HI HELLO THERE!! I'm thinking I do this post first about getting to know the different Spider-people that I introduced in my last post before we continue with the discduo center story one, so in that way I can give myself and my readers context about their stories and abilities!! Anyways ONTO THE RAMBLE!!

(Part 1/2)

Spider-Man Tubbo "Web Boom" (Earth 2312003)

Tubbo is a 19 year old boy that lives in New York with his aunt Puffy (his parents died on a fire accident, so Puffy took care of him when he was very little). He also has an uncle who he usually visits, his uncle has an alcoholic problem, and he's not exactly a good guy, but Tubbo knows deep down he has a good heart, he just doesn't show it (but he doesn't know that his uncle is actually an enemy of his)

Tubbo was bitten by a radioactive spider when he infiltrated Alchemax's building to get to see up close some scientific projects that he couldn't get to see properly when he went on a tour for school (he's a tech genius, so he really wanted to see the projects, and it was easy to hack into the system). Puffy knew about his secret about a week when Spider-Man appeared, she knows him very well and when he asked him about it (about 2 months later, to give him time), Tubbo couldn't lie to her because: 1.- He doesn't know how to lie and 2.- He didn't want to keep secrets from her.

His special power is that he's able to manifest two big stings on his wrists (kinda like Miguel, but imagine them coming out like how Wolverine does, but only has one instead of three, and it comes out of the wrist instead of the knuckles). He's able to inject a venom that paralyzes them completely, kinda like if they were frozened and can't move a muscle, this venom has an effect of 1 hour, but he's working on making it take more time to dissapear. He also created some mini bombs that contain lots of webs in them to capture easily enemies (hence why the name "Boom")

This hasn't happened yet, but he will lose Jschlatt when he discovers that his nephew is Spider-Man and Techno kills him (Jschlatt is The Prowler here) (yes I'm incorporating your idea @veyette because I really loved it a lot!!/pos)

Other villains he has: Techno as Kingpin, Dream as The Green Goblin, Niki as Doc Oc, Ranboo as the Lizard, BBH as Carnage.

As you can see, almost every villain he has are the same Spider-People that ended up in his universe (yes I made that half intentional because as I said, I make this up as I write it in the moment lol)

Spider-Man BadBoyHalo "Demon Spider" (Earth 020495)

Bad is a 28 year old man that lives in New York with his partner Skeppy (they're in a queer platonic relationship). They both work at a bakery that they opened themselves, it's a small shop, but they get enough money to live comfortably.

Bad was bitten by a radioactive spider when he visited Alchemax's building because Sapnap, a good friend of his he has known for years and basically considers like a son, invited him for a science exposition that another friend of them was part of, George (they meet after a bit of knowing Sapnap). He told Skeppy he was Spider-Man after a month of patrol.

His special power is that he's able to have 2 pairs of extra arms with claws, have another pair of eyes, and have chelicerae (basically like that one episode of Ultimate Spider-Man where he got poisoned and turned into a savage Man-Spider lol), because of this, he has the title of "demon" (it also contributes this because of the black and red clothing he uses-not Miles suit btw haha-). He only uses this power in extreme cases of emergency, since in this state he can get really agressive and almost losing his sanity and humanity.

He lost Skeppy during a fight with Doc Oc (in this universe George is Doc Oc. Just like in the second movie of Tobey Maguire, in another experiment George did, he lost control of the tenticles and his mind became clouded and corrupted -but not to the point of insanity like Green Goblin is-he killed Skeppy when he collapsed a building)

Other villains he has: Jack Manifold as Electro, Quackity as Kingpin, Slimecicle as Venom, Fundy as Kraven the Hunter, etc.

Spider-Man Ranboo "Arachnid Shadow" (Earth 0211003)

I'm gonna use they/them for Ranboo just to clarify/lh

Ranboo is 19 years old and lives in New York with their friends Tommy and Tubbo (they've known each other since kinder-garden and have a great friendship together)

Ranboo was bitten by a radioactive spider when they visited an old warehouse where they would film some scenes for a project for school they were doing (this would be Generation Loss, but more of a format of a movie than a live-stream). They were visiting the building with other best friends like Aimsey, Freddie and Billzo, since they wanted to tag along. The warehouse was located near an Alchemax building. They only told Tubbo about their secret since Tubbo helped them cure some nasty injuries when he found them in an alleway bleeding without their mask.

Their special power is that their able to manipulate the darkness and shadows. This means that their able to create darkness when they need it, form shadow people for a short period of time, and in extreme cases, teleport through the shadows (they still don't know how to handle well this power, and when they teleport, it makes them faint and bleed from their nose for a bit, so they don't teleport unless is an emergency). Imagine like Whisp from "Monster-High 13 wishes", to give somewhat of an idea haha.

He lost Tubbo while fighting Venom (in their universe, Exdee is Venom). Coming from a meteorite that fell on Earth, he escaped from there and while Ranboo was patrolling, he attached himself to them. Ranboo spend almost a month with the symbiote, he started acting agressive, rude, and even started to sleepwalk when he went to sleep (this would be the enderwalk). When they finally realized what was happening to them, they asked help from Tubbo to get rid of the parasite. While doing this, the symbiote got angry at Ranboo and attached himself to Tubbo, causing the two of them to fight. In a fire that was produced by the chaos of the fight, some fireworks from a near store got activated and went straight to Tubbo. The symbiote got too weak and escaped while he still could, leaving without healing Tubbo, who got too injured by the explosions that he sadly passed away.

Other villains he has: Wilbur as the Green Goblin, AntFrost as Kraven The Hunter, Purpled as Mister Negative, etc.

AND THAT'S IT FOR THIS PART!! I'm really having a lot of fun cming up with the backstories and the lore of this AU hehe, it's also difficult thinking who fits best as villains for different universes haha. Anyways hopefully tomorrow I finish introducing the rest of the Spider-people so I can continue with the discduo main one. Let me know your thoughts, opinions and ideas of this :D!!

In the year 2074, the entertainment industry had taken virtual reality to unprecedented heights. "Gamble of the Gargantuans" was the latest hit game show, merging physical reality with digital marvels. The premise was simple: contestants, often spry seniors with nothing to lose and everything to gain, would face their greatest fears in a digital colosseum for the chance to win a lifetime of luxury in the outer colonies.

Betty and George, both octogenarians, were tonight's stars. They stood on stage, their biometric game-show suits snug against their skins, ready to face whatever the game's AI, known as The Director, threw at them. The audience cheered, holographic streamers floating above their heads. This was live entertainment at its most extreme.

The Director, an algorithm with a flair for the dramatic, decided tonight's challenge would be the stuff of legends—literally. A giant holographic demon erupted from the floor, its eyes aglow with digital fire. It was the infamous Red Gorlox, a creature from Martian folklore said to devour the souls of the unwary.

Betty, known in her youth as Bold Betty, clenched her fists. Her late husband had told stories of the Gorlox around the fire when they were settlers on Mars. She never believed she would face one, even a virtual manifestation.

George, a retired space navy admiral, stood his ground. His life had been spent navigating the black void, combating space pirates and negotiating peace with extraterrestrial races. A holographic fiend didn't frighten him; what did was the real possibility of losing and spending his final years in monotony.

As the Gorlox roared, fire effects simulating heat, the studio temperature rose. This was immersive entertainment; the audience felt the warmth, smelled the ozone, heard the digital monster's every breath.

"Remember, folks," boomed The Director's synthesized voice, "our contestants have three lifelines: Freeze, Flee, or Fight. Use them wisely!"

Betty's mind raced. She had been a programmer before retirement. She knew The Director had a pattern, an algorithm it couldn't deviate from. She whispered to George, "Follow my lead."

On her cue, they selected Fight. The Gorlox, bound by the program's rules, accepted the challenge. But instead of physical combat, Betty challenged it to a battle of wits. The Gorlox, overconfident in its might, agreed, believing no human could outsmart its vast data banks.

Riddle after riddle, Betty countered each of The Director's digital deceptions. George, with his tactical expertise, suggested counter-moves, trapping the AI in its own logic. The Gorlox grew more agitated, its form flickering as its CPU struggled to process the human ingenuity it was faced with.

In the final moment, with a triumphant smile, Betty delivered the final riddle, one without an answer. The Gorlox froze, circuits overloaded. The Director conceded defeat, a rarity in the history of the show.

The audience erupted, not just in the studio, but across the solar system where millions watched. Betty and George, the elderly underdogs, had done the impossible. They didn't just win the game; they reminded humanity that no matter how advanced technology becomes, there is no substitute for human spirit and ingenuity.

And so, the legend of Bold Betty and Admiral George was born, their tale passed on not just in human circles, but in the data streams and subroutines of AI and machines across the cosmos, as a reminder of the night when humanity outsmarted the digital devil in the gamble of the gargantuans.

kenny my theatre bestie,

in memoriam 😭😭😭 what is your favorite sondheim: song & or lyric, show & character?

also any fun facts about him if you got ‘em! like, i once read an interview where he said he has a couch in his office because when he’s stuck or needs a break, he takes naps & lets inspiration strike! (i have a couch in my office now, too!)

love to you tonight & always! how cool was it to share the earth with stephen sondheim, huh? xx

bee......

this has sat stagnant in my damn inbox for a few days because i truly couldn't bring myself to think about all of the miraculous things sondheim has brought to the world without bursting into hysterics 😭😭😭

also i can’t help but worry i accidentally manifested this when i titled the recent chapter of since we’re alone after a sondheim song…. “we had a good thing going, going…gone”. like???? we had a good thing going with sondheim and then he died like did i accidentally kill him????

anyway. i went crazy but here you go:

FAVOURITE SHOW - company. this one just hits me right in the gut every time. the score, the lyrics, the themes. especially as i get older i connect with this one more with every listen/watch. i even had tickets to see the revival on broadway in may 2020 and then covid cucked me. if i don't see patti sing ladies with lunch live before i die.....i will rain havoc on the world. (honorable mention to sweeney todd & merrily we roll along)

FAVOURITE SONG: i settled for favourite song in each show i know well enough to have a favourite song in. i might be missing some...but here's what comes to mind

rose's turn - gypsy

pretty little picture - forum

miracle song - anyone can whistle

the glamorous life - a little night music

not a day goes by - merrily we along

sunday - sunday in the park with george

lament - into the woods

poor baby (and being alive and you could drive a person crazy and and and....) - company

no one is alone - into the woods

pretty women - sweeney todd

i cant think of any tidbits except that he was the most giving and kind man that always championed new works and you should watch tick tick boom because he’s in it and i’m so 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

THEATRE CLUB HAVE LOST A VALIANT SOLDIER. i still can't believe it.

i want to hear your answers to all of the above please >.< i simply want to swim in the sondheim love forever i am so fragile and tiny like a little bird

RDR Essentials - Hip-Hop/R&B (4/21)

RDR Essentials is a weekly newsletter of alternating genres that outlines key releases of the past month, upcoming events around Seattle and happenings in the specified music genre.

Made in collaboration between Rainy Dawg DJs and the Music Director.

Releases:

Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - Haram

New York rap duo Armand Hammer have become known for their dreary, dense, and thought-provoking poetry, often paired with gloomy instrumentation and symbolic storytelling. Haram, the duo’s newest full-length album, marks billy woods and Elucid’s first collaboration with one producer for an entire record. The Alchemist lends his ear to the pair on this album, providing an eerie, haunting and emotive soundscape that still sounds like nothing the legendary producer has made in the past, pushing his own boundaries and proving that he is capable of evolution even after a career spanning two decades. Tracks like “Indian Summer” are laced with a menacing energy, while “Falling out the Sky” sounds almost summer-esque, like the sun peeking through an otherwise dark place, beginning with an abstract verse from Earl Sweatshirt, centered around mentions of the sky, space, and supernovas. This track starts a three-song run of the record’s only rap features, as well: “Wishing Bad” contains a furious verse from Curly Castro, transitioning with a more than menacing audio sample that forebodes in an echoing fashion: “There’s a lot of blood early on here”. This next track,“Chicharrones”, is one of the most fear-inducing beats the Alchemist has concocted thus far, and acts as an anger-fueled climax of the record. Quelle Chris delivers a seething verse, focusing on police brutality, not from a perspective of fear or sadness, but rather unrestrained rage, rife with references to George Orwell’s seminal Animal Farm but grounded in a clear disdain for the police. “If you off the pig/ Is you offin' pigs or offerin' figs?/ Oh, you big and bad?/ Blowin' hay and sticks, huffin' bricks” Quelle Chris chides in the chorus: “off the pig” likely refers to not eating pork as a convertee to Islam, in reference to the album’s title, “haram”, meaning “forbidden”, and the record’s stomach-churning cover art. The chorus seems to call out those who claim solidarity and yet “offer figs”, a phrase with roots in the biblical tale of Adam and Eve, who, in shame for their behavior, cover their genitals with fig leaves.

These guest features reinforce the record’s themes of drug abuse, class theory, racism, and the cultural ramifications of the “forbidden” in all its forms. Those who use the forbidden to cope, those who are able to get away with doing the forbidden, and everything in between seems to manifest within the record’s walls. As with every Armand Hammer release, however, it is the energy and poetry of these two MCs, seemingly almost psychically connected, that makes their staggeringly dense words so potent. At every turn, the two seem interlaced. Elucid brings invigoration to his verses, combined with sung choruses that sound as raw as can be, like on the solo track “Roaches Don’t Fly”, with soaring guitar riffs carrying an explosive verse (“My new name, colonizer’s can’t pronounce”) swelling to an enormous sung mantra: “You don’t gotta be here if you don’t wanna.” Elucid’s unique style of delivery often sees him, as many have noted, emphasizing unexpected syllables in his words, leaving his performances consistently engaging. Billy woods’ signature vignette-style storytelling and dry, dark humor are intact once again as well. The first verse of “Indian Summer” sees woods start a track as menacingly as one can (“I swore vengeance in the seventh grade/ Not on one man, the whole human race”), leading to a chilling tale of a man’s past in drug sales using a job cutting grass as cover, with detail to spare, painting a clear scene of “the stink of gas in the evening” and “the intoxication of counting cash in secret.” Highlight “Squeegee”, too, sees woods providing an unbelievable lesson in telling a full story in a short amount of time, chronicling a man’s attempt to turn his life around: eating healthy, working out before dawn, and barely smoking weed. Ultimately it’s all for naught, as paranoia takes over. He wonders if someone will follow him home, he wonders what his neighbors are doing, and it seems that old habits creep their way back in: ‘The taste in his mouth just like before.” It’s a chilling vignette, and undoubtedly one of woods’ best verses to date.

The album ends on an emotive high note; if “Chicharrones'' was the angry climax, “Stonefruit” is the album’s explosive and heart-wrenching finale. Elucid’s sorrowful chorus makes clear a turn inward, after an album focused so heavily on societal ills. “I don’t want to lose control” he repeats: “I’ve got so much left to undo.” Finally, billy woods delivers the album's most painful and emotive verse. Woods seemingly chronicles a rocky relationship perhaps interrupted by a sudden passing, a relationship filled with strife (“Said ‘OK’ to save face, but she never forgave”) that is yet anchored by an irrefutable love. The beautiful instrumental turns into a droning, and the euphoric emotional climax is once again drowned out by the ills it is surrounded by. This album is dense, difficult, and often a hard listen. But if one chooses to give it the attention it asks, it is more than rewarding enough, and once again proves billy woods, Elucid, and The Alchemist as three of the best artists we’ve ever seen.

- Casey Chamberlain

Kenny Mason - Angelic Hoodrat Supercut

Atlanta artist Kenny Mason is beginning to make a name for himself. After his impressive Angelic Hoodrat last year and a standout feature on Denzel Curry & Kenny Beats’ UNLOCKED 1.5 remix album, the 26 year old is back with a sequel project, Supercut, and continues to impress with his astounding mix of rock and rap. The project is a tightrope act that balances the genres, bringing trap beats, triplet flows, and bedroom guitar passages in equal measure. Rap cuts like the excellent “A+” featuring Denzel Curry see Kenny bringing technical flows and quick wit to the table, alongside standout “Much Money” which sees Freddie Gibbs making an appearance, bringing his signature swagger and Instagram-story quotables.

However, the most impressive aspects of the record are where things begin to change up, seeing Kenny swing more into rock and indie territory. “Play Ball” feels like a teenage anthem, accompanied by driving guitar riffs and bouncy drums and vocal mixing more reminiscent of a live performance at a house show than a recording booth. Opener “43”, too, immediately sets the tone, with a powerful sung chorus and heavy guitar rhythm and booming drums. Perhaps the biggest highlight, however, is the two-part “Pup”, which sees a low-key first half blend into a spacey and introspective second half. Not only is the production here at perhaps its most interesting of the record, combining gritty guitar and a pulsing trap beat, but Kenny’s songwriting stands out as well, with a strong emotive performance and personal lyrics highlighting insecurities. If there’s any critique to be had of this record, it would be that it most certainly feels like a part two of the first Angelic Hoodrat (in fact, the record’s title even makes it sound more like a deluxe than a separate album). Yet, Kenny’s style is most certainly exciting, reminiscent in equal measure of contemporaries across the musical spectrum, from Jean Dawson to JID. If refining his sound means putting out music as impressive as this, then Kenny Mason is on the right track, and is one to watch.

- Casey Chamberlain

Benny the Butcher & Harry Fraud - The Plugs I Met 2

Benny The Butcher has rocketed to heights previously unknown in the last year, with his full length project with Hit-Boy, Burden of Proof, being his biggest project yet, and seeing him steer into different sonic territory, moving away from the grimy Daringer and Alchemist production he had become known for on projects like Tana Talk 3. 2019’s The Plugs I Met was the epitome of that sound, and it’s perhaps inevitable that Benny would move past it at some point. Plugs I Met 2, however, feels like a marriage of those two sounds, sounding like a true sequel to the first project while still pushing into new territory and incorporating bigger features. There’s nothing as grimy here as the first album’s “Sunday School” or “Dirty Harry”, but tracks like “When Tony Met Sosa” and “Plug Talk” carry that same energy.

Highlights include “Overall” featuring Chinx, where the production feels like a brilliant mix of the street sounds and the lavish flashiness of Benny’s wordplay, alongside heavy drum kicks and incredibly dense production. Harry Fraud produced every track on the project, and this consistency shines. Each track sounds different from the last, but they fit neatly together. Even the tracks that tone down the energy feel just as lyrically impressive, such as “Live By It.” The features are mostly standout as well, with guest verse from 2 Chainz, Rick Hyde, and more. Overall, this is a solid project and logical sequel to the first Plugs I Met. Those who miss Benny’s grimy, TT3-era sound may be disappointed not to hear it return on every track here, but for those who remain impressed by Benny’s newfound flexibility, Plugs I Met 2 will no doubt remain a worthwhile addition to the Griselda catalog.

- Casey Chamberlain

Denzel Curry & Kenny Beats - UNLOCKED 1.5

Not content with waiting for the already-announced sequel to release, Kenny Beats and Denzel Curry return with a batch of remixes of tracks from last year’s excellent UNLOCKED with UNLOCKED 1.5. Featuring guest production and verses, this collection feels less like a full project on its own and more of a playful invitation to collaborators to make something brand new out of an already energetic album. The original UNLOCKED made clear its influence from MF DOOM, Madlib, and a host of others, seeing Kenny Beats branch out into new, cartoony territory and seeing Denzel Curry flex his lyrical prowess on a non-stop barrage of high-octane tracks. 1.5, in comparison, takes many of those rambunctious verses and places them over entirely new production. Standout “So.Incredible.pkg”, with production by the great Robert Glasper brings a jazzy and laid back energy, where Denzel still feels right at home, followed by an excellent and sly verse from Smino. “Cosmic.m4a [The Alchemist Version]” brings in the legendary producer for a brand new beat with beating drums and piano passages, alongside a vengeful, if not far too short, verse from Joey Bada$$. “Pyro” sees bouncy new production from Sango, with a witty and childlike feature from Kenny Mason. The highlight, however, has to be “DIET_” which, as the standout of the original project, with Denzel’s ferocious and guttural delivery inspired by the late DMX now enhanced by an effortless verse from Benny the Butcher, marking an unlikely but incredibly fulfilling appearance. The original UNLOCKED was a lighthearted project that showcased the talent of Denzel and Kenny Beats. 1.5, while not necessarily a fulfilling EP taken on its own, is something of a victory lap for the duo and their friends, a fun counterpart to the original project and a flexing of creative muscles.

- Casey Chamberlain

AG Club - Fuck Your Expectations PT. 1

When AG Club titled this album “Fuck Your Expectations”, they meant it. Fans, like me, who became hooked on AG Club after their debut melodic rap masterpiece Halfway Off the Porch, have been patiently awaiting a completed “Fuck Your Expectations” since its anticipated debut date in the summer of 2020. After months of waiting, with a few eclectic singles sprinkled in, AG Club decided to fuck our expectations once again by only giving fans part one, released April 2nd, with part two expected (I’m hesitant to use this word) on April 30th. Although it’s not the drop fans were expecting, it’s more than enough to tide us over. AG Club, now only composed of Jody Fontaine and Baby Boy on vocals, brings a fresh and exciting energy on this album that is more comparable to their early singles, like “Holy Shit” or “Ay, G”, than it is to their last full release. Tracks like “NOHO”, composed solely of bass and percussion, and “Columbia”, which features a blaring horn like they just brought the cavalry out, are the album’s “bangers”. AG Club hasn’t settled - they still have chips on their shoulders - and these songs prove that. To round the album out and further their pattern of genre-warping, tracks like “HOT PINK” and “A Bitch Curious” mix R&B, indie pop and rap to produce a completely new sound for the group. And just when you thought your expectations were certifiably fucked, the “A Bitch Curious” instrumental suddenly morphs into an EDM beat around three minutes in. Although it’s filled with an absurd amount of interludes for a nine track album, this project will still leave you saying: “Thank you AG Club, may I have another?”

- Charlie Darnall

BROCKHAMPTON - ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE

The visuals for BROCKHAMPTON’s latest record say a lot about it. The video for “BUZZCUT”, the album’s opener, is a glorious clusterfuck of outdated animation and strobing color. On Spotify, every song is accompanied by a video of each vocalist’s face slowly morphing into the next. The self-proclaimed boy band’s visuals, although abrasive at first, are full of depth; every scene in a video or clip has spot on color pallets, an energy that accurately mirrors the song and an attention grabbing theme. And ROADRUNNER is equally as dense. Sonically, the album can range from the aggressive, east coast rap inspired “BANKROLL” to the all acapella, gospel inspired “DEAR LORD”. Between these polar opposites, lie eleven eclectic, constantly morphing tracks. “WINDOWS” is an eerie, acoustic laced song about all the boys being “outside your window” (oh no!) Following it, however, is the accessible and breezy R&B/pop track “I’LL TAKE YOU ON” featuring the legendary Charlie Wilson. “DON’T SHOOT UP THE PARTY” contrasts a beat that could send an Ibiza nightclub into a frenzy with passionate lyrics about racial injustice and the media and government’s inability to condemn white mass shooters. In the spirit of a “new light”, BROCKHAMPTON decided to include features on this album - a first time for the boy band. In both popularity and sound, these features are equally as eclectic. Features range from industry titans, like A$AP Rocky, to smaller, indie pop artists like Baird. Amongst the album’s themes of religion, hedonism and new beginnings, you will find density, both instrumentally and lyrically. 

- Charlie Darnall

Young Stoner Life - Slime Language 2

The second installment of Young Thug’s Slime Language series is undeniably essential. Young Thug and Gunna together are arguably two of the biggest figures in rap right now. Do you have a cousin or sibling in middle or high school? What about a friend in a fraternity? I’ll bet you $100 they’ve both heard a Young Thug or Gunna song in the past week. Both these Atlanta artists have transcended your average rap fan; their songs might be on your dad’s favorite radio station. And I think they’ve realized that. Out of the many things this album succeeds in, its greatest accomplishment is playing into the popularity its creators have achieved. Features include Drake, Lil Baby, Lil Uzi Vert, Travi$ Scott, Skepta, Kid Cudi and even the controversial YNW Melly. The beats are accessible and lend themselves to millions of streams. Tracks such as “I Like” and “Trance” model the more melodic side of Travi$ Scott’s sound with a low tempo and spacey synths. “That Go!” sounds like Playboi Carti had a beat to spare after finishing Whole Lotta Red. In terms of lyrics, there isn’t much to say. Gunna and Young Thug are still two of the biggest rappers alive, they’re still quite wealthy and they’ve made sure to mention that, although their lines seem to prioritize memorability. Every song is either hard enough to make a JV basketball team go nuts, melodic enough for late night drive or bouncy enough to make your mom go “oh, this is fun!” The album plays on many established themes and styles, but I asked myself two questions after I first listened and these are the answers I came to: Is it trying to be popular? Yes. Is that necessarily a bad thing? No.

- Charlie Darnall

Upcoming Releases:

MIKE- Disco! (6/21)

New York rapper MIKE has released a steady stream of incredible, personal, and beautiful records over the past few years, and it seems he is gearing up to release another project, titled Disco! this June. The rapper’s raw delivery and soulful production has brought him to the forefront of the burgeoning abstract hip-hop scene, and projects like 2019’s Tears of Joy and the seminal May God Bless Your Hustle have garnered not only critical acclaim but a fanbase of passionate fans. The lead single for the project, “Evil Eye” provides a gorgeous sample and instrumentation and a short but sweet verse, and is a perfect taste of what is sure to be another personal and important record from one of the best rappers currently working. Disco! arrives June 21st on MIKE’s label 10k.

- Casey Chamberlain

Paris Texas - “BOY ANONYMOUS” (5/14)

Compton-based duo Paris Texas have announced their debut EP, BOY ANONYMOUS. The group has made a splash with the project’s lead singles after dropping the explosive “HEAVY METAL” earlier this year. The group mixes rock and rap, and brings a ferocious energy to their music while staying introspective. The group’s name comes from the 1984 movie of the same title, often cited as Kurt Cobain’s favorite film. The duo has released two other tracks prior to the project’s release, “FORCE OF HABIT” and “SITUATIONS.” The eight-track EP is out May 14th.

- Casey Chamberlain

Petals & Thorns - chapter 6/?

Pairing: Fred Weasley x oc

Warnings: none

Word count: 2.2k

SONG OF THE CHAPTER - otherside • post malone

So then our story brings us to the night of October 30th. The night Beauxbatons and Durmstrang would be arriving. In the great hall gathered Hogwart's entire assemblage. Durmstrang had arrived by ship, and Beauxbatons by heavily dramatic carriages. Posted once again closest to Professor Snape, Adalinda watched as Dumbledore announced the all female school and their headmaster, Madame Maxine. The girl caught the eyes of the potions professor. He gave her a sideways smile before the doors bursted open. She returned it before she sent her gaze to the visitors. Adalinda knew Snape was not a good teacher or a decent person; he was kind to her. She respected him on that note only.

Girls dressed in matching uniforms burst through the doors. They presented themselves as lustful, beautiful women. Addy did not find the appeal of their charm. They danced down the walkway, catching the attention of the boys. They were followed by a woman who was close to Hagrid's height. As they finished their performance, the hall erupted into cheers and clapping. Adalinda sat with her hands folded on the table. She did not respond to them in the slightest. Immediately, she held a dislike for them. They walked in as if they could wrap every student around their fingers. It took her six years to be able to do that, and she didn't want them to believe it would be so easy.

As everyone settled, Dumbledore returned to his post to announce the second school. Their school was run by a headmaster named Igor Karkaroff. Addy knew about him. She knew about the mark that littered his arm under his sleeve. He was infamous for his betrayal in their household. Although, her father was not much better in The Dark Lord's eyes. He had managed to evade his own prison sentence by claiming to be under the Imperius Curse during the first war. As she thought these things to herself, in walked boys dressed in matching clothing. Each one possessed a wooden staff in their hand. They banged them against the cement floor as they took their stage. Even she had to admit, some of them were attractive. They were all built well, strong and tall. Although each of the men were important to the setting, Addy could clearly see favouritism as the head of school walked in. Beside him was Viktor Krum, the famous quidditch player. On the other side of Viktor, walked a highly attractive boy. The three men walked close. Igor looked as if he was protecting Krum, or putting him on a pedestal, more likely.

Draco turned to look at his sister. "That could have been us." He beamed.

"Shut it, Draco." The older of the two sent him a glare. The boy cowered away, looking back to the show. As the men finished their introduction, the foreign students were allowed to sit where they pleased. The Beauxbatons students were drawn to the Ravenclaws, finding their spots on their benches. The Durmstrang students immediately caught the Slytherin table, walking towards them. Addy gave a small, triumphant smile. As they filed over, the boy who had walked with Krum and the headmaster approached her. He nodded his head as if to ask to sit with her. She gave a warm smile and shot Adrian a glare, signalling for him to move over.

He did so with spite, anger rising in his face. She ignored him, putting her attention into the boy who had chosen to sit beside her. Before she got a chance to speak, her younger brother beat her to it. "I'm Draco Malfoy." He reached his hand over the table, wanting to shake the unknown man's. The Durmstrang student sent Adalinda a look. She shrugged, meaning that he was just eager. He took her brothers hand, giving it a firm single shake. He did not mention his name. Before her sibling got the chance to embarrass himself, the girl introduced herself.

"I'm Adalinda Malfoy." She said, offering him her hand, too. Instead of shaking it he placed a kiss on the back of it. Her cheeks tinted red, something they usually did not do. The girl never was subject to being flustered on behalf of a boy. Again, he did not speak his name. He did not get the chance, as Dumbledore began to speak once again. He announced how the winners would be chosen, and gave the students a deadline to submit their name. He explained that to ensure the age restriction would be followed, an age line would be placed around the Goblet of Fire. They were also told that if their name was chosen, a binding magical contract would be made. The name was selected would be required to participate in every challenge. He made it clear that the tasks would be daunting and dangerous. As he finished, he announced that the feast could begin.

Each student in the hall hungrily watched as the food appeared. They dug in, enjoying every dish and desert they could. This time around, Addy was a little bit hungrier. She ate faster than she was used to, yet still finished ages before anybody else. She looked up and noticed a Beauxbatons girl stand and make her way to the Gryffindor table, having a small conversation with the students present. She was beautiful, even the Slytherin girl had to admit. She caught the attention of every boy in her vicinity. Fred and George Weasley were too, infatuated by the girl before them. Adalinda felt a twang of emotion in her chest as she saw the look of adoration they held. She was sure it was jealousy she was holding, but she refused to believe it was on Fred Weasley's behalf. She passed it off to herself as anger at the fact they were kneeling before a new girl instead of her. Still, as much as she tried to ignore it, she couldn't help but notice she didn't care about the wandering eyes of George. She didn't care about the caught attentions of the variety of students. She only felt the anger bubble inside her when she saw Fred, open mouthed staring at the girl.

She let her attention draw back to the man sitting on her right. The thought was still drilling the back of her mind; she couldn't care about it. She made herself believe she was angry simply at the girl herself. She carried herself like she was the prettiest, most important person in the building. The Durmstrang boy looked back over at Addy after finishing his food. He was much more tame than the boys in her house. He ate like a civilized person, not messing or acting as if he'd never eat again. She had to ignore his interested gaze as she remembered the boy on his opposite side. Her boyfriend, the one that should be looking at her as he did.

As the Slytherin and the other boy exchanged conversation, Fred Weasley caught himself looking over at her. He watched her admiration of the boy in front of her much like she watched his with the Beauxbatons girl. In truth, he didn't want to cling to her aura like he did. When the stranger came into his sight, he felt drawn to her, like he couldn't escape it. He didn't want to stare as much as he did, but when she held conversation with them, Fred felt unable to stop. It was different when he looked at Adalinda. He didn't want to look away from her. He watched often, like he was doing in that moment. Ever since the day they collided in the hallway, he couldn't get her off his mind. He never showed much interest in her before. Yes, he thought she was beautiful, but she was a Malfoy. The thought of it struck him with distaste. When he actually did get to speak to her, it was nothing like he imagined. She was kind and held a glimmer in her eyes that was so appealing it made him nauseous. He broke his trance when his brother elbowed him in the side, asking if they should get the age potion they had brewed that morning.

The day was still light outside as they left the hall, though soon to come to a close. As speculations of students arose of who they thought would be picked, Addy let herself go to where the Goblet was placed. Her, along with many students formed around it. The underage students stood cautious of being close, afraid they would accidentally pass the age line. Adalinda let herself lean against the wall across from it. She watched as students placed their names inside. Adrian took his post next to her, grabbing her hand. She barely put strength into holding it as he laced their fingers. She observed Angelina Johnson and Cedric Diggory let their names fall inside of the flames. Marcus Flint and Lucian Bole also chose to put their name into it. Addy knew they wouldn't be picked. It was foolish that they'd even attempt to. Lucian may have stood a chance, but she found it funny that Marcus even tried.

She noted that every student from the visiting schools entered their name. Addy wasn't interested in trying to put her own in, but she found it amusing to watch and see who was. She watched as Fleur Delacour's paper floated into the blue flames. It captured it in an elegant fashion. Then, as he stepped away, two booming voices rounded a corner followed by a storm of red and gold. Adrian sent his girlfriend a look as she followed the Weasley twins with her eyes. As the boys stood before the age line, they stared at each other with smiles dancing on their lips.

"Ready, Fred?"

"Ready, George!" The two linked arms and pushed vials of a potion to their lips, swallowing it as fast as they raised them. Aging potion, she thought. Clever. Minimal to no change ensued in their faces. An aging potion was good when used for the right reason. She believed that a simple trick would not fool their headmasters powerful enchantment. They waited a few more seconds before jumping into the circle around the goblet. When nothing happened, they cheered in excitement. Voices of others around them murmured in astonishment. They danced around like fools who just won the lottery. As they moved to place their names inside, the hall was silent. The flames engulfed their papers as another round of cheers erupted. Just then, the fire of the goblet manifested and pushed towards them, and they were blasted back with a powerful force. They landed feet away from their challenge, and on the floor. They gazed at each other when they realized what happened.

The Slytherin girl was biting back laughter. When the crowd dissipated around them, she could see their faces. Wiry, sporadic white beards dominated their faces. The ginger hair that usually sat atop their head had turned grey. As they took in each other's appearance's, a grunt of discontent escaped both of their mouths.

"You said!"

"No, you said!" The two lunged at each other. In the heat of the moment and chaotic events, Adalinda found herself cackling at their antics once more. As she did so, Adrian's temper rose sky high. He grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the lot of people who had gathered around. She fought against his hold, but he had a solid grip on her. As they left, the twins had stopped fighting. Now, Fred and George watched them leave.

"Adrian, shove off!" She warned, but he didn't listen. He dragged her away from the goblet and all the way down the halls back to the dungeons. In a deserted hallway, he stopped. The light had gone from the windows, and now the castle was only illuminated by lanterns on the wall. "What is your issue?" She pulled her arm away from him.

"My issue is you! I can deal with you looking over the Durmstrang boys, but Fred and George Weasley?" He asked, incredulously.

"I was not 'looking over' Fred and George Weasley!" She knew she was lying. She was issuing a denial so strong anyone could tell it was a lie. "They are blood traitors, and you are my boyfriend." She was using Adrian as a motive, or an alibi for her lies. Even as she spoke, she knew that Adrian could never make her feel the way she did when she looked at the ginger boy from the Gryffindor house. She didn't want to face the ugly truth she was piecing together in her mind. "I was laughing at their idiocy." She reached out and grabbed his face in her hands. "You know I love you." Even as she spoke the words to him, an unsettling feeling cane across her chest. She was never good at hiding her emotions. She didn't love him, but deep down she did have a liking for him. They both knew what she held for Adrian was not love, and soon, it would be even less than what she did hold for him in that moment.

Tags: @play-morezeppelin           

A lengthy, LENGTHY post on keeping yourself mentally safe AND politically active during this time of racial/political unrest

I wasn’t expecting the need to do another writeup again, but here we are, haha Taking this break day to discuss the NEW giant elephant in the room: the US has flared up in a gigantic racial conflict again after the high-profile death of another black American at the hands of the police. There’s no beating around the bush since everyone’s already talking about it, and if you haven’t heard about it til now (which hey, my analytics say some of you are pretty young, so I wouldn’t blame you), it’s been a greatly aggressive mess that everyone is feeling the pressure of getting involved in. Now, I usually don’t like getting publicly political, but that doesn’t mean that I as a creator am not a political person. Far from it; the moral matters of how people should be treated, what constitutes as “justice” and what to do when “injustice” is committed, are all very important subjects that we eventually learn to form our opinions on through life experience and interacting with the world, and will always remain relevant due to how we exist in the world under governments and cultures. It’s dishonest to say we have no belief in stuff like that, and ultimately unhelpful to deny our say in it. Politics are very important, and they matter. But I’m not here to get into a full filibuster about why you should support Black Lives Matter and be informed of the protests going on and what motivates them. The thing is that I trust all you lovely monitors and have the faith that we’re generally on board with at least adjacent beliefs in how the world should work -- the life of innocent people matters, racism and other forms of hatred are bad, killing people is bad, the misuse of authoritative power is unjust, etc. If someone asks me to explain in a multi-paragraph spiel why I believe people should believe these things since they think otherwise… I’ll kindly tell them “no”. Instead, similarly to my COVID-19 writeup, I just want to talk about some tips to help deal with the day-to-day of this ongoing conflict; not necessarily discuss politics in deep detail, but rather the handling of politics in your everyday life, especially during times of controversy. This is a VERY rough time for many people, online and off, and I think it’s as important to keep yourself healthy during this time of extreme tension as much as it is to stay strong regarding the conflict in which we are all in one way or another embroiled in. This writeup might be a little cluttered and clunky since many of these points are greatly interconnected, but just bear with me through this, and I hope the points I make will make sense in the end.

=========================== 1) JUSTICE IS THE BOTTOM LINE =========================== Let me establish something as clear as I possibly can right off the bat: The ultimate goal of rebellion (especially this one based in activism towards the better treatment of black lives) should not be to create stress to psychologically destroy everyone in the vicinity, but to inspire change for the better. The systemic allowing of authorities to misuse their power for hateful purposes should not merely be a seen as an excuse to get angry at the world, but an injustice that must be corrected, and the bottom line of protest is not merely agitation, but actual change. I feel like this should ultimately be pretty obvious for a lot of people, but because change is a very difficult thing in general and because the protests have provoked turbulent response, it’s very easy to lose sight of what we’re actually doing and why, especially for the young adults whose first exposure to complex and nuanced politics is through times like this. Make no mistake, at the end of the day, getting justice for George Floyd and the countless other African-Americans lost to police brutality is the goal. So… why is this controversial? Well, because... =========================== 2) POLITICS ARE COMPLICATED (AND WHY WE MUST BE CAREFUL AND PATIENT WITH IT) =========================== Kind of an obvious statement, but politics are VERY complicated, often to the degree that they can be extremely overwhelming, especially to the young and inexperienced. So I want to start by just making some sense out of the chaos to make what we’re all dealing with more digestible for later. There’s a lot of ways politics can be controversial that I feel should be obvious on a fundamental level of “not agreeing”, but the facet I want to focus on is the fact that in discussion about what’s “morally correct”, morals are not synonymous with the rhetoric and methods with which they’re presented. Often times, people who agree on the same target goal will disagree on the actual means of getting to that goal. We’ve all been in the situation where we got angry at someone for saying something in a really bad way, and frustrated because we also thought “...they still have a good point,” but the delivery made both of us look bad. This is everywhere in politics, and is also just a fact of life and humanity; everyone will have their own opinions on what to do and why to do it, and they may not all be completely the same. That doesn’t mean that people who you don’t 100% agree with are definitively less worthy of being on your side, nor does it mean that people you don’t 100% DISAGREE with are suddenly worth your time. The point is that nuance should be expected… and that’s not unforgivable, contrary to what some people might want you to believe. There’s a frustrating narrative that’s sadly common (or at the very least, disproportionately vocal) within activist movements which social media isn’t helping with, and it’s the classic “you’re either with us or against us” philosophy. Again, this can manifest in many ways, but the prevailing modern take is the oft-unspoken assumption that anyone that doesn’t immediately qualify as an ally must be considered an enemy, ignorant, and/or at the very least worth showing contempt to unless they do something that suddenly makes them qualify as an ally. In other words, assuming the worst of people until proven otherwise. I’ll go into more detail about this further down, but simply put, I do not agree with this approach at all because it inherently roots itself in the presumption that personal philosophies are set in stone, and that it requires a Herculean amount of effort on the other party to change for you. Yes, YOU, the absolute moral victor who not only never needs to change or rethink anything by virtue of being the victor, but also gets to choose what counts as acceptable in the first place. This is not to say that activism is inherently dishonest or bad, merely that again, politics are complicated. This current Black Lives Matter boom and the various responses to it are very complicated, and despite this movement being a thing for a while now, not everyone is an expert on everything that happens and why, especially as it continues to develop. The most egregiously unhelpful part of the “people who are ignorant are enemies” assumption is that it forgets not only that ignorance is the default state everyone born into this world starts as, but also that everyone is perpetually still learning, and no matter what, it’s always possible to change your mind, whether you're 15 or 50. In turn, this implicitly encourages the rejects people who DO want to be accepted as an ally to a cause they ultimately believe in to rush into action just to stop being antagonized for not “getting it.” For your own safety: DO NOT RUSH INTO POLITICS, especially since the current-day responses to some of this conflict can get dangerous. It’s not even a case of getting peer-pressured to getting into a live protest only to do something that gets you shot at with rubber bullets -- you could end up saying something you didn’t realize was insensitive until it was too late, you could mistakenly contribute to a false charity fund or untrustworthy organization merely posing as an activist group, or basically anything that only affirms peoples’ perception of you as ignorant. Please, take your time. As sucky as it is to deal with peer pressure from the toxic people on your side, also remember that you’re not alone. Not just in the sense that there are people who want to understand and become better and more informed like you, but also that there are people who are on your side who WANT you to become better and more informed and will understand if it doesn’t come immediately. Being able to safely say you holistically “understand” is a process that requires a lot of time and thought ruminating about your morals and your place in the world (like, to adulthood at the least, basically), and I can say for sure that many people involved in these activist movements have grown up still understanding that. Also (and this is just a thing on life in general), don’t let mistakes damn you. While everyone should strive to do their best, especially regarding matters as critical and controversial as racial inequity in the justice system, mistakes should not be completely inescapable dead-ends, nor should they be seen as such. Every misstep is a hidden lesson. Did you fall into the trap of misinformation? Give yourself new perspective of what misinformation looks like to avoid it in the future. Did you realize that you’re being strung along in potentially negative action you don’t understand? When you’re skeptical, do your research. Did you end up in a confused place because the causes you followed have come into conflict? Give the time to reassess what you fundamentally believe in and why. In short, Be patient with what the world throws at you. Your friends and allies will love you more for being careful and smart than merely being the first to say something. =========================== 3) REMEMBER TO BE PATIENT WITH YOURSELF TOO =========================== Now I realize that the suggestions I just shared in that last section might read off as being easier said than done, which... yknow, it is. Again, change is difficult not just on a system level, but on an individual, personal level, even when they have to do with the same thing. But now with all that backdrop out of the way, let’s talk directly on mental health. Again. I’ve already discussed my thoughts and tips on keeping your mind healthy in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown (which still is important since the pandemic is still going on, LINK: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr7go6 ), and most of the stuff mentioned are still applicable to this new climate that I generally recommend still being practiced on a personal, self-care level: understand that even at the darkest, there will be dawn, keep yourself stimulated with regular activity, and be sure you get plenty of healthy sleep so you don’t spend your waking days tired and unable to lift yourself up. Of course, this is a new situation where the priorities are a lot different, namely that rather than merely keeping your sanity during a very passive time, this new situation is about social interaction, participation, and in general being active in big, drastic ways. That said, I don’t believe the fields are mutually exclusive -- I believe you can act for the greater good while preserving your own health, despite what some might be saying. Going back to that bit of internal gatekeeping of “you’re seen as an enemy until proven otherwise,” another part of what makes this thinking ultimately harmful is that the “line” which “separates” ally and enemy can be incredibly hazy and effectively whatever it wants, with the biggest narrative as of writing being that “silence means you’re complicit in allowing evil, and that if you don’t ever speak up, you’re a bad person.” Now there’s a lot to unpack from this, because this is a case where there is a good point, but it’s buried in vitriol. There ARE valid reasons for why someone would stay quiet, namely that not everyone has the same emotional/psychological bandwidth. Maybe people are having breakdowns because everything in the world angrily and violently collapsed onto them at once. Maybe they had burnout because the exposure dulled them of their usual ability to care. Heck, maybe there’s a way more corporeal issue in that they’re afraid for their own safety because of what they do or don’t say and are afraid of the consequences being literally dangerous, like they might lose their job or are gonna get targeted IRL. But does that constitute a free pass to sit this entire movement out? Well, as nice as it would be, the answer is “no”. Once again, the point of this movement is achieving justice, which I believe is a very worthy cause to take part in should we have the ability to, and I’ll be sharing stuff further down for those who can (and I believe most of you can). But the important thing to know now is that we and our brethren are not completely equal in terms of how smart, vocal, durable, or ultimately able we are, and that's FINE. I want you to know that just because you might not be as big in that regard as your peers, that doesn’t instantly make you “less” of a good person who can do great things, and I don’t think it’s at all wise to see action in a "flawless", black/white way. We all matter. And now is a time to do our best to stand united with our friends to affirm that black lives matter. Now, before I share in tips on how to go about being an active participant, since you’re here reading this huge-ass essay, this is a good time to reflect on where you stand from a mental health perspective, which is just as important and should be regularly checked upon as brushing your teeth. In addition to more visceral emotional reactions like secondhand trauma, other things like burnout and depression don’t just suddenly APPEAR. They creep up on you over time through prolonged stress, and they should be identified before they become a really crippling problem. No matter how passionate you are about advocacy and how much you believe in yourself, recognize that we are all still human, and that there are times that we need to stop, relax, and breathe. (like, literally! Take slow, deep breaths!) Ask yourself: are you physically feeling fatigued? How often? Is your overall morale good? What is your frequency of good to bad days, and is there any correlation you can find that dictates when they occur? Do you get instantly anxious and depressed when receiving certain stimuli like bad news? What about “good” stimuli like being empathetic or compassionate? Give yourself a patient, honest answer: how “well” do you feel? Like from my COVID-19 post, I want to remind that I am not a doctor who can necessarily prescribe things like therapy or give definitive treatment for every individual who reads this based on how they’re doing, and these suggestions are more stuff that I believe will help cope and take care of yourself just from experience. With that being said: • If you are feeling constantly exhausted, finding yourself unable to consciously self-care or work, I cannot recommend a healthy, regular sleep schedule enough. Do your best to be honestly consistent about it, your body and mind will thank you so much for good rest! • If triggering topics are festering in your head, learn how to practice meditation and grounding techniques. Meditating and grounding can be regularly used to help sway your mind away from the harsh topics your mind may wander into and fixate on in any given moment, and can be very helpful in allowing yourself to clear your mind from stress, as well as to refocus on what you’re really experiencing in the present. There are so many ways to approach these forms of treatment to try out, but just some online resources to get started: https://www.theawakenetwork.com/free-online-meditation-resources-for-the-time-of-social-distancing/ --- https://www.healthline.com/health/grounding-techniques • If the constant exposure to these ongoing, intense news and their discussions are becoming too much for you, it is completely within your right to turn off your social media, news, and halt your advocacy in general for a bit. Again, these are important, crucial topics which we ultimately fight for because we believe that things should be better, but if you start to feel legitimately traumatized and unable to properly handle new information to work, you don’t need to continue exposing yourself to it. Give yourself a break from it, you can join back any time once you feel strong again. • Stay connected to the people you trust. I firmly believe that empathy and friendship are more powerful than any kind of indirect threat like peer pressure in helping you stay productive while happy. You were probably already doing this because of the COVID-19 stuff, but now is especially a good time to come together with your friends and loved ones. No matter what, we all need our safety, reassurance, and love, and while we may not always be able to unload all our grievances onto each other (everyone has a right to their own mind they should take care of), there is nothing to be ashamed of in seeking out solidarity. That is a big thing with a movement like this, after all! • If you really believe you need professional help for constant distress, then genuinely good professional help is out there. If you have concern in finding proper mental health treatment (especially for black people), programs out there specifically with it in mind. https://twitter.com/mayarichardsun/status/1265676677549559809 One last point: it’s also important to understand that coping isn’t exactly the same thing as “self care”. We all have an obligation to act in ways that can in one way or another be seen as stressful, but also understand that not all methods to cope with it are equally healthy. What I suggested are very low-maintenance, low financial cost techniques, but there are other techniques like spending cash on clothes or (for some of us), binging on alcohol or other substances. Techniques like that aren’t strictly invalid as coping tools in moderation, but understand that ultimately, self-care is a form of reducing the harm you receive, and it isn’t necessary to cut into your finances or physical health just to not feel bad. Be safe about how you cope! =========================== 4) READY? GET SET. GO! =========================== There are so many ways that you can help with the Black Lives Matter movement that honestly, I’m kinda nervous about going in great detail about all of them since I feel like I might misword stuff that explains themselves very well already, haha. But here is a big, constantly-updating resource that I currently trust and follow: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co This Carrd page by @dehyedration is a very extensive page on “Ways You Can Help”, with links of direct support and additional educational guides for those who wish to be further educated (which should be all of us!). Included are: • Petitions to sign for justice not just for George Floyd, but other victims felled to police brutality (very low-cost and contains details for international). • Text/call contact info towards local govt. representatives who can bring George Floyd and others to justice. • Links to donation funds towards the victims, the protesters, to black-owned businesses, and other charity institutions (includes a segment for international links!). • Guides for live protesters, compiling resources for understanding your legal rights, links for assistance (including access to pro-bono lawyers), and tutorials on how to stay safe and treat injuries should things get hairy. • Additional resources on educating yourself on the topics of Black Lives Matter’s rhetoric and goals, the issues of systemic racism at large, debunking of common misinformation and outright hoaxes, and more! There are MANY way to contribute to the cause right now, and a surprising amount of it you can do in virtually no time. Signing the petitions alone can be all done in 5-10 minutes (give or take, given how many tabs you can open and keep track of at any certain time haha), and even if you can’t donate, there are so many ways to you express your support without needing to have to deal with pointless fights against Twitter trolls. Once again, I firmly believe that contributing to and being aware of a powerful, meaningful cause and keeping your sanity are not mutually exclusive. We can act for the greater good, and we can be healthy about it, so long as we remember to be patient with the world as much as we should be patient with ourselves, and together, we can do amazing things. And one final reminder: just because this is an important subject we should all do our part to get involved in this, that doesn’t mean you must sacrifice everything else in your life right now. As important as the discussion is and as critical a time it is for it to be visible, that doesn’t mean that you should be completely engulfed in it. You can still enjoy what makes you happy, healthy, and motivated enough to take part in this movement. To paraphrase many a wise men: take it, but you can take it easy! I’ll be leaving you with a link to a Twitter thread I found of a bunch of nice news regarding the ongoing protests, which contrary to what a lot of the media might say, is not all looting, fires, and tear gas. The people out there ARE there as a show of solidarity as much as much as support, and it's genuinely beautiful. https://twitter.com/tomakeupwityou/status/1266947871686959106 Stay safe, and stay healthy out there, lovely monitors! (and keep washing your hands!) 🖤🖤🖤

I Believe There is an Ongoing Insurrection in the United States...

...and it is not organic, or grassroots, or founded on legitimate grievances. Immediately, of course, people will point to the killing of George Floyd. Over which the nation is in agreement that the officer responsible should be prosecuted for the killing. He was in fact arrested and charged with Floyd's death - and yet, it was AFTER this that the bulk of protests, riots, looting, and destruction were carried out, all under the nom de plume of "Justice". No one could then, or can now, name what "Justice" the officer should be further subjected to beyond trial on the proper charges. Indeed, there is now concern from numerous legal analysts that Officer Chauvin may ESCAPE justice because the Minneapolis prosecutor's officer raised the severity of charges to satisfy subsequent demands from the mob - who then said it still wasn't enough and continued rampaging. All of this has been widely and, with extraordinarily rare exception, endorsed by the Democratic Party, in whose cities and states police brutality are most commonly normalized. This is the same party which, to prevent insurgent populist candidates from rising in their own Presidential Primary Debates, revised their debate rules midstream to allow former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg to join. Bloomberg, of course, was one of the architects of what "Black Lives Matter" protestors call "institutionalized racism" by deliberately targeting black neighborhoods for "stop-and-frisk" gun searches which did not require Constitutional limitations regarding "reasonable search and seizure". Their actual current Presidential candidate is Joe Biden, whose 1994 Crime Bill is also often cited by BLM as being racist in both character and intent. If institutionalized racism actually exists on a wide scale in the United States, it is as a direct result of these and similar Democratic Party social policies aimed at addressing urban crime. Yet, we hear virtually nothing from BLM, the Democratic Party, or in excess of 90% of mainstream news coverage about these policies, let alone concern over the party's culpability for them. This alone would not suggest an insurrection, only the usual sort of blame-rigging that both major parties are well known for when something they do lands the nation in a mess. It is, instead, the widespread decisions by party leadership, not just in relation to the shooting of George Floyd, which tell the tale: * Denying/denigrating the First Amendment right of peaceable assembly for one political viewpoint while permitting it for another (in turn creating numerous 14th Amendment violations regarding equal treatment before the law). In New York City, this has particularly targeted the Jewish community's access to parks and synagogues, with no corresponding outrage from party leadership. * COVID-19 is treated as sufficiently deadly as to justify the above restrictions - except for those particular political viewpoints currently being endorsed by the Democratic Party. Economic lockdowns in Democrat-held areas are being maintained, with the result that the economy is rebounding in Republican-held areas while Deep Blue states and cities face an actual legitimate Depression at this point. It is worthwhile to note here that numerous Democrat leaders and pro-Democrat pundits have, for years, been lamenting the pre-COVID economic boom, to the point of saying they were hoping for a recession just to hurt Trump's polling numbers (example: Bill Maher). * Allowing, and even openly encouraging, the spread of violence by conflating it with peaceful protests, often pretending it does not even exist. A notable incident would be a CNN crew being pelted with bottles by a passing car full of rioters as the reporter insists it wasn't meant "in a harmful way". * Ordering police stand-downs and retreats in the face of violent mobs. * Arresting citizens who lawfully counter-protest. * Arresting and charging with murder citizens who lawfully defend themselves against attacking mobs. I live by two Razors: Hanlon's and Ockham's. Hanlon says you should never ascribe to malice that which is more likely explainable by stupidity. This is best applied when speaking of individual people - but the uniformity and speed in which these actions manifest do not suggest independent individual action. It is more likely a party policy in operation, applying to all areas in which they hold sufficient authority to functionally enable it. Ockham says that the simplest answer to a question is usually the correct one. Many of the things the Democratic Party is currently doing not only depart from their official pre-Floyd policies, but clearly reverse themselves on a widespread basis dependent on whether BLM/Antifa or any given Conservative group is being addressed. The simplest answer is that these illegal actions are both intentional and meant to affect the political landscape in an election year. SUMMARY The Democratic Party appears to have already been actively engaged in hand-grenading the nation's economy under cover of COVID-19 lockdowns, and also appears to have deliberately harnessed the murder of George Floyd to incite both violence and the suppression of particular civil liberties to include freedom of speech, freedom of peaceable assembly, and equal treatment under law. They appear to be abusing those parts of the judicial system under their control, creating further injustices which have now sparked genuinely grassroots and organic counter-protests... which they immediately denounce and defame within minutes of each event. This is further amplified by a large portion of the press, who have been acting as though they are branded PR firms in the DNC's employ, facts and video be damned. On basis of the demonstrably unConstitutional acts of rights suppression being carried out by the Democratic Party's leadership for purposes of political benefit, on basis of the violence being allowed, endorsed, and enhanced by Democratic Party leadership, and on basis of deliberate destruction being invited and enhanced by Democratic Party leadership to the nation's economy - all apparently for political advantage - it is my view that the Party is in a state of Insurrection.

A Whole Bear World with Fartman

"BaeBae! BaeBae!" I chanted in Native American fashion as I playbeat Joebear's leg. 

Joebear laughed and chanted along.

Kissy sounded like the broken toys that never worked. The broken toys were much like the people in our neighborhood. To go forward, they have go backwards and sideways and do the twist. They get bewildered when you say normal shit, but when you talk crazy, they seem normal. They seem so allergic to new knowledge and to half-bears half-humans. 

They don't like computer science majors like Joebear or Albear. They start glitching and having panic attacks. 

Joebear mauled me and gave me a hug. I began to rub his bear butt. All of a sudden, I felt his butt begin to break wind. He let out a fart that sounded like an angel's trumpet. 

"Oh! My bowels are moving!" Joebear said as he ran into the bathroom and closed the door. 

Preston Nichols, the scientist, then faded into existence. "That toilet seat costs $150. But, it honors his bear butt," he said super seriously before he burst into laughter. 

His laughter is so contagious that I started to laugh. 

When Joebear emerged from the bathroom, Preston Nichols then faded out of existence. 

"You're an asshole," Joebear said super seriously before he burst into laughter. 

I started laughing hysterically again. My sides were splitting. My belly all of a sudden became super pregnant from laughter and the presence of Joebear's sexy bear body. 

--------------------------------------------------

I was on a hospital bed and contracting like crazy. Joebear, Albear, Fartman, Kissy, Garfield, and Tug were circled around me. The Chinese lady I met in the lab where we were first introduced to this mainframe was my nurse. I had learned that her name is Chung Ming. 

After Chung Ming helped me birth my first cub, whom Joebear and I named Paddington Joe, Fartman fell asleep in a chair. 

I fell asleep after Paddington Joe was washed and placed in my arms.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Fartman was melting his computers and his cell phones with his toxic farts. "Goddamn computers! They don't work! I can't get access to my bank account what the fuck?" he screamed. 

He threw his small, flip cell phone in the air and turned to fart on it. It disintregrated in thin air. 

"I'm so pissed I'm going to fart on every goddamn computer there is on the Earth!" he screamed as he farted on his silver laptop. "Fuck you."

He farted on boom boxes that sang "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by The Proclaimers. 

In fact, I watched him fart on the Publix ATM machine with his to the beat of "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by The Proclaimers. He also spoke in a Gaelic language as he farted on the ATM to submission. The ATM magically was restored to its former glory of being a new ATM machine. 

"You needed a zero at the beginning of every account number this goddamn bank has!" Fartman screamed. "Sangeetha!!!"

"I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by The Proclaimers was playing in the background as Fartman was running around and farting on random ATM machines. He even farted on the parts of Peter's computer that flew outside of his house.

Apparently, Peter was beating his computer inside of his house this time. I wondered if Ted the Alligator was arguing with him again. 

When Fartman returned home from farting on random ATM machines around the Southern United States, he came home and farted on the pieces of his new laptop computer. 

"I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by The Proclaimers stopped playing in the background.

I cracked up, laid on the couch, and damn near had a coronary from laughing so hard yet again. I could also barely breathe from the noxious fumes from Fartman's ass. 

"Fucking piece of shit. I just want to open up my computer and do a few things. I turn the damn fucking thing on, and three games and little gray creatures who drink Lysol pop up on my screen!" Fartman yelled a mighty Tarzan yell. 

"Holy Shit not again! Donald Marshall talked about them when he exposed the cloning facilities!!!!" I shouted while getting in a fetal position and snickering. 

"Oh God," he said. "Computers are getting worse and worse!!!!"

I laughed. He continued to fart on the laptop. "I have things to do. I don't have time to fuck with little gray creatures who drink Lysol," he said. 

I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by The Proclaimers started playing in the background.

"Seriously. Get this goddamn fucking shit off my computer!" Fartman yelled as he farted on the laptop to submission in rhythm with "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by The Proclaimers. 

I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by The Proclaimers stopped playing in the background. Mickey Mouse appeared, and  the Pokemon battle theme song started playing.

"You fucking asshole!" Mickey Mouse screamed at Fartman.

"What the fuck?! Who manifested YOU?!" Fartman yelled. 

"The little gray creatures in your computer that you broke!" Mickey Mouse yelled.

"Oh God get the fuck out of here!" Fartman yelled and sounded like George Carlin.

"Yeeeeessssssssssss!!!" Mickey Mouse sang before he vanished. 

The Pokemon battle theme song stopped. I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by The Proclaimers started playing in the background again.

Fartman continued to fart on his cell phone. He pooped his pants.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I was taking a dump in Fartman's bathroom and giving birth to yet another poop child. My butt was sore as I was pooping. 

This poop child was the longest one yet. I decided to call him Artemis Peter because he was tall. He was my fifth poop child... and also the messiest. I used every rag in the house to clean up after myself. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

A TV popped out of Fartman's cabinet and showed this commercial: 

Do you need to shave your beard?

Don't use your razor! 

Use the Vaginasaurus Rex!

The commercial showed a mound with mock pubic hair on it. The mock pubic hair was full of tiny razor blades that looked like pubic hair. The vaginal lips were in the middle of the mound, and a handle could go in there as a guide for the razor. 

The commercial showed the man shaving his beard and trimming his moustache with the Vaginasaurus Rex. 

Fartman and I laughed our asses off while the commercial was playing. 

"It will only cost you $19.99 plus handling if you order now by calling 1-800-VA6INA9," the commercial said. 

The TV went back into his cabinet. Fartman called 1-800-VA6INA1 and reordered the Vaginasaurus Rex. He wore out his first one by shaving too much.

My phone rang. I went to see whom it was. It was Joebear. 

"Hello BaeWhuhhhhhh!!!!" I yelled happily. 

"Bae! I need to tell you something," he said. 

"What, Buh?" I asked. 

"The hunger games are here," he said. 

"Excuse me. What?!" I asked. 

"It's true. The price of housing is going up. Food costs have skyrocketed in the last seven years, and families are fighting each other to survive, Bae. Our former friends are zombies and ghouls," he said.

"Yes, Bae. And don't forget! The new world order is here. The banks are changing the numbers on the account. The people have no money. The banks have all the money," I added. 

Joe was making all kinds of angry bear noises to prove a point.

"Damn, BooBoo. How did this happen?" I asked. 

"It has been happening since before our grandparents were born," he answered. 

"Damn, BaeBae. What shall we do?" I asked. 

"I SHOULD EXPECT MY VAGINASAURUS REX NEXT WEEK!!!??? THANK YOU!" Fartman yelled excitedly.

I giggled. Fartman is a fucked-up human being. 

"Finance an RV and live off the grid. Remember Zombieland," Joebear answered. 

"Oh yes. We must rebel against apartment complex companies, banks, insurance companies, myspace.com, and the new world order," I said.

Fartman was now farting obnoxiously on the printer. 

"Ugggghhhhhh!!! Can't have a conversation with THAT going on in the background!" Joebear shouted.

"I know, bae. Fartman is farting on his computer accessories again . I have to witness the never-ending farting," I said.  

Joebear growled loudly. "That's fucked-up," he said. 

"It is, but it's necessary," I said. "Computers are part of the new world order."

" Yes, BaeBae. Well, I won't keep you," Joebear said. 

"Love you, Boo!!!" I yelled. 

"Love you, Baelove!!!" Joebear yelled before growling. 

I made dolphin noises in return. 

We both hung up, and I witnessed Fartman shitting on the printer. 

End music: "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers.  End scene: Fartman walking backwards toward the camera endlessly while farting to the beat of the song.

We’ve reached the climax

I know it’s been a long time since I updated. I don’t update often and sometimes forget I have this blog, but I had to follow up on my earlier Fourth Turning predictions.  I believe we are now, thanks to COVID-19 and our reaction to it, in the climax of the Fourth Turning (4T).  Please read up on Strauss and Howe Generational Theory if you haven’t heard of it before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

Trump is, whether you like it or not, the Gray (orange) Champion of this cycle. His approval keeps going up despite this crisis and it doesn’t seem likely that he will lose to Biden in the next election. But that could change, especially considering the long term economic effects of this crisis. Biden’s choice of VP is very important as whoever he picks is likely going to be the real president if Biden does manage to win. I'm guessing he's going to pick Kamala Harris, but I could be wrong. It's interesting to note that a presidential nominee has never died before the election, but that actually may happen this time considering the ages of the candidates and COVID19. And even if Biden does manage to survive to the election, he's already in his late 70s so he may not last two terms.

But it's interesting to note how unimportant these politics seem at this time. Issues that were huge only a month ago (impeachment, FISA abuses, even climate change) just seem trivial by comparison. This pandemic is a real crisis unlike anything we've been through. You would have to go all the way back to WWII to find a crisis that required such a level of sacrifice by the whole population and put us against so common an enemy. That being said, the hardships they went through is nowhere's near the same as what we're going through. Our lives have become undeniably a lot easier since then. But because we've become so accustomed to an easy life, even a mild crisis, like this, seems difficult. So compared to what we've become accustomed to, this is our version of the WWII climax of the last 4T.

And like the great depression and WWII changed the world permanently, so will this crisis. The last 4T saw the permanent addition of social safety nets, ie Social Security, unemployment insurance and Medicare. As a result of this pandemic, we will very likely see additional permanent changes to healthcare and the introduction of something like a Universal Basic Income (UBI) due to the massive damage this crisis has done to an economy that was booming just a month ago. Even Republicans are supporting UBI now, and it may replace Social Security and unemployment insurance entirely. And I don't see us putting the UBI genie back in the bottle once this crisis ends either. Politicians that run on a platform to end UBI will very quickly lose support. UBI will become the new "third rail" in politics like Social Security has been for so long.

But UBI, by itself, will not be sustainable. For those of you who are familiar with my posts, you'll know that I was always in favor of UBI, but preferred the Gary Johnson model over the Andrew Yang model. The Gary Johnson "Fairtax" model involved switching away from a federal income tax system to a consumption tax system, and using a percentage of the consumption tax to fund a monthly UBI prebate or "tax refund". The reason being that if UBI was funded by income tax, the incentive to work will collapse. If the checks were big enough, most people would prefer to collect free government money rather than work, and there wouldn't be enough income tax revenue to fund UBI. Plus the resentment between the workers funding UBI, and the non-workers collecting UBI will become unsustainable after a point. At least, if it were funded by a consumption tax, everyone would be paying into it, not just the people with jobs. Gary Johnson's UBI model could stand the test of time. Andrew Yang’s could not. So it's likely that we will see something like the Fairtax being instituted to keep UBI sustainable.

As more and more schools and companies adopt a work from home model, I have a feeling this is another genie that we will not be able to put back in the bottle. Work from home will become the norm, except for jobs that can't physically support a remote work option. School will also adopt more of a remote desktop model, and I see homeschooling becoming way more prevalent after this.

Looking at the big picture, I see this crisis as the death knell for globalization. The trend towards globalization had already been losing ground with Brexit and Trump's election, but this just killed it. Borders are more secure than ever, and although it will ease up a bit, I don't see the "open borders" argument regaining ground any time soon. Yet, despite how socially isolated we've become, we're becoming more connected than ever online. But I see us ultimately becoming more domestically focused. Economically we're already seeing a major push to rely less on other countries (especially China) for manufactured goods. There’s already been a movement away from over-centralized economies and this trend is likely to continue as we'd want to be more prepared for another crisis like this. It's interesting to note that WWII ultimately resulted in increasing globalization. This crisis is resulting in the opposite.

So let’s re-examine Strauss and Howe Generational Theory and see how things line up.  S&H Theory is generally based on US history, but can be applied to other countries as well if you adjust the dates and major events.  Keep in mind I don’t view S&H Theory as a science.  It’s really just a framing device.  It’s an interesting way to organize history.  It is highly subjective (and that’s what makes it so much fun to study).

Strauss and Howe identify four turnings in each Generational Cycle:

The First Turning is a high or recovery. (Spring). ie Reconstruction (1865-1886).

The Second Turning is an awakening. (Summer). ie The Gilded Age (1886-1908).

The Third Turning is an unraveling (Autumn). ie WWI and The Roaring Twenties (1908-1929).

The Fourth Turning is a Crisis (Winter). ie The Great Depression and WWII (1929-1945).

Strauss and Howe broke the Fourth Turning up into four phases: 1. Catalyst - Event that sparks the crisis. (ie Stock Market Crash of 1929) 2. Regeneracy - Call to Action and unity in response to the crisis. (FDR's New Deal in the mid 1930s) 3. Climax - Darkest point of the crisis. (Attack on Pearl Harbor 1941) 4. Resolution - Winners and losers are decided, and new institutions rise as the country is put on a new trajectory. But every solution creates a new problem, and the next cycle is all about addressing that new problem. I generally agree with the dates and analysis Strauss and Howe gave for the above Great Power Cycle (1865-1945), however, I disagree with the way they divided up the Civil War Cycle, and I’ve discussed that at length in an earlier post, but here’s a summary: First Turning - 1789-1807 - The Constitution is ratified and the states come to a compromise on how to deal with slavery. George Washington becomes the first President. A new country is established and party lines are drawn between John Adams' more classically conservative "Federalist Party" and Thomas Jefferson's more classically liberal "Democratic-Republican Party".  The US gains the midwestern territories and the issue of slavery in these new territories reopens the divide between the pro-slave and anti-slave states. Second Turning - 1807-1828 - The Atlantic Slave Trade is banned and slavery ends in the North. The War of 1812 results in the collapse of the Federalist Party and the "Era of Good Feelings" begins. Only one party, Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, is dominant for the rest of the turning. The expanding cotton industry makes the southern states a lot more reliant on slavery. Third Turning - 1828-1848 - The Election of Andrew Jackson ends the "Era of Good Feelings". The Democratic-Republican Party splits into a more populist left wing Democrat Party and the more classically conservative Whig Party. The Democratic Party dominates this turning and slavery becomes more entrenched in the Southern States.  The abolitionist “Free Soil Party” splits away from the Democratic Party. Manifest Destiny, The Gold Rush and westward expansion results in The Mexican War and Sectionalism. And I would break up the Fourth Turning into these phases: 1. Catalyst - 1848. The Mexican War ends and the issue over whether new territories should be free states or slave states becomes an even more controversial and divisive issue than before when the midwestern territories were gained. 2. Regeneracy - 1850. The Compromise of 1850 at first unites the country, but ultimately results in more division. The Whig Party splits in 1852 over disagreements with The Compromise.  The pro-compromise faction joins the Democratic Party or joins up with third party coalitions.  The Whigs that were against the Compromise and were more fervently anti-slavery forms a coalition with the Free Soil Party.  The Republican Party is born. The country is divided between southern pro-slave, and northern anti-slave lines even more than before. 3. Climax - 1860. Lincoln is elected and the Confederacy breaks away, resulting in the Civil War. 4. Resolution - 1865. The North wins the Civil War, Lincoln is assassinated and Reconstruction begins in the next 1st Turning.

But most of you are probably more interested in my thoughts on this current “Cold War Cycle” (1945-Present).  Well, I agree with the first half of Strauss and Howe’s analysis.  But would make some changes to the second half:

First Turning - 1945 - the USA and USSR emerge from WWII as the two dominant world powers.  The Cold War begins. The Korean War breaks out and ends in an armistice. Keynesian Neoliberalism replaces Classical Liberalism and Progressivism in the Democratic Party. The UN, NATO and the IMF world bank is established as the world becomes more globally centralized. The Civil Rights Acts of the 50s and early 60s to end Jim Crowe and Segregation are put into effect and the Federal Government gains more power over the states.

Second Turning - 1964 - JFK is assassinated and the Cold War heats up with the Vietnam War.  The peace movements quickly make the war unpopular.  Neoconservatism (a more conservative, supply side flavor of Neoliberalism) begins to emerge and dominate in the Republican Party. The gold standard is officially abandoned and the classically liberal Libertarian Party forms to challenge the more dominant and interventionist Neoliberalism of both parties. Nixon resigns in shame as a result of Watergate. Rapid stagflation ensues and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976 is the last time The Democrats are able to win the southern states. A poor economy, his pessimistic malaise speech and mishandling of the Iran situation results in his loss to Reagan in 1980.

Third Turning - 1980 - Strauss and Howe start this turning with Reagan’s optimistic “Morning in America” campaign in 1984 that resulted in his sweeping electoral victory. But I chose to move it back earlier to 1980 when he won his first term, since that’s when things really started to change. The economy soared for most of the 80s and 90s and the USSR collapsed in 1989. The other major communist power, China, adopted a more free market friendly economy, but never completely abandoned communism and totalitarianism. The Culture War heated up as the more traditional values of the right clashed with the more progressive values of the left. Universities, schools and the press became more left leaning. Immigration and Globalism increased as America became more reliant on other countries (especially China) for manufacturing.

Fourth Turning - 2001 - Neil Howe believes the current 4T started with the 2008 Financial Crisis, and I used to agree with him.  But as time has passed it seems clear to me that it started on September 11th 2001.  Here are the phases of this current Fourth Turning:

1. Catalyst - 2001 - The terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 shocked the world and showed us that, just because the we “won” the cold war, we weren’t yet at peace.

2. Regeneracy - 2001 - The regeneracy for this catalyst was immediate as volunteers rushed in to save lives. Despite the growing culture war, the country came together with a new sense of patriotism. But over time, the unity collapsed as the war on Terror spread to Iraq and the Patriot Act was passed.  Anti-war leftists and libertarians turned against the hyper-interventionist surveillance state.  Events like Katrina in 2005, the financial meltdown of 2008, The Great Recession, And reactionary movements like The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter,  Gamergate and the Alt Right only served to further divide the country and exacerbated the crisis as the culture war raged worse than ever before. Mass Shootings became a regular occurrence as hatred levels rose, and the resulting gun debates only worsened the divide. Like it did during the Civil War 4T, the regeneracy failed. We hated each other more than ever. And it looked like the 2016 election was going to lead to another Civil War. The establishment and pro-war Neo-liberal and Neo-conservative factions of both parties became increasingly discredited in favor of an anti-war populism on both the left and right.  Brexit and Trump’s election saw a rejection of globalism and a desire to secure borders and bring manufacturing back home. The economy made a massive recovery after 2016 and was booming during the first few years of Trump’s presidency. But Trump was a divisive figure who was hated by the Democrats and he was impeached in late 2019.

3. Climax - 2019 - The first case of COVID-19 was discovered in Wuhan China in late November 2019.  The disease spread rapidly and resulted in thousands of deaths.  In the US, the politicians and press were distracted by the impeachment trial and were late to react.  China was unable to contain the disease and it spread all over the world.  By March 2020 governments all over the world mandated self quarantine, business lockdowns and social distancing.  The economy, which was booming only a month earlier, collapsed and drastic measures were needed to be taken to save people from falling into poverty while still protecting the public from infection. Congress is now attempting to come to an agreement on a massive and unprecedented two trillion dollar stimulus bill, funded primarily by the Fed’s magic creation of money.  But unlike the quantitative easing of the past, this time the money’s not just going to banks and major corporations, it’s going to businesses big and small and even individuals.  The increased demand that will result from so much money injected to the economy combined with a shortage of supplies will very likely result in rising prices like we’ve never seen before.  There will be attempts to price fix but as more and more businesses shut down the resulting shortages will force the government to allow price gouging. The stagflation will likely be worse than it was in the 70s and could lead to a monetary crisis. We may be heading into the worst worldwide depression we’ve ever seen.  To top it off, many countries are succumbing to the temptation of full on totalitarianism to manage this crisis. A world war is looking increasingly inevitable.  But hey, let’s try to stay optimistic and hopeful.

A 3rd year film festival retrospective.

Scumdance (Reno’s premiere underground film festival) has just completed its third year.  As such, this would probably be a good time for a little retrospective and as the festival’s sole proprietor/curator I would be glad to let a little light shine into the inner workings of what it takes to start a film festival, what it takes to keep it running, why I do this in the first place, and the lessons learned along the way.

How did we get here?  In late 2016 I was having conversations with friends, co-workers, bandmates and fellow film nerds about how there was real lack of local film festivals geared towards horror, exploitation, underground, B-movie, etc. types of films.  At the time our band’s practice space was in a warehouse on the edge of town where a loose artist’s community of sorts had taken shape.  Pottery studios, sculpture gardens, graffiti murals, custom hot-rod builders, welding shops, theaters, antique dealers and so much more was all happening in this row of warehouses. One particular spot became hugely inspirational. Next door to our practice space was an event location (for lack of a better term) called the Black Rock Drive-In.  A novelties collector had taken several old cars cut them down, installed benches within and parked them in front of a movie screen like an old-time drive-in movie theater, complete with a western setting sun mural painted on the warehouse’s interior. Combine this with his collection of Airstream trailers, mid-century furniture and appliances, and WWII memorabilia and you had the makings of a great film set.  

Standing outside that warehouse on a chilly evening, post band practice, and musing with our bass player Perry Disgrace, the thought was born… “We should totally put on a mondo-bizzaro film day with crazy movies and bands and just throw a party.” In the true DIY spirit of punk rock, the idea was born and efforts were put in place to manifest this reality.  When mentioning the idea to co-worker and fellow film nerd Gilbert Leiker, he responded “You should call it Scumdance and have the skanking guy from the Circle Jerks albums carrying a camera.”  Boom. Done. Within 20 minutes I had the logo and artwork in place.  I have a habit of taking ideas and running with them, even if they are not my own.  As Pablo Picasso is reported to have said “good artists borrow, great artists steal”… most likely he “borrowed” this from T.S. Eliot.  

As for the details of what it takes to put on a film festival, it’s honestly not all that hard. All you need is a laptop, a projector, a screen, a sound system of some sort, some chairs, a venue, a Film Freeway account and a website.  Having submitted a good number of my short films to a variety of film festivals and having received all manner of rejection (more on that later), the drive to experience critical evaluation of films from the other side was also a strong motivator in bringing this festival about. I already had a website devoted to my filmmaking endeavors. Adding a page listing the event details and linking it to a Film Freeway account was straight forward.  Acquiring the necessary hardware and physical assets was just a matter of pooling resources and gathering items that I already had. The matter of finding a venue has at times proved challenging. The aforementioned Black Rock Drive-In closed. Our favorite dive-bar, in which we hosted the event’s first year, has closed.  Finding the right venue that has a bar, allows outside food to be brought in, while having the right mix of size, space, seating and availability hasn’t been easy; but we have been fortunate enough to work with some fantastic bar owners who have been very accommodating.

The festival itself, wouldn’t be what it is without the amazing filmmakers who have submitted some truly incredible films and the ever enthusiastic judges. The panel of judges was built from a pool of friends some of whom I’ve worked with on previous film projects, some just having shown an overwhelming interest in film and some asked to join the panel after having submitted to previous year’s festivals. It is this last group with whom I am most excited to work.

So why would anyone do this? It’s a question I ask myself every year. Does it pay off when you consider: The countless hours spent watching, rating, and reviewing the films; scheduling a date, finding and coordinating with the venue ,updating FF and the website, attending local meetings to be included in Reno’s Arttown, writing press releases to be distributed on horror sites, selecting the films,  sending out acceptance and rejection letters, scheduling a run of show, setting up all the equipment, running the festival,  bringing food and snacks?   By the time I finish up the event I find myself exhausted.  It wouldn’t seem that sitting in dark room watching movies all day would be that taxing, but mentally, and emotionally it takes a toll… hoping nothing goes wrong technically, hoping that everyone (or at least most attendees) find something enjoyable in the films, hoping that the venue owner and bar staff are not completely annoyed with the films and are making a decent amount of tips, and hoping that there is enough attendance to make it all worthwhile.  While it might be “easy” to put on a festival, putting on a quality festival takes effort. That’s effort I’m willing to put in.  I want to make it the kind of thing I would be delighted to attend.

Of the benefits that come from running a festival, the number one has to be the relationships established.  This is the reason we make films in the first place. It’s all about human connection.  As I was saying above it has become our practice to ask previous year’s submitters to become next year’s judges.  George Sukara, a producer from a film submitted in the first year (HELL! The musical), has become an instrumental part of the festival. His critical insights in judging and undying support have been phenomenal.  It was great to have him at the festival, hosting one of the Q&A sessions, and bringing with him a crew of folks from San Francisco.  One of the other connections made that first year was a gentleman by the name of Michael Joy who brought us a film (Red Christmas) with Dee Wallace of Kujo fame. I’ve been working with Michael on spreading the word about Scumdance through his connections with Artsploitation Films and Horrornews.net.  The second year brought us some great filmmakers from Canada and Indiana, in Grace Mathisen and Adam Laughlin respectively.  Their films were superb, and it was great to have them there in person. They too have gone on to become valued Scumdance judges.  This last year, brought us filmmakers from Toronto, Houston, and Los Angeles.   The Audience favorite, Llamageddon (it’s exactly as it sounds) was written and directed by a young woman who was going by the name “Howie Dewin.”  Her astonishment at winning overrode even her astonishment at being entered in the festival at all (apparently someone on her production team entered the film without telling her as a fun prank).   Even after having a breakfast coffee and a decently long discussion with her, I never did find out her real name. We’ll be stoked to have her as part of the judging staff next year, that is if she responds to her “howiedewin” email.

One of the other great benefits of running a festival (or being a judge) is the experience gained by viewing so may films, of all quality levels.  You learn all the things not to do when making a film.  You see time and again, the overused tropes, the stock and often pointless dialogue, the desire to shock without attention to narrative, and films that are far, far longer than they need to be.   After all this one quickly gains an appreciation for audible dialogue, well thought out story lines, character development, motivated camera movement, inspired score/soundtrack, and tightly edited scenes.

Another wonderful discovery has been the insight into cultures and communities throughout the world that one would not have accessed otherwise.  It has been amazing to see films submitted from the US, Canada, The Netherlands, India, the UK, Austria, Iran, Italy, Mexico, and even Belgium.  In particular the films we receive from Iran have been nothing short of mind blowing. There is something so special about those films.  They tend to be intensely creative, original, inspiring, and chock full of touching humanity in a way that almost makes me reluctant to place them amidst our other less wholesome faire. Also of note, are the LGBT films we receive.  This year we had a film dedicated to trans-persons from Nepal, that was a rare insight into portions of the world not ordinarily seen.

As previously promised, I think it’s worth mentioning the feedback process.  One common thing that I noticed from festivals I was submitting to, was a lack of quality feedback.  For way too many festivals, it doesn’t seem they could even be bothered to change the judging status on Film Freeway… or if they did, it wouldn’t be changed until well after the event date.   For other festivals, they would change the status and send out the standard generic rejection emails. While they were intended to soften to the blow of rejection, they would do little to inform or provide one with any sense as to what could have been improved on the film…. no information on what exactly about the film caused it to fall short of the mark.   It was with this experience in mind that I personally made the decision to include judge’s commentary in both the acceptance and rejection letters. I feel it’s the least we can do to provide the filmmaker with meaningful feedback.

This decision has mostly been met with appreciation, but in some cases the feedback was viewed as “arrogant, presumptuous, and dismissive.”  I can certainly understand how after spending the enormous amount of time, energy and effort that it takes to make a film how one would be incredibly protective of the work.  One exchange with an initially upset but later apologetic filmmaker, gave me clear cause to stop and think about my intentions and motivations. Was I intentionally levelling overly harsh criticism against those who submitted to my film festival, as a way of feeling superior for the failings of my own films? It’s certainly something I need to be cognizant of going forward.  In the future, I hope to continue providing the judges commentary, but will most likely do so after an explicit opt-in scenario.

In regard to my own films, I’ve come to realize with much more clarity than ever that my films were being rejected for completely valid reasons.  I’ve seen what it takes to make a good film and the number one rule is to be entertaining.   In the age of short attention spans and a bajillion choices, it’s difficult (but more important) than ever to gain and hold someone’s attention.

So what’s next for Scumdance?  One exciting possibility discussed with the San Francisco crew is the idea of taking Scumdance on the road.  Perhaps we select the best films from the past 3 years and do a screening in SF or LA.   At some point it would be nice to get Scumdance into a proper movie theater as well, a but the lack of any historical or art house theater in Reno limits our options.  Another exciting possibility is the idea of bringing in a real host… someone with real entertainment value... someone like the subject of this year’s winning documentary, the Phantom Troublemaker.

Of course, I couldn’t do this without the love and support of my wonderful wife Amelia. In all it’s been a great experience that has promoted growth in me as a filmmaker and as a person. It’s been the impetus to build meaningful relationships that I otherwise would not have done and has given me cause to provide much needed exposure to small films.  This is something I want to keep doing, while growing the festival in organic and manageable ways.

Viva Le Scumdance!

Travis Calvert

Quotes for curious contemplation: John’s jealousy and possessiveness manifested in terms of family. (a compilation in progress)

Consider this a(nother) supplementary post to this ask, where I touched upon John’s absolutist outlook on relationships. Instances are specific to family, as I’ve noted in the title. More will be added as and when it occurs to me. (Other quotes for curious contemplation: John on distinguishing between best friends and partners, creative and romantic, male and female.)

If you’re wondering who else may have contributed to John’s perspective of love as a zero-sum game, here’s Aunt Mimi accusing John of, amongst other things, betraying her love by being generous to his estranged father and spending time with him:

I’ve been hurt. Cut to the quick. What do you think I felt like, when I’ve been with those Beatle parents, and have heard what they’ve done, for them? I was foolish enough to think, as I had you, and waited for you to be born, that I was father and mother to you. But my goodness, John, you didn’t want me. [laughs; bleak] You didn’t want anything to do with me. And a lifetime’s work was just thrown on one side as nothing.

And you say The Beatles were dumb. They may have been… but in many respects, they could’ve taught you a thing or two. The first thing they did was to make their parents secure. Forever. Knowing very well that they would always get it back. But oh no, you, right, left, center – anyone could have in. And then I had to ask you, this year, to help me out – a terrible thing for me, I’m telling you, it nearly killed me. I’d had the same money from 1962, and anybody with a little thought would have known that what I had was melting away, during that eleven years.

And it seems as though you hated the sight of me. You couldn’t bear the sight of me, and you never missed an opportunity to cut me down dead – in front of other people as well, which was even worse. But it didn’t do you any good, for people noticed. But you were very kind to Alfred Lennon, taking him round the West End and having him in your home. I don’t suppose it ever once crossed your mind that that would hurt me. Especially when you couldn’t stand the sight of me.

— Mimi Smith, recorded letter to John Lennon. (Early 1970s)

And because possessiveness and a sense of entitlement can linger long after the love has been lost or at least temporarily misplaced (see also John writing a song, well into househusband years no less, about the blustery American cowboy he suspected Cynthia was having an affair with in India), here’s John expressing his relief that he still effectively is the most looming presence in his father’s life and doesn’t have anyone else to compete with (while still being mindful of Mimi’s distaste for Alfred): 

Dear Alf Fred Dad Pater whatever,

It’s the first of your letters I’ve read without feeling strange – so here I am answering it – ok? As you know I’m pretty tied up at the moment, there’s a hell of lot to do – if I get time I’ll give Uncle? Charles a ring – but anyway I’ll get in touch with you before a month has passed – after that I’m going to India a couple of months so I’ll try and make sure we meet before then. I know it will be a bit awkward when we first meet and maybe for a few meetings but there’s hope for us yet. I’m glad you didn’t land yourself with a bloody big family – its put me off seeing you a little more – I’ve enough family to last me a few lifetimes – write if you feel like.

Love

John

PS Don’t spread it, I don’t want Mimi cracking up! (press I mean)

— John Lennon, letter to Alfred Lennon. (September 1st, 1967)

Where Paul is concerned, one can imagine John accompanying Paul to any number of Paul’s crowded and happy extended family gatherings and wishing, guilelessly, after that happiness and security for himself—

JOHN: I’m just turning out like all other parents, you see.

MATTHEW: [laughs] Obviously.

JOHN: But I must – I try and think about it, when [Julian]’s not there, I try to be rational. I’m trying to do it all right, but I’m sure it’ll all just turn out the same. And – I’m gonna try not to – you know. At least I’m thinking about it, now.

MATTHEW: But with that much experience behind you, now, would you like to have more children?

JOHN: Yeah, I – as many as come, you know. If Lennon roll out, as they. I like large families. The idea of it. 

— John Lennon, interview w/ Brian Matthew for Pop Profile. (November 13th, 1965)

—while also feeling resentful of and threatened by the importance of family and their emotional attachment to Paul. Consider the unpublished Record Mirror questionnaires everyone but John filled out circa early summer 1963, where John asserts himself in Paul’s answers (and past, and future):

McCartney’s response to the question regarding the biggest musical influence on his own career is initially completed in Lennon's hand in blue ink: John and why?: He's Great; McCartney scored out Lennon's confident answers replacing John's name with: Dad, adding: (he [Lennon] put that himself); as to a question about his future career if music was out, again McCartney crosses out Lennon's hand-written response: John and replaces it with: Tramp...

— Christie’s: Pop Memorabilia including the Collection of Alexis Mardas. (May 5th, 2004)

Not to mention John outright framing himself in competition with Paul’s father (and family) for Paul’s time, affection, and loyalty (the mitigating circumstances of which I’ve unpacked in the past):

[Paul] liked it with daddy and the brother… and obviously missed his mother. And his dad was the whole thing. Just simple things: he wouldn’t go against his dad and wear drainpipe trousers. And his dad was always trying to get me out of the group behind me back, I found out later. He’d say to George: “Why don’t you get rid of John, he’s just a lot of trouble. Cut your hair nice and wear baggy trousers,” like I was the bad influence because I was the eldest, so I had all the gear first usually.

So Paul was always like that. And I was always saying, “Face up to your dad, tell him to fuck off. He can’t hit you. You can kill him [laughs], he’s an old man.” I used to say, “Don’t take that shit off him.” Because I was always brought up by a woman, so maybe it was different. But I wouldn’t let the old man treat me like that. He treated Paul like a child all the time, cut his hair and telling him what to wear, at seventeen, eighteen.

But Paul would always give in to his dad. His dad told him to get a job, he fucking dropped the group and started working on the fucking lorries, saying, “I need a steady career.” We couldn’t believe it. So I said to him—my Aunt Mimi reminded me of this the other night—he rang up and said he’d got this job and couldn’t come to the group. So I told him on the phone, “Either come or you’re out.” So he had to make a decision between me and his dad then, and in the end he chose me. But it was a long trip.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld. (September, 1971)

John, in the same interview, immediately follows with a contemplation of the importance of family for Paul, and Linda with her “ready-made family” giving him what Jane Asher (or for that matter, John himself) couldn’t:

JOHN: So it was always the family thing, you see. If Jane [Asher] was to have a career, then that’s not going to be a cozy family, is it? All the other girls were just groupies mainly. And with Linda not only did he have a ready-made family, but she knows what he wants, obviously, and has given it to him. The complete family life. He’s in Scotland. He told me he doesn’t like English cities anymore. So that’s how it is.

MCCABE: So you think with Linda he’s found what he wanted?

JOHN: I guess so. I guess so. I just don’t understand... I never knew what he wanted in a woman because I never knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted something intelligent or something arty, whatever it was. But you don’t really know what you want until you find it. So anyway, I was very surprised with Linda. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d married Jane Asher, because it had been going on for a long time and they went through a whole ordinary love scene. But with Linda it was just like, boom! She was in and that was the end of it.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld. (September, 1971)

And because I can’t stress enough that the possessiveness and jealousy and resentment and longing flows both ways, here’s John bitterly lamenting both Julian’s attachment to Paul and Paul’s natural affinity with Julian/children in general (in stark contrast to his own perception of his faculty as a father):

SCHOENBERGER: How is it for an 11-year-old boy to have John Lennon as a father?

JOHN: It must be hell.

SCHOENBERGER: Does he talk about that to you?

JOHN: No, because he is a Beatle fan. I mean, what do you expect? I think he likes Paul better than me… I have the funny feeling he wishes Paul was his Dad. But unfortunately he got me…

— John Lennon, interview w/ Francis Schoenberger. (Spring, 1975)

Julian himself would lend a measure of credence to John’s paranoia:

JULIAN: [Paul] used to be a lot of fun, I remember. I mean… well, he was good with kids. [laughs] I’m not saying that Dad wasn’t, or is, or whatever. But uh, as far as I can recall, whenever Paul came round, we used to wrestle and fight and run around. Which was not something we did every day with Dad. We used to go for long walks in fields, and stuff like that. He’d tell me things, or point at things and say, “Look at that,” and “Look at this.” So in a strange way, Paul… almost, in some ways and sense, took over the role of Dad. Which is strange to say. But I do recall a lot of that going on, you know. Whenever he was there, it was always fun.

— Julian Lennon, interview w/ Elliot Mintz. (1988)

Which must have struck an especially discordant chord with John, as he seemed determined with Sean’s birth to keep Paul from taking any more of what wasn’t his to claim:  

He became so jealous in the end. You know he wouldn’t let me even touch his baby. He got really crazy with jealousy at times.

— Paul McCartney, “off the record” conversation with Hunter Davies. (May 3rd, 1981)

Having Sean and having a new go at being a good father didn’t exactly stop John from being niggled by Paul’s family (not to mention Paul’s continuing industriousness and creative productivity, recording music and going on tour all while taking good care of his family, and all else), however:

SHEFF: You say you haven’t really listened to Paul’s work and haven’t really talked to him since that night in your apartment—

JOHN: Really talked to him, no, that’s the operative word. I haven’t really talked to him in ten years. Because I haven’t spent time with him. I’ve been doing other things and so has he. You know, he’s got twenty-five kids and about twenty million records out—how can he spend time talking? He’s always working.

— John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy. (September, 1980)

To round up, a non-family-specific but nonetheless pertinent discussion with John and Yoko about love, jealousy, possessiveness, allowance, and self-fulfilling prophecy:

INTERVIEWER: Do you think people’s idea of love has changed, or young people’s idea of love has changed?

JOHN: I don’t. I think whatever love is – and it’s many many things – is constant. It’s been the same forever. I don’t think it will ever change.

INTERVIEWER: But do you think – I’ll say it this way. Do you think young people are now ignoring love, disregarding love, saying it doesn’t exist?

JOHN: How can you? It’s – it’s a sort of abstract concept that comes and goes whether you like it or not. Whatever legislation or whatever philosophies people have put out about it, it exists – without words, without philosophy, and without discussion.

YOKO: Yes, but I know why children, the young kids, are trying to ignore love. That’s very natural. Because they don’t get it and they’re bitter about it, so they’d rather not want it. You know that feeling about – well, you know that you’re not going to get it, and if you try to get it it’s so much pain, so you’d rather sort of pretend like you don’t want it. And you start to believe in that, like oh, “I’m glad that I’m not the type who falls in love, and I’m so glad about it because that way I don’t have to get hurt.” That’s sort of unreal.

JOHN: And they’re probably reacting against – they’d be reacting against the conception of “righteous” love that’s handed down from above over the centuries.

YOKO: Yeah.

JOHN: That’s what they don’t want. But real love they’ll get… whether they want it or not. It’ll happen.

...

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that a new attitude towards love and relationships – would it be fair to say we’re getting away from the property concept of relationships?

JOHN: Of owning the other person? I think – yeah, we could be. But uh… That’s all very well intellectually, but when you actually are in love with somebody, you tend to be jealous and want to own them, possess them a hundred per cent. Which I do.

YOKO: Yes, it’s real life, all that. And I do it too.

JOHN: But intellectually, before that, I thought – right. I mean, owning a person is rubbish, but. I love Yoko, I want to possess her completely; I don’t want to stifle her, you know? [Yoko laughs] And that’s the danger, it’s that you want to possess them to death. But… that’s a personal problem of mine.

YOKO: But we’re doing alright now – just very nice, you know. In other words, I think—

JOHN: It’s after the beginning, when it cools down a bit – not cools down, whatever, it st– uh, whatever the word is, you know – that you can allow each other to breathe.

YOKO: Yes. When you relax a bit, you know.

JOHN: But at first you tend to strangle each other, I think.

YOKO: And [inaudible] we’re starting to relax—

JOHN: And because you have so little as a child, I think it is, you – when once you find it, you want to hang onto it, you grab it so much you tend to kill it.

— John Lennon and Yoko Ono, interview for Women’s Hour. (May 28th, 1971)

Cue You made me love you / I didn’t want to do it... (Insert footage from Magical Mystery Tour of the Beatles singing the song here.)

And - it’s a bit of a self-serving interpretation of the case referenced, admittedly, but it is bizarrely appropriate, and the sentiment of each man killing the thing he loves stands:

Well, there was this Japanese monk, and it happened in the last 20 years. He was in love with this big golden temple, y’know, he really dug it, like—and you know he was so in love with it, he burnt it down so that it would never deteriorate.

That’s what I did with the Beatles.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Alan Smith for NME: At home with the Lennons. (August 7th, 1971)

(Insert John’s dramatically ironic and appropriate love for Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca during the househusband years, chewy parallels between Manderlay and the Kinkakuji and Paul/the Beatles, deranged and convoluted essay comparing John and Paul/the Beatles with Mizoguchi and the Kinkakuji as depicted in Mishima Yukio’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, something something Rinzai something something El Topo here.)

Bungou Stray Dogs: European Ability Users HC Part 2

|| And part two because as I said, this idea escalated a lot. Again many thanks to @deyanirasan​ for brainstorming with me :)  ||

There's soon and there's too soon and really no one wanted to see Germany and Poland working together ( this is why Goethe has the dubious honor of working with Dumas ). So Poland makes teams with Austria and perhaps Stanislav Lem could have been more gracious when pitted together with his Austrian partner, Gustav Meyrink - hurling a night lamp at the other’s head may have been over the top - but really he had just woken up to find a stranger in his apartment. Perhaps the first meeting is not the most auspicious, but then again it's neither of their faults so they scratch it from recollection and start again the second day with proper introductions and a trip to the nearest cafe. 

It soon becomes clear the pairing is a success. Their abilities complement each other perfectly and between Lem's Solaris that brings the deepest guilt of anyone's soul to the surface, giving it tangible form and Meyrink's Golem that locks the enemy in his own mind, plunges him in agony and suffering, there's a reason why everyone is scared of them, even their own colleagues. There’s also a reason why the leaders have contingency plans in case they ever decide to turn traitor.

The Belgian and Netherlands representatives are a pair before the organizations even take shape. They merely appear one day and offer their skills. Masters of recon and stealth missions, nobody truly knows what they did before they appeared out of thin air. Anne Frank is young and sunny, the single bow in her hair and frilly dresses giving her an even more childish appearance. She is kind to everyone without fault, always quick to help wherever she can. Her youth allows her to move unquestioned, her innocence making others spill their secrets without even understanding who they are spilling them to. Her ability is healing, but not quite so. Not the healing of the flesh, not the kind that doctors do, mending broken bones and sewing up wounds. No, it is a feeling of warmth blooming over battered bodies, a feeling of strength rejuvenating even the weariest, the feeling of comfort when one is down and unflinching trust when one doubts themselves the most.

George Simenon is gruff where Anne is joyful, but he is ever patient and fair. Dressed like a detective from old mystery novels, wearing an old fashioned hat and lighting his pipe at a moment's notice, he is often passed off as yet another old style, eccentric bachelor roaming the streets of Europe. His ability, L'inspecteur, does not hide him from sight, but rather makes others unable to notice him. Simenon becomes a part of the scenery just like a brick wall or a light pole.

Spain and Portugal are another low maintenance team, but in a world where Dumas challenges people to a duel on a daily basis and Lem conjures manifestations of guilt for his peers when he is feeling bored, that is not encouraging. Still, the Spanish-Portuguese team is a highly successful one, less prone to causing mayhem and more likely to solving their missions in a quick and efficient manner.

Miguel de Cervantes is romantic and wistful, prone to singing odes to a woman none have met, a so-called Dulcinea. There is still a matter of debate whether the woman is real or merely lies in his imagination, but Miguel is smitten and there's not much more to say to that. He wears ruffled collars and makes wearing a goatee a fashion statement, has often been mocked for fighting uselessly against the windmills, but can never be daunted no matter how hard the mission can be. His ability, Don Quixote, is a bit of a mystery to all. They can never quite agree whether the way it works is real or whether it's simply an illusion conjured by their confused minds.

Jose Saramango is perhaps Cervantes' antithesis. Whereas the first looks as though he had descended from the tales of the Romantic authors, the former is clad in all black, silver haired and solemn, round glasses framing a similarly round face and a dark cloak billowing behind him. His ability, Death without Interruption, is able to negate any other healing ability and to also push over the threshold those lingering in a state of in-between. It comes as no surprise that his weapon of choice is a scythe as opposed to a dagger or a gun.

The Iceland-Denmark duo comes during a dark winter night, when the wind is howling at the window and the trees are creaking ominously in the frozen landscape. Hans Christian Andersen is blue eyed and fair haired, a fur cloak lining his shoulders and sturdy boots in his feet. He pushes the storm back with his ability, allows the Snow Queen to pave the path for them and grins unrepentant when he pushes open the locked doors of the organization and makes his way inside uninvited.

Snorri Sturluson rolls his eyes, annoyance grumbled in his long, white beard, but nevertheless he too makes his way inside. A man of few words, even when dealing with his partner, Sturluson seems as unhappy to be in the organization as he would be anywhere else. His words, when uttered, boom like thunder, conveying annoyance and disregard for just about anyone. He only seems to liven up in the presence of children and holds a deep affection for Anne. His ability, Elder Edda, brings the hammer of Thor to mind, when thunder starts falling from the skies and bursts of electricity hit his enemies with uncanny precision.

If the organization found it hard to find a match for French and German ability users, it  soon discovered that to pair Romanians and Hungarians was an absolute nightmare. Although cordial and  icy polite, there was a definite lack of trust that permeated in whatever dealings they had. It was hard, no it was downright impossible and they were about to call it quits until...  

Until Magda Szabo and Ion Luca Caragiale first started snipping at each other, trading sarcasm and witty remarks. The woman, previously unimpressed by her partner, found it a challenge worthy of her to keep the pace and retort in kind to Caragiale's quips. And what started as an argument where insults were hurled turned into a game that left the others baffled. At the end Magda gave her partner a glace of appraisal and the worthy praise of "well could have been worse”.

( piece written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali- fellow at Stanford University and Somali first Generation American)

Outrage is the natural response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. Yet outrage and clear, critical thinking seldom go hand in hand. An act of police brutality became the catalyst for a revolutionary mood. Protests spilled over into violence and looting. Stores were destroyed; policemen and civilians injured and killed. The truism “black lives matter” was joined by a senseless slogan: “Defund the police.”

Democratic politicians—and some Republicans—hastened to appease the protesters. The mayors of Los Angeles and New York pledged to cut their cities’ police budgets. The Minneapolis City Council said it intended to disband the police department. The speaker of the House and other congressional Democrats donned scarves made of Ghanaian Kente cloth and kneeled in the Capitol. Sen. Mitt Romney joined a march.

Corporate executives scrambled to identify their brands with the protests. By the middle of June, according to polls, American public opinion had been transformed from skepticism about the Black Lives Matter movement to widespread support. Politicians, journalists and other public figures who had denounced protests against the pandemic lockdown suddenly lost their concern about infection. One Johns Hopkins epidemiologist tweeted on June 2: “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”

Although I am a black African—an immigrant who came to the U.S. freely—I am keenly aware of the hardships and miseries African-Americans have endured for centuries. Slavery, Reconstruction, segregation: I know the history. I know that there is still racial prejudice in America, and that it manifests itself in the aggressive way some police officers handle African-Americans. I know that by measures of wealth, health and education, African-Americans remain on average closer to the bottom of society than to the top. I know, too, that African-American communities have been disproportionately hurt by both Covid-19 and the economic disruption of lockdowns.

Yet when I hear it said that the U.S. is defined above all by racism, when I see books such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” top the bestseller list, when I read of educators and journalists being fired for daring to question the orthodoxies of Black Lives Matter—then I feel obliged to speak up.

“What the media also do not tell you,” I tweeted on June 9, “is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you. We have our problems and we need to address those. But our society and our systems are far from racist.”

America looks different if you grew up, as I did, in Africa and the Middle East. There I had firsthand experience of three things. First, bloody internecine wars between Africans—with all the combatants dark-skinned, and no white people present. Second, the anarchy that comes when there is no police, no law and order. Third, the severe racism (as well as sexism) of a society such as Saudi Arabia, where de facto slavery still exists.

I came to the U.S. in 2006, having lived in the Netherlands since 1992. Like most immigrants, I came with a confidence that in America I would be judged on my merits rather than on the basis of racial or sexual prejudice.

There’s a reason the U.S. remains, as it has long been, the destination of choice for would-be migrants. We know that there is almost no difference in the unemployment rate for foreign-born and native-born workers—unlike in the European Union.

We immigrants see the downsides of American society: the expensive yet inefficient health-care system, the shambolic public schools in poor communities, the poverty that no welfare program can alleviate. But we also see, as Charles Murray and J.D. Vance have shown, that these problems aren’t unique to black America. White America is also, in Mr. Murray’s phrase, “coming apart” socially. Broken marriages and alienated young men are problems in Appalachia as much as in the inner cities.

If America is a chronically racist society, then why are the “deaths of despair” studied by Anne Case and Angus Deaton so heavily concentrated among middle-aged white Americans? Did the Covid-19 pandemic make us forget the opioid epidemic, which has disproportionately afflicted the white population?

This country is only 244 years old, but it may be showing signs of age. Time was, Americans were renowned for their can-do, problem-solving attitude. Europeans, as Alexis de Tocqueville complained, were inclined to leave problems to central authorities in Paris or Berlin. Americans traditionally solved problems locally, sitting together in town halls and voluntary associations. Some of that spirit still exists, even if we now have to meet on Zoom. But the old question—“How can we figure this out?”—is threatened with replacement by “Why can’t the government figure this out for us?”

The problem is that there are people among us who don’t want to figure it out and who have an interest in avoiding workable solutions. They have an obvious political incentive not to solve social problems, because social problems are the basis of their power. That is why, whenever a scholar like Roland Fryer brings new data to the table—showing it’s simply not true that the police disproportionately shoot black people dead—the response is not to read the paper but to try to discredit its author.

I have no objection to the statement “black lives matter.” But the movement that uses that name has a sinister hostility to serious, fact-driven discussion of the problem it purports to care about. Even more sinister is the haste with which academic, media and business leaders abase themselves before it. There will be no resolution of America’s many social problems if free thought and free speech are no longer upheld in our public sphere. Without them, honest deliberation, mutual learning and the American problem-solving ethic are dead.

America’s elites have blundered into this mess. There were eight years of hedonistic hubris under Bill Clinton. Then came 9/11 and for eight years the U.S. suffered nemesis in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the financial crash. After that we had eight years of a liberal president, and the hubris returned. Sanctimonious politics coincided with deeply unequal economics.

Through all this, many Americans felt completely left out—of the technology boom, of the enterprise of globalization. I never thought I would agree with Michael Moore. But at an October 2016 event, he predicted that Donald Trump would win: “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest [middle finger] ever recorded in human history.” I still think that analysis was right. Mr. Trump wasn’t elected because of his eloquence. He was elected to convey that middle finger to those who had been smugly in charge for decades.

But you can’t give the middle finger to a pandemic, and 2020 has exposed the limitations of Mr. Trump as a president. Yet when you look at the alternative, you have to wonder where it would lead us. Back to the elite hubris of the 1990s and 2010s? I can’t help thinking that another shattering defeat might force sane center-left liberals into saying: That wasn’t a one-off; we’ve got a real problem.They’ll be in the same position as the British Labour Party after four years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and two election defeats, when eventually the moderates had to throw the leftists out. One way or another, the Democratic Party has to find a way of throwing out the socialists who are destroying it.

The Republicans, too, have to change their ways. They have to reconnect with young people. They have to address the concerns of Hispanics. And they have to listen to African-Americans, who most certainly do not want to see the police in their neighborhoods replaced by woke community organizers.

We have barely four months to figure this out in the old American way. To figure out how to contain Covid-19, which we haven’t yet done, because—I dare to say it—old lives matter, too, and it is old people as well as minorities whom this disease disproportionately kills. To figure out how to reduce violence, because the police wouldn’t use guns so often if criminals didn’t carry them so often. Perhaps most pressing of all, to figure out how to hold an election in November that isn’t marred by procedural problems, allegations of abuse and postelection tumult.

Who knows? Maybe there’s even time for the candidates to debate the challenges we confront—not with outrage, but with the kind of critical thinking we Americans were once famous for, which takes self-criticism as the first step toward finding solutions.

Ms. Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution

Janelle Monae’s Grammy-Nominated ‘Dirty Computer’ Is The Album Black Women Need Right Now

Getty Image/Bad Boy Records

“I go forth alone and stand as 10,000.” — Maya Angelou

As the opener of Janelle Monae’s newest record bursts into its second track, the fluorescent pop-rap fusion of “Crazy Classic Life,” I can hear traces of the expansive synth-crazed ‘80s I was born into. Legwarmers and big hair; Phil Collins and Boy George; Flashdance and Pretty In Pink. And, of course, the way the song’s booming, frolicky production is complicated by lyrics of impending doom, “So if the world should end tonight / I had a crazy, classic life.” That last line of that otherwise upbeat hook feels holy, immortal — and timely.

When I listened to Dirty Computer for the first time, it was like hearing my Black, blue-collar, southern girlhood set to a soundtrack of big, bright ‘80s pop — only this time with the mic in my hands. For all my infatuation with the music and culture of the ‘80s, there had been a gulf between me and Sixteen Candles’ Molly Ringwald, between me and even the inevitably doomed Culture Club hook I still remember by heart: “Time won’t give me time…” Even as I watched the culture from somewhere outside it and sang along to its music, I wondered if there could ever be a time when the gulf between us would lessen — a moment in which the culture I idolized might fully be mine.

Beginning with the Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase) EP, set in the year 2719, Janelle Monae introduced her alter-ego Cyndi Mayweather, a genre-hopping, Black female android who was being hunted for the crime of falling in love with a human. Cyndi’s epic cyborg saga developed further on 2010’s critically acclaimed The ArchAndroid — a supersonic admixture of R&B and funk threaded with rock, euro-folk, rap, and cabaret — and a project that cemented Janelle as the kind of artist my college professor would call a “cat on a hot tin roof.” Or, more directly, a transgressor of genre lines, lyrically, visually, and sonically.

Noted for bringing Afrofuturism and science fiction into R&B and pop in a big way, Monae’s music has been compared to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, her beloved former mentor Prince, and Sun Ra. Over the course of a decade and three project releases, Monae built an Afrofuturist femme-ruled universe in which she reigned as “funkstress,” defying easy categorization and, according to scholars, re-framing a historically male-centered Afrofuturism like Clinton’s into a neo-Afrofuturism that centers black women — an extraordinary feat for an artist still as early in her career as Monae.

On Dirty Computer, which is considered by some to be a sort of prequel to Cyndi Mayweather’s universe, Monae’s decade-long Afrofuturist world-building collides into biomythography, a literary genre that merges history, fact, and myth. Coupled with the fact that the album’s massive Grammy nominations precede Cyndi Mayweather’s lush 2719 “cybersoul” funkscape by exactly 700 years, the project’s timing feels mythic and magical — as if Janelle can manipulate time and space themselves to reflect her reality.

Audre Lorde coined the term “biomythography” in 1982 to house her newest project Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. The self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” created the category in response to the limitations of the genres she’d been tethered to her whole career. A convergence of history, memoir, and myth, biomythography was a space where Lorde could represent her queered, Black, working-class womanhood without the socio-political limitations of established genres that were already irrevocably male-centered and heteronormative minded. Within this new form, Lorde created a space where she could be feminine and masculine to a degree that was unacceptable to the “mainstream” literary canon or, put more simply, be her entire self.

In the case for Dirty Computer as biomythography, the “myth” is embedded in the album’s Android saga backstory. Because of it, we can see three women in Dirty Computer’s cover art: Cyndi Mayweather, Janelle Monae, and Jane 57821. Here, myth and magic create a space for the reclamation of female autonomy flying in the face of powerful, oppressive men and contextualizing female rebellion against misogyny as both an epic and a timely battle. Consider the pointed lyrical rebuttal of “I Got the Juice.” In this instance, pussy is mythical, “divine,” and has political power: It will “grab you back” and give you “pussy cataracts.” This phrasing is threaded with myth, but also functions as a real response to one of the most misogynist comments in America’s pop culture memory.

Dirty Computer’s accompanying emotion picture opens amid a cultural “cleaning” of epic proportions. As mugshot-like photos of citizens appear one after the other, Jane 57821 narrates: “They started calling us computers. People began vanishing. And the cleaning began.” Jane explains the qualifications for said cleaning — “You were dirty if you looked different. You were dirty if you refused to live the way they dictated…” — before an all-important concept emerges in the exposition’s final word, appearing on the screen just as Jane concludes: “If you were dirty, it was only a matter of time.”

Time is, in fact, the major difference between Dirty Computer and its Android saga predecessors. Monae croons in the album’s opener: “I’ll love you in this space and time,” and unlike her past work, this album’s footing is firmly in the present. In a conversation with Billboard Monae said of the project: “Overall, I wanted to reflect what’s happening in the streets right now, and what might happen tomorrow if we don’t band together and fight for love.” This is not Cyndi Mayweather’s Afrofuturist funkscape future: This is Jane 57821’s buoyant, dirty, complicated pop present where she must take full ownership of the narrative.

Dirty Computer also feels biomythographical because of its position in real time and also because of its insistence on complete ownership. Lorde created biomythography out of a very real urgency to fully manifest her multifaceted identity, to define her work as she pleased, and Dirty Computer takes the same stand. On songs like “Americans” in which present day fact and historical memory collide, Monae takes “Americans” to task for racism, sexism, and heterosexism, transforming the word “American” into a loaded, often pejorative descriptor, but still insisting matter of factly: “I’m American.” This seeming contradiction re-frames the term to center the perspective of those historically oppressed and shows Monae, again, claiming full ownership of all facets of her own narrative.

On “Django Jane,” Monae uses rap not only as a means of “leveling up” to the male-dominated hip-hop industry, proving she can flow as well as any of the boys, but as a means of unearthing rap’s historical self — as a sociopolitical expression, from the mouth of a queer, dark-skinned Black woman, no less — tucked neatly into what is overall a sonically pop-oriented record. She dedicates her Emmy to the “highly melanated / arch-Android orchestrated” before the thread of inevitable doom resurfaces: “…tuck the pearls in / just in case the world end.” Taken together, the lines celebrate Blackness at the same time they express a hyper-awareness of its dangers.

In the same Billboard conversation where Monae references the album’s timeliness, she also says: “I’ve been inspired by the people that came before me, the artists who pushed the limits of where music can go and how it can be represented visually.” It goes without saying that Monae understands her place in the present historical moment — and that she also sees herself in the long lineage of Black women before her. And though Dirty Computer is Janelle’s most personal album, the very idea of myth implies a shrouded-ness; its presence next to fact infers a degree of mystery, that even some of the facts will be veiled just as the album cover’s deified pop icon. On “I Like That” when Monae calls herself a “walking contradiction” who is “factual and fiction,” she leaves room not just for ambiguity, but the ambiguity of her choosing.

Dirty Computer, like Lorde’s Zami, takes the fact and history of Black suffering, joy, and being and wraps it in the magic of myth, making legendary meaning of the “meaningless” lives of Black women both past and present, from Lorde and Monae to their working-class mothers and beyond. In biomythography, one woman stands for many; the not one, but three possible faces we see in Dirty Computer’s album art. The elusive ambiguity that marks Dirty Computer is also its purest artistic element: Its intent, as part myth, is to memorialize the Black queer working women who were buried in unmarked pop culture graves before Monae came along to valorize them. Monae’s true work is to allow those at the paralyzed margins to take their rightful place in history and legend, creating a loving, inclusive center within the finicky confines of a bleeding pop beating heart specifically for those who have been traditionally excluded.

Dirty Computer is as important as a pop album as it is a historical moment, because it dares to center the personal (and, therefore, political) struggle of a dark-skinned, Black, pansexual woman for a pop audience not traditionally welcoming of “The Other.” Dirty Computer says that the complex embodiment of my extremes is not only possible but heroic. It bridges the gulf between me and popular culture — insists that its music can be fully mine.

Whether it wins any of the many Grammys it’s been nominated for or not, Dirty Computer is the past, present, and future aligning like stars — a biomythographically infused pop album that sings, raps, and leaps in celebration of infinitely complex outcasts like Lorde and Monae who birth new genres in the face of opposition. As Maya Angelou wrote in homage to her foremothers: “I go forth alone and stand as 10,000.” Wherever Monae lands on Grammy night, she already shines as a mythic many — Lorde and all our gloriously queer, complicated ancestors shine in her constellation.

source https://uproxx.com/hiphop/janelle-monae-dirty-computer-audre-lorde-biomythography/