly a mild one about which to be complaining, so I really should be seeking a less severe sounding word than “deformity”, so perhaps I should settle on a ”disproportion” as being more appropriate.

I have not actually measured nor calculated my “lap-slope” in terms of degrees of declination, ratio of rise over run or percentage gradient, but in practical terms, it is sufficient to involve the effects of gravity.  That is, put simply, anything placed on my lap tends to slide off.

One could at this point enter the field of applied geomorphology and discuss matters of the “angle of repose” and the “angle of sliding friction”, both significant factors in determining slope stability, but I would agree with you that such an engineering approach to my ‘problem’ is probably going overboard. 

On occasion one is asked about one’s “most embarrassing moments” in life and since I have more than several that immediately come to mind, I have to pick and choose carefully. But one moment I recall with shuddering embarrassment, to this day, concerns exactly the affliction being discussed here.

I was about 17 and had for some time been my girlfriend Jenny’s partner in her dance lessons, the two of us becoming quite accomplished dancers. My father, a family doctor, did not have the financial status of the social circles of the ‘nouveau riche’, but the doctor was a much respected member of the community and was occasionally invited to events because of this respect rather than his financial/social station. Sometimes this extended to the doctor’s son, who was assumed, quite without cause, to also be respectable. So it was, known to be a good dancer and holding the position of the ‘the doctor’s son’ that I was invited to be the partner of the daughter of a well-to-do family at a dinner dance they were attending. I did know the girl through playing tennis at the local swimming pool cum tennis club, but had no particular liking or disliking for her, though, if asked, I might have described her as a bit “toffee-nosed”. 

On the evening in question, dressed in a formal black dinner suit and patent leather shoes (which, being a dancer, I owned already), my Dad dropped me off at the large house of my host, situated in a nicer part of the town in which we lived, our house being one of a sea of semi-detached, rather similar-looking, inter-war houses. The father, whom I had seen playing tennis, was very cordial and, himself armed with a glass of sherry, poured me a shandy, a mix of ginger ale and beer, while we waited for the ladies to come downstairs. Ladies, it seems, take a long time to dress, and, in seemly circles, must be patiently waited for. 

In due course, the ladies descended, my partner dressed in a ball gown, looking very elegant, but nonetheless not effectively concealing the fact that she was a little on the plump side, certainly as compared to my long-legged, trim figured girlfriend. I was switched to my ‘best behaviour mode’, and though secretly feeling out of my depth, managed to do and say all the right things, which was, I’m sure, a relief to my partner’s parents, whom I suspect, had at first questioned their daughter’s choice of dance partner.

Father drove us into the hills of the Surrey countryside along narrow lanes, and ultimately up a long private driveway to the forecourt of a very grand looking mansion, hidden in a coombe of the chalk North Downs. A number of vehicles were already there, and guiding my partner with an arm lightly linked through hers, we entered through the imposing front door. The young people were congregated in a side room, leaving the adults to mingle with their cocktails and discuss the stock exchange, politics and sport. Most of the young people were already destined for expensive private schools, and I had, of course, not met any of them, but as partner of this well known girl, I was received hospitably enough by them. I was introduced to many, but was quickly made aware that one girl was the best friend of my partner, and we would be sharing a table for four with her and her partner for dinner.

Dinner was served in a large room, the adults seated at larger tables with wine glasses at each place, and the younger set were seated at smaller, card-table sized tables around the perimeter of the room, without the wine glasses. I was already familiar with the order in which to use the multiple silverware at the table, but nonetheless was apprehensive and focussed on my getting every step correct. We sat and were served a very good series of courses, presumably catered by a company hired for the occasion. The two girls yattered away endlessly, so her partner and I chatted amiably about common interests, of which, some we fortunately shared. All was going swimmingly when the awful thing happened.

I had placed my napkin, a large heavy linen one, on my lap, but knew that it would be unacceptable to tuck the end under my belt, so left it loose. At some point during the meal, I realized that my napkin was sliding off my lap. Trying to make it as indiscernible as possible, I reached under the table, found the edge of the napkin and pulled it back towards my lap. But, what I pulled stealthily was not my napkin but the edge of the taffeta crinoline of the best friend sitting opposite me. She uttered a shriek of surprise, gave me a look which would have shrivelled a prune and yanked her underskirt back. It was a memorable look, one which I can all too easily relive in my dreams. Needless to say, though she had hardly spoken to me, from that point on I became persona non grata in her eyes and her partner obediently ceased to speak with me. I wished with my whole being that the ground would open up and swallow me, but it didn’t. 

Fortunately, my partner saw the lighter side of the incident, and the dance portion of the event went well enough with her, a small orchestra playing all the favourite tunes of the day. There were dances in which everyone changed partners, but thankfully, her best friend was on the far side of the room and we never met again. I managed, with concentrated effort, to meet the behavioural standards of my hosts but was never relaxed enough to actually enjoy the sumptuous occasion. On the way home, father took a diversion to drop me outside my own house. Perhaps significantly, his daughter never again invited me to partner her, for which I have to admit some relief, fearing that the story of my grabbing her best friend’s petticoats would quickly be spread, to everyone’s amusement.

Returning to the matter of the science of  “lap slope” I conclude that friction certainly has to be considered as a major contributor to the issue.

I do not own silk pyjamas, possibly because of some fear of sliding out of bed while fast asleep, but I know for certain that should I ever be in the unlikely situation of being expected to have a breakfast tray placed on my lap when wearing said pyjamas, disaster would swiftly follow, and morning tea or coffee would soak my bed-socks (though, since I do not wear bed socks, I would instead have wet, squelchy toes) and egg would irremovably sink into the carpet. 

Friction, or the lack thereof, certainly plays a role. The nearest I have come to a raw demonstration of this property of physics, was at an academic conference and was but a very brief episode in fact, though a memorable one. I and three male colleagues, suitably dressed for the Annual Banquet, were sitting around a low table in the faculty lounge of the university hosting the conference, when two female colleagues arrived. Not waiting for us to rise and offer them a seat, they promptly sat down on the nearest laps, mine being one. My lap-lady was a well respected climatologist whom I had only met briefly, but I recall, even now, that she had a long, solid dark green dress made of a shiny material. As she sat on my lap, she reached around my shoulder with one arm, but before she could get a grip, she was sliding off my lap. Whatever she was wearing beneath her dress had no property of friction with the lining of her dress, nor the dress with my suit trousers, and she only just saved herself from landing unceremoniously on the floor at my feet by bracing her legs at the last second. Brushing off the near disaster with a laugh she plumped down on the next lap along, where, to my chagrin, she remained comfortably perched for the few minutes remaining prior to the call to take our places for the dinner. 

Sadly, it seems, that is the story of my life. My “lap-slope” is such that it holds neither napkins, trays nor lovely ladies, unless I sit in a low chair or brace my feet on tippy-toes. Ah me, what an affliction to suffer.

senior70

“Reflections on an Ordinary Life”.

[barreratyson68-blog]

The Perfect Creamy Whole 30 Tomato Sauce Recipe.

Among my viewers asked if I might chat more about exactly how Health at Every Dimension ® helps individuals dealing with certain medical ailments, exclusively ones for which dietary modifications are actually suggested. Thus indeed, the the main thing our company could say for certain is actually these type of foods items I am actually discussing, fine-tuned carbohydrates, glucose, flour, beer and the really starched quickly edible vegetables like potatoes failed to exist in our diet plan for pair of thousand years. a fantastic read developed this diet regimen to help girls with boob cancer to slim down and maintain it off forever. Research study seems to be to show that genetically matched diet regimens enhance outcomes, in relations to effective weight loss and also fidelity - revealing that a one-size fits all technique to our nutrition is actually possibly flawed. Sure, if you deny on your own for long enough you will certainly loose body weight - yet you will not be experiencing very good (most likely incredibly hungry) & won't automatically be well-balanced either. Thus now I have confined my salad to environment-friendlies simply and am in ketosis yet certainly not burning fat. Analysis shows that we can reduce the grocery costs through manies bucks a month as well as waste far less food by planning our every week meals. I oscillated, after that obtained stayed as well as inevitably found the body weight starting to return on. The Flexitarian Diet plan outruned most of its competitions, along with especially higher credit ratings in nutritional efficiency, ease to comply with and also long-lasting weight management. Prior to I would certainly find myself visiting the 2 PointsPlus bars from Weight Watchers or other points like that. Its gradual however I know when I need to have to perform a quickly if I skip a full week I do not fret and also body weight does not pour back on. No matter the hiddening explanation, low-carb diets most certainly are quite reliable in numerous people. Joe Cross, whose documentary Fat Sick & Almost Dead demonstrate how he went off being ONE HUNDRED pounds over weight to well-balanced by juicing reveals just how that could not just assist you shed excess weight but be tremendously helpful for your wellness. He points out some factors that are actually simply simple inappropriate, like 1) everybody could be skinny, 2) there are actually only eight necessary amino acids, 3) physical exercise is actually relatively handy along with weight loss, and 4) weight training simply when every 10 days is adequate. Most of the metabolic improvements observed listed here might be reproduced along with loss from 30 pounds (13.6 kg) over 12 full weeks making use of any type of affordable diet. Should admit after a thyroid disorder induced a 30 pound body weight increase in six full weeks, I complied with the Dukan diet with great excellence however locate it a bit uninteresting given that I do not have the moment to plan effectively now. When performed, weight all those unopened manages as well as drinks in to your vehicle and also contribute them to the nearby meals cupboard. To observe the effect from a particular meals or dish on sugar amount, check it a couple of hrs after consuming. This is actually a pretty affordable diet regimen program as well as the only expense may be actually that your grocery store expense is actually slightly enhanced as a result of the must obtain added new vegetables and healthy healthy proteins. As well as our company found that individuals that performed have that believing style, which were actually really black and white, or all-or-nothing thinkers, were actually a lot more probably to regain body weight. In this recipe book, Nicole as well as Lisa show our company how you can comply with a whole food vegan diet plan and also produce amazing substitutes like vegetarian butter, frozen yogurt, cheese and also dairies from scratch. Amy Reichelt: Rats have just the same chemistry as our team. They have dopamine in their human brains, as well as they are also extremely food driven. They randomized 46 adoloscents (grow older 12-18) to either a high-protein, low-carb diet (HPLC diet plan) or a calorie-restricted low-fat diet to be adhered to for 13 full weeks. I'm finding the diet edge of this fine actually, have actually been actually staying with really good stuff most of the time so I'm pleased keeping that, and also I've found I've been obtaining fuller quicker. The Mayo diet regimen's theory is actually that you may eat means extra yet take in far fewer fats because of your main food groups being fruit, veggies as well as grains. The Revelation: Another web site co-founded through a hubby-and-wife group, Paleo Adult porn is actually the home of manies drool-worthy pictures and recipes, alongside a listing of Paleo-friendly dining establishments and a handy 'Is that Paleo?' food overview.http://prisonnierdebeaute.info ='display: block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;' src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B1LlYh6iKqs/SvNzXnFfqbI/AAAAAAAABH4/LARGq2wJfaA/s400/Before%2BAnd%2BAfter%2BWeight%2BLoss.jpg" width="277" alt="food city"/> As an alternative, consume a handful of additional glasses of water and also put additional sodium on your meals. That aside, I can easily tell you that now that I am actually incredibly rigorous reduced carb, I generally have less atmospheres (a feeling from deja vu that can easily in some cases be actually a forerunner to a confiscation) compared to I did on an average American diet. . I've encountered sufficient individuals now to recognize that my tale, while certainly not completely traditional, is actually additionally certainly not that one-of-a-kind one of people who have lost or even sought to reduce weight. The importance from emotional factors in weight reduction was actually disclosed to me in the 1970s when I go through Susie Orbach's intriguing manual Fat is actually a Feminist Problem". Lost a handful of pounds then gained this back the following full week, even though I was complying with strategy. A list from the highest possible rate weight reduction dietscreated through our review experts is available right here. The bottom line is actually that if you utilize the Dietary Standards as a Gold Standard, Atkins is going to inevitably position low due to the fact that that is a substitute method to weight management. Normal exercisers were excluded from engagement, as well as my sense is that exercise in the course of the diet regimen trial was actually prevented. Concerning Blog site - AltShift operates through certainly not merely asking just what our company ought to consume to be healthy and balanced and lean, yet likewise when our experts ought to eat those factors to halt adaptation to fat loss.

In addition to the star of the program-- pork or chicken-- Cauliflower Leek Puree, Dessert Potato-Pumpkin Puree and also Roasted Eco-friendly Beans are actually all delectable low-carb edge recipes that will accomplish my Thanksgiving holiday meal. Our portion measurements can be also big, and also that's hard to judge when enough's sufficient, when you have actually still obtained half a platter of glorious food looking back at you. Effective diet administration in the course of personal injury could cut times, also weeks off an injury and help you return to your best immediately. Take the idea of easy-to-digest foods items one measure even further by offering food items mixing a shot. Each dietary trends led to enhancements in the cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk profile page therefore of weight management. I make certain she'll possess a 'I want to tone up' or even 'I have to gain weight in a well-balanced way' publish down free throw line. Visiting the diet, with a handful of lapses now and then, I have actually kept my weight down for numerous years and gradually lost a handful of additional pounds. So in short, that is actually actually cycling back and forth in between mainly a low-carbohydrate diet along with some carbohydrate times intermixed where you are actually receiving an anabolic burst or even boost, so to speak. This remains in extra of the approximately 1/2 pound (0.2 kg) every day of fat loss viewed in more continuous starting a fast.

[harrismacgeorge-blog]

The Value Of Play Through Judy Hansen

Sometimes, one performs certainly not must await an exclusive event to consider that relatived from yours that show that will last her the whole year or her entire lifestyle by means of. A. Bob wishes to know if the weight-loss for his group on the chocolate-only diet regimen is actually rep from fat burning in a large population of middle-aged guys. Offering a really distinct instructor gift isn't really as tough as that appears if you cease considering gifts as factors," and also instead consider exactly what could be significant to the instructor's life. Some brands have managed to damage free from their industry limits that exist in markets including financial services and energy, as well as found dependable, relevant marketing methods. Couple of noticed that the circumstance through which phrases operate depends on the personal significances from these terms. Your youngster will certainly feel comfortable coming to you when he or she requires tips if you create a constant routine around purposeful interaction. IKEA creates numerous significant links along with individuals, at an economical, mental, organisational, emotional and also religious level. Standard remembrance poems as well as conclusion from life quotes may be wholehearted and nostalgic. Famous X-mas tracks include Dootha Paata Paadudi, Oh Sadbakthlara, Sri Yesundu Jenminche Reyilo. Certainly not incredibly, Fidelity Investments is among the best significant financial labels. This is my chance that you are going to recommit to discovering meaning in the work that you carry out now or find a brand new career that is significant to ensure you too can discover your very own potential. Brief paragraphes are actually alluring, successfully meaningful and caught on. When the look through discovers his method to the end from a long paragraph, like coming to be mixed up in interpretation the factor you therefore restlessly want to create can be lost. We have relocated so far away from this, partly in feedback to authentic worries for the welfare of little ones doing work in manufacturing plants in the 1800s, and mostly due to compulsory education, that our experts are actually currently rearing a significant proportion from the population to the adult years without any knowledge of work, or maybe meaningful accountabilities. Therefore why not discuss your finest preferred quotes along with your relatived thus you could appreciate speaking about deep blue sea meaning it possesses all together. That would certainly explain why Cindy Crawford's Meaningful Charm items target the exact same skin layer issues of aging such as alright product lines around the eyes and also lips, creases, dryness, in different means, as well as along with different factors of emphasis as compared with Victoria Head's Reclaim. Therefore, while facing an obstacle of deciding on a purposeful present, the primary step is to establish the category of the present. School-age little ones start cherishing managed play - such as innovated rhymes and tunes, activities along with policies, relays as well as other exercisings, sporting activities as well as jobs that they can easily complete over a certain time frame. The brain scans showed that this adjustment-- from worthless to meaningful-- looked generated through LSD acting on certain receptors as well as constructs in the human brain, according to the research. Considering that they are additionally part of our lifestyle, our experts picked to consist of these expressions and also quotes as effectively as the tidy informalities only. If this is assigned for a task, a periodic update on the project's standing in the monthly bulletin will definitely perform. Certainly, forecasting relevant (purposeful to the benefactor as opposed to the project supervisor) landmarks and also later accomplishing all of them boosts donor assurance and engagement. If being as long as necessary" can be carried out in 500 words and you utilize 520, this is actually probably a concern from private style. To display Meaningful Make use of along with your EHR, you should mention on each of the plan's objectives. She partners with website progression and publishes materials including weblogs, eBook and also banner designs which offer purposeful connections along with the website visitors online. Today I am actually an instructor and practice specialist not too far off my teaching origins however I have actually had years to actually assume what I yearned for off my work and also how to guarantee that it was actually significant job. Depending upon your business and also people you provide, there are actually dozens from various other methods to touch the lifestyles from your clients in a meaningful technique. The present that you provide your cleaning lady of honor must be private and also meaningful. Relevant success is a different value structure for each people. Should you loved this informative article and you want to receive details relating to yellow pages uk twitter (Read the Full Guide) i implore you to visit our web site. Whatever you laid out significant results to be could be originated from benefit income, volunteerism, bodily or even hand-operated work, even play. A visit to this stunning as well as unique island leaves behind an opinion in the mind for life. It seems most people believe meaningful work should be actually one thing on a huge incrustation or even cause national or globe awareness. Coming from this instance this is clear that schema plays a primary function in making text purposeful. What gay guys prefer in a partnership is actually to be fully relaxed with their sex-related companions who agree to defend techniques in people. The moment you open up the planet from meaningful little one titles, you could have difficulty limiting only the appropriate title for your kid. A research coming from the online income- and also benefits-tracking provider PayScale discovered that, from all professions evaluated, medical professionals measured their jobs as the best significant. Rather you find whole entire terms like dog, or maybe whole entire words like hot dog", frozen yogurt", or United States from America". Although some passion estimates and also phrases may seem easy, but they take a sturdy, profound meaning that transcends terms and contacts your heart. What I am claiming is that our experts need to consider them when our team opt for a place to possess relevant interaction. The phrasings as well as words are innovative and the tale promotes audiences to look into life as well as the planet around them. It is a noticeable simple fact that when we rested final evening our company were actually no more mindful from the affairs in our environments which implies that whenever death happens knocking at the door, no Jupiter in the world can easily cease this off doing its job which is the reason why our experts must all of do our absolute best to make sure that our experts create quite a purposeful influence in the lives of whoever happens our means and also, no question, is actually the significance from individual serene co-existence. That is my chance that you are going to recommit to locating meaning in the work that you perform currently or even discover a new job that is actually relevant to ensure that you too can discover your personal capacity. Short paragraphes are enticing, successfully significant and also caught on. Like ending up being blended in interpretation the aspect you so restlessly prefer to create could be lost when the explore uncovers his way to the end from a lengthy sentence. Although obviously a theological ceremony of flow, the theme of such a festivity may either pay attention to that component by stressing that along with design and also Communion prefers with the Cross, chalice and wafer symbolic representations or you can easily opt to highlight the child's rate of interests and individuality a lot more prominently with a concept that recognizes him/her as the important invitee and also his/her achieving this important come in lifestyle. To puts it simply: they can serve as webs or sources and also simply associate distinct factors; or they can give an interpretation to these frequent associations, they may leave all of them meaningful. Particular industries coming from CCDA documents obtained through HealthVault off Meaningful Use-enabled requests are made use of for the function from querying as well as producing HealthVault Meaningful Usage files. Once you've started regularly sending out an email e-newsletter, look at sending by mail out occasional bodily newsletters, memory cards or little presents to present your appreciation to your customers and contacts.

[andrewromanoyahoo]

Kevin de Leon takes on Dianne Feinstein from the left

U.S. Senate candidate and California State Senator Kevin de León and Sen. Dianne Feinstein speaks at the 2018 California Democrats State Convention Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018, in San Diego. (Photos: Denis Poroy/AP)

LOS ANGELES — Dianne Feinstein has been the senior United States senator from California for the last quarter-century. She is the first and only woman to have chaired the Senate Rules Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence. Before joining the Senate, she was the first female mayor of San Francisco; before that, she was the first female president of the city’s Board of Supervisors. In 1994, Feinstein authored the federal assault weapons ban; during President Obama’s first term, she led a groundbreaking investigation into the C.I.A.’s controversial post-9/11 interrogation program.

And yet on Saturday night California Democrats gathered at the San Diego Convention Center and voted not to endorse Feinstein for a sixth term, making her the first incumbent senator in decades to compete in a Golden State primary without the official backing of her party.

Instead, Democratic delegates threw most of their support — 54 percent versus Feinstein’s 37 — to challenger Kevin de León, a Los Angeles politician 33 years her junior with precisely none of her experience on the national stage.

The result wasn’t a total shock, though de León’s share of the vote was bigger than expected. California’s Democratic delegates tend to be progressive activists, and progressive activists, who’ve badmouthed Feinstein’s bipartisan instincts and relatively hawkish foreign-policy views for years, have become especially eager to unseat her since last August when she refused to call for President Donald Trump’s impeachment, arguing instead that he “can be a good president” if “he can learn and change.” Also worth noting is the fact that de León didn’t secure his party’s endorsement, either. For that, he would have needed 60 percent of the vote.

Even so, de León’s strong finish raises an intriguing question: Are Democrats in California— where shifts in American politics tend to happen first — on the verge of tossing out the party’s decorous old guard in favor of a new, more pugnacious generation? Is the so-called resistance a threat not only to Trump & Co., but to Democrats like Feinstein, too?

De León certainly hopes so; his entire candidacy is premised on that possibility. President pro tempore of the state Senate since 2014 — he is the first Latino to hold the position since 1885 — he will hit his term limit later this year. With a newly elected senator, Kamala Harris, serving along Feinstein; a popular mayor, Eric Garcetti, recently reelected back in L.A.; and a 2018 California governor’s race overstuffed with high-wattage contenders, de León is a rising political star with no obvious office to rise into. And so, seizing upon perhaps the only available opportunity, he immediately set about selling himself to a shell-shocked statewide audience in the wake of Trump’s election.

U.S. Senate candidate, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D- Los Angeles, speaks at the 2018 California Democrats State Convention Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018, in San Diego. (Photo: Denis Poroy/AP)

“That night, the night of Nov. 8, I was stunned, just like so many of my fellow Democrats,” de León told Yahoo News shortly before Trump’s inauguration. “But the next morning I got up and got to work.”

By “getting to work,” de León means something very specific: in short, doing whatever possible to transform California into ground zero for the resistance — and to cast Kevin de León, by extension, as one of the movement’s leaders. On Nov. 9, De León and his counterpart in the state Assembly, Anthony Rendon, released a letter proclaiming that California would “lead the resistance to any effort that would shred our social fabric or our Constitution”; in January 2017, they hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to shape their legal strategy.

Ever since, de León is particular has pushed bill after bill designed to thwart Trump’s agenda: SB 54 (aka. the California Values Act), which prevents the administration from forcing local police departments to assist in the deportation of undocumented immigrants, thereby transforming the whole of California into a so-called sanctuary state; SB 49 (a.k.a. the California Environmental, Public Health, and Workers Defense Act of 2017), which mandates that California enforce environmental and worker protection standards no less stringent than the ones that existed at a federal level before Trump took office; and SB 227 (a.k.a., the Protect California Taxpayers Act) which would allow Californians to circumvent Trump’s new caps of certain tax deductions by making charitable donations to the state.

Fifteen months later, de León can credibly claim that he’s done as much as any legislator in the country to oppose the president — and, of course, that’s exactly the claim he’s making on the campaign trail.

“My name is Kevin de León, and I am the President of the most progressive legislative house in America,” he said at the start of Saturday’s convention speech. “We carved it in stone: no matter the place of your birth or the hue of your skin, you can live in California in safety, dignity and, yes, sanctuary.”

Much of the rest of de León’s address was dedicated to drawing what political consultants like to call “contrasts” with his primary opponent.

A Los Angeles police officer talks with a protester dressed as a chicken during a demonstration against President Donald Trump outside the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Jan. 31, 2017 in Los Angeles, Calif. Hundreds of protesters staged a demonstration outside Feinstein’s office to demand that Congress refuse confirmation of President Trump’s cabinet picks. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

He didn’t pull his punches. Feinstein, 84, is currently the oldest sitting U.S. senator; if reelected, she will be 91 when her next term concludes. Twice de León mentioned “congressional seniority,” and the implication was lost on no one.

He went on to say that “the days of Democrats biding our time, biting our tongue, and triangulating at the margins are over” — a not-so-implicit rebuke of Feinstein’s measured approach to politics, which The New Yorker once described as “slightly formal in style,” with a faithful adherence “to procedure and protocol” and a belief in “settling disputes privately, by argument rather than by force.”

De León then rattled off all of the insufficiently progressive things Feinstein has done, and that he “would never” do: “I would never oppose card check, and will never vote for school vouchers”; “I would never vote to allow federal agents to spy on American citizens without warrants”: “I would never vote to prosecute 13-year-olds as adults”; “I would never call our country “the welfare system for Mexico”; “I would never vote for two different wars lasting 17 years, costing countless American lives and more than five trillion dollars.”

And, lest anyone forget, de León made sure to mock Feinstein’s gentle comments about Trump.

“In your state Senate, Democrats act like Democrats,” he said. “We demand passion, not ‘patience.’ We speak truth to power, and we’ve never been fooled into believing Donald Trump ‘can be a good president.’”

Even beyond the convention hall in San Diego, de León has had some success with this line of attack; two of the state’s most influential unions, the SEIU and the California Nurses Association, previously endorsed his insurgent bid.

Daniel Ortiz, a janitor at Boeing in El Segundo, leads a cheer as Senate President pro tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, hosts a celebration of Gov. Jerry Brown signing SB 588, The Fair Day’s Pay Act, giving the Labor Commissioner more enforcement tools to combat wage theft at the SEIU/USWW Southern California Headquarters in Los Angeles, Calif., on Oct. 13, 2015. (Photo: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

In December, Yahoo News followed de León to a series of campaign stops in Orange County, and found a candidate convinced that his moment has arrived. Wearing a navy-blue merino sweater, slim gray slacks and a silver Apple watch, de León appeared at least a decade younger than his 51 years; his impossibly black mop top helped to sustain the illusion. He mixed easily with Democratic regulars at the Plumbers, Steamfitters, Welders & Apprentices local in Orange, where he received a poster-size comic-book cover depicting Donald Trump as a tyrannical madman; later, he mingled with young, cosmopolitan Democrats sipping cocktails atop a luxury apartment building in Irvine.

“As God is my witness, I had no intention of running for U.S. Senate at that moment,” de León said of the day Feinstein made her remarks about Trump. “I’m the youngest child of a single immigrant mother who had a third-grade education. I never pined or aspired to be a politician. It’s never been part of my DNA. But I made a decision to send out a press release [criticizing her] that day, and I cannot tell you how many phone calls, how many texts I got, even from members of Congress, who always wanted to say this but were always afraid. I was like, ‘You’re afraid to criticize the obvious? That’s stunning to me.’ And that’s why I made the decision — that we need change, that we need a new voice. Not of the past, but of the present and the future.”

The question now is whether de León can convince California. He may be more in tune with the zeitgeist than Feinstein; he may even be more in tune with the most active California Democrats, who have embraced their new role as Trump’s top antagonists. But ultimately de León’s candidacy could prove to be a case study in the limitations of resistance politics, rather than its power.

Feinstein is formidable, despite her deviations from current liberal orthodoxy. In an ordinary state, De León might have a shot at snatching his party’s nomination away from a moderate incumbent by running to her left in the primary. But California has a nonpartisan primary system, which means the top two finishers — likely Feinstein and de León — will advance to the general election regardless of who gets more votes on June 5th. After that, moderation tends to be a plus, not a minus.

Meanwhile, Feinstein has rustled up $13 million for her reelection; de León has raised $434,000. The latest statewide poll shows her ahead by 29 percentage points (46 percent to 17 percent), up from 24 points in November. De León is fighting like mad to raise his profile, and more cash. But so far, he has only slipped further behind.

All of this is symptomatic of a larger reality: Feinstein may not be popular among self-styled resistance fighters, but how many resistance fighters are there, really — even in California? And how many are just as upset about moderate Democrats as they are about Trump Republicans? Enough to unseat a trailblazing woman who has been serving the state for decades and who won reelection in 2012 with more votes (7.75 million) than any other senator in U.S. history? Enough to replace her with a largely unfamiliar legislator who presided over the state senate during a sweeping sexual-harassment scandal?

Senate Judiciary Committee racking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., arrives for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, entitled: “Firearm Accessory Regulation and Enforcing Federal and State Reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).” (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Recently, Feinstein has started speaking out more forcefully against Trump. In January, she took the “extraordinary step” of releasing a key transcript from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Russia probe without the Republican chairman’s approval, earning a nickname from the president in the process: “Sneaky Dianne.”

“I think what we’re beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice,” she said in December.

Whether such boldness is a political gambit meant to neutralize de León is difficult to say. But either way, it serves to remind Californians that seniority has its advantages.

“To say you would come in as a rookie and be more forceful against Donald Trump than Dianne Feinstein means people are going to care about what the hell you say, because what you do will be marginal,” Bill Carrick, Feinstein’s longtime strategist, tells Yahoo News.  “You want to have an influential United States Senator? Dianne Feinstein is the ranking member on the judiciary, where she can actually do something to stop these judges who are outside the mainstream. On the intelligence committee, she’s a senior member investigating President Trump, particularly on Russian interference. And on the judiciary committee she’s investigating obstruction of justice. It’s campaign rhetoric versus reality. And it’s pretty preposterous.”

Anyone following the California Senate race should expect to hear more of this from Feinstein in the months ahead. It’s a canny point: that resistance can take many forms, and that a quieter, more traditional approach may still be most effective. Unless De León can prove otherwise, he won’t be able to repeat his San Diego upset in November.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:

House Democrats seek 20 to 30 more witnesses in Russia probe, but GOP resists

Jefferson’s ‘tree of liberty’ and the blood of schoolchildren

Author Eric Metaxas, evangelical intellectual, chose Trump, and he’s sticking with him

Meet the teen girl behind the National School Walkout movement

Photos: Chris Hondros’s life and pictures highlighted in documentary, ‘Hondros’

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

A Mixed Military Bag for People with Diabetes

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/a-mixed-military-bag-for-people-with-diabetes/

A Mixed Military Bag for People with Diabetes

As we approach Memorial Day and recognize those serving our country, we thought it would be worthwhile to look at the ease with which people with diabetes are able to serve in the military, and how that's changed through the years.

Sadly, the picture isn't as optimistic as we would have hoped.

While access to military service for PWDs has gotten a little better over time, not much has changed and it remains mostly hit-or-miss when it comes to someone being able to serve despite their condition.

The American Diabetes Association's legal advocacy director, Katie Hathaway, says it's pretty much "a mixed bag" and military service is off limits for most PWDs. It comes down to an individual being able to educate a military medical panel that he or she can still serve despite their diagnosis, often battling the same misconceptions and perceptions that plague those of us on the civilian side. Our battle is their battle, and the war spills into all ranks and military branches, apparently.

Of course, we have to talk types here. Really, we're only talking about those PWDs already diagnosed with type 1 or dependent on insulin at the time they wish to enter the military. The possibility of service pretty much becomes a non sequitur when you're living with a pre-existing condition.

Growing up, I was told specifically as long as I could remember that serving in the military wasn't possible thanks to my type 1 diabetes. So that killed any thought of following in the footsteps of my maternal grandfather who served in World World II. I wouldn't describe it as a "dream" of mine to serve, but if I'd had the chance I might have explored it as a possible path. Sadly, I have friends who did have that dream but had it stolen thanks to diabetes. So sad to think that so little has changed to this day!

"It's hard to see a kid's dreams dashed by a diagnosis of diabetes, and the military is one of the few jobs still off-limits to those with diabetes," she says, noting that commercial airline pilot is the other, and the ADA is working actively to try to change that.

The federal anti-discrimination laws that apply to private and government employers don't apply to the military, Hathaway said. No new laws have been passed in recent years to change this in any way. So basically, the military can discriminate as it sees fit — even if you're a PWD who is qualified for the job (aargh!!)

Basically, we have athletes who've competed in the Olympics, are professional athletes worldwide, have endured safaris and mission trips and climbed the highest mountains in the world... but serving in the military isn't allowed, because someone in the upper ranks believes that a PWD is a flat-out higher risk than any other soldier who might trip or have a heart attack? Maybe this is my naive civilian perspective speaking, but I think that's wrong.

At least some PWDs still have the chance to serve, though: those whose diagnosis hit after they were already in.

One of the role models in the world of PWDs has been Master Sergeant (MSG) Mark Thompson, a senior career counselor based in Washington who was diagnosed with diabetes in November 2000 after collapsing one morning while stationed in Germany -- following weeks of weight loss, exhaustion and thirst. First told he was type 2 as a likely result of his age at the time, Thompson said he was able to get promoted late that year, but eight days later he learned that he actually had LADA (latent autoimmune diabetes in adults).

Not wanting to scrap his promising Army career that was 4.5 years strong at that point, Thompson gathered information from the ADA's website about managing his condition and used that knowledge to persuade a military medical board to let him stay in. With his win, Thompson was deployed to Iraq in 2004 and has since returned and served as a national spokesman and role model for PWDs in the military.

A Stars and Stripes article published in 2004 told his story, and he says that after the article ran, a bevvy of soldiers with family members with diabetes approached him, and he was bombarded with emails from other PWDs in the military — some of whom were keeping their diabetes a secret.

You could say that Thompson broke through the "don't ask, don't tell" principle for people with diabetes in the military, and he insists that there have been some significant changes in recent years.

Perhaps most importantly, in 2007 the military published a checklist about when PWDs can be deployed, which can be found in Army Regulation document 40-501 (Standards of Medical Fitness). In the middle of this 150-page document, the military now lays out specific criteria for those with "diabetes mellitus" who do and do not meet medical standards for service; if a PWD maintains what the military considers to be good control, they can be considered for duty. That changed the game, so that at least PWDs weren't automatically thrown out of the military and have a chance to contribute.

Waivers are available for those diagnosed while serving and want to remain enlisted, Hathaway says. But these waivers can be difficult to obtain and depend mostly on the individual person's case and medical review board, so getting the support of one's chain of command and supervisors is crucial.

"It really boils down to the specific situation. It varies so widely across the military branches. We don't know where the disconnect is, but it pretty much comes down to your being able to convince that medical panel," Thompson says.

The ADA states that its organization has made in-roads on individual cases, such as Thompson's, and it's trying to educate PWDs about military rules and processes such as physical evaluation boards and the need for really solid medical support. Finding others who may have been in that position and faced service questions can be a valuable resource, they say.

Thompson says a key is education, and that is often the biggest hurdle in someone being able to stay in the military. Many people don't understand diabetes or have preconceptions based on what they've seen in the media or how a family member's poor health might translate to all PWDs. Ah, so misconceptions and prejudice about diabetes spill into the military just like anywhere else!

While reasonable minds can disagree on whether PWDs should be able to serve in certain capacities, it's pretty clear that our community has a long way to go in getting more equal treatment when it comes to serving our country.

So, that's the current picture for those PWDs who are serving or might want to serve in the military. But what about those who have already served? Does our country step up to help them with their diabetes care into retirement? That's a whole other issue, and one our correspondent Wil Dubois will be exploring on Memorial Day Monday. So stay tuned!!

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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