honestly people who don’t speak out against the genocide in palestine because they’re ‘not educated enough to make an informed decision’ completely baffle me. like it’s not that complicated, people are literally being killed & their country is being colonized! if you’d take the time to research it for literally 10 seconds, you’d be able to easily see that the idf are obviously the bad guys here!

I'm sorry for saying this but the fans attacking the band over this issue should go outside and touch some grass, use that time to spread awareness if you're so passionate about this conflict instead of sending hate and threats to f*ucking musicians that have nothing to do with this, and this is not me defending Paramore. How bad does a parasocial relationship with a celebrity has to be to be seeking validation from them over your 'choice' in a conflict that's so complex in any way? I understand, and fans have every right to be disappointed if they want to but sending someone hateful messages is not the way to do it. People need to grow up, really. Go pester politicians, the press, the higher ups etc. that actually are directly involved in this instead of artists for not posting 3 sentences that could very well be PR and not genuine.

Sorry for the rant, but some of the comments I've seen on their social media are just disgusting.

i've been asleep all day so i will answer the asks i have (ppl may get annoyed so i'm just warning that i'm answering since we did start talking about it and then i fell asleep)

all of you are using the term "parasocial" in the more incorrect way possible, and i would know... being a kpop stan and everything lol. what people are saying to paramore is NOTHING like a parasocial relationship at all, so please stop using that word.

majority of fans i've seen have not sent them any hate. nothing has been hateful, i don't know why criticism = hate but that is not the case. the issue is, when you make using your platform for good, to help amplify the oppressed voices, and things like that part of your identity, and when there's something going on in the world you decide to stay silent, not even taking 2 seconds to sign a letter for a ceasefire (in which they wouldn't be doing or saying anything uneducated), people do have a right to criticise you.

the people saying anything (aside from maybe 2 accounts that piss me off on a daily basis) have been using their platforms and their voices and directed plenty of things towards politicians, world leaders, so called journalists and everyone under the sun, most of us have been very vocal about everything. we can very much talk about two things.

Radical Common Sense: Introduction.

Though we all may be very different, we likely have one thing in common: In one way or another 2020 has changed each and every one of us. As if these last four years hadn't already filled our brains to the brim with political jibber-jabber from the mainstream media. I think we can all agree that the news has been persistently focused on politics (more specifically allegations against President Donald Trump) and that it has been a constant noise buzzing all around us, effecting each and every one of our lives. When we turn on the radio, when we scroll through our social media feeds, when we're on the bus, or eating peacefully at a restaurant and the person behind us is talking a little too loudly. As if all of this weren't enough to endure, the pool of politics became much, much deeper for us to swim in when we were locked up in our homes for months on end.    I lost my job on March 15, 2020 when we were forced to close. I was fortunate enough to be able to continue to live comfortably with my boyfriend, but the time on my hands felt endless for the next 6 months. Like many I first went mad and began organizing every closet, cabinet, and sock drawer. I held so much pint up and nervous energy in my body that I felt like I was in a constant state of sticking a fork into an electrical socket and could burst into a series of sparks, burning to a crisp at any moment. I began dowsing myself in CBD products to try and keep my cool. I started painting, reading a ton and took an online Interior Design course???

   Once I had finally grown somewhat accustom to my new and strange life of gardening, day drinking, reading on the balcony and pretending that I was a retired old woman, that's when the riots started happening. The shutdown alone had caused even more friction to rise between both ends of the political spectrum. Conservatives voiced their objection to government overreach while Leftists called people jogging outside without a mask "grandma killers". There was certainly ignorance shown on both ends of the spectrum, but the point I'm making here is that the tension was growing with each and every day that we all were forced to stay home, leaving our means of having any income in the hands of Daddy Government.    I did my best to limit my social media intake, but even 5 minutes scrolling would reveal a whirlwind of very strong and accusatory opinions of the shutdown, Black Lives Matter, racism, systemic racism, systematic racism, another cancelled syrup bottle or comedian who wasn't politically correct in a stand up act back in 1994, white privilege, voter fraud, total Covid-19 hysteria and a whole lot of shaming those who didn't follow suit with the mainstream narrative. There were people fueling these fires and if you dared to question their motives you were on the chopping block, also embarrassingly known as Cancel Culture.

   We all know what it is, but I am afraid to think of how many of us have actually experienced it. I certainly did when I shared a video of a BLM event happening in Chicago. This video was particularly alarming because the crowd of "peaceful" protestors were so extremely organized in their attack. I felt overwhelmed with fear watching as they took their giant "Black Lives Matter" sign made of pvc pipe, that stretched across what looked like 6 lanes of highway, hid behind it, changed into all black clothing and then proceeded to use it as a shield as they grew closer to their target. Once they were close enough, the pvc pipe was pulled apart to reveal that it had been constructed from pieces of pipe that they had sharpened to a nice and lethal point. They then began to throw these sharpened pieces of pvc pipe, along with frozen water bottles, frozen cans, rocks and explosive devises at police officers who appeared to be standing back, allowing the protest to happen without interference prior to this attack. So much so that most of them were even unarmed, not expecting violence to prevail on either side. (Feel free to watch the video to see for yourself.)

   This certainly wasn't the first video I'd seen where "peaceful" protestors were being destructive or even gruesomely violent, but it was the first that made this movement look like a well organized militia, inspired by an organization which I believe has a Marxists, or communist agenda. When I shared my fears about this, calling the movement "violent" I received quite a lot of hate from the friends I'd somehow collected on Facebook over the last 10 years. They urged people not to support my creative endeavors. People took screenshots of the post and shared it on their other social accounts (completely out of context as the video was of course removed) in attempts to reach an even bigger audience. I received direct messages from total strangers who called me racists, among other things. I had already been “cancelled” by some close friends prior to this for going to the beach on the day it re-opened in Daytona and posting about it with a caption that suggested it was safe to be outside. This idea seemed to really devastate some people and they made sure to let me know it as they called me the following names: Laughably f*cking stupid, Karen, Privileged, Nazi, uninformed, insensitive, stupid b*tchh, flat-earther, ignorant f*cking b*tch, racist, a “Trumper” and the ever popular white privileged b*tch. These are just some of the insults that I can remember off the top of my head. 

   My message here is not meant to invoke pity, or rage, or anything in between, but it is necessary for me to give you some back story as to what led me to my obsession to understand something very few people care about today, the Truth. I knew that the ideas I was hearing, coming from the mouths of the majority were wrong, but I wanted to understand why and I wanted to be prepared to defend myself, since it had been made abundantly clear to me that, that was going to be necessary. So, I delved even DEEPER into politics, government, American history and the criminal justice system. I am happy to say that this thirst for knowledge led me back into school, where I'm finally finishing up my associates degree (and getting straight A's). But I digress. Time went on and I calmed my little hummingbird heart over the dramatic smearing of my name (which had previously been widely accepted due to my Leftist blabbering of things I didn't really understand) and I continued to quietly read and research.    I dared to peer my head back into the land of Social Mania and posted yet again on Facebook. This time I felt I had something to say that was rather mild on the offensive scale... that proved to be incorrect. A friend of mine had shared a video with me of a fallen soldier whom he'd fought beside in Iraq. They had grown close and the video showed as they draped his casket with the American flag. The message he sent attached to the video said "this is why I'll always stand for the flag." I found his message really touching and shared the video along with what he had said (of course not mentioning his name out of respect). Later that day I received a message from a previous co-worker that was quite belligerent and sloppy, but somewhere in his (I'm assuming drunken) rage he asked the question: "Have you been radicalized or something?"

   We are living in a world where the narrative has completely shifted. It is no longer radical to preach about the wonders of what Communism "could" be. It is no longer radical to loot, riot, burn down churches, kill police officers and even innocent child bystanders so long as it is under the guise of social justice. It is not radical to want to uproot your countries entire political system in order to replace it with a "better", socialist/communist one that has proven to not only fail but ruin/end the lives of millions. It is now radical to suggest that we should honor our flag, those who fought for our freedom and to simply lift ourselves up to stand for the American flag.

   It is now racist to celebrate the 4th of July, insensitive to celebrate Thanksgiving, homophobic to practice Christianity and don't even think about subjectively acknowledging the accomplishments of Christopher Columbus. In fact, don't dare to celebrate the intellect of any of our founding fathers. It is now radical to be proud to be an American. It is radical to support a free-market economy. It is radical to defend straight white men against any and all accusations as they are the "obvious" oppressors of all. People will gasp if you question the effects of Drag Queen Story Hour and you're  likely just "uneducated" if you don't understand why the nuclear family is outdated.      

   In summary, do not practice critical thinking and especially not Common Sense. Just repeat after the mainstream media and you might be spared from exposing your truly "radical" ideas about traditional American values and your love of oppressive straight white men. 

   I will continue to write about these topics as well as covering current events from the perspective of someone who is dedicated to understanding the Truth, how we can connect what we’re seeing today to human History & to earn a better understanding of human behavior. I do not intend to use this as a platform to rant vigorously about my own personal feelings. Rather to defend what I believe to be Common Sense values. 

2020 Letter to the World

In 2015, I began writing annual Letters to the World to reflect on what I learned during the year. I shared my first one publicly in 2018, and since then I discuss certain topics that were relevant during the year and what they taught me. Enjoy.

***

I typically don’t start writing my annual Letter to the World until October or November at the earliest, but this year has already been a huge whirlwind for the entire world. I started writing this in April and edited it until the day it was posted. At that point, we had been in isolation for a month. A few weeks later, yet another revolution sparked within the United States. As soon as the riots and protests started, I knew this would be the hardest letter I’ve ever written. 

This year I will discuss coronavirus, racism, social media, and the importance of face to face communication. 

Around the time I finished writing last year’s letter, a new illness was taking over Wuhan, China. This new, mysterious strain of coronavirus was infecting people left and right. But like any other American, I didn’t worry about it, though I kept track of it on Twitter. I remember the time when there were only 600 cases, and it hadn’t spread outside of Wuhan yet. Man, those were the days. It’s amazing how much the world changed within a month, a week, and a few days. 

A month before isolation, my friends and I drove down to San Antonio for the TMEA convention. Tens of thousands of music educators in the same building. At that same time, San Antonio had its first cases of COVID-19. Less than a month later, SXSW was cancelled. That’s when I realized that this was becoming a big deal. The same day the WHO declared the pandemic, my university announced it was moving to online instruction for what would eventually be the rest 2020. My first day of quarantine was 14 March. I began vlogging occasionally to document the experience. 

I barely left the house during quarantine. For the first five months, the only reasons I left were to go walking, move out of the dorm, or to pick up food. My family took a trip to Colorado right before I left for school, which was our first time eating at a restaurant in 150 days. None of my family or our friends officially tested positive. At school, my roommate did, which led to a two week isolation for me. It really bothered me that those who could stay home weren’t. I get that the United States was founded with freedom in mind (even though we’re not free yet), but I don’t understand why people weren’t willing to give up a little bit of freedom and wear a piece of cloth on their face. Sometimes, you have to give up freedom for the sake of the big picture. I learned that many Americans don’t understand that. The United States shut down too late and reopened too early. Those above us care too much about money. The economy is important, but so are people. Human lives matter, including Black lives.

We all know what happened.

Every January in elementary school, we learned about the Civil Rights Movement. However, they did not mention that racism was still an ongoing problem. They implied that it was a thing of the past. God, I wish it was. I don’t think it ever will be, but the things we can do to eliminate it as much as possible are promoting anti-racism and teaching those who come after us that no matter where someone comes from, they can’t form any opinions about them until they know what’s in their heart. 

That entire week after the murder was very overwhelming. It made me wonder what kind of families racist people grew up in to think that it’s okay to not be good to everyone. I live my life with one thing in mind all the time: be good to myself and others. And I think everyone else, regardless of socioeconomic background, race, religion, whatever, should do the same. And we must teach those who come after to follow those footsteps.

There was never a class in school dedicated to being good citizens. They just yelled at the students doing bad things to stop, but never explained why it was bad, nor did they tell them how to be better. Common human decency is something that should be taught K-12, and I honestly think it’s more important than STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). We cannot force the students to rely on their parents for something like this, because some parents are uneducated, some are not good people, some suck at parenting, and way too many children in the world don’t even have parents. Schools are the ones that need to teach kids how to be good… all the way through. 

WE MUST BE THE CHANGE. Those currently in power appear to not be doing anything, so those who want change must RISE UP. For us civilians, signing petitions and donating is great, and being good, like I mentioned above, is also something we should do. We must change our behavior for the better. We cannot rely on other people to do stuff for us. We must do it ourselves. Change is not a process that can happen over night. So far it’s taken decades/centuries of work, but someday we will be there. Even if we don’t live to see it, the work we do now will help our future descendants. 

After George Floyd’s murder and the explosion of social media, I was super overwhelmed with everything I was reading. I decided to take the month of June off of Twitter, and man, I’m glad I did. Social media in general is a toxic place to be, and cutting out Twitter and Facebook was healthy for me. In terms of toxicity, Twitter and Facebook, in my opinion, are the worst platforms. On Twitter, it’s hard to control what you see in your feed. Most of the tweets in my feed are from people I don’t follow. They’re tweets I never signed up to see, and they flood my feed with posts that sometimes feel like propaganda. Sometimes I feel like celebrities are worshipped like a deity. I often feel like I’m not allowed to have my own personal beliefs on Twitter, rather I have to conform to what the loudmouthed users believe. If I don’t, I’m racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc. Facebook is similar, but most of the people I follow are my friends or family, so I can’t unfollow them.

Surprisingly, I like Instagram. Reposting is very uncommon, and posting more than once a day is unofficially considered spam, therefore people have to put all their politics into one single post, which I can scroll past and never see again. You never see posts from people you don’t follow, (except for the occasional advert) and overall I think people use it mostly to share photos of their lives. Most of the flaws that come from Instagram are the people who use it, but it’s easy to avoid them. 

My brother shared some statistics with me recently. Only about 10 percent of Twitter users tweet on a normal basis. About 40 percent of people in the United States have a Twitter account. With that in mind, theoretically, the loud mouthed Twitter users only make up about 4 percent of the U.S. population. Or… something like that. I don’t know how accurate these statistics are, nor do I know where my brother got them from. Regardless, social media does not represent everyone in the world. Not even close.

The nice thing about living in a world of social media is being able to keep in touch with friends and family while quarantined. This whole quarantine process made me ever so grateful for face to face meetings. Some people believe no one will ever want to work again once everything ends. That’s not true. I think most people like working. Being able to leave the house every day and do something, even if it’s something you don’t like, is what keeps us sane. When it came time to return to school, I was initially really mad due to COVID. I ended up being okay with it. My school did a fantastic job at keeping COVID cases down for the entire semester (we only had an average of 20 cases a week, compared to some schools who had hundreds). Not only that, but I was able to see my family away from home again. Even though we wore masks and social distanced most of the time, things felt somewhat normal. 

If you are the kind of person who could care less if you see your friends and coworkers in person, don’t forget that most people don’t feel that way. It’s hard to have group conversations on Zoom. You certainly can’t have a party where multiple conversations happen. Don’t assume everyone feels the same way about something. Let people have their social gatherings when it’s acceptable again, and don’t belittle people who feel different from you.

Everyone must do the right thing… all the time. Even when no one is watching. It’s our job to develop the habit of being good to ourselves and to others regardless. If we do that, we’ll be able to go back to a normal-ish life sooner. Lin-Manuel Miranda called America a “great unfinished symphony” in Hamilton. America, you great unfinished symphony, we still have unfinished business to take care of. The change we need won’t come tomorrow. The amount of work we have before we reach the double bar line will take generations to get to. We cannot allow a repeat sign. We must start today. May 2021 be a year of healing.

Empathy For A Family

First off I want to say thank you to everyone who reached out to me over the week. I ‘m doing well, I’ve been doing what I can to speak out on the matter through my artwork and peaceful protest. This topic is uncomfortable as it should be. And if you are concerned for my well being or are uncomfortable with the tone of artwork, then please take the time to educate yourself on the current issues and support the Black lives matter movement however you can. I will be sharing information between all my social media platforms as best I can. In the meantime, here is a master post link Black Lives Matter Movement

So today I want to talk about why this issue hits home for me. Really it’s because this issues hits my home literally.

This is my family, aka the Ocaña Clan

My Mother (scrunched to the back of this photo lol) raised the six of us to treat everyone we meet with respect, and to strive for excellence. My siblings and I are a mix of intellectuals. A High school Honor Student, Engineer, Graphic Designer, Makeup Artist, Forensic Psychologist, and Navy Officer. We love to sing, play uno, and cook together the rare chances we all get to assemble. We all have a good reputations among our peers and are each notorious for our hard work ethics.

We are also a mix of skintones, but they do not define us. And yet it’s terrifying to think that at a moments notice My family and I can be labeled as Ghetto. Thugs. Uneducated. Those names are only a fraction of what we can be called sometimes. On top of that, my mom fears that her two sons will never come home and her daughters could end up in the the wrong at wrong time. All because of a pigment we have no control over.

I strive to do the best at anything and everything I put my mind to because I want to show that my family, or honestly that anyone, is more than their skintone and stereotypes. I’ve been criticized and judged from head to toe because of those very reasons and It never feels good. It’s something I have to deal with everyday and I will be forever on my guard because of it. My nieces and nephews don’t deserve that. No children of our future generations deserve to feel like that either. And now that there’s all this unrest on the matter it’s time for change.

However, In order to make that change happen we need to start by having more empathy. The fear of never seeing a loved one again are real feelings. The frustration of being labeled as something your not are real feelings. The determination to be more than skintones are real feelings. The strength to to deal with criticism day after day are real feelings. To anyone who feels this way you are not alone and If you feel the same as me then continue to demand change.

For those who are not quite convinced on these issues, I challenge you to have more empathy because these feelings are real and they’re not going away.

Thank you taking the time to meet my family. It’s because of their love and support that I’m the artist I am today. If you need love and support from the chaos of the current events don’t hesitate reach out. We need to stay strong together and keep fighting! Also My artwork will return to norm technicolor this week but as I said before I will continue to use my voice to hightlight that Black lives matter!

Also Also! I’ll be sharing some more art tips again! If there’s a particular topic you’d like me talk about then feel free to let me know!

Until next week stay tuned!

How to Draw a Toon - (In-Progress) Fandom: Warner Bros, Looney Tunes, Disney, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Rating: M Categories: M/M  Relationships: (eventual) Bugs/Daffy  Warnings: Language, moderate violence, cartoon violence, racism, Additional tags: friends to lovers, mystery, adventure

Somewhere in Toon Town, a rabbit sat uncomfortably in the only library in town. He was pouring over autobiographies of other Toons. Each chapter of every book began the same: humble beginnings with a chance of stardom. Most were poor, some were sheltered… every single one was literally drawn into their lives. Their family, their class, their religion, their politics; it seemed to be all predetermined. Whether it was intentional from the creator, or heavily influenced, he still wasn’t sure. 

“Bugs?” A small voice spoke.

Bugs Bunny jolted, placing his hands over the piles of books he collected on instinct. He quickly regained his posture and settled his eyes on a soft-colored and familiar face. “Belle?” He asked, shocked.

Belle was hovering over him slightly with a few books in hand. “It is you… Did you need any help, Bugs?” She asked politely. 

“Oh ehh… nah.” Bugs said, trying to keep some of the books from her view. “I’m all good here. Say ehhh… shouldn’t you be at like…. Disneyland or somethin’?” he asked.

At that, Belle laughed slightly. “Oh Bugs… just because I’m a Disney princess doesn’t mean they keep us all holed up in their theme parks. Plus, with all of the royalty checks, I don’t really need a job. I volunteer here.”

“Ah. I see. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“Not at all…” Belle said, then looked curiously at Bugs’ pile of books. “It looks like you’re about to check out the entirety of the Autobiography section.” She chuckled.

“Ahaha… just about.” Bugs said, suddenly feeling slightly nervous about her nosiness.

 “All of them are Toons, too…” 

Just then, Bugs had an idea. “Ah!” He exclaimed before he stood up and gently turned her away from his pile of books, “Actually, I’ve been watchin’ some kids recently and wouldn’t ya know it, I can hardly put ‘em to bed. If you could find me the very best fairy-tale book you can think of, I would be foreva in your debt.” 

“Uh, sure.” Belle said with a weary tone. 

Bugs didn’t like the sound of her voice. Once he believed Belle was out of earshot, he scrambled to gather his haphazard notes and supplies. “I gotta get outta here.” He said from under his strained breath. 

When Bugs placed things away, he turned tail to find the closest exit. The rabbit managed to slip through a back door completely unnoticed. He found his car and sped off in a hurry. This kind of prodding had consequences. He had heard rumors of Toons going missing over stuff like this. Luckily, Bugs was smarter than that. 

In truth, Bugs trusted no Toon nor Human with the kind of information he was gathering. It was starting to weigh on his conscience, and even take a blow to his general health. Typically, when a Toon became stressed it visibly showed. Bugs was no exception.

Which was why an hour later, with no one else to turn to, Steven Spielberg took a look at Bugs and simply said, “God you’re a mess.” He commented once he approached the Toon rabbit.

“Thanks, Doc.” Bugs said with a slight roll to his eyes. “You looked in the mirror lately, yourself?” He japed, commenting on the distracting and ugly anti-paparazzi gear Steven had on.

Deciding to ignore the comment, “Please tell me it’s not…” Steven asked, as he brought his shades onto the brim of his baseball hat.

“It’s not the kids. I can take care of ‘em jus’ fine.” Bugs shot Steven down immediately. 

They walked down the sunny L.A. street, headed towards Griffith Park. They were both well aware it was the entrance to Toon Town. Still, the park itself was the only place that provided Bugs with any comfort. 

“So… what did you bring me out here for?” Steven asked. 

It took every ounce of energy Bugs had not to just start spouting out every tiny piece of information he had been gathering for the past six months. Instead, he took a breath and exhaled softly. “I’m over eighty years-old, mac. I’ve been repainted a dozen times and there’s no end in sight.”

Immediately, Steven knew exactly what Bugs was dealing with. It was obviously some kind of mid-life crisis, but a Toon equivalent. “Go on…” He prompted.

“So a few months ago, I got ta thinkin’... What else am I gonna do with my life? I can’t be slingin’ dynamite foreva. I already toured the world when I was younger… but I never learned anything!” Bugs cried out, “Sure the occasional script had some kind of historical tidbit, or a line from another language, but I still felt… uneducated.” 

Steven was already connecting certain dots in his head, leading up to what Bugs wanted to say. Because of it, a small smile was beginning to inch onto his face. However, he continued to let the Toon speak.

“Then I realized… what if it ain’t just me? And as it turns out--” 

“Eighty-seven percent of Toons are uneducated.” Steven finished and the smile vanished, ”And the number keeps growing every year. There isn’t a single school in Toon Town. If Toons want an education, they acquire it themselves or through scholarships the studios award.”

Bugs and Steven stopped and looked at one another. “I came to you nearly a decade ago... “ Steven started, feeling slightly irritated at Bugs.

Immediately Bugs cringed, “I know, I know!” he shouted, starting to move away from him. While he wanted to tell Steven more about his findings about Toon education, he decided to keep his mouth shut. Paranoia struck him again.

Still, Steven gave a small chase. “I asked repeatedly if you wanted to make Acme Loo into a real school, and you said there was no need. I gave you my pitch all those years ago, now give me yours.” He said in a harsh tone.

Bugs tugged on his ears before looking at Steven in the eyes again. “People love me, Toons idolize me… but for what? Bein’ the lucky one? Always comin’ out on top? What good is that when you can’t protect the ones you care about? I just… I want to give somethin’ back’.” 

After hearing that, Steven was more than pleased. He gave a nod to Bugs, “Alright, I’ll help you. We’ll make Acme Loo.” 

“Thanks, Doc.” There was still so much on Bugs’ mind, but he tucked it away for later. Right now, he allowed himself to relax and feel good about these life-changing decisions. 

A year passes, and somewhere along the coast of Central America there was a lowly island on the horizon. With a closer look, anyone could see the stark-white mansion that stood nearly three stories tall.

Even as a young Toon, Daffy Duck had pictured his retirement from his acting career very vividly. He dreamed about being alone on a private island, with an enormous mansion and every luxury he could possibly think of. And wouldn’t you know it, after nearly a decade of work, few movies and a couple of reboots, Daffy had that private island. Staying there continued to be a blessing for many, many years. With the royalty checks and occasional paychecks from public appearances rolling in, he was able to upkeep the mansion very well. 

Daffy’s desire for attention was somewhat satiated by social media. He had a big presence online and made sure everyone knew it. From when he woke up to when he was preparing for bed, he would cross post about every detail onto every feed. People ate it up, as they were fascinated by his lifestyle. While he wasn’t the richest duck in the world, he was certainly one of the most popular. At least, he was in his mind. 

As Daffy was tweeting about his incredible breakfast one morning, he noticed one of his butlers carrying in some mail. “What’s the big idea? Checks go straight to my financial adviser, and fan mail without any valuables inside are shredded! You all know the deal!” Daffy barked. To his knowledge, he hadn’t been expecting anything either. Still, the butler came to his side and silently handed him a letter. 

Before he could protest further, the Butler turned away. Daffy simply huffed to himself and opened the letter. He took his time to read it, just to make sure he was reading it correctly. Once he had finished he slammed the letter onto the counter top, and ran up the stairs towards his room in seconds flat. 

He pressed his help buzzer multiple times and shouted into the speaker, “I need to pack, now! Book me a flight to L.A.! Let’s go people!”

It was time to move back to Los Angeles. 

The next day, Bugs Bunny got out of his Oober (Toon Town’s Uber equivalent), adjusting his suit as he looked on towards his greatest accomplishment. A stairway from the curb stood Acme Looniversity. Despite seeing the building many times over the course of its production, Bugs still couldn’t help but feel his chest swell with pride at the sight of the finished school. 

And there, in front of the entrance, he saw a huge crowd gather. This wasn’t even taking into account for all of the cameras and people lined up along the sidewalk. Not even the Toons who were celebrating in the streets. The crowd split like a wave as Bugs approached the doorway of the school, finding it partially blocked by a stage with a ceremonial ribbon. Bugs could tell it was painted because of how large and neat the bow in the middle of it looked. 

As he approached he saw the only human at the event (besides a few brave reporters) Steven Spielberg, sitting beside the podium on stage next to three empty seats. Bugs’ felt slightly saddened by the sight of the empty chairs, still Bugs shared a smile with Steven before he approached the podium. A deafening silence went over the crowd, with all eyes on the Toon rabbit.

“My fellow Toons,” Bugs began, “For too long, we’ve been deprived of our own education. More than 87% of Toons have never stepped foot in a school that wasn’t a painted set. After learnin’ that, we decided that wasn’t fair.”

The crowd cheered and clapped for Bugs. Over the crowd he continued, “Our newcomers should know our history! They should know our culture!” He paused slightly to wait for the crowd’s enthusiasm to die down, “And they should know their limits.” 

Bugs felt his stomach twist, “Too many Toons have been lost simply because they didn’t know how to survive their next fall durin’ a stunt. We owe it to them to inform newcomers of the risks. No one on Earth can do what we do, and we need to learn to do it right.” 

Gesturing to the building behind him, “Now, thanks to Warner Brothers studios and Steven Spielberg, Acme Looniversity ain’t just a fantasy we all saw on TV all those years ago. It’s here for everyone!” 

The crowd once again burst into applause and cheers. Bugs looked out into the crowd, noticing a slight disturbance that was making its way to the stage. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when Daffy Duck emerged from the crowd and began to crawl his way onto the stage, rather than using the stairs on the side.

Immediately, Daffy wormed his way in front of Bugs in order to speak into the microphone. “Helloooo, Toon Town!!” He shouted. The only sound he was met with was the sound of crickets. “As the Master of Deception, I just wanted to say what an honor it is to have been recruited by my longtime co-Star, Bugs, to teach at this wonderful place of edumication.” 

Bugs saw the shifty eyes from the crowd when Daffy had mentioned his unofficial title. “Eeeh… We’re still workin’ on the curriculum.” He said, addressing the crowd. Then he turned to Daffy, knowing exactly how to derail him from hogging the spotlight. “Hey Daff, ol’ pal, wouldja wanna join me in the honors of cuttin’ the ribbon?” 

Daffy’s head whirled around as he gave out a gasp, “Really? You’d let me cut the ribbon?” He asked. 

“Togetha, yeah. It feels only right.” Bugs said, just to butter him up even more. 

The two of them were approached by a Toon who held out comically huge a pair of golden scissors. They took the scissors, holding them open above the ribbon for a little longer so photos could be taken. After a minute, they looked at each other and cut the ceremonial ribbon. Daffy and Bugs posed briefly with the scissors that were nearly the same height as them. 

Once they were done posing, Daffy turned to look for the first camera he could find. For Bugs, he turned to Steven and gave him his hand. “Thank you… So much. For everything.” 

Steven shook his hand, “Anytime, Bugs. I have a lot of faith in you.” Then he gave a slight nod towards Daffy, “You sure about hiring Daffy, though?” He asked. 

Bugs looked over and watched as Daffy chatted up the remaining reporters. “If there’s anything I’ve learned in the years we've worked together, it’s that I know how he ticks.” 

“Well, it’s your call. It is your school, after all.” Steven said with a shrug. 

“I’m gonna go check on ‘im. I’ll be seein’ ya, Steven.” Bugs said before slipping away. 

Bugs hovered over Daffy’s shoulder while he spoke to a reporter. “And that’s when I told my buddy Bugs, the only way we’re going to reach today's Toon youth is through education! And what better teachers than the oldest Toons out there?” He said. 

When he heard that, Bugs rolled his eyes. Of course Daffy would lie and make this his idea. Bugs decided to butt in. “We’re opening our gates to humans, as well.” He told them. 

At that, more reporters surrounded them. A chorus of questions were being launched at Daffy and Bugs. While Daffy shied away, Bugs lifted his hands to quiet the small crowd. “I wanna stress this; Acme Loo is gonna be the only school to focus on the importance of learning about Toons. As citizens and as a species. So we ain’t gonna turn away humans who wanna learn more about us.” Bugs said. 

A reporter’s voice spoke up, “Who else do you have in place as teachers? Any word about Mickey Mouse?” they asked.

“That hack—?” Daffy said before Bugs pinched his beak. 

“Mickey sent us his best wishes, but regrettably makes no plans of joinin’ the staff.” Bugs said with a shrug.

Daffy rolled his eyes when he felt Bugs let go of his beak. 

“As for the rest of the staff, we’re still lookin’. So if any Toon wants to come forward and apply, they’re free to do so on our website.”

“When does class begin? And what’s the class size going to look like?” The same reporter asked.

“We’re startin’ in the next coupla months, just in time for the school year. Dependin’ on how many teachers we get, we’re gonna be expecting anywhere between 500 to 900. Applications for students will also be online.”

“900?!” Daffy exclaimed. Just how was he going to teach to a class of 900? 

Bugs sighed a little, knowing Daffy had misinterpreted his information. He turned to talk to him, “900 altogetha, Daff. We’re lookin’ at a class of 40 for each homeroom.” 

“Oh.” Daffy said softly. 

Then Bugs turned to the cameras, “No more questions now. Thank you!” He said and waved them away. 

Disappointed, Daffy watched the reporters shuffle along and pack away their equipment. He had truly missed being in the limelight. Then a tap on his shoulder brought him out of his daydream-like state. “Huh?” He asked as he turned towards Bugs again.

“Ehh… Daff?”

“Yeah?” 

Bugs sat there like he was fighting to say something. “I’ll uh… I’ll see you later. We’ll have to look over that curriculum of yours, before school starts.” He finally said.

“...Yeah sure.” Daffy said. After looking at Bugs more he noticed something was off, “You should get yourself a new paint job. You look awful.” 

Bugs deflated angrily at the comment before rolling his eyes and turning away. He knew that, in Daffy’s twisted way, that he was concerned for his health. So he let the comment slide off of his back. The truth was, Bugs had never let go of his Toon research; and the paranoia had set in so much that it was starting to alter his appearance. He hoped that the success of Acme Loo would be both a distraction and a resource at his own disposal. 

Later, after numerous phone calls and even a couple of live interviews, Bugs managed to find his way home. He paid and tipped his Oober as much as he was allotted, due to the fact that they had to travel out of Toon Town during rush hour. As Bugs approached the steps of his white porch, he loosened his bow tie and unlocked the door. 

Bugs threw his keys on a stand next to the door, just before closing and locking it behind himself. Just as he was about to call out for someone, his long ears perked at the sound of rattling glass and plastic coming from the kitchen. Immediately, Bugs’ eyes darted towards a lowly baseball bat sitting in his umbrella holder in the foyer. 

Quickly and quietly, Bugs’ removed his black blazer and rolled up his dress shirt sleeves. All the while his mind was racing: Where had he slipped up? Who was onto him? What kind of force would be pitted against him? All these questions burned inside him while he picked up the bat and held it tight and high. With as much stealth as possible, he rounded the kitchen corner. As he suspected, the figure hidden partially inside of his fridge wasn’t any of the kids. 

The fridge began to close and the figure swerved around to meet Bugs. Several plastic containers dropped to the kitchen floor as they exclaimed, “Bugs?!”

Bugs brought down the bat, stopping it only inches away from Daffy’s beak. “Daffy?!” He exclaimed. 

“What the hell, Bugs? Is that any way to welcome an old friend into your household?” Daffy barked while pushing the bat away from his face. 

Only a few seconds later, Bugs and Daffy heard a stampede of footsteps coming from upstairs. Settling on the staircase, three Toons looked down on Bugs and Daffy. “Well what’d ya know, the old Duck has decided to grace us with his presence.” The tallest smiled. 

“Daffy, darling!! We had no idea you were in town.” The smallest chimed with an obnoxious accent of some kind.

“Really? I mean, he tweeted out his entire trip…” The middle one said in a thick Liverpool accent. 

Daffy looked on in surprise and awe. “The Warner’s?! What are you three hooligans doing here?” He asked with a wide smile. 

Bugs put down the bat, leaning it against the staircase, and turned towards Daffy. “They’re stayin’ with me.” He said simply. 

Sure enough, the three siblings of undetermined origins ran down the steps and gave Daffy a group hug. “You three look a little different than I remember…” he said, looking over Yakko, Wakko and Dot. 

Yakko peeled away first, “Haven’t ya heard? We got a reboot comin’ in! Two whole seasons, so far.” 

“You don’t say? An’ they gave you a repaint jus’ for that? Your designs were fine before.” Daffy said, a little confused. 

“It’s standard now. Nothin’ we could really do about it.” Wakko said as he pulled away with a slight shrug.

Dot continued to cling to Daffy, looking up at him with her glossy black eyes. “You don’t think we look ugly, do you?” She asked, her lips trembling. 

“Ugly?! Nonsense!!” Daffy exclaimed, picking up Dot into his arms and holding her tight. “You three are the sharpest lookin’ Toons I know. Anyone who says otherwise is blind.” 

Bugs looked curiously at the way Daffy was interacting with the three. He didn’t remember them being particularly close, but he assumed that was simply the effect the three had on adults and Toons alike. Still, he was certainly enjoying seeing this other side of Daffy.  

“Alright, you three.” Bugs finally interrupted, “How’s about givin’ Daff and I some space?” He asked. 

“Yeah yeah…” Yakko said before turning back up the stairs. 

“See ya later, Daffy!” Wakko waved and followed the oldest. 

“Always nice to see you, Daff.” Dot said when Daffy put her down so she could follow her siblings. 

Once the three were out of sight Daffy turned to Bugs, “Now, I know it might not be the most convenient thing for you at this time…” He explained, “But I’m certainly not the richest Duck in the world. I had to sell all eight of my estates to get that private island.” 

Bugs move towards the kitchen and began to clean up Daffy’s initial mess. He already knew what Daffy was about to ask, and he already knew his answer. Still, he let his friend speak. 

“Each estate had to go, including the two I had in L.A.! Honestly, the price for rent in this forsaken city is so damn high, I really don’t know how you do it!”

“You can stay.” 

Daffy gasped and looked deeply offended, “You would throw out your own flesh and blood onto the street? I thought I knew you better, Bugs Bunny!” 

“Ehh… we ain’t related, but you can still stay wit us.” He tried again. 

Daffy started to walk towards the door with a dramatic flair, “Fine! I know when I’m not wanted—” He stopped as soon as he draped himself on the corner of the closest wall, “Wait… what? You’ll let me stay?” He asked, bewildered. 

“Of course I will, Daff. We’ll be able to look over your curriculum togetha, you’ll be able to do some shoppin’ for the house, maybe a few chores and you’ll be able to watch the kids…” Bugs said, closing the fridge door to get a better look at Daffy.

At that, Daffy looked even more surprised. “Watch those kids? Chores? Me?” He asked.

“Well yeah! What? You’d think I’d let you stay out of the goodness of my heart?” Bugs asked, leaning on the island counter.

“Well… Yeah!” Daffy exclaimed, manhandling the other side of the counter. Here he thought he could take advantage of Bugs’ feelings of existentialism and sudden generosity to fully weasel his way into staying with Bugs with zero obligations. But apparently this rabbit had other plans for him.

Bugs simply laughed in Daffy’s face. “Ahaha, oh that’s rich, Duck.” he laughed. Then there was a slight pause,  “When are you gonna realize, we ain’t so different? You and I…”

Daffy and Bugs sat in silence for a little bit. Something about Bugs’ smug look made Daffy’s face feel warmer than usual underneath his feathers. He shook his head wildly. “Nope. I don’t see it.”

At that, Bugs simply rolled his eyes. “We can split chores in the mornin’... right now I just want to hit da hay.” He said, peeling himself off of the counter and moving to unbutton his dress shirt.

While Bugs navigated past the living room, Daffy gave a slight chase. “Wait, wait. I just gotta know one more thing,” then a slight pause, “okay a couple of things.” 

A small sigh came from Bugs, then he decided to plop down onto the living room sofa. “Alright. A coupla questions.” He said, putting his feet up.

Daffy sat in a recliner adjacent to Bugs. “How’d you end up with the Warners?” He asked, his voice a little hushed in case they were being heard. 

“...I was visiting the new set last year.” Bugs began to explain, “Steven told me that he was concerned about rumors that the Warners were livin’ in their trailer. No one was allowed to go near it. They even wrote up a contract about it, saying they’d leave the show if anyone on staff visited it. Because I wasn’t in the show, I could see the trailer for myself.” 

The memory was still vivid in Bugs’ mind. A little more than a year ago, Bugs shared a weary glance with Steven before he slipped off the set. With the Warners busy in a scene, Bugs was able to make it to the trailer. And with a copy of the trailer key given to him by Steven, he pried it open. 

The mess the three had accumulated was even taller than Bugs’ ears. He honestly didn’t know how anyone could navigate the trailer, let alone three Toons. Even as he was inside, he made an attempt to clean what he could. Still, it was a horrible mess. 

After doing what he could, Bugs waited outside the trailer until the Warners began to approach it. Yakko was the first to catch eyes with Bugs, before rolling them. “God damn it…” Yakko groaned, seeing the look of disapproval spread across the rabbit’s face. 

“Y’all really live in dere?” Bugs asked.

It was Wakko’s turn to be angry, “Yeah! What’s it to ya?” he barked.

“Guys, I’m jus’ concerned. A lot of the staff are concerned. Steven was even worried!” Bugs exclaimed, watching them weave around him and head into the trailer.

“Yeah? Well we don’t need your pity.” Dot snapped.

Bugs stopped the door from being slammed in his face with full force. The trailer door swung open and Bugs stepped inside once more. “Fine then. Lemme give you a place to stay. Eva since you were created, I’ve always told you guys you were welcome at my house!” He said. 

“We’ve been fine on our own, Bugs. Didn’t need your help then, don’t need it now.” Yakko said. “Any day now, the show will air, we’ll get another wave of royalty checks and we’ll be livin’ it up in a mansion down the street from yours.” 

“Those checks will only stretch so far. You already know this.” Bugs warned. 

“Blah blah blah I learned my lesson. Like I said, I don’t need to stay at yours. I’m comfortable here.” To make his point, Yakko cleared off some space on the couch (which also acted as their bed) in the trailer and found his ideal position. 

Immediately Bugs read this type of prideful attitude. He also knew where Yakko’s weak points were. “If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for your siblings.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Bugs saw Dot and Wakko perk up and look over at Yakko silently. Yakko sat up from the couch slowly and looked at Bugs with a hardened expression. “You’ve got a whole lotta nerve, rabbit.”

“And you’ve got a whole lotta attitude, kid.” Bugs snapped back. 

And with that, Bugs took them in. Presently, he looked at Daffy across the way and gave a slight shrug. “I’ve always seen a lot of myself in Yakko. Scrappy, independent and plenty mature for his age. It took him the longest to adjust here and for me to adjust to him, honestly. That boy doesn’t let me lift a finger for ‘im. His siblings? Sure. When it comes to him? No way, no how.” 

“Interesting.” Daffy finally said.

Feeling exhausted, “Any otha questions?” Bugs asked.

“Yes! Where do I sleep?” 

Bugs got up from the couch and beckoned Daffy to follow him. Down the hall there were three doors. On the left side there was a white door with a gold star labeled Bugs Bunny in black lettering. Though, something told Daffy that it wasn’t his original master bedroom. The middle door was left open, so Bugs pushed in further and flipped on a light to reveal a bathroom. “Here’s the bathroom…” he announced, then pushed open the door on the right side of the hallway. “And here’s your room. G’night, Daff…” 

Before Daffy could say anything else, Bugs slipped away into his bedroom and shut the door. “Night.” Daffy said more to himself. He maneuvered himself inside the bedroom and pulled out a suitcase from his Toon space. He flicked on the light and looked around, the decor was still predominantly white with the same hardwood floor that echoed through the house.

Daffy placed his suitcase on a chair sitting across from the bed and launched himself directly onto the comfortable mattress. It was something akin to a bed from a five-star hotel: soft as a cloud. It didn’t take long for Daffy to fall into a deep sleep.

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NEXT CHAPTER >>

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A/N: I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! It was a struggle but I’m happy with it and I can’t wait to continue. <3333

UNTIL DEATH DO US PART

                        fortune for those people who finds happiness at a very young age, experience love as a sweet not bitter, and still enjoying it but never the less, all of us experience pain, heartbreaks and aches and going in to that corner of our room crying for a person who we believe does not appreciated and uneducated about love. They say “ we can’t be who we are today unless we experience trials and surpass those”. But why love will always want us to experience such terrible things we don’t want to. “Flying Colors” a victory maybe for others who finds love when they are young and got married when they became professionals but a “walking colors” a word we even not sure existing, the same as for the others  who really put efforts and life for love but ending up in pain really thinks that love doesn’t exist at all. One thing for me is for sure, that love will always win at the end. Unconditional love given by our parents is a proof that love means giving. We put so much effort and assumed to become victorious at the end, but we all know that we need to lose and experience pain sometimes.  Now a days, people busy posting on social media about finding true love but not even thinking that true love exist on people who have really true feelings. We sometimes forget what love is. We sometimes fail about giving a meaning to something or someone.   But love isn’t all about pain, to take the other side of the coin, let’s look for the good side of love. “Flying above the sky” is so much joy and overwhelming happiness when we find our true love and spend the rest of the years with that person. Like those Fairytales that my sister always watching, I want to experience love that can make you sing and dance. A love that never fails and a love that will survive through years.    “The love experts” I think you remember the disney movie “Frozen” about the love experts. Well I must say that when I watched it, I learned that love sometimes can be unexpected and you can never feel it unless someone will told you.        I remember one person taught me and gave me an advice, “Staying in love with that person is your own choice”, until now, I always think about it. I was just so amaze and being convinced that staying in love is our own choice. We choose to broke our own heart and broke others. We choose to cheat and hurt our love ones. But what makes it special is we choose to forgive and to say sorry for what we did and we choose to make things right on a second time around.     Love may not be perfect, Love may occur in a very young age or in the age of twenty, thirty or sometimes in sixty. But love is the biggest instrument for us to do what we intend to do and what we don’t know we could do but we did for love.     Falling in love at a very young age doesn’t define you to not become successful but our parents want us to have good future so they are making everything they can to secure us.    Family, friends, our special someone and God are the foundation why Love for us is very strong. “Sugar, spice and everything nice”, is from the cartoon network “Power Puff Girls”, like making the perfect cute little super hero girls, love needs Pain, Heartaches, Happiness, and true Love to have and to be successful on making our own story about Love. I really want to write about love because I know my generation can really relate on what I am taking to. But all of this is just my own opinion about love, no one and not me is convincing you to believe that this is really the love that you are having for your life, this is just my own story, my own experience my own thoughts about it. My introduction is quite long but here is my story. I know I am very young to have love life but for me having special someone can give us a very active mind which may lead to high grades “HAHA” no, but seriously, having a special someone could make us even better, example in school, we tend to sometimes not doing our home works or school activities but when you have special someone, you want to make him or her proud so you do your task very well and for exchange, you receive a good grades, but lucky for those people like me, that having a special someone is an inspiration but what about those teens out there who make relationship very seriously at a very young age, who happens to do activities that only a married couples could do. They think that having it would sustain and last their relationship with each other because scared of losing that person. But opposite happened, they didn’t think of what may result with their wrong doing. So when you enter this kind of stage, you make sure to handle it correctly and to really know you limitations. Back to my story, I met a lot of girls everyday, I’ve been in 4 to 5 relationships of course with different persons that has different hobbies and attitude. I believe really that all of them teaches me a lot of lessons that someday I can apply in my future life. “I found that someone I would love without end” from a writer of thought catalog website, Jairron Cruz published last 2014, 28th of February. I red this line that says “And really, I do not see any end for it all, unlike all the other times where one would imagine life without that someone, this time I really cant, I think I would cease to exist by then.), and someone who would love me for who I really am, well, aside from my friends and family, but that’s a given fact already, isn’t it? In my own thought about Mr. Cruz line, all of us really would find love for a person who we want to spend the rest of our life who we didn’t experience with others. A person who we put our life just to hold them tight. A person we can’t imagine our life without him or her. A person we can fight until the end, a person we that we can be our partner and to be the mother or father of our child. When old days past and we have our wife or husband beside us talking about happy memories had past. The memories of tricking our own parents sometimes that we have our project to be done outside but really we sneak out a little to have time for our boyfriend or girlfriend, and now the trick was back in us by our children. How ironic it was, someday. How sweet when someone except your mother cooks you breaktfast and kiss you when time for waking up. Playing and singing in front of you your  theme song and making memories with you bringing the same last name and I hope that someone on my story will be the someone you are thinking all along. You’ve done a lot for love, You did all you have to do to find a perfect relationship, you are a fighter. And as the days go by, be strong because God has planned better from what you know was better. God will give the perfect person for such a perfect person like you, a perfect person that will match everything for you. That will hold on through ups and downs. For better or for worst, in sickness and in health until death do us part.

(via What Makes a Good Writing Buddy and How to be One | B.D. Tucker)

Whether you’re looking to become a better writing buddy, or you’re searching for a good one, this blog should be helpful for you! I’ve had an excellent writing buddy since college and having her around has not only been great fun, but has also helped me exponentially with writers block, staying motivated, and keeping my stories structured.

WHY HAVE A WRITING BUDDY?

Oh so many reasons! If you don’t already have a writing buddy, here are some reasons why they are great and helpful:

They can see things from a new perspective

Great to bounce ideas off of

You can get a taste of something new (their story) while still sticking to your project

Someone to be excited with

Constructive criticism

Motivation, goal setting, and accountability

Lift you up when you’re down

They know the struggles so you complain together or problem solve together

Important things to have in a writing buddy:

Trust

No Judgement Zone

Be on the Same Level

Similar Enough, Different Enough

TRUST

Your writing buddy needs to be someone you trust for multiple reasons. For one, you are sharing something that you don’t want stolen. If this is not someone you trust to keep your ideas secret, they’re not going to make a very good buddy. The same goes for you. In order to be a good writing buddy, do not take anyone’s ideas (unless, of course, they give explicit permission). And do not share their work unless they have agreed to it.

Writing is also very personal. You are pouring your soul into your writing: experiences, intuitions, observations, imaginations. You need to be able to be a little vulnerable with them. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing ideas with them, they aren’t going to be helpful to you. As for you, you must recognize and appreciate someone opening up to you and be sensitive to the fact that it can be daunting for people.

And lastly, you need to be able to trust their judgement. This is a delicate balance between ego and understanding. You have to be careful when taking criticism because often people will not take advice from anyone, and this is also when they don’t end up succeeding. You are welcome to pick and choose who you listen to. But you need to realize whether you’re choosing not to listen because you’re being stubborn, or because they legitimately are giving bad advice. You cannot be so far trapped in your own way of doing things that you don’t take good advice. Or, take it with a grain of salt at least.

On the other end of this is if you take criticism too much to heart. This is something that you need to work on personally, but also it can help to find a buddy that isn’t overpowering in their suggestions. You and your buddy need to know that your story is yours and their story is theirs no matter how much you want to help each other. Trying to overpower the writer to get what you want out of their story is never okay.

And so, discerning whether your buddy has good judgement can be hard and can have a lot to do with your perspective. But, usually you can tell if someone’s suggestions always seem to be off the mark or uneducated (or perhaps even just not your style), and those are the people you want to avoid. (Don’t confuse this with your potential buddy sharing ideas that don’t quite fit with your vision. Not everyone can see your story as you do.)

NO JUDGEMENT ZONE

No judgment does not mean that you accept every idea and don’t tell people when you don’t like something. This goes along with general trust. I definitely react differently to who is giving me criticism. But you also have to know how to. No judgment means that you let them say the stupid stuff, you allow them to mull through what they’re thinking. For example, when I’m thinking of names, it sometimes helps to be able to spit out every random thing that comes to mind, which means 90% of it is going to be crap. So, having a buddy who knows that, and passes no judgment, is so important.

That doesn’t mean you can’t voice your opinion. Instead of just saying you hate an idea, tell them why you think it won’t have a good impact, why it’s not as strong as another potential idea, what problems it could cause later in the story, etc etc. Explaining your coherent thoughts about an idea are much more helpful than just voicing an opinion.

But REMEMBER, this is their story. So, even if you tell them that you think their idea isn’t strong, it’s going to cause problems, or it’s just not your favorite you have to also know that they can do absolutely whatever they want. Part of being a good buddy is allowing them to have the freedom to write what they want. And you need your buddy to know that about your writing. You must allow each other to choose what you want without bitterness or superiority.

BE ON THE SAME LEVEL

This one can be tricky. But, for example, if my buddy was me from Jr. High, that would not be a good pair. I was an avid writer in Jr. High! I would have loved to have a good writing buddy. But, pairing me now and me then together would not make sense. Cause one is just starting out and the other is experienced. Writing buddies need to be mutually beneficial. I’m not saying you can’t be a mentor to someone young or new. But, for the purposes we’re talking about, you need to find someone on a similar level as you. Someone who is actually helpful to you and someone you can be helpful to as well.

SIMILAR ENOUGH, DIFFERENT ENOUGH

Another hard one. This one has to do with vibes and thought processes. If your buddy doesn’t like the same type of writing that you do, they may not be helpful. That’s not always true. My buddy, T.S. Rather (T), prefers realistic fiction and I prefer fantasy. But we share the same quality level.

This is hard to explain…Someone that, when you share ideas with them, they get excited. Part of the reason you want them to be a writing buddy and not just a support to your writing/a fan is because they know the feels. The struggles, the excitement, the process. I can tell ideas to other people and they look at me kinda funny, like, “That’s cool, I guess.” Because they can’t see it. Other writers can see it. And other writers who share your same vibes with see it and get excited with you and help you cultivate it.

On the other hand, you want them to be different enough that they’re still helpful. I’ve met people before that are too much…of a follower I suppose. They see your ideas and they like them and that’s it. And that can be really nice, a good confidence boost, but it’s not going to be as helpful. T is helpful to me because she has different strengths than me. She reminds me to be logical. When I’m lost she helps me find my structure. When she’s lost, I help her untangle plots and find emotional arcs. It’s a give and take.

CONCLUSION

And remember that this is my take on a writing buddy. Me and T are very good friends as well as writing buddies. We keep in contact often, whether about writing or just life. A writing buddy that you have may not be as close, and that’s totally fine. The most important thing is to know what you’re looking for and what you need and try to find that. If you just need someone to set goals with so you keep writing, find that person. If you want someone to bounce ideas off of, find that person. If you need someone to read over you stuff and give constructive criticism, that’s who you look for.

The sad thing is, finding a writing buddy that you vibe with can be difficult. I was lucky enough to meet T in college working at a Writing Center (and later on we took writing and editing classes together). She thinks differently enough from me that she can tell me when I’m being stupid and she thinks like enough that we feed off of each others enthusiasm and ideas. If ever I am stuck, I talk to her. Because even if she doesn’t give me the answer, she helps untangle the thoughts in my head.

So, if you’re still searching for that special someone, I wish you all the luck!

As always, feel free to subscribe or follow me on social media for updates on new posts! And take a gander at my ‘Services‘ page for prices on my editing services!

Tattoos, Powerful and Meaningful

Intro:

Hi there, and welcome to my first ever blog post. First, let me introduce myself. My name is Melissa Burks, I am a 23 year old living in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Just in case you are someone who found this post, and hopefully you have so I know my transmedia branding is working, let me catch you up to speed. I am a Conestoga College Journalism student, and for my social media class, I have to create a blog about a topic, my topic being tattoos and the stories behind them, that can result in connecting people together. I chose this topic because I have two tattoos myself, both meaning a lot to me. Something I love is when I get asked about them, I explain myself, and then I get to hear how that person relates. It’s so interesting to see how something like that allows two people to have an intimate mutual connection.

Stereotyping:

Something that is honestly quite terrible, is other people’s opinions when they don’t understand the reason to the tattoo and won’t give it a second thought as to why someone got it. Take for example a comment I found online, “I don't care how beautiful or classy a woman appears as soon as I see a tattoo she drops in the class level in my opinion of her. They make a woman look cheap, dumb and uneducated.”  When you’re someone with tattoos and you read that, it just builds this kind of fury inside. At least definitely for myself. Why should I be dropping in some made up class in this person’s head, why do they think it’s okay to assume I’m not educated, dumb or cheap? It’s disheartening to think that this person will never understand just what a tattoo can mean to someone.

Reason to a Tattoo:

I personally have two tattoos, but I’ll talk about the one that means the most to me. I grew up with a beautiful German shepherd mix, this dog was so beautiful, and so perfect. Her name was Fox. As a kid, I didn’t have much responsibility to take care of her, it was more like her taking care of me. She was there through the boo-boos, the tears, whenever I felt scared. She made me play with her and laugh, and she was my fury friend to hug when I was scared or sad. She was my best friend. As time went on, I did learn responsibility to taking care of her, and at times it felt like she was solely mine. It was one devastating day my mom gave her away to my sister once her allergies became too much, which my sister then gave her away to a random family. I never saw her again. I had to assume as time went on that she was gone forever. In 2017 for my 22 birthday, I got a tattoo of a vixen in memory of her, so I can always remember the beauty she brought into my life. When I look to my right forearm, I see a reminder of something in my life that helped me learn love and compassion. I see something that helps me remember my childhood best friend. It helps so much through the tough times to have her with me.

Something to Consider:

Someone could be getting a tattoo to feel more comfortable in their own body. An example of this that I really love is Jeffree Star coming to terms with himself and being able to share why he has his tattoos for the first time to his fan base. In Shane Dawson’s YouTube series, The Truth About Jeffree Star, he’s quoted as saying, within the topic of conversation of his past, “When I tattooed my whole body, a lot of it was hiding emotions and pain. I spent all of high-school in 90 degree weather with full sweaters and pants and no one ever asked me why. And the whole entire time I was cutting my entire body. … I decided later on in life that when I got over that, and overcame it, I wanted to tattoo my whole body so people couldn’t see that.” I think it’s important he was able to express himself in such a way that allowed him to talk openly and honestly. It goes to show that tattoos help with self-confidence allowing someone to be themselves.

Why Judging Needs To Stop:

What you shouldn’t be telling someone is anything along the lines of how the tattoo will be on the body forever, because the person is clearly aware of that thus resulting in getting the tattoo. Just because someone has a tattoo, does not mean that that person is unintelligent or worthless. It doesn’t make them ugly or incapable of work. Judging just makes the person feel bad, and how is that any way to treat one another? Everyone should feel like their voices are heard instead of being shut down.

Final Thoughts:

Tattoos are about freedom of expression, and the ability to make your body into artwork. Whether it be a quote, a scenic piece, an in memory piece, all of it has beauty. Tattoos are part of us, often times a coping mechanism. They help us feel beautiful, help us feel appreciated when someone can connect, it helps bring purpose to life. So tell me, why is it okay to talk down to someone for expressing themselves? Why is it okay to make them feel worthless, why is okay to tell them they won’t amount to anything in life? Do you think tattoo stigma should disappear once and for all?

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Attached you’ll find my two tattoos, the fox I touched on earlier; the other with a lyric quote is something that helps me stay strong in times of need, quoted from my favourite band, Marianas Trench in their song “Beside You,” helping me since age 12.

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References:

Negative comment toward tattoo:

https://www.debate.org/opinions/are-tattoos-negatively-stereotyped-in-the-united-states/arguments/C07367FC-2F5C-4C08-A843-FD4F61FC99DE

Shane Dawson’s, The Truth About Jeffree Star:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhTw1SUxWTA&t=1508s 24:55-25:24

How to fight back against internet censorship

Internet Information Suppression: Fighting fire with fire  So as you may have figured out by now, they are actively attempting to censor information on the internet. Not only that, but I’m am 100% convinced that they are using multiple fake bot accounts in a desperate attempt to  control the narrative  on the internet. You may have noticed that anything critical of mainstream news especially on platforms like reddit are quickly down voted, removed, or deleted when it goes against this narrative.

 They are using terms like  fake news  and Russian propaganda because they are losing control of this narrative and they would rather create a reason for censorship then face the allegations and deal with fixing the mainstream propaganda mechanisms like those of the major news outlets.

 For so long they, I’m talking about you liberal media, have tried convincing us that bringing immigrants from poor uneducated countries is diversity in action and only positive. But we can see the rapes, the beatings, the terrorism being allowed to propagate within our western countries, working to degrade us as a whole, not enrich us culturally. They try to hide this, they try to hide anything damaging to the liberal state propaganda apparatus and blind us to the reality of the squalor they are creating for us. Try to question this obscene behaviour, try to question other institutional corruption and you are blocked, banned, or worse ghost banned.

 The problem I see is that they are constantly attempting to frame everything as some type of race war and as such are excusing violent behavior and it’s clear from police behavior that they are ignoring their oaths to charge members of the left like antfa and such they are literally abdicating their respective responsibilities and letting groups like this get away with criminal assaults against what they refer to as neo-Nazi’s. Seriously people put down you iPhones and look around you, your political affiliations are not a concern, and you are being played by your governments.  As such are playing into the giant distraction the liberal media is pulling so you don’t demand they explain themselves for the clear wrongs they are responsible for.

 RELATED:  Divide & conquer: a rich man’s game where common men lose 

 Cutting the cord has given me tons of perspective, it’s like you’re born again into a reality where you can see a spade for the spade it is, I recommend getting as far away from cable as you can. The problem now however, is you can see the propaganda sneaking into the internet at an alarming pace, and with things like net neutrality, we may face a future where, things deemed not acceptable by the  CIA  and mainstream news organizations are literally throttled down to oblivion and to never be seen.

   You see, the internet is the last great refuge for the free thinking individual; it’s all we really have left and as such we must fight back in a smarter way to avoid them winning. I was told I lived in a free country and I am going to live like this is still a reality even though I know that everyday my freedom becomes more and more limited.  They shouldn’t be able to take our ability to communicate freely just because they can’t admit to where they have gone wrong.

 Sometimes it may become necessary to fight fire with fire and the need to move towards the same modus operandi. They are seemingly using multiple accounts for propaganda and censorship purposes and that does not mean we should discount these methods ourselves. You see we can fight back and we can hit them back, everything leaves a footprint and these fake accounts are likely upvoting and promoting other accounts that are fake. Fortunately for us,  this is simple for any private citizen to also utilize. Here are some steps you can take to get your own alternative accounts:

 Step 1. Proxies. You will need to find a reliable proxy if you want to setup more than a few accounts. Typically for one proxy you can reliably have 5 accounts of each social network. What the heck are proxies? A proxy can work as a bridge so to speak, your computer or device using a proxy can appear to be the ip address proxy that you want.

 They are geographically attached so that you can purchase USA proxies and you appear to be from the USA or you can get Canadian proxies and appear to be from Canada. They are great for other uses as well like masking your ip address to get access to content that may not be available in your region. Proxies are cheap and there are lots of suppliers out there, for example you can expect to pay around $10.00 USD per month for 10 proxies. With that kind of plan you could have 50-60 social media accounts and fight back against the blatant censorship.

 Step 2. Firefox portable or similar standalone browser. Once you get the proxies you’re halfway there, now all you need to do is download the portable firefox browser, make sure it’s the portable version! What I’d do is download the portable version and make a new copy for each proxy I’m going to use. So you should have 10 copies of firefox portable if you get 10 proxies. Now you just open each browser, one at a time and go to “options” and then “general”. Choose “network proxy”  check “manual proxy configuration” and input one of the proxy ips and the port for each one.

   That’s all you really need to do, now you are free to have like 50 accounts and fight back against the bot assisted downvoting and manipulation of content not deemed appropriate by them. Now you can go and get called fun buzzwords like “Russian agent of Putin”, “white supremacist” and “neo-Nazi”, for simply questioning or being critical in general about any mainstream news.

 It’s really amazing to see how giant companies like Youtube are attempting to censor people’s thoughts and opinions, many people I personally follow have had their accounts demonetized which means that they are being actively suppressed and as an added bonus to this demonetization they will appear lowing in the searches in Youtube and Google search. This is very troubling, the internet was never meant to shut people up rather it was created for the good of us all to communicate freely, censorship is outright wrong and dangerous.

 We really have to fear when the truth is being suppressed so much, this tells us that rather than face the truth they would rather silence us all, so we must all stay strong and fight back. To really be effective in your fight against information supression, you will need to find relatively new content and promote it everywhere you can. This is where it can be effective with reddit to sort by “new”. If you notice that something is being brigaded especially in the case of reddit, fight back with your own army of accounts and upvote what they are downvoting en masse, this will help others to see this information and make them harder to be suppressed.

 The number one thing you can do today for your critical thinking self, is to  cut the cord  get away from the heavily propagandized media apparatus, they are a cancer on free thought and have ventured so far from their original mission statement into a degraded corporate propaganda mouthpiece. Show and teach everyone you know about this, we can take back some power with the  corporate media  in it’s death throws as we rise to the top. We are supposed to live in free societies where freedom of the press used to actually mean something, now it’s only purpose is sowing division and promoting war propaganda. They want to turn us all on ourselves and degrade our good intentions, while they hope to remain under the radar and heeding no responsibility for this madness.

 In writing this post I am in no way condoning illegal behaviour, rather providing information for educational purposes only.

 The post  How to fight back against internet censorship  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://thegreenlivingsolution.com/fight-back-internet-censorship/

How to fight back against internet censorship

Internet Information Suppression: Fighting fire with fire  So as you may have figured out by now, they are actively attempting to censor information on the internet. Not only that, but I’m am 100% convinced that they are using multiple fake bot accounts in a desperate attempt to  control the narrative  on the internet. You may have noticed that anything critical of mainstream news especially on platforms like reddit are quickly down voted, removed, or deleted when it goes against this narrative.

 They are using terms like  fake news  and Russian propaganda because they are losing control of this narrative and they would rather create a reason for censorship then face the allegations and deal with fixing the mainstream propaganda mechanisms like those of the major news outlets.

 For so long they, I’m talking about you liberal media, have tried convincing us that bringing immigrants from poor uneducated countries is diversity in action and only positive. But we can see the rapes, the beatings, the terrorism being allowed to propagate within our western countries, working to degrade us as a whole, not enrich us culturally. They try to hide this, they try to hide anything damaging to the liberal state propaganda apparatus and blind us to the reality of the squalor they are creating for us. Try to question this obscene behaviour, try to question other institutional corruption and you are blocked, banned, or worse ghost banned.

 The problem I see is that they are constantly attempting to frame everything as some type of race war and as such are excusing violent behavior and it’s clear from police behavior that they are ignoring their oaths to charge members of the left like antfa and such they are literally abdicating their respective responsibilities and letting groups like this get away with criminal assaults against what they refer to as neo-Nazi’s. Seriously people put down you iPhones and look around you, your political affiliations are not a concern, and you are being played by your governments.  As such are playing into the giant distraction the liberal media is pulling so you don’t demand they explain themselves for the clear wrongs they are responsible for.

 RELATED:  Divide & conquer: a rich man’s game where common men lose 

 Cutting the cord has given me tons of perspective, it’s like you’re born again into a reality where you can see a spade for the spade it is, I recommend getting as far away from cable as you can. The problem now however, is you can see the propaganda sneaking into the internet at an alarming pace, and with things like net neutrality, we may face a future where, things deemed not acceptable by the  CIA  and mainstream news organizations are literally throttled down to oblivion and to never be seen.

   You see, the internet is the last great refuge for the free thinking individual; it’s all we really have left and as such we must fight back in a smarter way to avoid them winning. I was told I lived in a free country and I am going to live like this is still a reality even though I know that everyday my freedom becomes more and more limited.  They shouldn’t be able to take our ability to communicate freely just because they can’t admit to where they have gone wrong.

 Sometimes it may become necessary to fight fire with fire and the need to move towards the same modus operandi. They are seemingly using multiple accounts for propaganda and censorship purposes and that does not mean we should discount these methods ourselves. You see we can fight back and we can hit them back, everything leaves a footprint and these fake accounts are likely upvoting and promoting other accounts that are fake. Fortunately for us,  this is simple for any private citizen to also utilize. Here are some steps you can take to get your own alternative accounts:

 Step 1. Proxies. You will need to find a reliable proxy if you want to setup more than a few accounts. Typically for one proxy you can reliably have 5 accounts of each social network. What the heck are proxies? A proxy can work as a bridge so to speak, your computer or device using a proxy can appear to be the ip address proxy that you want.

 They are geographically attached so that you can purchase USA proxies and you appear to be from the USA or you can get Canadian proxies and appear to be from Canada. They are great for other uses as well like masking your ip address to get access to content that may not be available in your region. Proxies are cheap and there are lots of suppliers out there, for example you can expect to pay around $10.00 USD per month for 10 proxies. With that kind of plan you could have 50-60 social media accounts and fight back against the blatant censorship.

 Step 2. Firefox portable or similar standalone browser. Once you get the proxies you’re halfway there, now all you need to do is download the portable firefox browser, make sure it’s the portable version! What I’d do is download the portable version and make a new copy for each proxy I’m going to use. So you should have 10 copies of firefox portable if you get 10 proxies. Now you just open each browser, one at a time and go to “options” and then “general”. Choose “network proxy”  check “manual proxy configuration” and input one of the proxy ips and the port for each one.

   That’s all you really need to do, now you are free to have like 50 accounts and fight back against the bot assisted downvoting and manipulation of content not deemed appropriate by them. Now you can go and get called fun buzzwords like “Russian agent of Putin”, “white supremacist” and “neo-Nazi”, for simply questioning or being critical in general about any mainstream news.

 It’s really amazing to see how giant companies like Youtube are attempting to censor people’s thoughts and opinions, many people I personally follow have had their accounts demonetized which means that they are being actively suppressed and as an added bonus to this demonetization they will appear lowing in the searches in Youtube and Google search. This is very troubling, the internet was never meant to shut people up rather it was created for the good of us all to communicate freely, censorship is outright wrong and dangerous.

 We really have to fear when the truth is being suppressed so much, this tells us that rather than face the truth they would rather silence us all, so we must all stay strong and fight back. To really be effective in your fight against information supression, you will need to find relatively new content and promote it everywhere you can. This is where it can be effective with reddit to sort by “new”. If you notice that something is being brigaded especially in the case of reddit, fight back with your own army of accounts and upvote what they are downvoting en masse, this will help others to see this information and make them harder to be suppressed.

 The number one thing you can do today for your critical thinking self, is to  cut the cord  get away from the heavily propagandized media apparatus, they are a cancer on free thought and have ventured so far from their original mission statement into a degraded corporate propaganda mouthpiece. Show and teach everyone you know about this, we can take back some power with the  corporate media  in it’s death throws as we rise to the top. We are supposed to live in free societies where freedom of the press used to actually mean something, now it’s only purpose is sowing division and promoting war propaganda. They want to turn us all on ourselves and degrade our good intentions, while they hope to remain under the radar and heeding no responsibility for this madness.

 In writing this post I am in no way condoning illegal behaviour, rather providing information for educational purposes only.

 The post  How to fight back against internet censorship  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://bit.ly/37Kg96R

January 24, 2021: 3:05 pm:

===================================================

“You killed my Jabberbabywokki!?!!?!” ~Red Queen

https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1353359905185521666

It’s about Harry Windsor, Duke of Sussex.

He was not a “Prince”, the “Prince” is Charles, but he is also dead, been dead, is going to stay dead, like Harry Windsor is.

Harry’s Ho is dead too.

The read of the Fox news Tweet includes the bullshit story about the Duke & Duchess of Windsor who are said to be residing in Hollywood.

The Royal Pains in the Asses at Windsor House DC, are going to need to find a suitable Harry look-a-like very soon. Have a look around Twitter, you will see a number of red headed fellows around in the news, who, if they were to shave their beards, who be reasonable facsimiles thereof the original Harry.

Royal terror is seeking a “Harry Hodad”, a “Wanna-Be” surfer who sits on the beach with a surfboard at 1st point Malibu scamming on the Bikini clad Wahine.

The inclusion of the term: “Impeachment”, when spoken by the King of Mormon’s, is a “Two-Pointer”.

The “Harry Hodad” will be Hangin‘ Ten at 2nd Point, not first point, at “The Bu”, then head for Point Dume to dump the bodies over the cliff.

The “accountability” is the key that unlocks the comm.

“A Count Hillbillity”, from Camden Dr., not far from Vintage King Audio, somewhere near Rodeo & Hollywood.

Look for freshly shaven red headed men in their early 30′s hangin’ out where small girls are known to gather, in a town near you.

“Unity” = Joe Biden’s signature on the FOX news terror marching orders, as Joe steps out of the First Trinity Christian Church this morning...

... at about 10:00 am I am guessing.

Unity = The Trinity

Joe requires a constant, fresh supply of little girls, red headed little girls are his new favorite.

“Second Point Bu” is where the “Squids” are at, baby surfers are “Squids”, they surf second point Bu, waves are good, easy to catch... so are “Squids”, they are easy to catch. Second point Bu is precariously placed in the “Irony Position“ between 1st Point Bu, where the Longboarder’s Rule the beach, and 3rd Point Bu where the skilled, experienced surfers compete to ride “the Holy Grail”, a swell from the south, is epic, when breaks... very rarely does the 3rd Point Bu break at all.

Longboarders tend to be older, experienced men in their 50′s and 60′s catching the smaller waves, but extra long rides. The Longboarders at Mailbu 1st Point are the same as Royal Canadian Mounted Police disguised as US State Police at the State Capital Police HQ in AnyState USA.

Those guys at 3rd Point Bu, are like the Tracy Family Bouy’s from Thunderbird’s Puppet TV Show for Kids of the 1960′s. They are experienced, they know what is going on in the neighborhood, been around the block a few times, and wherever those guys are at, all of the time, they are listening to the surf-report on he radio. When 3rd Point Bu is breakin‘, they are there, Johnny on the Spot, within minutes of news of a 3rd Point Swell. They tend to be guys in their thirties, well equipped, skilled, and have reliable Woody’s for bringing the boards to the beach.

The Hodad’s, have a surfboard, but have never got their feet wet. Ever. They sit on the beach, all oiled up, coconut oil, SPF 80 Bullfrog Sunblock on their noses... watching, tend to be guys in their 40′s.

Real surfers don‘t sit on the beach, they don‘t bring a blanket, no bullshit, just a surfboard, and some Mr. Zogg’s SexWax up their sleeve’s of the wet-suit. Dawn Patrol... hit the waves at sunrize, surf until the squids show up, then go home after the zoo takes over at The Bu, after some Taco’s from the Mexican Food Wagon at Kanan Road.

In Santa Barbara, there is a similar situation, at Carpenteria State Beach, where the swell is at Rincon, the camp is at the State Park, the Tracy’s are at Padero Beach, and the Feast is at Santa Claus Beach... Point Dume is at the Bluff’s, but is just a cover story for the Railroad train bridge at Carpenteria State Beach Park.

There, in Santa Barbara, there is a Carpentry Framing Contractor called “Surf’s Up, Gotta Go, Construction”. All of the contracting they do, includes a clause that says: “We don‘t work on Big Wave Days”.

With Joe Biden ruling the beach at 1st Point Bu, on his longboard catching Ankle Breakers, that 3rd Point Bu will be swollen for at least four more Halloween‘s.

The Squid’s won‘t have a chance, closed out by the 1st Point Rulers on the drop in right, and, washed out goofy-back side left on the bottom turn towards 3rd Point, at the Bu.

The thing about a goofy foot back side left, at any place that swells, is not possible. You cannot possibly go goofy foot back side left, anywhere. That is what the Harry Hodad is for, to make it possible to do the impossible, at the cliffs at Point Dume, 3 miles north of The Bu, where the shit goes south after the ride is over.

Point Dume breaks so perfectly, the no one is permitted to surf Point Dume, then live to tell about it. It’s like the scene from Once Upon a Time in Mexico, where Johnny Depp shoots the cook because the food is too good. Point Dume, is too good, so, they killed it there.

The Hodad’s learned about Dawn Patrol that the real surfers do.

They don‘t speak English very well, are from Quebec, w/British Still education, so, Dawn Patrol, turned into “go to the beach, put oil”. Don Petrol was born when a Hodad raped a Wahine in a Bikini, at the Bu parking lot. The activity became a “Darn Pet Roll”, by Hodad’s all fixed up on the Queen‘s heroin while raping the baby in parking lot, but that was not enough for Papa Pope, who insists on a Smear Campaign, so it became the Pap Smear, a sodomy event at the Bu, where every day is Halloween, with a over-cast zoo on a back side goofy foot drop in to the restroom at the parking lot.

The Pope is ass who collects souls, while surf fishing.

The head ass soul.

Comes with a fall’s flag.

The Hijack Asshole’s flag, while on a eternal quest to find Christopher’s Compass, stowaway on The Mayflower.

(this keeps going on forever into the Russian Mother of all Hoaxes from there, at the Mayfower, where the compass, may have been there the whole time.)

===================================

5:10 pm:

Speculation:

Throughout recorded AD history, there has been basically three kinds of people:

There has been the Christian Pirates, who know exactly who they are, and are collectively well versed about their goals of Global Domination.

Then, there has been “The Naive People”, who are not aware of the presence of he enormous Christian Pirate Ship parked on their front lawns.

Then, there is this other group of people, maybe they are “The Naive People Who Are No Longer Naive” or some other way of describing the people who have seen, and learned about that big ass Christian Pirate Ship that parked on the front lawn.

So, the naive people all get gobbled up by the Christian Pirates. The ones who are no longer naive, seem to have been the people who invented Santa Claus.

Santa Claus, translates to: “Dead Hands”.

“Hands” are a ships crew members.

So, maybe the ones who were enlightened about the presence of that big ass pirate ship parked on the front lawn, and at the schools, and at the markets, and at the government where the laws and rules come from, invented Santa Claus in hopes that the message would be heard, without them being killed. Santa Claus to say: “Dead Hands” could have been a shell language of an opposing group trying to organize some opposition in greater number in effort to sink that fucking pirate ship that is everywhere we need to go, all of the time, is filled with crews of French scalawags who man the boat, in to find Jesus’, to nail to the mast, to catch wind, then stow below deck, to move the boat forward, in search of Land, Riches, Slaves, and Power.

One of the ways the Christian Pirates have developed for communicating among themselves publicly coded into the news stories, is a concept called “Big Yellow Airplane”. A news item featuring anything at all that can be otherwise described as a “Big Yellow Airplane” is a way the pirates say that someone has seen the Christian Pirate Ship, and has described some of it’s characteristics publicly online or in prints somewhere for others to learn about.

The “Big Yellow Airplane” is often presented as Hillary Clinton, who effectively becomes the “Big Yellow Airplane” that was spotted, and talked about. So, some person someplace see’s and talks about terrorism that they saw, and makes some statements on social media about it. Then, the Google Internet Twitter Spies see those statements that were posted. That is not good for that individual person who is seeking some help, or trying to find others who may also have seen the “Big Yellow Airplane”. There will be an army of Christian terror pirates there at that persons house, and where they work, at the school where the persons children go to school, and everywhere that person may need to be, and that person and all that was written or photographed, or otherwise exposed about “The Big Yellow Airplane” will vanish, never to be seen, or heard from, again.

My guess about those people who may have invented Santa Claus is that the Pirates learned of the story about Santa Claus that was used as a way to warn others about the Christian Pirate ship on the Front Lawn. I suspect the pirates hijacked the story, adapted it against that opposition, and then harnessed the story with Reigndeer and a sleigh, with details about how Santa is going to come down your chimney, with gifts, for your children.

It’s scary.

But, the world is filled with uneducated idiots, who adopted the story of Santa Claus, and put some cookies and milk there by the mantle, so that new, Reigndeer powered Santa, could have a snack after raping the baby.

The speculation makes sense to me.

Makes me want to go straight over to the Hallmark store for a Valentines Day Card to send to Santa and his Elve’s.

Valentine’s Day, and the Hallmark store, are terror that I can explain on a different day. The two are one and the same story, go hand-in-hand onto an Arc Pirate Ship after the smoke settles in Chicago.

Chinese Size Speculation Glasses:

Get some.

Don‘t be fooled by cheap imitation one’s from Hong Kong. Those won‘t work.

============

6:04 pm:

Here is simple way to find, learn about, apprehend media professionals who are terror pirate “Poly the Parrot’s”, the Pope’s Bird, a parrot that sends marching orders on TV news:

news report in 1960: “Two people were murdered on a beach while on their honeymoon“

same news report in 1975: “Two people were slayed on a beach while on their honeymoon“

Simple terror ID in a news broadcast happens with one single word, “Slay” and conjugation of a verb.

These are the trapped victims in the universe:

Over to the right, is freedom. Very few people reach freedom west of captivity:

Terrorism is said to be “East”. The truth about that, is the terror is “Easterly” terror, meaning that the terror is related to Easter, is Christian terror.

Those who make it past Virgo and west of the captivity are fucked many times over while trying to break free of the Easter captivity, death, and shear terror.

===============================

In other news:

7:21 pm:

This:

https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1352761662068166658

Resulted in this:

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1353538064040288258

I hate to say “I told you so”, but... :

See “January 22, 2021: 1:07 pm:”

And,

“January 23, 2021: 11:34 am:”

There, is where I said the read of the terror command orders that were presented by BBC news, as was stated from I O Downing Street, to do a “Schul Schut” style distraction event to cover for Joe Biden terror, happening somewhere else ... twice.

“Terror is a 9 to 5 job in USA.” Payday is Friday, shit runs downhill, they are all plumbers trying to fix a leak in the Christian Pirate Ship, with chewing gum, paper, and some C-size batteries.

===========================

7:46 pm:

They are not done.

The pregnant gal is only a small part of what is coming down the road.

Typical scenario goes like this:

Tragic Schul Schut takes place, is all pre-arranged by Universal Studios and/or Disney theme park attraction associates in league with SAG Writers Guild and all of news media television network personalities and directors.

The event is roled out, is deployed like a weapon, or battle plan is deployed.

Real police are drawn to the event, other, fake police are also deployed there.

Department of Homeland Security, and Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms division are both part of the fake police, are there to arrange that real police are separated from the crowd for a “Divide and Conquer” event to quietly happen out of the limelight. The separation activity could very well take place after what may look and feel like some real good investigative work took place, and seemingly, some big problems were solved as a result of work said to have been done by real officers sent there purposefully into an ambush from the inside.

The ambush, on a typical scenario, could happen at a celebratory event, where the real police officers are said to have done a good job, and a private police style award ceremony takes place.

All of that is where the real police are divided and conquered, with staged ambush against them by people they trusted in the prepared and planned investigative parts of the aftermath where the pregnant gal, and others, were brutally murdered, as part of the set up to kill some real police officers.

They are killed while the police awards banquet is happening.

Later, National Sheriff Association will provide some recommendations for replacement officers to take the place of the real officers who were ambushed at the awards ceremony.

The public may or may Not be informed of the death of the real police officers. If the Christian Pirates benefit in some way by making that part publicly available in a news story, then the news story will be presented about some officers who were killed, or maybe just injured, at the Pregnant Gal Murder Event.

Once the awards ceremony begins, the Christian Pirate Ship and Crew go into the “Darkness” of terror, we don’t get to see that part, it’s really gruesome. That part includes that those awarded officers are tortured with a medieval theme, and old style torture contraptions fitted and designed with a modern twist to them.

So, it’s not over when the perceived perpetrator is caught. In fact, it could work out where the ones said to have been the perpetrators of the Pregnant Woman Murder Event, are actually those real Police Officers, and a photo shown with a different name would flush out any family of friends of those real officers. Loved ones see their family on TV news, with the wrong name, saying they killed the pregnant lady... they call someone to see WT actual F is happening with that, and that is how the family is identified, and, it shows the Christian Pirates that the one on the torture rack was either lying, or telling the truth.

It gets complicated from there.

The show is not over.

Don‘t do the awards ceremony.

Welcome to the show:

Saliva: Lady’s & Gentlemen

Official Music Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMlKmELIhgY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtLKn5Y1ulc&list=PLA708B84007CE6461

Again, my account is throttled, I am prevented from sharing the video to help you see through the facade, see beyond the charade, and into reality of the Christian Pirate terror army of millions of terror soldiers who have been setting us all up to fall with lies told in the name of God and a quest to find Jesus.

Chances are high that some other photos and visual aids are inserted into the places I have been posting the helpful information. Information that could be used to stop 90% of all of the terrorism on earth, and in space, forever.

I see what I post when I review the pages here. I don‘t know what others see when they read the information here, I am held captive, don‘t have friends to compare notes with.

==========================

8:51 pm:

Computer hijack symptoms happening today, and repeat from time to time, other than the ones I already have tried to describe:

Letter M is not always available. I have to push the M many times, insert other letters in place of an M, the delete it, then push M again, maybe then it will make an M when I use the keyboard for trying to get some help.

On YouTube, the user has a history of videos that have been viewed in the past, the videos previously watched are supposed to show up when a YouTube search is done in the search text box as a sort of automated pull down menu that is presented as the user is typing in some search criteria. So, sometimes, like today, that YouTube memory of the videos I watched before is not working, it is as if I only started to use YouTube today, and as if there is no memory there to present in that automated search text box that usually remembers for me, what I already watched on YouTube. Today and other times, those are the times when Tumblr is throttling my ability to post a YouTube video... the Tumblr control icon used for adding a video to the content here is greyed out as I showed with a screen shot a few times. The light grey “add video button“ does not work.

There are more than one kind of Tumblr text box that I can access. One, like this one, starts out as blank page to write in, and has only few controls to add video, or a photo, or a Gif. I can also make the page have a option to unfold to read more. I have never used the “unfold” option. (control-shift-Q) is specified with that icon. I have never used the “Gif” icon, and don‘t know what it does, or why it would be beneficial. I use the “Photo” and “Add Video” controls only.

The Text Box with the grey colored icons for control features is very difficult to find one like that, there is only one way to get one of those.

There is another kind of Text Box available to write in, one with more controls that are made with colorful icons. That colorful control style text box behaves differently than the grey control featured ones I use. That kind is very easy to get one to write in on Tumblr, there are many links that lead to a Text Box that has colorful control icons, and when I have used one like that before, there is a message that shows up that says I cannot do an edit to what was written in that kind of Text Box, cannot make additional comments, have to start over with a new post if I use one like that, and it also explains that those are specific for “The Tumblr App”. I don‘t know what the Tumblr App is, I only know that it is associated with a Tumblr Text Box that has colorful icons, and a few more controls than the kind of Text Box I use.

All 800 and more entries here were written with this kind of Text Box that has the grey colored control icons, except for very few, enough of those that I learned that those are part of the Centurylink/Google/Tumblr internet terror consortium of terror bastards who are manipulating the information I write here, and fooling the federal fools who insist on being fooled all of the time, by refusing to do their own research to learn something, and instead rely 100% on the terror bastards who took over the USA Government, to do their research for them.

The result is many big heaps of federal fools, and far bigger heaps of dead and dying US Citizens who are hauled away from the slaughter by the Railroad train full, one hundred freight cars loaded to the top so much that they are spilling out and it’s necessary that the terror bastards have a smaller vehicle on the train tracks to pick up the body parts that fall out of the fucking train.

So, today is Google/YouTube doing the computer hijack, mostly.

===

9:33 pm:

Also, sometimes the Firefox window where the Refresh Page icon is at, starts to toggle between the “circle arrow” and the “X” all by itself very quickly. That and other things that happen, are easy to see that there is someone making that stuff happen live, on purpose, manually as I am writing something.

All of the time, everyday for five years, there has been someone assigned to fuck with me as I write, while trying to get some help. They are from Google, Centurylink, Josephine County Courts, Tumblr, and Pacific Power Corporation and more, all the way to Oregon State Capitol at Kate Brown HQ and OR State Police HQ, and all five of the fake FBI field offices in Oregon, all of that stuff is hijacked by the Christian Pirate Ship.

Pacific Power Corp (Rocky Mountain Power Corp, all five of them) is to the terror army, as is the US national guard supposed to be to USA.

Oregon FBI is to the terror army, as is a shooter at a barrel filled with fish of other real FBI.

Josephine County Courts are to the terror army, as is the Captain of a US navy ship to the navy,

Kate Brown to the terror army, as is Betty White to the Golden Girls.

Oregon State Police is to the terror army, as is the Principal at a public school.

Google is to the terror army, as is the Pope to the Vatican.

Centurylink ISP and Telephone service is to the terror army, as is the box that contains all of the parts to a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

US Cellular Phone Service, and all of the cellular phone companies and the network of cellular towers is to the terror army, as was the perceived relationship between USA and Russia during Cold War times. They are to the terror army, as is a soup can on a string is to a citizen in an emergency, and the other end of the string is tied to a tree that explodes when you talk into the can.

There is always some of those guys live, on the other side of my computer screen, on the other side of the connection to the internet, in between me, and freedom, in between me, and helpful people who I need to reach. They are there doing manual manipulations live, all of the time.

Sometimes, like yesterday, when I say some very revealing information, as I am just mentioning the important parts, someone starts shooting at the 520 Jackpine address in the backyard there, about two or three hundred feet away from where I am.

Also that kind of shooting comes from 3747 Russell Road, 3701 Russell Road, and from Chartrand’s at 376 Jackpine Drive.

I don‘t usually mention those kinds of shooting events, but sometimes do.

Almost every day, as I turn on the computer, after making some coffee, and I just begin to start writing something, or even as I review from the previous day, or look at a YouTube video.... as I begin online activity, a small airplane fly’s over my house, low and slow, every day, almost without fail. Only as I sit down to use the computer is when the airplane fly overs begin. Sometimes ten fly overs per day, sometimes only one. They drop loads of poison gasses from the small airplanes, and the people at Chartrand’s, Myers, and at 520 have a thing that can operate my heating unit fan to turn that on remotely, thereby creating a negative air pressure inside the house, to draw in the poison gases released by the low flying aircraft. My assumption is that once the fan is turned on remotely, then those people just take a drive over to “The Jelly Donut” in town for awhile to get some coffee and some doughnuts there while the gas is thick in the neighborhood.

===========

11:19 pm:

Local Update:

Local Update is cancelled until further notice.

I have to find a way to defeat the newly installed democrat variety of terror in the neighborhood, the Democrat terror signature is everywhere. You can recognize it as it contains greater spectrum of color, texture, odor, layers in greater number, is duplicated over and over in fractal form, where there are miniature versions of much larger terror events, each has similar components, and there sizes of the same fractal or terror presented in between the small and the large, with full spectrum terror composed of the same ingredients on each layer of the spectrum.

So, if you want Local Update, do it yourself, or send help.

Royal HMS terror is grand in every way, is deadly, is black & white terror, meaning there is only two binary parts, is either on, or is off, is dead, or is not dead. Is very serious terror. There is a grey scale on the Queen’s television. She uses the contrast and brightness knobs, with volume for the sound, and that is all there is to it. There is no fucking around with the HMS terror the way the Democrats do.

Democrat terror looks bigger, is smaller, has more people, are all candy ass pansies, non of them have any balls, it’s all for show. The show is the scary part.

They have real law, real judges, but are fake. Real law, enforced by fake police, is a scary show, with a real judge in a real courtroom that was taken over by actors from Hollywood, and is full spectrum Hollywood style, but is plastic, and every part of it is green screen fake presented by actors reading a script.

========

11:56 pm:

Mail box is glued shut.

Last year, they glued my gate lock shut, tried to frame me when I cut the lock, by saying it was someone else’s gate.

It was more than a year ago. Search this account for “super glue gate lock” and “super glue car door shut” to learn more about Democrat branded terror. “Walmart lock packaging, and “Fred Meyer Door Lock-set” will also produce Democrat styling in the terror methods that differ from other brands of terrorism.

How to fight back against internet censorship

Internet Information Suppression: Fighting fire with fire  So as you may have figured out by now, they are actively attempting to censor information on the internet. Not only that, but I’m am 100% convinced that they are using multiple fake bot accounts in a desperate attempt to  control the narrative  on the internet. You may have noticed that anything critical of mainstream news especially on platforms like reddit are quickly down voted, removed, or deleted when it goes against this narrative.

 They are using terms like  fake news  and Russian propaganda because they are losing control of this narrative and they would rather create a reason for censorship then face the allegations and deal with fixing the mainstream propaganda mechanisms like those of the major news outlets.

 For so long they, I’m talking about you liberal media, have tried convincing us that bringing immigrants from poor uneducated countries is diversity in action and only positive. But we can see the rapes, the beatings, the terrorism being allowed to propagate within our western countries, working to degrade us as a whole, not enrich us culturally. They try to hide this, they try to hide anything damaging to the liberal state propaganda apparatus and blind us to the reality of the squalor they are creating for us. Try to question this obscene behaviour, try to question other institutional corruption and you are blocked, banned, or worse ghost banned.

 The problem I see is that they are constantly attempting to frame everything as some type of race war and as such are excusing violent behavior and it’s clear from police behavior that they are ignoring their oaths to charge members of the left like antfa and such they are literally abdicating their respective responsibilities and letting groups like this get away with criminal assaults against what they refer to as neo-Nazi’s. Seriously people put down you iPhones and look around you, your political affiliations are not a concern, and you are being played by your governments.  As such are playing into the giant distraction the liberal media is pulling so you don’t demand they explain themselves for the clear wrongs they are responsible for.

 RELATED:  Divide & conquer: a rich man’s game where common men lose 

 Cutting the cord has given me tons of perspective, it’s like you’re born again into a reality where you can see a spade for the spade it is, I recommend getting as far away from cable as you can. The problem now however, is you can see the propaganda sneaking into the internet at an alarming pace, and with things like net neutrality, we may face a future where, things deemed not acceptable by the  CIA  and mainstream news organizations are literally throttled down to oblivion and to never be seen.

   You see, the internet is the last great refuge for the free thinking individual; it’s all we really have left and as such we must fight back in a smarter way to avoid them winning. I was told I lived in a free country and I am going to live like this is still a reality even though I know that everyday my freedom becomes more and more limited.  They shouldn’t be able to take our ability to communicate freely just because they can’t admit to where they have gone wrong.

 Sometimes it may become necessary to fight fire with fire and the need to move towards the same modus operandi. They are seemingly using multiple accounts for propaganda and censorship purposes and that does not mean we should discount these methods ourselves. You see we can fight back and we can hit them back, everything leaves a footprint and these fake accounts are likely upvoting and promoting other accounts that are fake. Fortunately for us,  this is simple for any private citizen to also utilize. Here are some steps you can take to get your own alternative accounts:

 Step 1. Proxies. You will need to find a reliable proxy if you want to setup more than a few accounts. Typically for one proxy you can reliably have 5 accounts of each social network. What the heck are proxies? A proxy can work as a bridge so to speak, your computer or device using a proxy can appear to be the ip address proxy that you want.

 They are geographically attached so that you can purchase USA proxies and you appear to be from the USA or you can get Canadian proxies and appear to be from Canada. They are great for other uses as well like masking your ip address to get access to content that may not be available in your region. Proxies are cheap and there are lots of suppliers out there, for example you can expect to pay around $10.00 USD per month for 10 proxies. With that kind of plan you could have 50-60 social media accounts and fight back against the blatant censorship.

 Step 2. Firefox portable or similar standalone browser. Once you get the proxies you’re halfway there, now all you need to do is download the portable firefox browser, make sure it’s the portable version! What I’d do is download the portable version and make a new copy for each proxy I’m going to use. So you should have 10 copies of firefox portable if you get 10 proxies. Now you just open each browser, one at a time and go to “options” and then “general”. Choose “network proxy”  check “manual proxy configuration” and input one of the proxy ips and the port for each one.

   That’s all you really need to do, now you are free to have like 50 accounts and fight back against the bot assisted downvoting and manipulation of content not deemed appropriate by them. Now you can go and get called fun buzzwords like “Russian agent of Putin”, “white supremacist” and “neo-Nazi”, for simply questioning or being critical in general about any mainstream news.

 It’s really amazing to see how giant companies like Youtube are attempting to censor people’s thoughts and opinions, many people I personally follow have had their accounts demonetized which means that they are being actively suppressed and as an added bonus to this demonetization they will appear lowing in the searches in Youtube and Google search. This is very troubling, the internet was never meant to shut people up rather it was created for the good of us all to communicate freely, censorship is outright wrong and dangerous.

 We really have to fear when the truth is being suppressed so much, this tells us that rather than face the truth they would rather silence us all, so we must all stay strong and fight back. To really be effective in your fight against information supression, you will need to find relatively new content and promote it everywhere you can. This is where it can be effective with reddit to sort by “new”. If you notice that something is being brigaded especially in the case of reddit, fight back with your own army of accounts and upvote what they are downvoting en masse, this will help others to see this information and make them harder to be suppressed.

 The number one thing you can do today for your critical thinking self, is to  cut the cord  get away from the heavily propagandized media apparatus, they are a cancer on free thought and have ventured so far from their original mission statement into a degraded corporate propaganda mouthpiece. Show and teach everyone you know about this, we can take back some power with the  corporate media  in it’s death throws as we rise to the top. We are supposed to live in free societies where freedom of the press used to actually mean something, now it’s only purpose is sowing division and promoting war propaganda. They want to turn us all on ourselves and degrade our good intentions, while they hope to remain under the radar and heeding no responsibility for this madness.

 In writing this post I am in no way condoning illegal behaviour, rather providing information for educational purposes only.

 The post  How to fight back against internet censorship  appeared first on  The Green Living Solution .

https://bit.ly/37Kg96R

The Social Dilemma: get off your phone now

This film has been a huge wake-up call for me. I am legitimately scared of how social media has become a tool for third persons to further their own commercial or political interests through the manipulation of users. As a person who uses social media quite a lot, I am alarmed and astounded that I am unknowingly consuming tons of propaganda and allowing this subliminal content to change my world view. Reader, I hope you’ll be glad to find out that after this film, I have turned off my notifications on all my social media applications – even Messenger. I feel incredibly manipulated whenever I turn on my phone and find myself wanting to have a notification, and so I want to un-program my brain. These have been my initial thoughts after watching the movie, but let’s get into a deeper analysis of how these insights relate to the bigger picture.

 What roles do technology and social media play in your life?

Technology and social media have made my life infinitely easier and more entertaining. Technology allows me to learn new skills, communicate with my relatives in the US, and find communities that share the same hobbies as me. I can also order food, clothes, and virtually everything that I could ever want through the Internet. Also, on my phone, it has become a daily routine of mine to learn some French through Duolingo and exercise using this fitness app. I also use my phone to track my menstrual cycle, so I’m never caught off-guard. (Life is tough as a woman, isn’t it?) Social media, on the other hand, is not just a place for me to stay updated on my friends’ lives, it has become my go-to source for entertainment and news. So, technology and social media are an essential part of my life now, and if I were to go even a day without it, I would have an extremely tough time finding things to do, and I wouldn’t be nearly as productive and efficient. Hence, I could go, at most, twelve hours without my phone. And that’s already pushing it.

So, it’s not surprising that I do identify with the two extreme portrayals of social media users – the teenage boy who gets indoctrinated by an extreme movement and the little girl who has anchored her self-worth on approval on social media. I feel that I was once that little girl when I was in high school. Back then, I used to post an absurd amount of information about my life and I always monitored the number of likes I was getting because it made me feel important and loved when I was getting positive attention. I also used to feel really sad about posts that didn’t have as many likes as my other ones, and I would delete those if they didn’t do well. I would also obsess over the number of followers I had on Twitter. Looking back now, that was an extremely dark and toxic time in my life because I was just living for what people thought of me. As I grew older and got into college, I outgrew this phase and moved onto the extreme movement phase. I am currently in it now and I am quite scared that I will end up becoming a brainless pawn in politics. I see a lot of propaganda online, and I used to react very strongly and recklessly to “information” like this. I am glad that I now know to be critical of emotionally charged news and facts to not let my biases get the best of me.

Can you give us insights on a SWOT-PEST analysis of yourself?

The PES factors affect my life more than I am capable of understanding. Most DDS possess an inability to piece together how the larger system affects all of us individually; so, it’s a good thing I’m not a DDS! All of these factors DO affect us massively; politics affect the way legislation and national and local initiatives are imagined, inflation and investor confidence affect prices and even the growth of infrastructure in the country, and our society is affected by mostly intangible social factors like the trend of younger people of a higher socioeconomic class to take on liberal stances. These all influence our individual lives because we live in a bigger bubble than our personal environments – all the ideas and the actions that we do are largely determined by the larger environment.

The technological factor greatly influences the PES factors, and it is easy to see why. Whenever there are any technological advancements, humans find a way to use these to reach their goals efficiently. When the wheel was invented, trade became easier (economic), communication became faster (social), and this might be a stretch, but the wheel played a huge role in power relations as it was used to have the upper hand in ancient battles (political). In the same way, the T factor influences the PES factors today – financial transactions have never been more efficient, social interaction continues to evolve, and politicians can campaign (and scheme) more effectively through social media.

The technological factor continuously affects every factor that affects our lives to an unimaginable extent. Because it affects the PES factors, it certainly also affects the opportunities and threats present in my life as well. Through modern technology, I can join many webinars, watch many informative videos about topics that interest me, and even find jobs online. However, because of technology, I am threatened by cybersecurity and data privacy issues, and I am vulnerable to fake news and propaganda which could drastically affect my world view. The documentary actually perfectly captured how technology, particularly social media, has affected our lives – business, politics, society, and our personal lives have become more productive yet somehow more vulnerable at the same time. The film echoes my assessment of the PEST factors when it exhibited how: 1) businesses use data to make advertisements more effective, 2) extreme political stances polarize society and destroy democracy through fragmented truths, 3) social interaction has deteriorated into a drug that causes people to crave attention and validation more than the essence of social interaction itself, and 4) all of these factors and their interactions have real-life consequences that affect our personal lives more than we know.

How do you foresee the future use of technology?

I have a bad feeling that this downward trend of abusing technology will continue. I do think that businesses and politicians will continue to milk the heck out of this disinformation and advertisement cow just because they can. I don’t mean to take on such a radical view of the world, but I do believe that the elite in society ultimately are the ones who decide on what’s allowed and what isn’t. Because these unethical practices have become the industry standard and even a competitive advantage for some of these social media platforms, it’s going to tale a long time to push back against this current, especially because there are going to be financial consequences that harm the elite. Would a drug pusher advocate for making drugs illegal? Would drug addicts want drugs to be illegal? Would politicians who benefit from having a medium for effective campaigning want social media to be regulated?

This was mentioned in the film and I think that it’s worth mentioning again -- these corporations make the public feel like they are capable of regulating themselves when in reality, they are doing the bare minimum when it comes to ethically handling our data. It’s horrible that they’re doing the bare minimum because the public can’t easily demand that this bare minimum be changed to a higher standard because again, IT’S ALREADY AT THE BARE MINIMUM. It’s like when you ask a man who’s DECENT ENOUGH to start treating you better – and he replies with, “At least I don’t beat you as other men do.” As if that’s a good enough excuse to continue on this path to human destruction.

So, how do we push back?

I want to say that we should all boycott social media applications until they decide to do right by us, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. I also want to say that we should have everybody watch The Social Dilemma for them to become aware of the unethical practices that have become the industry standard. However, there are only a few of us who have access to this film and only a few of us who can comprehend it in the way that it was meant to be comprehended. Being individually aware is a great first step to pushing back, but it’s the uneducated masses that are most vulnerable to the fake news and propaganda being spread online. So, a better solution to halting these unethical practices is having an external body regulate these corporations. An organization has to intervene and create ethical standards for these companies. It’s the only real way to start pushing back.

What are your thoughts about these quotes from the film?

"If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product."

When something is free and too good to be true, be critical of what the product is doing to you and how it is affecting your life. More often than not, the world is not some great place where you get great stuff for free. Everything has a price, and we have to be wary of when we’re being used.

"There are only two industries that call their customers 'users': illegal drugs and software."

Social media is addicting. The reason why they make it so addicting is that their business model is most effective when you have users spending every waking minute on the application. More user engagement means more advertising exposure. Hence, we need to know that we are not the target customers of social media platforms, but we are merely users. To quote the film, “if something is not a tool, it’s demanding things from you.” When social media begins to demand your time from you, then it’s not playing the role of a tool for communication and entertainment anymore, but it is playing the role of a drug.

"Social media is a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures."

What is social media selling exactly? On the surface, it might seem like it is just selling the promise of effective advertising to third persons. However, this effective advertising has a goal – to change your behavior in some way to fulfill the commercial or political interests of a third party. You might plug into the app that you own a dog. It starts showing you dog videos, and then a cute chew toy that you might like to buy. Slowly, the algorithm recommends you rabbit videos next. You end up liking rabbits and then proceed to buy two chew toys – one for your dog and one for your newly acquired rabbit. Social media changes us in tiny ways that we aren’t aware of. So, we have to be cautious, especially because the algorithms, driven by purely financial incentives, could end up transforming our world view.

"The very meaning of culture is manipulation."

The algorithm used to power this effective advertising medium manipulates people into staying on the application as long as possible. But very few of us understand this. If more people knew about the unethical tactics used by companies to keep users engaged, they would feel incredibly manipulated. Is this what business and politics have come to? Has human culture evolved to a point where it’s perfectly fine to toy with people’s lives to fulfill a financial or political goal? Or has it always been this way, and the abuse of social media has just uncovered human nature’s tendency to value self-interest above all else?

To conclude this lengthy blog entry, an algorithm that blindly recommends fake news and propaganda to keep users engaged should not be the industry standard. People cannot be manipulated to serve commercial or political interests. Let people have access to unbiased truths and let them think for themselves what they’d like to think. We cannot rely on corporations to regulate themselves. These corporations must be regulated by an external organization.

Humans are better than this. We can do better than this.

#GreedyCorporationsCanKissMyAss 

The Monthly

This one is super short, sorry, but I wanted to get something up for you guys. UPDATE: We are so much closer to 200 than we were a few days ago. I’m going to post a preview of what the ships would be like for those that don’t know BEFORE we hit 200, just so you guys can see what I’m talking about, but we’re so close! So so close! Thank you guys so much, from the bottom of my heart! Requested by anonymous ~*~*~ Living with his mother, a doctor, and now his girlfriend, Sherlock Holmes wasn’t uneducated when it came to the plights of women, particularly the illness that plagued women once a month. However, he wasn’t prepared for it.

Reading about battle, and going straight into it are two very different things. It started subtly. One hour ago, you were happy, laughing at the littlest things that YOU did, as if there wasn’t a care in the world. He left for a few minutes, going down to get the mail that Mrs. Hudson hadn’t brought up yet. Knowing you were in a joking mood, and wanting to be a good boyfriend and play along, he thought up a funny joke while he was gone, and ran up the stairs eager to tell you. He found you sitting in his chair, laptop open and you were just staring at it, scrolling through social media, he expected. Trying to hide his smile, he said the joke and waiting for your reaction. A smile. Then a laugh. That’s what he was expecting… Instead, he got a glare, a blink, and a sigh. “You alright?” He asked, wondering just what could change your mood so quickly. Another sigh as you leaned to rest your head against your arm. “I’m fine, why?” He shook his head. He learned not to argue, just to stay silent. “No reason.” “There obviously was a reason, but if you want to keep secrets I guess that’s fine.” He had been walking to the kitchen, but stopped and turned as you spoke. “Well, I just asked because you seemed like you were in a bad mood.” “What’s that supposed to mean? I didn’t do or say anything.” He shrugged, not really knowing if what he was saying was the right thing. Honestly, he had no idea what was going on with you. “Well, you just didn’t laugh at my joke, but we were joking around earlier.” “Maybe your joke just wasn’t funny. You’re not the best at everything, you know.” You weren’t even looking at him, just staring at your computer. He said nothing, just left your mail on the kitchen table and went back to the bedroom to grab his coat and gloves, wanting to give you some time alone. When he got back it was late at night and you had already retired. He discarded his coat and gloves in the living room, throwing them on John’s old chair before going back to the bedroom, finding you sleeping on your side, curled up. Quickly changing into some sleep clothes, he crawled into bed slowly, not wanting to wake you up. He had just closed his eyes when he felt two small arms wrap around his torso and your head resting on his chest. “I thought you were asleep.” He mumbled. He felt you shake your head. “Nope. I was waiting for you.” “I thought you were angry with me.” You raised your head to look at him. “Why would you think that?” He wondered for a brief moment if you were suffering from memory loss. “Earlier you seemed upset, that’s all.” “Oh, well I wasn’t upset at you.” “Just the world?” he guessed, jokingly. “I’m always upset at the world.” “It’s not hard to be.” He agreed. You both laid there in silence and he felt your breathing pattern change. You began taking deeper breaths and soon enough he heard your tiny snores, telling him that you were out. He glanced at the bedside table, looking at the clock. You had gone to sleep much earlier than usual, but he knew that you hadn’t been sleeping very well, so he didn’t think much about it and closed his eyes. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Sherlock got up early the next morning for a case, waking up long before you would. He untangled himself from your arms, crawling out of bed slowly, only stopping when he saw a much darker color contrasting with the white sheets. You were still asleep on your side, the blankets thrown to the foot of the bed (something Sherlock had always done since he was a child. You hated it) and Sherlock noticed what looked like blood on the sheets where you had been sleeping. Looking at you, he found more on your sleep pants and it didn’t take him long to reach a conclusion. He decided not to wake you, he knew you would be embarrassed about it, though why he didn’t know, and instead ran to the bathroom, making sure you had enough feminine products to last you a full week. He didn’t really know what all you needed, but he could try. Surely you could appreciate that, right? Deciding that half of a box maybe wasn’t going to be enough to be completely on the safe side, he made a mental note to pick some up on the way home. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~ He hated shopping, but this was the most nerve raking shopping trip he had ever been on. There were so many options-so many expensive options, and he had no idea what you preferred. He remembered the colors on the box and the brand, but didn’t think to remember sizes. He didn’t even know that there were different sizes. He thought feminine products were a one-size-fits-all type of deal. “Lost?” He heard someone behind him ask. He turned to find an older woman standing behind him. “No, I know where I am.” She smiled and patted his arm. Reaching up, she took a box of feminine products, the same brand you had at the flat, and handed them to him. “These are the best. She’ll thank you, trust me.” He took the box, adding it with the rest of the items in his basket. The woman, however wasn’t done and she ushered him to another aisle. “Here.” She thrust a box towards him. He took it, but had no idea what that would do. “How is a box of chocolates going to help?” He asked her. She turned to him and smile. “Does she not like chocolate?” He nodded. “She loves it. I just don’t see how it will help her.” The woman shrugged. “She likes chocolate. It will make her happy, and that helps.” He mentally face palmed for not seeing it earlier. “And since it makes her happy, that will release endorphins which will then ease any cramps and headaches.” He finished. She was silent for a moment before nodding. “Sure.” ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Sherlock made his purchases, with the kind lady’s help, and went straight back to the flat. He heard tiny sniffles as he walked up the stairs and peeked into the room before entering. You were sitting in his chair, watching an old Disney cartoon, tissues in hand, tears covering your cheeks. You looked up as he entered, wiping your cheeks clean as he put the bags on the desk. “What’s that?” “Just some things I thought you might need.” He shrugged it off, not taking anything out but the box. Thinking that this was the perfect time, he handed the box to you. You paused your movie, still wiping tears away. “Would you like some chocolate?” You looked up at him for a moment, brows furrowed. “Why did you get me chocolates?” “I just thought you might like some. It seems to be your favorite.” “Are you saying that I eat it too much?” “What? No!” “That I’m fat?” Tears were still visible, but they were much, much different now. It was because you were offended, not sad. “No! No, no, no, absolutely not, you’re as thin and beautiful as ever.” You still stared at him. Finally you sighed. “Really?” You asked, quietly, taking the box from his hands slowly. “Really really.” You allowed yourself to smile a little as you opened the box and took out a chocolate piece, then took out another for him, deciding to share. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ You couldn’t sleep. There was no way you were going to sleep tonight, you knew that for a fact. Your stomach was cramping more than ever. This was, undoubtedly the worst pain you had ever been in. You got up, deciding to walk around the flat some to see if that eased any of your pain. Sherlock had been studying up on the menstrual cycle and remedies for different ailments, and that seemed to be one of the only ones you remembered. After ten laps around the living room, you thought that if it wasn’t better by then it wasn’t going to get any better at all and you gave up, plopping down in Sherlock’s chair, only to curl into a ball a few seconds later due to pain. You still weren’t going to sleep so you grabbed the remote and turned on the telly, surfing the channels until you found (Your fav tv show). It was five in the morning before your eyes closed long enough for you to fall asleep and that’s how Sherlock found you the next morning. Curled up in his chair, the TV in the background. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Surely, you thought, if that night was so bad, you wouldn’t have to worry about it again. Sherlock woke up, feeling the bed shift and move beside him. He kept his eyes closed, knowing that it wasn’t morning just yet. He tried falling back to sleep, but just as he was drifting off, the bed moved again and he heard you groan in frustration as the other side of the blankets were thrown on top of him. He opened his eyes now, turning to you. You were laying there, hand on your forehead in frustration and, even in the dark, Sherlock could see tears of frustration in your eyes. He checked the bedside table, looking at the clock and seeing the early hour of three. “(Y/N), what’s the matter?” He asked quietly. Startled, you jumped and turned towards him. “My stomach is cramping so bad I can’t sleep and the heating pad broke this morning, so I can’t use that. I get incredibly hot, so I have to get the blankets off, but then I get so cold, so I have to put them back on, then I get hot again. I can’t get comfortable.” He could hear you crying in the middle of your explanation and he knew this wasn’t a joke or exaggeration. Instead of saying anything, he got up from the bed.* “I’m sorry I woke you up.” You sniffled as he went to the bathroom. You assumed he was upset or angry with you for waking him up, but it was quite the opposite. Instead of leaving, he was grabbing two rags and he turned on the water. One rag he wet with cold water and the other was hot-as hot as he could stand it. He came back in seconds later, sitting beside you on the bed and placing the cold rag on your forehead. “I don’t have a fever.” You assured him, but he didn’t acknowledge what you said. He pulled back the blankets that you had put back over yourself and looked up at you. “Where does it hurt?” He asked. You lifted your shirt just barely, placing your hand just below your belly button. “Here.” You whispered and he placed the hot rag where you told him, pulling your shirt over it to cover and keep it there. He pulled the blankets back over you, up to your chin, then walked across the room, pointing the fan to you and turning it on so that you could feel a slight, cool breeze. “There. Maybe this will help.” “I don’t see how, other than the hot rag.” He laid back in bed, letting you rest your head on his shoulder. He brought an arm around you, placing his hand on your forehead, making sure the rag didn’t fall off. Getting another idea, he reached over and grabbed the novel of short stories you had been reading, opening up to Flat of Angles ** and reading it to you out loud. You had no idea how in the world this was working. Maybe it was the cold rag and the fan against the hot rag and blanket making everything somehow balance out. Maybe it was him reading to you, relaxing you. You didn’t know, but you knew that you felt a thousand times better, ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

* This has actually worked for me a lot. This part of the oneshot is based on my personal experience where I was going through Hades and back with cramps and hot flashes, so I got a little creative and it worked really well. **I have yet to read it, but Ben C. has read it and that’s what inspired me to add it, because it’s really nice and relaxing to listen to. Here’s the link to part one. ALSO, if you ever wanted to visit 221 B (as I have wished to several times) and fall asleep on the couch (as I have wished to do, again) this link will take you to a youtube video that I’ve used to fall asleep SEVERAL times. Never fails to relax me and get me to sleep. The audio is marvelous, and the picture she used is amazing! Go check her out and give her channel some love, it’s amazing. She also does LOTR, The Hobbit, and a lot of Harry Potter, including the common rooms, the library, and much more! (no, this was not sponsored or anything, I haven’t contacted her, I just wanted to give her amazing work a shout out because I love this channel and I think some of you might too)

Renewed faith: Tale of a Covid-19 survivor

#PHnews: Renewed faith: Tale of a Covid-19 survivor

DAVAO CITY – If there's one thing positive about surviving the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) other than being alive, it is the renewed faith in God and in our fellowmen. This, according to Dean Ortiz, the spokesperson of the Department of Public Works and Highways in Region 11 (DPWH-11) who, until his positive test result for Covid-19 on Oct. 27, thought he was "very careful" enough not to contract the dreaded virus. For one, Ortiz heads the DPWH-11 Covid-19 Coordinating Group, ensuring health protocols are practiced across the organization and its linkages. He said nothing was more terrifying when a supposedly good Tuesday morning filled with positive energy was broken by a Viber message with an attached screenshot of a document with his name on it, in a screaming red, all in capital letters: "POSITIVE". “I guess what happened to me was leadership-by-example personified,” Ortiz said, adding that up until he spoke to the Philippine News Agency on Sunday, his exposure had not been traced to any person or group of individuals. “I underwent an RT-PCR test along with some colleagues on October 27. It wasn't really required because I didn't have any symptoms, to begin with. It was more of an act of leadership mixed with a bit of smugness and confidence, as I always thought of myself as the last person on earth to catch the virus,” he recounted. Ortiz said he was "very careful," especially in his line of duty, and especially because he has a family to take care of. Hours after his diagnosis, he was picked up at home by a van with a crew clad in full Covid-19 protective equipment, he said. Leaving his house with a blank thought, Ortiz said he felt weird sitting at the back of an unlit van where he can only hear the occasional thud, the van's engine, and human voices of the faceless crew. “No facial expressions to draw emotions from, as if emotions had a place in the uncertainty I was faced with. The sound of my own heartbeat was very reassuring and I found myself saying a prayer,” he said.

The patient care center where Dabawenyo Dean Ortiz was put in isolation after contracting the coronavirus in late October 2020. He describes the area as as a well-lit facility, albeit the surroundings were pitch-black. (Photo from Dean Ortiz's Facebook Page)

 Filled with fear, he entered a patient care center that he described as a well-lit facility "but everything around was pitch-black." He said the scene was straight out of a post-apocalyptic movie—dark, cold, terrifying, surreal. “I declared that this was where God wanted me to be, where I will get the help I need, recover, and do some introspection. Whether I like it or not, I am no longer my old self. This experience has changed me already and I intend to come out of it bent in places, but definitely not broken,” Ortiz said. Hope, resentment As soon as he told everyone the news, he said he received a string of calls, social media posts, and private messages that were encouraging and sympathetic. “Some told me to stay strong, to leave everything to God, and not lose hope. Others were not so kind, their words full of resentment, blame, just a tad short of "good riddance." I felt violated and weighed down by insults,” Ortiz shared. In his line of work, however, Ortiz said he learned to be patient and tune out negative things. “I’m used to being called a lot of things. Name it, I've heard it. In from one ear, out from the other side. But in my delicate state, I couldn't help taking offense at the vitriol that was being thrown at me from all sides,” he admitted. "People aren’t crazy enough to get the disease intentionally. I remember my boss saying: Who wants to get it in the first place? His wisdom lingered in my mind through the whole ordeal, he added. Coping up with newfound friends Despite being feeling helpless, Ortiz tried to call people whom he said he never thought that he would ask moral support from. And to his surprise, he said he received no judgment from them. “They reached out to me with genuine compassion and concern and offered to help in any way they could. I had their support and it felt like a huge load was taken off my shoulders. When you're in distress and at your lowest, these small gestures make a world of difference,” he said. He recalled that his first day in the facility was a thrill as the sun was up and he felt cheerful. He checked his surroundings and saw the wide and airy open spaces perfect for jogging, good landscaping, and a perfect spot for plane-spotting. He also tried to make friends with his co-patients, whom he described as “positive with Covid-19 but at the same time positive that they will all get through of it somehow.” “We shared stories of what happened to each of us and how we got there. In the end, we shared one story – discrimination. The hardest part perhaps of being infected is the fact that too many people know too much about the disease yet choose to be uneducated, even ignorant, on how they treat people who have the dreaded disease,” Ortiz added. Coming from different walks of life, he said they all found friendships and saw themselves equal inside the patient care center. “I know these guys won’t forget me for giving them a bottle of ice-cold Coke once in a while, a welcome treat given the circumstances. Good thing I have a good set of friends and relatives who never turned their back on me when I asked for help, as my family back home was under strict quarantine and were forbidden to get out,” he said. Modern-day heroes Ortiz said the doctors, nurses, and their support staff were attentive to their patients as they can be seen coming around the facility three to four times daily to serve their meals, check their vital signs, and clean their rooms. “We may not see their covered faces, but their big hearts showed through and shone like sunlight. I wish I could do more than thank them profusely for their sacrifices, knowing that they too have families and loved one’s back home. Yet, they were there for us, egging us on to beat this disease and easing our suffering while they themselves suffer,” he added. With that realization, he said he lost all reason to complain. "It goes without saying that, during this pandemic and when this is all over, let’s honor their selfless contribution to our country," he said. Along with his “co-positives”, he said they were blessed to have hot meals sent to their rooms every night, and the food served by the city government was not hospital food but that the meals were well-planned, flavorful, nutritious, and satisfying, making his confinement much more bearable.

Dabawenyo Dean Ortiz (extreme left) and his 'co-positive' friends who tested negative for coronavirus disease, shows the clearance proving that they are all virus-free. (Photo from Dean Ortiz's Facebook page)

“I could only imagine how much the city government spends daily on people in isolation and in hospitals. So don't talk to me about how a minor flaw in the Davao QR system and the minor inconveniences make you curse the city government to high heavens. Who are we to judge? Wake me up when you find a perfect government,” Ortiz pointed out.  Renewed faith On November 5, Ortiz was released from isolation after testing negative for the virus. He thanked everyone who helped him get through the toughest eight days of his life. Under the new protocols, Ortiz and his new-found friends inside the patient care center were required to spend 10 days in isolation, counting from the day they underwent the swab test. “Looking back at the experience made me renew my faith in God for giving me another chance to savor the greatest gift I could ever ask for -- my wife and two kids, my 80-year-old mom, my sister, and our working student all testing negative for the virus. Not even the news of a Spice Girls reunion or a Coldplay concert in Davao City could ever match that. God indeed is the greatest,” Ortiz said. He also said that his experience gave him a reason to believe that being (Covid-19) positive ends when positivity begins, and when one allows hope to prevail amidst all the negativity. “Allowing other people's baggage to weigh you down would not help the process of healing from the disease and the stigma that comes with it. Revenge is tempting but a big waste of time. Karma is now digital, so they say,” Ortiz said. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Renewed faith: Tale of a Covid-19 survivor." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1121158 (accessed November 11, 2020 at 07:05AM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Renewed faith: Tale of a Covid-19 survivor." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1121158 (archived).