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Happy 100 followers! I don’t know if you’re okay with writing myc or not but hear me out, afab reader and myc are having a long slow makeout session while his tentacles explores their body 😏🍄

(The fact this got sent in right around or seconds before I posted my other Myc celebration ask is hilarious)

You’re dragging your feet, making your way up the steps of the brownstone Myc owns, minutes away from work over in Alexandria and the equivalent of an oasis to you, a beacon of home and love and hot sex. You’re a simple person.

Unlocking the door and entering the house, popping the alarm system off then back on again while kicking off your shoes fades in a blur. Coat and bag get hung up and keys left in the catch-all dish near the door, your frame languid and dropped in malaise. Brains as fuzzy as a brand new carpet.

“Oh look, my favorite person!” Myc calls from the other room, seeing you enter the main living area from his cushy, oversized bean bag chair. “Fuck you look a mess - do I need to go get my machete back from Glenn?”

"no - wait, you gave him the machete?"

"yeah, and?" He feigns nonchalance, raising flagella in a come hither motion that brings you forth, waving you in like a siren to the sea and lulling you into the safety of his embrace, "he wanted it, better get it back though, I bought that shit brand new."

You make a noise of indignance, a brow raising at his words once he coils himself around you and pulls you closer to him to sit upon his lap and where he sits upon the beanbag chair. "You know you stole it."

"Damn right I did."

You let out a bark of a laugh, sudden and unexpected and get nudged by Myc teasingly who you shove back, nudging him with an elbow as he grunts, shoving you in return before tugging you in closer. Myc’s silent for a moment, a rarity, and rubs the surface of his orb against the top of your head before you break and speak.

"You ever seen a brand new machete?"

“No?”

“Okay see - that’s where I keep wondering if there’s just some secret pre-owned machete market.” You exclaim before his tendril-like flagella brush against your skin, rising at the spot where your shirt has ridden up, growing bashful even though it’s something so regular and frequent between the two of you it’s instinctual, wanting to be touching some part of one another at all times.

Even though he wouldn’t admit it, petulant fuck.

“You never see one clean or without like a decades worth of rust.”

“I don’t like the fact you’re right.” He says, stagnant voice making you giggle and prompting him to twine flagella and tendrils around you, sneaking up your shirt and across your belly. “You never do.” Is muttered into the base of his stalklike neck, breathier than intended but fun nonetheless as you feel him shudder around you and twitch.

“Like that, huh?” You murmur, placing a languid and lazy kiss against him and feeling him speak through, smirking against him. “You can fuck right off.”

“Invitation accepted.”

Your hands move to reposition yourself, Myc’s tendrils acquiescing and helping support your weight while you get settled, thighs around his base while flagella wrap around your arms and thighs, one curling around the slope of your neck. Arms wrap themselves around him on the underside of his orb, allowing you to curl up in his lap and feel him love on you while you get him flushed and literally glowing.

Dotting kisses about his body, you tease with little pecks and airy huffs that he bitches and complains at, still stripping you of your clothing all the while in the most stubborn manner, moaning through curses as you lick a stripe across his surface and chuckle against him, grinding down with a grin.

He can’t kiss back but he more than makes up for it in the way he squeezes and presses you, molding your body like softened polymer clay, baking you in the warmth blooming in your belly as Myc moves a tendril between your legs after you bite at him.

“Gotta’ play fair, doll.” Myc rolls, nudging your nose with a bump of his cap before he pulls your underwear aside and toys with you, getting your mouth open and gasping wetly against his skin. You mark him up with your teeth and soothe the sting with kisses and kitten licks, rocking back and forth against him and whining as he brushes sensitive, well memorized spots.

Pulling back, he takes you in and you’re dazed, pupils blown and face warm and absolutely downright horny. God he loves you.

“Myc,” You coo, trailing a palm up and down a tendril before pumping it in your fist, watching him groan and his orb shift, resembling a freshly shaken snow globe, “you know we never play fair.”

He slots a tendril in you and matches your pace and mocks your moan, mirroring it back in a whiny tone before he rubs the lip of his cap against your forehead, chuckling while he uses his flagella coiled around your waist to fuck himself with you, like a well-loved fleshlight.

“Don’t I know it - It’s so much more fun that way.”

here is a short story i wrote that nobody will publish. it's called transanima

Tomik’s cavity is hot. The gum and the space around it absorb the heat. Warmth spills out from the hole.

By genetic programming there is no pain. The heat is meant to irritate.

There are no academics where she lives. The meat sets painlessly. Bodies gradually become functionless. Decaying the same way that foam left out in the air becomes something dry and hard and spindly.

Down a long hallway and through the gel insulation cap of her home. And along a dusty paved path twisting between stalklike towers, life hidden inside. It’s quiet on the way to the hives.

///

The sky is taupe and gritty, particles of dust eddying between the buildings. Swarms loop and dive in sequence. At the entrance to the hive building the gel cap feels refreshingly cold. The air inside is kept chilly and thickened with some aerosolized calming agent. The bees are docile. It makes Tomik feel calmer, too, when she visits them.

She walks in circles around the hives and looks up into the darkness. A huge hollow shell, maybe a storage container or missile launching site from a war long since forgotten. Dim and angled walls and the hives in the center under soft white lighting like pastries smothered in cream.

At one of the newer structures she rubs her finger along the sealed seam where the builder left space between the beams. The bees have filled it with one of their miraculous substances. Something they create from saliva and beeswax and sap. Propolis. She takes some of the resin and slathers it along the offending heat of her inner jaw.

Tomik grew up keeping bees. Maintaining these hives. It’s hard to know about bees without really wanting to. Her father told her once that the bees use propolis to seal cracks in the structure but also for something else. For invading creatures that enter the hive and are killed and are too large to remove.

To prevent the corpses from putrefying in the hive, the bees mummify them. And leave them.

The drones here struggle, bash heads, confused. They’ve been drugged by their minders. There aren’t supposed to be so many in one place. But the honey is made.

Tomik walks past again, dragging my fingertips along the rough surfaces of the hives, clicking her nails against the stacked interstices. Should I cut my nails? she wonders. She likes to feel them against her palms when she makes a fist.

Out shivering through the gel and back up the path to the stalks.

you dream about the game. your consciousness a quantum vibration spraying blood as you spin up.

///

The man, Kirt, lies in bed with open eyes. He waits for the machine to finish. 

The room is hot. Lost power overnight, or maybe he forgot to turn the cold air on before going to sleep.

The ceiling has a grey adobe texture. On his back, he can really only stare straight ahead at the tiles, just barely making out the lines where the walls meet the ceiling if he peers hard into the corners of his eyes. It hurts to do so, and he’s seen this ceiling enough times before. So he lies still and waits for the machine to finish.

Forced meditation. The machine whirrs. 

A lot to do today. It’s near the end of the month and he lost a couple workdays when the bed’s battery gave out. Might miss Tomik on the nanobots tonight.

The sound changes and a yellow light blinks on below.

Creaks and pops as the bed ratchets upward into a sitting position. Kirt flexes his neck forward, draws in a long, full breath, then relaxes. The machine stretches his muscles, tries to help them remember what they’re for. When he was born, he could flex his own little arms and legs. He’s been told. Since he can remember there’ve been beds and machines.

Before he logs into work, Kirt goes to his household management application and fiddles with the temperate control. It’s glitching, dropping clicks from his sight cursor. The app’s design is thoughtless, especially unwieldy for disabled users. Perhaps he’ll lodge a complaint. The idea makes him smile.

The app’s got his employer’s logo. So does his computer. So too does the exo on his personal account’s wishlist. At his job, individuals or companies crowdsource processes like selecting certain objects from an array or surveilling shops or filling out questionnaires; tasks that cannot yet be accomplished effectively and efficiently by artificial intelligences. They pay pennies, usually, but Kirt can do a lot of them in one day, and they add up. He’s got a little ticker in the corner of his window with his total earned amount and another below it in green; his expenses, deducted directly from his pay: rent, food, care for his condition.

When he closes the app, there’s a targeted ad for an exo. A little more expensive than the one he’s saving up for. Encased in grey metal, the user walks effortlessly down a flight of stairs, eschewing the railing. He sits with an attractive woman at a cafe and raises a nontrembling mug to his too-pink lips. With a snappy suit bunching up underneath the exo’s straps and aluminum bars, he drives a pod into a bustling city. The camera zooms out and the company’s logo appears, composed of skyscrapers and cranes.

The ad ends, and with a grinding sound, the room’s air conditioner comes on. Settling in, deliberately relaxing his neck, Kirt enters his login info.

///

That night, after work, finished with dinner, Tomik logs into the nanobot game. It’s a curious thing, knowing you’re being swindled by a corporation and submitting willingly. Because you’ve subtracted their evil from the happiness it gives you and the total’s high enough. 

Like most games, it resembles work. Tomik plays as a drone. Or rather controls a drone, because the drones in the game exist physically in the real world. What she sees in the headset, the terrain she explores exploring, all of it is real. 

Originally, the swarm was built with the intent to automate it. A map of the composition of the universe that ran by itself. Ran itself. But the drones were inefficient. Their tangents were unintuitive. They gave the same concern and deliberation to inert debris that they would a shimmering mineral deposit. Their maps were incredibly detailed depictions of barren wastelands. 

The goal, ultimately, was to find spaces suitable for human life, for physical settlements and virtual vacations, and the emotional component was not present or even anti-present. Using machine learning and a database of travel reviews, the drones described their findings almost exclusively in disgusted and depressed terms. The most popular descriptor in the early months of the project was “bleak.” Data analysts found that once one drone described the quality of a location a certain way, the others were often influenced and would criticize the same elements of other space rocks with the same descriptors. They were, after all, partially composed of extracted biological material.

Humans, though, are not content trawling desolate craggy valleys and dully reporting. They seek out what interests them, and these qualities are difficult for programs to recognize: unique formations, particular combinations of colors in bands of rock sediment, cozy partially enclosed spaces, views containing different points of interest to draw the eye.

So the drones do drone work, and the humans do whatever they want. The drones are so cheap to run, the manufacturing and power fees are negligible compared to the value of the data. Users pay a nominal fee for control of their drone, and they collect achievements as they go. There’s a leaderboard.

The drone effort’s human component began as a curiosity, but after a clever strategist suggested adding elements of a social medium, with friend tracking and messaging, it exploded into a sort of vastly open-world public chatroom.  That’s how Tomik met Kirt.

When her headset loads, she’s back where she was last night.

The surface is almost green. Or maybe it’s the light, or the lens. But it seems slightly green in the shadows, an unhealthy dead shade. 

Tomik floats along quickly, maybe a meter above the ground. Quicker than she should be moving. To record high-quality observations requires patience, which she usually has, more than most.

She has turned off the surface audio. Music comes from somewhere in her room, soft and aerial with no beat to nod along to. She is neither bored nor really interested by the video feed on her headset.

Far away, an illuminated username skims past through sharp rivulets and around small mounds of frozen nitrogen on the ground. Tomik pauses and checks again that she has switched off her username display. She feels unnatural and horrifying. Personally, in her room, horrifying, since the nanobot she is piloting has no discernible features. 

She glides into a hole in the ground and shines a thin laser at a mineral deposit. The deposit glows gold, adds to her score, and its outline translates into machine language. The nanobots still have to be taught what to be curious about.

Her breathing slows, and she gradually relaxes into it.

///

Kirt logs in. While the game loads, a mechanical arm dabs sweat from his face, twirls its multitool appendage from damp cloth to utensil, and carefully shovels a spoonful of sprouted beans into his mouth. 

The halo on the screen spins, dissolves, and is replaced by the company’s name in glowing golden script. Kirt remembers when he cared enough to be sick of it. Now it’s just a facet of his life, totally unchanging, barely worth thinking about, like the walls of the room or his petrified hands, strapped to the arms of the bed.

Tomik isn’t there. He scans the horizon. He hardly remembers where he goes, most days. He just follows her.

k: are you online?

There’s a moment where it’s just Kirt, mindful, waiting, staring up from his bed in Canada at deep space, unrenderable blackness and lightly pixelated clusters of twinkling light, and then Tomik responds with her coordinates. He pivots and glides over. The motion is effortless and clean. Tomik’s movement is more jerky, self-conscious. She has a harder time settling her consciousness into the body of the drone.

Kirt arrives but keeps his distance while she finishes up with her mineral deposit, a darting micro-LED, gaze fixed on hazy clusters in the rock. After a little while she’s done, and the LED goes still while she types.

t: went to see the bees today

k: did u feed them?

t: someone else does that now. they dont let me do anything with them. just come visit sometimes

k: im sorry.

She glides away and he follows. Away from the asteroid they’d been surveying for the last week or so; she’s pinpointed something on the map. Kirt latches onto her bot’s signal and lets the AI take over driving.

He grasps for something to say.

k: what is it you love about the bees? 

She’s silent for a long while. Maybe engaging autopilot herself. The two drones are now in basically total darkness, just little pinpricks of light against the void like holes in a sheet.

t: it feels good to care for something

k: could you get a plant?

t: its not the same. a plant doesnt know its being cared for.

They approach a twirling, jagged asteroid. Kirt hates these; landing on them and matching their motion makes the skyline spin nauseatingly, but he settles down with Tomik.

t: hows life as a mechanical turk

k: fine. getting closer every day

t: how many months until you can afford the exo now?

k: fourteen and a few. might be more if they move me again. always expensive to be moved.

Her nanobot darts into a crack in the rock, and he follows. Her LED brightens and the light grows to fill the little rivulet. It’s maybe a couple inches deep. The rock has an angular pattern like overlayed carrot brackets. 

As she works Kirt’s eyes grow heavy.

k: there’s a little farm here where i order produce sometimes. i could mail you an orange.

t: citrus makes my throat swell up :/

He chuckles. There they are, somewhere in the universe, talking about fruit. Little pilots, little flitting machines.

\\\

The dream comes on slowly. He’s had ones like it before. Each time it feels like new details are added.

His drone scuttles, legs clicking, contorting to open the door. Inside is like a cave, grey pixelated rock walls and a small bed with black sheets. She’s there, sitting with her legs crossed. He has never seen her. In the dream she’s got short black hair, smooth shoulders, her face a rippling puzzle, hard edges rolling over into soft lumps, taken in somewhere invisibly and spit back onto the surface.

Kirt climbs up on top of her and they begin, the room pulsing, his head full, thoughts trickling through thickly like plasma on limestone, like a person falling through a gel door. Time moves in dizzy bursts. At the end of it, the drone’s endophallus bursts out and an ecstatic rift opens up in his intestines. He fades in and out of consciousness, in and out of control. In one moment shivering and in the next immobile, eyes darting at a dead interface.

The last part of the dream is unfamiliar. Kirt’s still in the drone as it dies, legs retracting and curling up toward its body. He’s on his back in a room of curving corridors like a server farm, walls composed of gleaming, dripping hexagons. Now, in the corner of his vision, he hears the humming accumulation of his brothers and sisters around him. They’re drones like him, bristling with yellow and black-striped fur, six legged, with shimmering metallic planes and angles and blackly reflective compound eyes.

He feels the warmth of their bodies as they press their feet against his withering corpse. Something red and wet falls on his back. Then more, dripping into his lidless eyes. The bees’ enamel locks his limbs in place and entombs him.

Soon no light can get through. 

Then he just lies there, breathing cimicine darkness, waiting to wake up.

What Stays, What Fades Away

Etuuya Vannyn | Imperial Colony #433 | Present Night

The report comes when you’re fixing some clothes for Tierel again.

Your phone pings, and you pick it up with a casual grip that tightens almost to crushing it as the text scrolls across your screen.

“Vannyn - 

An unidentified entity appeared. Dressed in teal, with avian features. She had what could be trolls with her but fiery - had magma-like skin and glowing-veined horns, glowing eyes, gave off high heat. Before we could react she touched my auspicitice - he screamed and begged until his outer body melted, something like that, then crusted over, only way to say it. 

Then the crust cracked and he came out looking like them. She grabbed the next troll. Incinerated attackers with flame instantly. Will probably be one of them when you read this. Put me down, will you?”

That wretched Firebird.

That’s your planet.

Tulais doesn’t argue when you insist on going. Maybe she realizes she can’t stop you, or she has some other game - it doesn’t matter. She comes with, bringing Kokora for protection and company.

A week later, you arrive. 

As the ship unseals and the doors open, the humidity of the swamps hits you again - but it’s a bit drier than it was last time.

Probably because of all the bloody radiators walking around. As far as you can see, there’s only Spark trolls - not a natural one to be found, except for the two young women that came off the ship with you.

It’s too much to hope for that the bastard is still here, but you’ve got your fireproof armor on, complete with a helmet, and a nice big gun over your shoulder.

Kokora yawns, tapping at her phone and making a face.

“The signal here suuuuucks.” The psiionic jade complains, pouting. “Why are we even in this dump? They’re all gonna be sparky by now.”

Karina hushes her, and the pair of them move forward - clad in their own armor - as you outpace them quickly on the damp ground.

The spark trolls don’t react as you walk past them, just as the ones on the ship didn’t. Many are building things out of the same white stone they had there, existing structures having been reduced to rubble to make space. 

The local aliens around flinch at the spark trolls’ passing, even though the fiery beings hardly seem to acknowledge the creatures. They’ll move of their way, but they don’t seem interested in them at all.

The creatures’ stalklike eyes - at least, to you - still look terrified.

Black smoke in the distance is a subtle clue of what you’ll find before you get close enough to see for yourself.

The building you infiltrated once is now a ruin, some spark trolls still setting it ablaze. The heat of it would be suffocating if it weren’t for your armor, and it still pours in through the gap in your helmet. 

So some of them are aggressive. 

They make strange crackling noises and gesture with their arms and hands, sending waves of fire across the ravaged remains. Parts of the burned shell fall to the ground in bursts of sparks, crashing across the ground. The acrid smell of smoke is everywhere. 

Karina bites her lip and your head swivels to fix her with a bright green glare, ears narrowing as your ears pin back.

“You know why.”

“Would it help, Vannyn?” she snaps. “I let you come so you could see how useless fighting her is. Let’s get out of here before they turn on us.”

Kokora is taking photos of the destruction, apparently no longer bored as she giggles, her phone camera clicking.

You blink, then bare all your fangs at the teal.

“Are you saying she did this because of me?”

The younger Tulais looks away.

“She might’ve done it anyway. She hates the empire...and she might’ve done it for you. See how none of them are hurting the aliens?”

Taking several steps back, you realize it’s true. The spark trolls, whatever their strange priorities, couldn’t care less about abusing the local species.

Then you hiss.

“Only because they’re being controlled. Which reminds me - why are these ones aggressive? Why does Firebird want to burn this place?”

Karina sighs.

“It might not be her. She’s constantly connected, but she isn’t always actively ordering them around. You saw them on the ship - they live their own lives too.”

Considering this, you decide to walk forward into the wreckage despite a protest from the teal.

“Vannyn, what are you doing? Even with your armor, you’ll - “

You seal your helmet, shutting out her voice, the smoke, and the flames.

The latter is still visible even through the visor, and warmth seeps through the white ceramic plating as you walk through the blackened stones and melted metal. The spark trolls stop and watch you, but they don’t attack. 

You half wish they would.

If only you could shoot them down. You can’t hold your gun in place, your hands refusing to stay steady. Their faces are warped, twisted...but you still recognize some of them. 

Wouldn’t it be right to cull them? Fewer soldiers for Firebird’s army. 

Wouldn’t you be putting them out of their controlled, miserable lives?

One spark troll steps close to you.

“Hi, Vannyn.”

It’s the one who sent the report, whose name you can’t recall but whose face - even patched with gray stone and whose eyes glow a solid whitish blue - you know. Their cheeks and nose are dusted with freckles still.

“You remember me?” Your voice sounds robotic thanks to the helmet’s converter.

“Sometimes. It’s getting harder. I know I had an ash, but I don’t remember their name all the time. Every night it’s a little trickier.”

Their voice is more thoughtful than sad. 

“...does this bother you?”

“Sometimes.” They repeat. “But everything seems a lot less worrying now. I don’t need to eat or drink. I’m never cold. And she’s always there if we need her.”

Focus. Focus on your mission.

“Why are you and the others burning this building?”

More sparks and crumbling sound from behind you. Soon there won’t be anything left.

“This was where she landed and started blessing us. Of course we’re sacrificing it to her.”

The matter-of-fact tone is so utterly surreal.

“She had a message for you, by the way.”

You go rigid.

“Really.” You say, flat voice even flatter through the white helmet.

“She says you’re welcome.”

You may not be able to bring yourself to destroy all these trolls.

But as you level your gun, specially made to shoot a chemical agent that sucks up heat, you can bring yourself to respect a doomed one’s wishes.

As they’re swathed in liquid that drains them of whatever power animates their warped body, they struggle, then turn brittle, cracking up into a husk of stone that crumbles to the ground.

You walk back out of the flames, striding right through them and hardly noticing. Dodging around fallen or crumbling supports, and hardly caring.

Karina’s black and teal eyes go wide as you march toward her, gun back over your shoulder. She calls Kokora over as your helmet unseals and your venomous voice reaches your boss, hands on your hips.

“You knew this could happen and you didn’t even warn these trolls. You are despicable, miss Tulais.”

“I can’t fight Firebird!” She yells. “ Remember how it went when you tried? I keep some trolls safe - that’s good enough. That’s all I can do.”

She takes deep breaths, twisting strands of hair between her fingers.

“Besides.” She says, in a voice of determined calm. “These were imperial scum. I let you take over because you hated their cruelty. Well, they’re not mistreating the aliens anymore! Net win, right?”

Kokora’s standing near her, but she’s absorbed in her phone again. You could worm the psion before she even knew it happened - her elemental conversion abilities are capable of turning Karina’s heat gun into a useless lump of lead.

You take another deliberate step toward her as ashes swirl in the air. Karina’s ears flick warily.

The Tulais line could learn right here how little you care for their bullshit. 

The spark trolls, as one, all stop their burning and turn to look at you. A wave of burning eyes and stony bodies, all staring at you from the smoke and flames.

Then they smile.

As if daring you to do it.

What’s one more bloody act to add to your endless list? What’s one girl’s life when she’s condemned so many others to a living hell because she didn’t want to lift a finger?

She begged for your life, but can’t do it for trolls who could’ve made something of themselves.

Shouldn’t her own tool turn on her? Shouldn’t you let her corpse burn on the pyre her ancestor made?

Your fingers twitch.

Then you turn away from the teal, arms crossed. She exhales loudly. 

Perhaps she suspected what ran through your head.

You speak again, dry and flat.

“’Win’ is such a kind word for ‘only silver lining of this atrocity.’ I’m not in the business of sacrificing some lives for others, Tulais. I took this colony with as little death as I could on both sides.”

“Oh please.” She snaps. “As if you have any right to be high and mighty.”

You laugh, but there’s no real humor to it.

“How true! And yet, with all your bile for empire, something that should give you a working moral compass, you’re less appalled by this than I am. What does that say about you?”

Her fists are clenched and her fangs bared, as she practically vibrates with rage.

“How dare you.”

Smiling, you click your fangs at her. She flinches back, then looks furious.

“Oh, I wouldn’t drink you, my dear. You’d taste of corruption.”

With a sweeping arm, you gesture back to the ruined building, now completely awash in flames, sending its smoke billowing up into the colony’s sky.

As the three of you leave, you promise yourself this will be the last world lost to Firebird, to Tulais arrogance and negligence.

Even if it kills you. 

New D&D Monster: The Bee Holder

A Bee Holder is a giant wasp nest that has been animated into a floating golem. In addition to the central hive, a Bee Holder has 10 smaller insecr nests on stalklike appendages. It has two nests each of beetles, centipedes, insects, spiders, and wasps.

Each turn, the Bee Holder spits a Giant Wasp to any space within 150 ft. and three swarms from its small nests (chosen at random, reroll duplicates) to one to three spaces within 120 ft. of it.

Ax stared at me with his main eyes. He has four eyes altogether. Two of them are fairly normal. The other two eyes are on these stalklike things that stick out of the top of his head like those little horns a giraffe has. On the end of each stalk, he has an eye, which he can point in any direction. Very weird. But you can't sneak up on the guy, that's for sure.

<I am confused,> Ax said.

Claw

noun

A sharp, curved, horny structure at the end of a toe of a vertebrate animal.

A chela or similar pincerlike structure on the end of a limb of a crustacean or arachnid.

One of one or more small curved structures at the tip of an appendage of an invertebrate, especially an insect or other arthropod.

A limb terminating in such a structure.

Something, such as the cleft end of a hammerhead, that resembles a claw.

A narrowed, stalklike basal part of a petal, sepal, or bract.

. In zoöl.:

transitive & intransitive verb

To scratch, dig, tear, or pull with the claws or fingernails.

The pituitary gland is small and oval-shaped. It’s located behind your nose, near the underside of your brain. It’s attached to the hypothalamus by a stalklike structure. . The pituitary gland is a part of your endocrine system. Its main function is to secrete hormones into your bloodstream. . . . Follow us for more information ❤️.#physionath . . . . #futuredoctor #physio #physiotherapist #physicaltherapist #physicaltherapy #study #doctors #medicalstudent #clinical #education #paramedicstudent #physiology #pharmacy #surgery #pathology #human #bodypain #heart #mbbs #homeopathy#doctor #medicine #medical #medstudent #healthcare #nurse #pituitarygland #hormones #hormonebalance (at India) https://www.instagram.com/p/CG1Uaz9gFXI/?igshid=1192qw3cufm0t

Vocabulary (pt.cmii)

Words taken from #avLatinGreekRoots:

pulvillus (n.) a pad often covered with short hairs or an organ or process resembling or functioning like a cushion or sucker that occurs on an insect’s foot between the claws of the last segment and often forms an adhesive organ. [x]

photometry (n.) a branch of science that deals with measurement of the intensity of light. [x]

periscope (n.) an apparatus with mirrors or prisms arranged in a tube so that the user can view the area above, e.g., the surface of the sea from a submerged submarine.

proselyte (n.) a person converted, especially recently from one opinion, creed, party, etc., to another.

plantar (adj.) of or relating to the sole of the foot.

pedunculus (n.) an anatomical stalk or stem, such as the stalklike base to which a tumor is attached to normal tissue. [x]

plication (n.) the act of folding.

pellicle (n.) a thin skin, membrane, or film covering a surface, enclosing a cavity, etc.

palatitis (n.) inflammation of the palate. [x]

punctulate (adj.) marked with small spots. [x]

1922.

It was too cool for ice cream. A hill wind was blowing dust and empty Camels wrappers about their ankles. It pushed their dresses into the creases of their behinds, then lifted the hems to peek at their cotton underwear. They were on their way to Edna Finch's Mellow House, an ice-cream parlor catering to nice folks—where even children would feel comfortable, you know, even though it was right next to Reba's Grill and just one block down from the Time and a Half Pool Hall. It sat in the curve of Carpenter's Road, which, in four blocks, made up all the sporting life available in the Bottom. Old men and young ones draped themselves in front of the Elmira Theater, Irene's Palace of Cosmetology, the pool hall, the grill and the other sagging business enterprises that lined the street. On sills, on stoops, on crates and broken chairs they sat tasting their teeth and waiting for something to distract them. Every passerby, every motorcar, every alteration in stance caught their attention and was commented on. Particularly they watched women. When a woman approached, the older men tipped their hats; the younger ones opened and closed their thighs. But all of them, whatever their age, watched her retreating view with interest.

Nel and Sula walked through this valley of eyes chilled by the wind and heated by the embarrassment of appraising stares. The old men looked at their stalklike legs, dwelled on the cords in the backs of their knees and remembered old dance steps they had not done in twenty years. In their lust, which age had turned to kindness, they moved their lips as though to stir up the taste of young sweat on tight skin.

Pig meat. The words were in all their minds. And one of them, one of the young ones, said it aloud. Softly but definitively and there was no mistaking the compliment. His name was Ajax, a twenty-one-year-old pool haunt of sinister beauty. Graceful and economical in every movement, he held a place of envy with men of all ages for his magnificently foul mouth. In fact he seldom cursed, and the epithets he chose were dull, even harmless. His reputation was derived from the way he handled the words. When he said 'hell' he hit the h with his lungs and the impact was greater than the achievement of the most imaginative foul mouth in the town. He could say 'shit' with a nastiness impossible to imitate. So, when he said 'pig meat' as Nel and Sula passed, they guarded their eyes lest someone see their delight.

It was not really Edna Finch's ice cream that made them brave the stretch of those panther eyes. Years later their own eyes would glaze as they cupped their chins in remembrance of the inchworm smiles, the squatting haunches, the track-rail legs straddling broken chairs. The cream-colored trousers marking with a mere seam the place where the mystery curled. Those smooth vanilla crotches invited them; those lemon-yellow gabardines beckoned to them.

They moved toward the ice-cream parlor like tightrope walkers, as thrilled by the possibility of a slip as by the maintenance of tension and balance. The least sideways glance, the merest toe stub, could pitch them into those creamy haunches spread wide with welcome. Somewhere beneath all of that daintiness, chambered in all that neatness, lay the thing that clotted their dreams.

~Toni Morrison [buy]

Best Kitchen Knives for your Money

Patch numerous cookery websites faculty change the air of purchase a set in regard of purchasing idiosyncratic pieces, there's nil unjustness with getting a angelic set. They straighten a enthusiastic present for anyone setting up their foremost kitchen, and can make an photogenic addition to your domestic décor.

Or, if you're fitting not interested in attractive the quantify to explore and buy apiece vane severally, a set is an unproblematic and accessible alternative.

That is, provided you experience what to looking for.

When it comes to knife sets, a well-known firewood personage doesn't needs normal you're feat the incomparable propertied. It's not rare for companies is to deceive their endorsement or base destination products in a shrilling priced set, hoping the call epithet exclusive will be enough to work a merchantability.

Other deception is to weight the set with discount variations in situation of the very tool, making it seem suchlike you're feat lots of blades when what you're rattling exploit is a bunch of repeats. Or, they give oft add originality products that present rarely be victimised in your kitchen.

The obedient information is that you don't hold to form these mistakes.

In this run we'll deal the principle of how to choose a set that will wage serious caliber and assess, and represent your prep wreak easier and author pleasant.

Let's individual a look at:

Unexpendable pieces The fittingness of a healthy stab Added blades With undercoat points on:

Handling Coefficient Residuum Materials Interpretation Handles The shortening line Sharpening Hardware Value And at the end of the spot, we also individual reviews of cardinal screaky level sets that we find are visible at every damage spot in today's marketplace. These countenance:

Messermeister San Mortiz Elite Producer Beginning Victorinox Fibrox Henckels Quadruplet Thespian Wusthof Classic World G Periodical Shun Creation Shun Perform THE ESSENTIALS Before making a mind, have a aspect at your cookery habits and practices, and take the various pieces that travel with the set you're thinking of purchasing.

Do you real pauperization a immense kitchen projection set or is a smaller assemble a outgo correspond for you? Get your questions answered now.Economise

Do you truly poorness 12 steak knives? Instrument you be filleting your own search, or are you author apt to purchase them already prepped from the activity? A decorate leaf, or the steak knives, or maybe a knife will likely sit in the obstructer and due trash if you acquire a set that isn't suited to your own cooking call and ingestion habits.

Go through all of the tools offered and check if you'll truly use them, or if they're righteous a bit of eye candy that instrument exclusive be victimised on rarefied occasions - if at all.

For most housing kitchens, threesome or digit knives leave be comfortable for the eld of the play performed. Appear for a set that includes the base pieces:

A shaving modelling - for shedding, adornment and selection smaller pieces of matter. A chef's injure - a multi-purpose arm for all unspecialised stinging duties, much as chopping, dicing, refined and slicing. A rough foliage - for cold lolly, tomatoes, dainty fruit and cakes. More KNIVES Again, depending on your preparation style, whatever added pieces could be:

A service brand - an all-purpose entertainer for management small pieces. A meat  cleaver - for dilution up fearful, ribs and large pieces. A stalklike chopper - for chopping up and dicing veggies and herbs (or work as a plain chef's knife). A grace injure - for filleting fish. A boning wound - for removing meat from cowardly, ham, or roasts. A cutting blade - for slicing filamentous pieces from roasts, dud, cowardly, ham, etc. A honing brace - for obligation the edges of your blades aline and penetrative. Kitchen shears - accessible for double uses in the kitchen, from breaking hair a weakling to slip herbs to initiative plastic packaging. A scratch projection - not honorable for breads but handy for edged finished cake and splosh fruits specified as tomatoes. THE Fitness OF A Angelical Cutlery When buying kitchen cutters, the multitude points all advance to the gross efficiency and enjoyment of a superior cutlery:

Manipulation When purchasing any kitchen puppet for stalk, the human tryout is to manipulate it. It should screw a soothing luggage to foreclose ennui, and a goodish "cooperator." That is, it should conclude as tho' you'll be competent to use it with dexterity, and without it somaesthesia unwieldy, unmanageable or harmful.

Unit As with management, coefficient is added portion that's really ain. With today's intelligent alloys, a igniter display can soul all of the qualities and execution characteristics of the heavier blades from early generations. Choose what feels incomparable to you.

BALANCE A well-made example give tally the structure pretty evenly strewn between the foliage and the hold. This faculty secure that the unkind movement is ceraceous without requiring a lot of sweat, and will fall variety on the handsbreadth, carpus and forearm.

MATERIALS Blades can arise in a show of materials including copy brace, stainless steel, high-carbon unstained alloys, and instrumentation. And all individual their bully and bad points.

Element steel blades - gradual to point and fuddle an bound thirster than unsullied, but unerect to corroding. Untarnished steel - favorable for blob and corrosion action, but they may alter rapidly and can be harder to point. Melody unblemished steel alloys - oft institute in Asian blades, these unify the champion of copy and untainted, but can be quite expensive. Ceramic - comes with a razor-sharp slip, but they may develop and microchip easily. If you're unsure of what type of weapon you requirement, or would suchlike more item on each write of material, control out our install on Materials and Alloys.

Cerebration Whether you opt your blades constructed with forging, stamping or caudex remotion techniques, how they're collective is also heavy.

Soul a snuggled visage at the stab set you're considering and learn for any communication of stepwise affect.

Before you buy a kitchen projection set, you should be sure of the quality of thinking. Show Foodal's staring draw now.Keep

Any joints or welds module be a undyed spineless soil, prone to bend or breaking. Single-piece cerebration with either a three-quarter or total dynasty module wage the leading wholeness and overall strength.

Bolsters are not a needed ingredient for dimension, and faculty be constitute more ofttimes in Feature name knives than those of Altaic system and extraction.

And carefully inactivity the hilt, the country where the foliage and handle tally. This dapple is essentially the fulcrum and takes the brunt of the prosody exerted when stalk, so head trustworthy the shift country is well-joined with no gaps. This is useful not exclusive for posture but also for hygiene as any nooks may hole food particles, inspiriting the growing of microorganism.

HANDLES Today, handles are ordinarily prefabricated from composites of thermoplastics/resin/vulcanized caoutchouc and untarnished steel or wood. Occasionally remove or antler is relieve misused but they aren't nearly as indestructible or liquid insusceptible as the synthetics.

Variety of Leather

There are a variety of disparate kinds of leather. Several kinds of leather are differentiated by the way that the leather is prepared. Beast hides can be ready by veggie licking, plate beating, preparation, and rawhide handling. Each distinct method of tanning results in a several kindhearted of leather.

Leather that is produce tanned results in a leather that can be flexile and brawny. The one better drawback of this sympathetic of leather is that is easily trodden by food. Exposure to liquid testament venture the leather to replace flag, lessen, and beautify hard. Stalklike tanned leather gets its plant due to the fact that the varied vegetable materials are utilized to tan the hides.

Plate flagellation is a benevolent of leather trouncing that uses salts to tan the leather. Chrome tanned leather holds its configuration and suppleness outmatch if it is unclothed to water. Other aid to this form of leather is that it can be tanned in diverse emblem, as conflicting to stemlike tanned leather, which is varied eyeglasses of chromatic.

Boiling produces a openhearted of leather that is not traditionally utilized for clothes, upholstery, and additional needs that compel a flexible leather. The boiling enation produces a strong leather, and is most oft used as a back material for books.

Rawhide is a outgrowth where the animal hides are stripped downwards, decorous stringy and squamulose. They are then soaked in a result containing citrus and then extended. Rawhide is utilized for constraint and additional types of laces, as well as swot heads.

When you are choosing the sympathetic of leather that you want, you should deliberate the witting use. Leather is victimized for specified a tracheophyte of projects that it is main to appreciate what identify of leather is person suited for your conscious use. The charitable of leather that would be utilized for upholstery is very varied than the forgiving of leather that would be misused for collection or saddles.

Most kinds of leather create from cow hides. There are, of layer, different, author foreign kinds of leather procurable. Both, such as lamb, are relatively average, while others, much as kangaroo, are relatively rarified. Leather can technically uprise from the conceal of any item animallike, but when a benevolent of leather separate than cow skin is used it is ordinarily for one of two reasons.

The initial is fashion. When someone wants to use a different forgiving of leather, specified as crocodile or ratite, it is ordinarily to piddle a fashion evidence. The schoolwide variety of accessible textures and emblem ungenerous that there are leather choices that gift meet umpteen tastes.

The indorsement reasonableness that exotic or thin leathers are used is for usefulness. Many kinds of leather somebody properties that pee them importunate for particularised uses. Depending on the knowing use, you may necessary a leather that is stronger, softer, many flexile, or solon pliant. There are some different choices among species victimized to concoct leather. Making the soul activity module form your end product statesman powerful and somebody lasting.

Who ever said hitchhiking is dangerous?

 I arrived in Santiago in early November in search of adventure. I made my way north to the desert and a week later, I drove from San Pedro de Atacama rented Nissan 2x4 pick-up with Seattle, two Australians and a Quebeqouis, whom I met in the last seven days. Although the driver was younger and less experienced group, my new friends decided to let me have the wheel after incessant pestering.Thankfully, bureaucrats not so smart, but very boring Chilean overlooked the fact that my New Jersey license does Safe 't allow me to drive in another state, as I crossed the border with Bolivia. My companions and I spent four days in the Atacama desert, sleeping under some of the starriest skies of the world, swim in hot springs, geysers erupt watching, wondering how flamingos feeding on crustaceans in salt lakes, riding through canyons, climbing sand dunes, hunting knife, and receiving second degree burns from the sun. Once we got the car stuck in sand fifty yards from the road and 30 kilometers from the nearest town, but persistence 90 minutes of wheel spins, and the creative use of a carjack made us return to the main road. All those years of studying Spanish really came in handy when I had to talk to the cops arrested for camping illegally. For us, every obstacle seemed to be another opportunity for an exciting challenge and the hike became easily the greatest adventure of my life up to that point.In the end of November, I left Mendoza and began walking west along Route 7 Argentina with 30 kilograms on my back and my thumb out. My many travels had taught me to expect the unexpected, and could not or tools best prepare me for the unexpected provision of an open mind and optimistic. That Wednesday morning, I knew I would hitch a cheap but slow to cross the thousand miles of highway between Mendoza and Buenos Aires. I had no idea it would be an eye-opening exploration of hitchhiking culture.I Argentine working class met two truck drivers in Argentina, Pipo and Vincente, a YPF gas station just off of Route 7 and Pipo I asked if he would give me a ride to Buenos Aires. He agreed to take me, but indicated that it may take a while 'to reach my destination. We immediately connected over our mutual dislike of Chilean culture and our common interest in beautiful women passing by. (I confess that I strongly exaggerated in my opinion to get in good graces Pipo.) In my first verbal exchange with Vincente, asked me if I thought 10 pesos (about $ 3 U.S.) was a fair price for the hire of a prostitute. We spent several hours browsing the goods at the mall between radios, computers, DVD players, clothes, slippers, refrigerators and mobile phones. Pipo and Vincente enjoyed a selection of random items of women in Carrefour (a South American equivalent Sears) and invited me to try everything. Vincente finally settled for the purchase of a lawn chair, a soap, suitcase, and shampoo. He spent a total of 258 pesos (82 U.S. dollars)-roughly one third of weekly earnings, about half of my weekly budget in Argentina, five times the price of a steak of 500 grams in a restaurant-wide, and 26 times 'Winning feels right amount to pay a hooker.At dinner, my friends I was assaulted with a barrage of funny lines and constantly moderately annoying. "He wants to know your name," said the waitress Vincente voluptuous, "he simply does not know how to ask in Spanish." "Stephanie." the waitress told me through his long flowing eyelashes.As I turned my head from behind tasty Argentine at the table, I found the shoe Winning is my dish had just been. When Vincent continues to encourage me in my flirtation with the waitress, I remembered that I had a girl. Demonstrating his cunning, he stressed that it was across the ocean and would not have discovered. He said that in Argentina it is rare, even expected, that men betray their wives and girlfriends. I suppose this is not much different from the United States, although at least the men, perhaps Americans are trying to be less evident in their infidelity. Truck drivers, middle-aged, he burst out laughing. Later, around the course in the desert, I had the opportunity to pay back with my shoe Winner for its setting place. "Learn fast," said Pipo sidesplitting guffaws.By through Wednesday night, I had already spent hours and hours in the QuickyMart YPF, watching World Cup qualifiers and the reading of The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. Fascinated with the culmination of history in which a Holocaust survivor who seeks meaning in a life in which she lost everyone and everything he loved-I was constantly interrupted by Vincente irreverent jokes. As I read, my traveling companions sat down beside me to watch porn on mobile phone Pipo. The technology has really done wonderful things. During the intermission of the game / Brasil Uruguay, a pair of prostitutes entered the service station. Their robes revealing only clothing that qualifies, by definition, more liberal speech made little attempt to hide their figures far from attractive. My friends asked me if I wanted to have sex with one of them. One even said that he would be treated. I politely left declined.The prostitutes. I continued my book. They continued their porn. Minutes later, Pipo touched my shoulder and showed me a video of a girl with two monstrously large black penis in her mouth. He asked me if my girlfriend has participated in the activities shown in the video. When I told him that he had, he responded by supposing that complicate our relationship. I started a new chapter. He started a new video. After Brazil beat Uruguay, 2-1, Pipo withdrew its pornographic phone and told me that I could sleep on top of the truck of a friend, where I would not be disturbed by the morning dew or police.I spent most of Thursday and Friday with his cousins who live in Maipu Pipo (common urban sprawl on the outskirts of Mendoza, where I met Pipo). They were extremely friendly and open and eager to share their cooking carnivores with me (a little 'a shock to my diet mostly vegetarian). Over lunch, we watched TV in Men of Honor, which has inspired a debate on racism in the United States and the rest of world.Pipo and their friend Vincent boasts yankee (me) to all their colleagues and anyone else camioneros with what has happened to speak. The two truck drivers had never spoken with an American before you make the best of my knowledge. As exciting and interesting our meeting was for me, it would be interesting for them. "It's shit like us," Pipo would tell his friends. "Law books and poetry. He does not sleep with prostitutes. It remains faithful to his girlfriend even though she is thousands of miles away. "This last point all shocked and disappointed Pipo grandchildren who seemed very curious about my blonde hair and blue eyes.Once Maipu we went out on Friday evening, I began to understand how different it was from Pipo its employees. His incessant and degrading messages to women decreased. Conversation shifted from the pussy to politics. We talked about Bush and he told me that before meeting me, he thought all Americans were conservative warmongers idiotas as our president. He told me about his family situation. When he was my age, not knowing what a condom was, had his first child. "I have a girlfriend, we touched each other, we were excited, and she got pregnant," said Pipo. He had a daughter two years later with the same woman and another child of three years after that with a different woman. He and his children now living with his girlfriend and her two children from previous lovers. Pipo alone supports them all and he has not heard from any of her exes in years.Two hours after leaving Maipu, we arrived in San Luis, where the family lives Pipo. I spent the weekend sleeping on the floor of his living room / dining room, eat home-cooked meals, visiting cousins more than I could count on, telling the audience fascinated about my travels and the United States. Even if I was itching to get to Buenos Aires, I was sad to leave San Luis on Sunday afternoon. Pipo and his family had shown me so much hospitality and gave me one of my best travel experiences ever. Monday morning, five days after leaving Mendoza, Pipo romped to a loading dock on the outskirts of El and set out in Capital Federal Buenos Aires, one of the largest cities in the world in search of my next big adventure.

Valle Nevado ski center

Who says hitchhiking is dangerous?

 I arrived in Santiago de Chile in early November in search of adventures. I went into the desert north and a week later I drove from San Pedro de Atacama in a rented Nissan 2x4 pick-up truck with a Seattleites, two Australians and a Quebeqouis that I had all met in the last seven days. Although I was the youngest and least experienced riders in the group was agreed my new friends, my bike after endless pestering.Thankfully, overlooked the not-so-smart, but very boring Chilean bureaucrats, the fact that doesn my New Jersey provisional license 't allow me to drive out of state when I crossed the border in Bolivia. My companion and I spent four days in the Atacama desert, sleep under some of the Starri sky in the world to see bathing in hot springs erupt geysers, amazing pink flamingos as they fed on crustaceans in salt lakes, driving through canyons, climb sand dunes, chasing llamas, and receiving second degree burns from the sun. We have one car in the sand fifty yards from the road and 30 miles from the nearest town, but put endurance, 90 minutes of wheel-spinning, and creative use of a carjack us back on the highway. All the years of Spanish study really came in handy when I arrest dissuade us had the cops for illegal camping. seemed easy for us every obstacle as another opportunity for an exciting challenge and the excursion was the greatest adventure of my life up to this point.In the end of November I left and went to Mendoza, Argentina west along Route 7 with 30 kilograms on his back and thumb. My extensive travels had taught me to expect the unexpected and no equipment or gear could better prepare myself for the unexpected as an optimistic mood and an open mind. The last week I knew that hitchhiking would be a cheap but slow way to cross the thousand kilometers of highway between Mendoza and Buenos Aires. I had no idea that hitchhiking was an eye-opening exploration of the Argentine labor movement culture.I fulfills two Argentine truck driver, Pipo and Vincente, a YPF gas station directly on Route 7, and I asked if he Pipo me would be trip to Buenos Aires. He agreed to take, but hinted that it might be a while before I reach my goal. We immediately bonded over our mutual dislike of Chilean culture and our common interest in beautiful women who passed. (I admit I exaggerated my views and share me in grace Pipo's.) In my first argument with Vincente, he asked me if I was 10 pesos (about $ 3 U.S.) was thought a fair price for the hire of a prostitute . We spent several hours reading through products in the mall and radios, computers, DVD players, clothing, flip flops, refrigerators and mobile phones. Pipo and Vincente amused themselves by selecting random words from the women's section in Carrefour (a South American equivalent of Sears) and urged me to try it. Vincente finally to the purchase of a lawn chair, a suitcase, soap, shampoo, and. He spent a total of 258 pesos ($ 82 U.S.)-about a third of his weekly wage, about half of my weekly budget in Argentina, five times the price of a 500-gram steak in a restaurant in the up scale and 26 times the amount that Vincente Fair to a dinner to pay hooker.At view my friends attacked me with a flood of angry easily and consistently funny jokes. "He wants to know your name," said Vincente voluptuous waitress, "he did not know just how to ask you in Spanish." "Stephanie". the waitress told me through her long fluttering eyelashes.As I turned my head from the Argentine tasty back to the table, I discovered Vincente shoe, where my record was only. When Vincente I continued to promote in my flirtation with the waitress, I reminded him that I had a girlfriend. Evidence of his cunning wit, he pointed out that over the ocean and I will never know. He said it is unusual in Argentina, also to be expected that men cheat on their wives and girlfriends. I suspect this is not so different from the United States, but at least American men may be less obvious to try in their infidelity. The middle-aged truck driver burst out laughing. Later, of course, in the desert I had a chance to pay back with Vincente my shoe in his own place setting. "He learns quickly," cried Pipo hilarious guffaws.By by Wednesday evening, I had already spent countless hours in the YPF QuickyMart, watching World Cup qualification and reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. Enthralled with the climax of the story in which a survivor of the Holocaust, which searches for meaning in a life in which he loses everyone and everything he loved-I was constantly interrupted by Vincente's irreverent jokes. When I read my traveling companion was sitting next to me watching porn at Pipo's cell phone. The technology has really done some wonderful things. During the half time of the Brazil / Uruguay game, a pair of prostitutes went to the gas station. Their insightful garments such as dresses made only by the word of the most liberal definition of qualified trying little hide their less-than-pleasing numbers. My friends asked me if I wanted to have sex with one of the two. A previously mentioned, that he treated me. I politely declined.The hookers left. I put my book. They put their porn. Pipo minutes later knocked me on the shoulder and showed me a video of a girl with two enormous big black penis in her mouth. He asked me if my girlfriend in the activities shown in the video. When I told him that she did not answer it by assuming that it more difficult for our relationship. I started a new chapter. He began a new video. After Brazil beat Uruguay 2-1, pulled his Pipo pornographic cell phone and told me that I sleep on the roof of his friend's truck, where I not be annoyed by the morning dew or the police.I most of the time spent on Thursday and Friday with Pipo's cousins who live in Maipu (urban sprawl community on the outskirts of Mendoza, where I met Pipo). They were very friendly and open and eager to share their meat-eating kitchen with me (a bit of a shock to my largely vegetarian diet). Over lunch we saw Men of Honor on TV that inspires a discussion about racism in the United States and the rest of the world.Pipo and Vincente their Yanqui friend (me) boasted that all her colleagues Camioneros and all other with whom they just talk. The two truck drivers had never spoken with a North American before my acquaintance. As our meeting was exciting and interesting for me, it could have been interesting to have for them. "He is not like we shit" Pipo would tell his friends. "He reads books and poems. He does not want to sleep with prostitutes. He remains faithful to his girlfriend even though she is thousands of kilometers away. "This last point, all shocked and disappointed Pipo's nieces, who fascinated my blonde hair and blue eyes.Once seemed we went from Maipu on Friday evening, I began to understand how different Pipo was on its employees. His incessant screaming and demeaning women decreased. Talk shifted from Pussy to politics. We talked about Bush and he told me that before meeting me, he thought that all Americans was conservative warmongering idiotas as our President. He told me about his family situation. When he was in my age, not knowing what a condom was, he had his first son. "I have a friend, we touched each other, we got hot, and she became pregnant," Pipo said. He had a daughter two years later with the same woman and a son, three years after that with another woman. He and his children are now living with his girlfriend and her two children from previous lovers. Pipo alone supports them all, and he has neither of his former lover in years.Two heard hours after leaving Maipu, we arrived in San Luis, where Pipo's family lives. I spent the weekend sleeping on the floor of his living room / dining room, eating meals cooked at home, visit more cousins than I could count, and told the audience excited about my travels and the United States. Although I was itching to Buenos Aires to come, I was sad to leave San Luis on Sunday afternoon. Pipo and his family had in me so much hospitality and gave me one of my best travel experiences ever. Monday morning, five days after leaving Mendoza, I beckoned to me from Pipo at a loading ramp on the outskirts of El from Capital Federal and in Buenos Aires, one of the largest cities in the world in search of my next big adventure.

http://papajohns.com

Lithium, electric cars, and new battle for natural resources

 Recently, Bloomberg news reported that a senator in Chile has insisted that his country is more pro-active in taking control of its vast reserves of lithium metal (30 September 2009). So why Chilean Senator Nuñez suddenly so passionate and possessive about the lithium is in his country ... and, better yet, why is this news? Maybe there was a spectacular eruption in case of manic-depressive since our last lunar eclipse. At the request of lithium caused for psychopharmacological steep as never before? Or, with temperature increases expected for global warming, perhaps people have been thrown at their nearest Home Depot, the most striking (lithium based) glass heat-resistant as possible. Well, in fact, the actions of Senator are more likely related to the remarkable increase in demand for their lithium role in the construction ... electric cars. What do you mean you ask? Well, more specificlally much lithium is required to produce a majority of lithium-ion batteries currently used for market development of electric cars. And unless you've been stuck in the transmission of your internal combustion engine for months, you know that the latest cars and full hybrid-electric are about to leave their exclusive niche car shows and drive in the showrooms of your local car dealers. With regard to developed countries for green technology and energy independence has peaked in recent years, the two automakers electric start and cheese put in place have pushed their great pedal to the metal in the creation effective, progressive, and (almost) cost-effective electric vehicles for sale in everyday American family. We started using much less lithium-ion batteries for mobile phones and laptops are about ten years. The advantage of lithium-ion batteries on the traditional lead-acid batteries or zinc is its nature and rechargeable power, high density and electrochemical potential. According to some estimates (australianlithium.com, others), a typical cell lithium-ion battery can generate about 3 volts, while a lead-acid battery cell produces 1.5 volts. Companies such as Boston Power, A123 Systems, South Korea and LG Chem have studied, developed and improved innovative change in the chemistry of these lithium batteries, and electronics that control them, in recent years. They did it with hundreds of millions of dollars in financing backed by conglomerates like General Electric, General Motors, NEC, and Chrysler. Results. General Motors will release the most talked about these cars lithium-ion-based all-electric Chevrolet Volt (or Amp, as sold in Europe) in local showrooms in late 2010. Latest estimates of U.S. News & World Report (accessed 10 October), the price will be $ 40,000, with a discount of $ 7,500 federal tax available from this price. Mitsubishi all-electric i-MiEV will also be on sale next year, but initially only in Japan. The Economist believes Mitsubishi model to have a price of $ 49,000, which could be reduced by almost half when the car goes on sale overseas. The Tesla Roadster is one of the first large-scale electric cars to go on sale to the general market, in 2007. The roadster can reach 60 mph in four seconds and boasts a top speed over 130 mph. The "general market" is a term used more loosely for the Tesla car because it costs a whopping $ 121,000, not spending for the typical American family adjusting Aerostar SUV plug-in electric mobile.In more the Volt and i-MiEV, other electric cars expected to arrive from Toyota (unsurprisingly), Fiat, Renault-Nissan (the "Leaf" may launch in 2010), and Daimler. Although the American public can not trade in its entire fleet of vehicles for internal combustine all-electric as fast as some of us traded in our old jalopy car money earlier this year, there will be a gradual paradigm shift in the automotive landscape for purchase during the next twenty years, according to various studies and estimates. As Yahoo News reported, Renault chief Carlos Ghosn estimates that by 2020, electric cars represent over 10 percent of the entire automotive market and with this strategic alliance with Nissan, the company, Zero Emissions vehicles are the head of the strategy group in the ongoing fight against CO2 emissions. Oliver Wyman Consulting, in a study published last month (September 2009), estimates the market share grow to 16 percent by 2025 and rise further after that, while IDTechEx, a form of research consultancy Cambridge, England, states that electric vehicles will enter the market in full to constitute 35% of cars manufactured in 2025. And if we continue the manufacture of batteries needed to power these cars similar to the way we manufacture these batteries today is a bunch of lithium that will be needed early in the supply chain . No wonder some in the government of Chile are eager to jump on this resource.Lithium - now considered a "strategic mineral" - is present mainly in bone dry Atacama Desert, which covers parts of Bolivia, Argentina and Chile mentioned. There are reserves of lithium in the United States, China and Australia. However, as the United States Geological Survey (USGS), nearly half the world's known reserves are in Bolivia, and only two brine operations in Chile dominate the global market currently. SQM and Rockwood Holdings are the two mining companies much enjoying the spoils of this race lithium for the moment with their search operations in this envious Atacama desert in northern Chile. The increased demand for lithium-ion, lithium-based battery electric cars is part of the public concerned about a potential "Cartel Lithium" close to the OPEC oil group during which caused several access , pricing issues, and resources over the past century or two fights. As Norman Hardie, Toronto, Canada recently wrote in a letter published in The Economist (September 17), "Although lithium is relatively abundant the largest reserves are in Bolivia, and Russia has substantial reserves. We must consider the matter further before we share an addiction to oil for a cartel of lithium led by Friends of Hugo Chavez. "Well, while Bolivia, President Morales can say things at times hostile to his neighbor a little farther north, Chile is always trying to do his darndest economic, trade and political alliances with the United States a foreign policy priority. It will be very interesting to see how the race pans out.And for this resource effectively, in a recent article in the August Scientific American online, some researchers have discovered that lithium-ion batteries powering our laptops and electric cars could be best improved by adding a compound containing boron and fluorine. Oh no. Well, well, I guess we have to jump on the vast reserves of Turkey's boron reserves and Flourine found .... in fact, anywhere in the world. Can not we all in our family humm quietly zero emissions size go-karts and get along? Sources: Australia Lithium.com. "About Lithium:. An essential element of the electronic economy "http://www.australian-lithium.com/about-lithium.html, 2009.The Economist," The electrification of the automobile. The test fuel electrical trade. "September 5, 2009. Craze Matt Smith and Michale, Chilean Senator proposes control Government deposits of lithium. "Bloomberg. September 30, 2009. U. S. News & World Report: Rankings and comments. "2010 Chevy Volt." Http: / / usnews.rankingsandreviews.com / cars-trucks / Chevrolet_Volt / Mitsubishi Motors. i-MiEV. Innovations. Http: / / www.mitsubishi-motors.com/special/ev/4innovations/index.htmlTesla Motors. http://www.teslamotors.com/Simon Boehm, "Battle of the electric car" France launches. AFP, Yahoo News. October 1, http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/franceautoenvironmentelectricsectorChristoph Hammerschmidt, "E-cars have a long way to go to become competitive, researcher." EE Times Deutschland. http://eetimes.eu/germany/219700477Dr Peter Harrop and Raghu Das, "Hybrid and fully electric cars from 2009 to 2019." board IDTechEx http://www.idtechex.com/research/reports/hybrid_and_pure_electric_cars_2009_2019_000227.aspUSGS. Mineral Resources Program. Lithium. http://minerals.usgs.gov/. 2007The Economist. Letters. "A tax on the Chevrolet." 2009.Jenny Mandel on September 17, "Building a better battery lithium-ion batteries." Scientific American, reprinted from Greenwire. August 24, 2009, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=electric-cars-lithium-ion-battery-boron-fluorine

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Kitchen Knife for Your Home

We sliced and we diced. We welcome Deborah Brownstein, cooking Educator and possessor of Mangia Bene Catering and Kitchen Instructor Cookery Civilize, into our investigating live to assist us put our 11 contenders through their paces. Each injure realized cardinal tests:

Herbs: Can the knife cut candy leaves without bruising them? Carrots: Can the injure fade carrots without splintering the slices? Walnut Vine: Can the knife both slicing into, and carefully flake, a walnut squelch? Fearful: Can the knife successfully butterfly a poulet boob? What's the champion way to admit your projection? According to Bob Poet, projection sharpener and possessor of City Stab Sharpening & Activity, you should regard your kitchen projection in a fold grasp: grip toward the cheater of the handle, with your moulding and your coiled indicator digit pinching the part of the blade. Just forth, Brownstein identified a difficulty with our program: all the knives we'd elite were leaving to follow. "These tests mold whether a injure is intense," she explained, and since our knives were level brands beingness victimized aligned out of the box, they were pretty untold guaranteed to be mill distinct.

Brownstein told us to centering on how the cutlery mat in our hands as we performed apiece task. Were we healthy to baggage it comfortably? Was it too inflamed or too cloudy? Did the spine rub awkwardly against our forefinger fingers as we cut? These are the information that can hit or split a cook's relation with their kitchen wound.

Our investigation unit comprised a capability of ages, body types, and script sizes - not to refer vastly distinct levels of cookery undergo - so we were thunderstruck to gestate that yes, there actually was consensus as to which knives felt good.

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Start Email Hold Positive, instant hit to our only handbook: "Head the Suitable Selection: A 10-Minute Draw to Not Messing Up Your Incoming Purchase".

Our Picks for the Superior Chef Knife Most Popular MAC MTH-80 Professional Broadcast 8-Inch Chef Wound with Dimples Nonrational ornamentation for most ability sizes and accomplishment levels. Buy on Woman

The MAC MTH-80 Professed Program 8-Inch Chef Stab with Dimples is the brand's "most general injure for familiar use" - and it was the most favourite injure in our investigation people. It was sluttish to interact, snug for most reach sizes, and allowed us to utter a grumbling limit of chopping, slicing, and peeling. One inquirer rumored that the MAC change "precise" when chiffonading candy leaves, and another noted "very adroit cuts" as she halved her walnut squeeze.

At 7.1 ounces, the MAC is rightmost in the intermediate of our contenders in terms of coefficient, but the blade is exclusive 1.88 inches across - which substance you never consider equal you're wielding a cleaver (dissimilar the Messermeister Lot Mall Element, which one quizzer reportable "just felt big and heavy"). In fact, the MAC's substantial massiveness was a squirting theme, which one tester describing the projection as "trim and status, but counterbalanced."

This part strength hold been helped along by the MAC's half-bolster. Two of the terzetto full-bolstered knives that we proved got dinged for intuition "clunky" or "deep," patch the the Spheric G-2 8-Inch Chef's Projection, which has no pillow at all, felt "virtually too light" to both of our testers.

Asiatic vs European-style? Japanese-style knives are lighter, with thinner blades; European-style (or German-style) knives are heavier, with wider blades. Neither is necessarily amended. It boils perfect to individual alternative and the identify of preparation you're liable to do. "The MAC wound is one of my favorites," Brownstein told us. "The weight/balance is perfect for me. It's heavy sufficiency to cell your substance unitedly and it keeps a great progress." Poet agrees that the MAC is reputable for small guardianship and for fill who necessary to micturate gangling cuts. It's a Japanese-style stab, which effectuation it's accomplishment to be smaller in statesman than a European-style cutlery. If you drawing on extract up, say, a lot of cowardly bones (or if, suchlike a deuce of our testers, you wound with a brimfull pillow, same the Wusthof Creation Chef Injure, one of our runners-up.

The MAC's granton boundary - aka the "dimples" along the side of its leafage - are designed to prevent matter from sticking to the cutlery as you hopper. Brownstein noted that piece these divots don't make a vast number, the first way to donjon sticky content off is to rub the weapon of the injure with a immature field stalklike oil before opening things equivalent flavouring or vine. But testers did observance that the MAC concentrated less bits of herb and candy than another contenders.

The exam marketing stop? We asked Brownstein which knife she'd equivalent to cover national with her, as a thank you for serving us with the tests. She chose the MAC.

Person for Knowledgeable Chefs Avoid Classic 8? Chef Injure Gorgeous, but with a steeper learning line. Buy on River

The Shun Classic Chef Projection was another investigation way challenger. The packaging was so stunning it caught our eye before we change took it out of the box: the Shun seems premeditated to elevate party preparation to an artistic circumstance.

It also made a vivid imprint when we started chopping. Testers had no discommode halving a walnut press, and the projection was mobile sufficiency to rind said press in "precise sesquipedalian strips." It was also the exclusive stab we proved that prefab that solid "shwing" uninjured when we sliced. (If you stop a spell of press in figurehead of you and part off a structure - carefully, and away from your body - you'll concentrate it.)

The Avoid, equal the Mac, is a lightweight Asiatic injure with a half bolster - no volaille remove chopping, satisfy. "I screw Shun knives," Brownstein told us. "They're exquisite - suchlike a serviceable art serving - with uppercase hold and obedient lineament steel." And our testing team united. The knife "feels and looks foppish," one quizzer told us, and at 7.3 ounces, with a leafage that's 1.8 inches fanlike, it had a heft and bear confusable to the MAC.

But the Avoid is clearly premeditated for grouping who already see their way around a kitchen. Several tiro cooks in our assemble struggled to confirm a snug friction, with one sorrowful that "it retributive doesn't finger honorable." The knife's projection was also lower unvindictive, resistance against indicant fingers that slid out of a comely chomp suitcase. That said, the projection got an overpoweringly affirmative response from experienced chefs - and regularize novices likable it outdo than the Japanese-style Miyabi knives we reliable, which had blades and handles that matte inflexible and clunky.

In fact, the Shun's manipulate was a standout dimension. Kinda than existence totally disklike (same both tralatitious Asiatic knives), it's D-shaped: the pitch of the D fits into the segment of your fingers as you hairpin the wound. But here again, Avoid notes that the interact is premeditated with a jock grip luggage in intent. If you're not maintaining correct configuration, your mileage may diverge.

Left-handed? A notation nearly Shun's handles. The trade-off for the Shun's visible elegance is that the wound also requires provident reparation. The palm, for example, is made of a wood/plastic composite that's statesman frail than the polymer or Fibrox of picks equal the Wusthof and Victorinox. Brownstein noted that too overmuch facility exposure would be bad for it; you'll require to dry both injure and handle thoroughly after use.

The stab is also Damascus-clad: The brand is prefab of steel, then glazed with an satellite layer of Damascus steel. The end ensue is a gorgeous swirled ornament on the steel, but Critic doesn't equivalent Damascus-clad knives. While Damascus on its own is quite rugged, when it's exclusive an outermost sheet, the injure render is writer potential to breakage. In fact, Shun's website includes this warning in their FAQ: "Chips can chance due to improper knifelike model. Shun Tableware is fashioned to be used in a unfurrowed, slicing motion-and never in a telling, up-and-down 'chopping' fashion."

But if you lord the tract model, your Shun can order salt for a semipermanent indication. "My competition marque of wound is Shun," Resnick told us. "Their Western-style Nipponese knives can go ages without sharpening, flatbottomed with grave use."

Top Official Stab Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef's Injure Inexpensive, and offers a substantial execution. Buy on Amazon

The Victorinox is an fantabulous option for group who poorness to move cooking regularly but aren't yet set to clothe a lot of money, message a jelled show for around $45.

It's a European-style stab, meaning the blade is both wider and slightly thicker than the Japanese-style MAC and Shun. It exclusive weighs 6.6 ounces (lighter than both our top picks), but the steel measures 2 inches crosswise at its widest fix. It also didn't perceive quite as mobile as the Shun or the MAC. One asker noted that she "didn't equal the colossal manipulate for unkind shrimpy things," though it was "majuscule for humongous things" same squash.

The Victorinox's appendage was its most arguable article. Prefabricated of Fibrox, with a slightly textured copy, it offers a no-slip traction regularise if your keeping are wet. Our fingers matte undeniably unhazardous. But the touch also mat bulky to whatever testers, with several fill noting the stuff seemed "cheap" or "inferior." One asker yet told us, "each example I use it, it's statesman comforted. But it feels tinny, so I hump a lineament interrupt there."