Istg i'm gonna kill someone if i have to go to work tmr 🔪🔪🔪

Old (2021)

Oh you guys. You guyyyyyys. Buckle the fuck up, I am so pumped to tell you about this absolutely GONZO mummified deuce of a movie. Spoilers will be had in this one, because you need to know everything. 

Old is the latest from M. Night Shyamalan and like....I think we all know M. Night’s track record. For every Sixth Sense, we also get a Happening or a Village. In some ways, he’s the most exciting director working today because every new film is a 50/50 coin toss, and mama loves living on the edge. The gist of this latest roll of the dice is that a group of different families who have all come to stay at a remote luxury beach resort get invited to go to a secluded private beach for the day, and after they arrive they discover they can’t leave. That’s not great, but the bigger problem is that they seem to be aging rapidly - like 2 years older every hour or so. That’s a solid “how are we gonna get outta this one” bottle episode premise, and in the hands of a better writer, it could be a fun sci-fi romp. M. is NOT that writer. 

Some thoughts:

I should have known it would all go wrong from the terrible foreshadowing starting at the very beginning scene. The mom of our main family, Prisca (Vicky Krieps) says “You have such a beautiful voice, I can’t wait to hear it when you’re older.” The dad, Guy (Gael Garcia Bernal) says, “Don’t rush this moment, enjoy the present while you can.” BECAUSE THE CHARACTERS WON’T BE ABLE TO LATER, DO YOU GET IT? dO yOU GEt iT? Wife leaned over and said “look at all the ferns - the oldest plants!” That last one was probably her projecting, but the point stands: there is nothing subtle about Old. 

There’s a lot of just like, shouting out loud the things that are currently happening onscreen. “She’s having a seizure!” “People who go back the way we came black out!” “The rust has entered your bloodstream; it acts like poison!” That’s how you tell stories, right? Just having characters point out events that are occurring right in front of their stupid fucking faces with no other commentary or reflection? 

An additional element that feels woefully ignorant at best and malicious at worst is the inclusion of a black male character (Aaron Pierre) who 1) is a rapper 2) is named Mid-Sized Sedan [I’ll give you a moment to deal with that detail emotionally] 3) says the single line of dialogue “Damn.” at least 4 times and 4) suffers the bloodiest, most violent onscreen death at the hands of a racist white man who is revealed to have paranoid schizophrenia. There are other gruesome deaths onscreen, to be sure, but the worst are body horror nightmares that could never occur in the real world - a woman whose bones are breaking and setting in the wrong position nearly instantaneously until she resembles a horrifying spider creature, and the aforementioned rust-in-the-bloodstream trick that leads to a Jeff-Goldblum-in-The Fly-bubbling-skin infection kinda deal. But Mid-Sized Sedan just gets stabbed in the chest repeatedly, brutally, a bunch of times by a white guy who pleads fear for his life even though MSS posed no danger to him, and it all happens onscreen when so many other characters are offered the mercy of offscreen deaths. I’m not sure if M. is trying to throw some real-world horror in and he’s just shit at it, or if it really didn’t occur to him how malicious this inclusion feels in a fantasy narrative, and I don’t really care. If you have a black character in your story and they die, you better think really long and hard about how it happens and what it means and it’s clear no one did that here.

Nothing to do with the film itself, but it did tickle me that someone brought a tiny infant to my pretty packed screening. The baby was very chill, thank goodness, and as far as I know did not age up to a kindergartner during the course of the film.

There is a Very Good Dog, a Yorkie, present for the first part of the film, but unfortunately the dog dies. It occurs offscreen, and given the premise of what’s going on on this beach, it’s not a shock when it happens BUT STILL. 

The old age makeup, at least on Prisca is pretty great. Good job makeup department!

At one point, Guy gets attacked by another beachgoer, and his eyesight is failing so he has a hard time fighting back. But you are surrounded by sand, my dude, and you can still see blurry shapes. You’re not gonna throw some sand in the eyes until you’ve been stabbed like 10 times? Not gonna try to push him down, or sweep the fucking leg, or do anything but just keep raising your arms and getting stabbed while yelling “I’ll protect you!” I’ve seen stale tuna sandwiches with better defense mechanisms than you. 

Like most fantastical premises, there are only a certain number of ways this narrative can end that really make any sense. It reminds me quite a bit of 2019’s Brightburn which was like “what if Superman but evil?” Either everyone is gonna die, or someone is going to improbably survive and you better have a real neat explanation for how that’s possible. Oh M. Night, when will you realize that your explanations are never as clever as you think they are? There’s no “twist” here really, simply a reveal, and it’s the equivalent of eating one of those sugar-free, gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free snack cakes I broke down and ate out of desperation when I was on Weight Watchers. That shit is “food” in the same way that the climax is a “logical explanation for all this.” Big Pharma is luring sick people to the resort through targeted ads, then arranging these excursions to the wacky time beach in order to test how medicine they secretly slipped into the guests’ drinks works over decades of life. These sneaky medical breakthroughs are saving hundreds of thousands of people’s lives, we’re told, and the scientists offer a moment of silence for each fallen group of unwitting human lab rats after they inevitably die. Because if there’s one thing the world needs right now, it’s more distrust of pharmaceutical companies and the ethics of modern science! I can’t think of one possible reason we’d want to portray molecular biologists, immunologists, and virologists in a positive light right now, can you? When will those assholes get off their high horses and stop being universally trusted and beloved by everyone, am I right?? 

My saddest takeaway, tbh, is that this is a stacked international cast, with at least half the roles going to POC - this is the future liberals want, etc etc - and the result is THIS.

Did I Cry? Of course not.

Not all is terrible! It’s a beautiful movie to look at, because M. Night’s direction is never the problem, but combined with the script, the acting, and the absurd narrative leaps needed to make this story make even a little bit of sense, the whole thing turns into a mess. Unfortunately, getting Old with M. Night is less “leisurely retirement at a plush resort in Florida” and more “rancid can of Ensure and a poop-choked pair of Depends.”

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Page 1 - Career Change - Pre-war memories of Lucy Feit,

- Hey sweetheart, you okay in there? Ian knocked softly on a bathroom door as he heard Lucy coughing a bit too much than she should.

- Yes, im fine, don’t you worry. I’m probably just catching a cold after we got washed by that rain last evening. Lucy washed the blood droplets from the bottom of the sink and wiped her mouth with towel. She lied. It wasn’t a cold, but an irritation and small wounds that still remained after an incident in the cellar with court mobsters.

-There she is, all formal but still beautiful. Ian commented as she left the bathroom, putting the black leather jacket on and sweeping the dust from her pencil grey skirt.

-Have to make a good first impression at new job eh? I mean from a national court to an private low investigator office, that is quite a drop. She laughed and threw her hands around Ian neck kissing him in the lips.

She met Ian at the practice shooting center where she was having her first experience with a pistol. He was working there during day time and taking some evening shifts aswell as a bodyguard at the local club. Ian was tall, well built, with a bush of messy short black hair and always slightly unshaved, rough at the lower bottom of his face. Felt good for Lucy to brush the palm of her hand through his chin. He had a weakness for mysterious petite beauties like her and she couldn’t resist the charm flowing from his smile and shine of misty grey eyes as he offered her help that day and a coffee.

Lucy was living in a one big room apartment in tenement house. Walls were filled with red-orange bricks, a few plants placed in a corners and on the window to make it more friendly for the eye and her clothes and papers scattered all over the desk and bed. It wasn’t good for both of them to live there but it was good enough to spend a night together. At least there were never tired of seeing each other too much as both of them were busy on daily basics but at the evening they were always coming back to meet either at his or her place.

- I still don’t know why you dropped such a good position. I mean from a court office to some assistant investigator for this weird old guy. That is indeed quite a drop hon. Ian chuckled and gave her one more kiss on her forehead after she pulled off.

- Well, i hate the amount of responsibility i had there and this is gonna be more thrilling than just sitting in the office, i mean cmon, i’m gonna see the actual crime scene, not just stupid papers. She smiled and grabbed her bag from the counter shoving some papers in and hiding her worried face behind the blond hair after reminding herself why she actually almost ran away from there.

-Don’t forget, at eight at our bar. Ian poked her shoulder and winked at her before she left.

-Oh i won’t. Love you. She winked back at him and closed the door behind her.

As she arrived to slightly older building she checked double the location written on the paper for her new work place directed by the new boss before entering. She stepped up towards the big double winged door and approached a woman sitting behind the desk, all busy with a newspaper and sharpening her nails.

-Uh..excuse me..is this Mr. Harrison’s office? She asked looking around pondering if its the right place. The building looked almost like an abandoned type but still good enough for a living conditions.

-I would not call this an office but yes, Harrison is waiting for you, through hallway, first door to the right. She could only see a clump of black waved hair sticking out of the paper responding to her.

The building felt empty, almost like there only Mr Harrison and his secretary. She stopped at the door having a gold plaque with his name and knocked.

-Come in! A firm voice responded. Lucy dropped the bag from her shoulder and entered.

-Mr Harrison? I’m Lucy Feit...from the..court. I got directed by the....

- I know, i know it all, just come and grab a chair, kid. He was sitting backwards in a big black chair. As she took a sit in front of his desk he spun back towards her.

Harrison was a retired black policeman around at his 50′s dressed formally in a white crumpled chemise, hell of a good one in his career at the better days but eventually life mistakes got him thrown out and forced to continue his business on his own as a private investigator. He didn’t have any family anymore, not a one that would accept him back anyway so he took a long stay in his office and eventually called it home along with his secretary Shanice. They were taking on a small or more mysterious cases that police didn’t care much about trying to avoid a hassle with a mighty ass court as he could while still staying on their good side. At least its what they thought.

- Look kid, i know your story. Me and our Boss, we know each other for quite a while. Are you really sure u want to get yourself into this shit? It ain’t gonna be easy and i don’t want another fucking dead rookie just because he thought that being all gangsta is cool enough to keep his feet on the ground. He scanned her looking doubtfully and raising his brow. Lucy swallowed and took a deep breath before responding.

- I am sure sir. I know the risks and i fully accept them, sir. Harrison put the elbows on the desk and pressed his clenched fists to the mouth. After a few seconds of deep thought he pulled a pistol out of a drawer and handed it to her.

- Reload and shoot something. I don’t care what, just not my whiskey. Lucy took a pistol from his hand and did as he ordered. Ian taught her well on that. She shot a glass on a shelf behind his head and handed the pistol back.

- Alright, tomorrow u start. We have a murder case and u gonna go with me first. Hope you have a stomach for it. Today we will talk how the things work here and where we keep the other archives for our Boss including the evidence that we would rather keep to ourselves. So listen because i won’t be repeating myself twice and if you fuck up it is gonna be your ass to shoot or worse...

- She nodded and followed Harrison as he walked her through the office and rooms hidden behind the cabinets. It was quite impressive how many secrets this old dusty building had along with its owner. His office was legally registered, taking in any small or nasty case that the policemen didn’t care about or helping the gang to clean some shit after them occasionally. It was a new start for her life and just a first step into the shadier part of it. The evening arrived faster than she thought.

- There’s my action girl. Late as always. Ian waited outside the bar spinning a rose in his fingers.

- Sorry, there was a lot to take in and my boss wanted to be done with introduction today. She gave him a long kiss, good enough to forgive her being late.  

- Harrison uh? I remember that man...quite a figure back in days. Didn’t know he is still working. Ian put a hand on her back and entered to the bar with her.

- Actually he is in a quite good shape and he is actually still working, just privately now. I think it is gonna be perfect for me. Smaller office and i might just learn a thing or two from him. She skipped all the parts that she couldn’t let Ian to know. He was the only good and positive thing keeping her mind in a proper set at the end of each day. Letting her forget the schemes and wash away dirt while melting in his arms each night. He never knew and she wouldn’t dare to tell him from fear of losing him. It was perfect set up after all.

- How did your training go? Bodyguarding and looking tough is not good enough for you anymore? Lucy smiled at him, joking as they sat at the table.

- Heh, just looking tough can be boring without throwing some punches here and there in a while. He joked back and ordered two beers.

- Cmon Ian, being a professional soldier isn’t the same thing. You will be gone out there longer than you think. Aren’t u scared? She reached with her hand towards his and squeezed it gently.

- No i’m not. I always wanted to do this. I have just one life sweetheart so not much else to lose, other than missing on this pretty face. He brushed a cheek with his thumb and pulled her for a kiss.

- We still have a lot of time so don’t worry about me. Today let’s have a toast for your new career and maybe a small treat later at your place eh? He clinked a bottles with her and grinned with corner of his lips.

- How about we take that beer outside and head there right away? She smiled back and walked towards home with Ian’s arm around her waist pushing her to him. They finished their beer at the stairs to the building talking and laughing.  They started kissing already in a hallway, going towards her apartment stumbling on the walls. She loved him, the feeling of safety in his arms holding her at night in bed and a assurance that she didn’t remain alone at the end of each day, no matter what happened through it.

_____________________________________

Note: So i decided to try write some pages of my oc memories/diary from the pre-war times as the current ones i posted only mention something here and there, not very clearly. To introduce how she got into the gangs and how her work looked it and people she met. This is very first basic introduction of sort ofc, not saying much but i will be scribbling more going deeper and closer to the explosion. I skip past her job at court and brutal incident that gave her a bloodworm/leech trauma as i am not skilled enough to write such a brutal scenes. (im a total random just writing some stuff coming up randomly to my head) So ye..after the court incident the gang member who she defended before and helped her get healed directed her to work at Harrison office to put some of her skills to good use and give her a safe workplace as Harrison was also in a contact with gangs. Ian never knew what she was doing other than changing her profession to a investigator’s assistant and working with the man. After all everyone thought he is legal and no one bothered with old retired man. I will be getting later to all the night club stuff and deeper into that shit. Cheers.        

I’ll be back

Chapter 4 - ”Cyberlife didn’t project me to be the babysitter of one drunker and arrogant detective”

1-2-3

The next day you went to work with a smile on your face, the pain of Carl's death was still fresh but had eased. The chat with Chloe the following evening was pretty funny between her and she denied every feeling and the LED betrayed her, she is like a friend to you.

"Good morning, Richard"you greeted him with a smile, he tried to return but he wasn't able to do it.

"Morning Detective. Today probability we are alone, because the Detective Reed didn't answer the phone."he said while he looked you sit down on your desk.

"Mhm..okay"you spoke, watched the computer desktop not very interested about Reed

“Today, another case, it’s a robbery case.”he informed happily Richard tried to make you another smile.

You left the notes on your desk and went with Richard to listen the witnesses of the crime.

After hour and hour you and Richard came back to the desk, you saw Gavin sit down on his desktop and watched probably something.

"Kamski in my office!"Fowler called over, you left the new notes to Richard, that put on the desk and went to the Folwer's office.

"Do you want to see me?"you demanded.

"Yes, you did an amazing work with your first case and the other."he said.

"But you never, never insult your partners not here in my station, clear?"he affirm a little anger.

"Yes, I'm sorry for my behaviour."you answered.

“I think that Gavin Reed is a good partner and a good marksman, if Captain Allen ask help you, I will suggest him.”you added, it wasn’t professional to put the sticks in the wheels of a colleague, so you tried to ignore what had happened the day before and you found a way to get rid of Reed.

“How can you say that?”he demanded

“In the first case, he shot the android while she took me as hostage, he didn’t hit me and he shot her.”you answered

“It was a lucky shot.”Fowler explained

“No, it wasn’t. There would be other similar situations documented, they can not all be fortunes.”you informed.

“You want him out?”he asked, taking a relaxed position on his chair.

“No...yes, but I assume we need to give him a chance to advance his career”you answered before you went out his office.

You didn't stop to your desk and went on to the break room to take a cup of coffee. You noticed that nobody was there so you prepared the machine coffee.

“Reed in my office!”Folwer shouted from his office. You remained in the break room, until Gavin went to the captain.

After that you reached the desk to work, you started writing the beginning of yesterday's report about a robbery case, I reached out my right hand to look for the folder with the notes on the case. The only thing you touched it was the material of which the desk was made, you turned and did not see the folder.

Where fucking I put it-you thought looked around yourself.

In that moment Reed and Richard returned from Captain officer.

Gavin’s Stress level:35%

Y/N’s Stress level:50%

“Have you seen my folder with the notes?”you asked while you’re researching it.

Gavin’s Stress level:50%

“I saw one of plastic prick took the folder, he hit the desk so I ordered to pick up it”Gavin replayed.

Gavin’s Stress level:35%

Y/N’s Stress level:40%

“Oh, where did he put?”you asked stopping to research.

Gavin’s Stress level:25%

Y/N’s Stress level:30%

“There”he answered, pointing to the last drawer of the desk.

“I saw it, but detective Reed took it from a police android and put it in there.”Richard said suddenly.

Gavin’s Stress level:65%

You pretended not to hear and took the folder, continued to work.

Gavin had seen the drawing and smiled, ignoring that Richard had seen it.

~~

“Stay with me, Gavin!”You exclaimed, standing in front of my body, Gavin had been badly hit and you wanted to save him, Richard had mentioned the risks but they were still equal to the chances of saving him.

You had burst into the building and they had reacted to the intrusion. Gavin had entered first, still with my haughty manner, while you and Richard had waited to enter.

Gavin had not seen that the androids were there, so Gavin had thrown myself to chase them and get them, but they were there and waiting for me and my partners. He was hit on the shoulder by a bullet and then to the right of the chest, he fell to the ground remaining in mobile while he heard the others respond to the fire.

“Stop detective Kamski!”Richard shouted standing beside you.

“Take him, I will cover you.” You ordered, shooting to the android.

“No, you haven’t the chance to survive”Richard objected.

It was a moment, an instant that you were hit, Gavin saw you fall backwards. He slighted near her body and to touch the hand, it was cold. He looked up at my face and saw that it had been hit on the head.

Gavin woke up screaming, the girl near him didn’t hear him and continued to sleep, he was shocked, he saw you died in front of him, for him. He felt stranger, different.

He saw his face drawn between your notes and he felt happy and loved.

It’s strange.

He stood up and went to the kitchen, he took a bottle of beer. He started to drink, he wanted to wash away that nightmare, when he looked the clock 4:50 am.

Maybe you slept and safe at home.

Gavin sit down until the dawn, the girl he met last night stood up from the bed. She had got up and had not found him till she reached the kitchen to eat.

“A second round my sweetheart?”she asked, uncovering right hip and showing sexy to the man’s eyes.

“No”he answered continuing to drunk.

“Why not? Oh do you think about someone else?”she demanded, sitting in front of him.

“Go out, and never, never see you again.”he replayed brutally and little drunker.

~~

“He didn’t answer. Where the fuck is he?”you exclaimed while Richard’s driving to the Gavin’s flat.

You searched it when you didn’t see him at the police station.

“He will probably have fallen asleep.”Richard apologised him.

He was right, Gavin probably drunked too much to awake, you hoped he had not seen the drawing, not only because it was embarrassing, but because you could not explain it to him.

After half hour you arrived to destination, you got out with Richard and went in the building, you took the lift and you climbed up to the 4th floor.

“You and Detective Reed should go out.”Richard said while you walked in the hallway.

“No, Richard. He was ambitious and unapologetically arrogant. He has garnered the hatred of his colleagues in record time. Ruthlessly ambitious, Reed will do anything to advance his career, even if it means treading on other peoples’ toes”you affirmed.

“But I saw a good in him. I…”

“Good? But it doesn’t have sense. He was arrogant.”Richard interrupted, you looked him and touched his cheek.

“People are not always what they are because they have decided, but they are so because they have been forced to be so."you responded, you were justifying him. What did you drunk this morning.

“Oh”he exclaimed, remaining cold and impassive at your touch.

“I felt that your bromance should attempt”you laughed.

“Our?”he asked confused

“Your and Reed.”you answered before reaching the door.

“We have the same relationship between you and Lieutenant Anderson.”he explained before you started to knock the door.

“Gavin are you at home?”yell while you were knocking.

“It is the only place where he can be.”Richard informed.

"Throw the door down” you loaded the weapon while Richard began to analyze the door his LED for a minute became red and after yellow perhaps to plan the action.

“There is a copy of the key under the doormat.”Richard informed, you lowered yourself to the doormat and after removing the key you opened the door.

“Gavin?”you called when you came in the house. Richard looked the little living room, that was completely messy, dirty and with bottles on the ground.

You found him in the kitchen he was slumped on the table and with a bottle in his hand, he was unconscious but still breathing, so I decided to take him to the bathroom.

“I find him. Richard would you throw the bottles away please?”you asked gently holding it under your arm, you took him to the bathroom.

“Cyberlife didn’t project me to be the babysitter of one drunker and arrogant Detective.”he answered.

“Please do it for me”you said smiled at him.

“Okay, but it was the first and last time”he said, thrown away the empty bottles in a black bag.

You and Gavin were in the bathroom, you put him in the bath tub and opened the cold water, he moaned and opened the his eyes.

“I told you to go away, how did you tell,bitch?”he said standing up and tried to pull away. He would fallen if you didn’t catch him in time.

“Hey, Gavin I’m Y/N”you said serious and pulled him. He started to swing, you didn’t have time to cover yourself that he vomited on your black blouse.

“Oh fuck, Gavin!”you shouted. He probably returned himself because he started to focus on who is in front of him.

“Oh fuck, Y/N how did you come in?”he asked confused.

“The key under the doormat”you answered.

“Where I find a new clothes?”you asked while you left him in the bathroom.

“In my bedroom. Can you pick some for me too?” he said from the bathroom.

“Obviously, we have a case.”you answered.

You looked for the clothes in the closet, you took off my shirt and put on his hoodie of the Detroit Police Department, you looked before it was not punch holes, then went to choose clothes for him, while you was looking for his usual clothes, you noticed a black shirt and immediately caught it by combining a jacket, after you took his flat jeans and went to him.

Peloton News – Chicken & Pork

Sitting in my kitchen about to start the usual factual tour documentation, I look out of my French doors and into the garden.

Literally, as I am about to punch finger to keyboard, a pigeon flies straight into the window.

20 miles to the South (my internal compass still accurate to within a few degrees) and one Captain Mark McEvoy sits cross-legged on his new yoga mat. He is, I suspect, in a deep meditative trance, communicating with the birds…well, one particular bird. He sees through third-sight the motion of digit towards MacBook and he seizes his opportunity.

There is a loud thud as the feathered fox food clumps against the glass.

Undeterred, I press on though. This is an important story to tell.

Munich really is a beautiful city. It has an unhurried feeling about it. Not too much hustle and bustle, but just enough. Clean and tidy everywhere and a sort of low-rise architecture with church spires scattered about the place, London this is not.

Sitting in the city-centre roof garden sipping beers with Macca, overlooking the city was a lovely start to this mini cycling trip.

We chatted about this and that. Furious disagreement on Coronavirus not even in the air, let alone the conversation at this point. (I believe that we need to be careful and manage the infection as the human price is significantly larger than the financial one. Macca believes that we should inject everyone in the eye with the virus and that the strong will survive and the weak will be thinned out nicely).

The drama of the evening was the arrival of Tommy Trusler with an arm in a sling (his own arm I should add). An outrageous rugby manoeuvre had seen him hit the deck and pain arrive with a jolt. Within 2 minutes of the news landing Macca had completely diagnosed both the problem and the rehabilitation period, had put the Truslers’ collective minds at ease and then laid out a spread of complementary peanuts to settle everyone down.

Next morning, the drive to our first port of call was largely uneventful. Deep into Italy and with a further 2 hours still to go to get to the eventual destination of lake Garda, we stopped for the day 1 ride.

The Sella Ronda. 42 miles and nearly 7,000 foot of elevation. This was going to be tough.  JT lead the pack out and immediately into the first tunnel. Somehow, I had found myself in second position. With this group, this is not a position which I belong in.

I didn’t know James had an uneasy phobia of tunnels. Why would I? Within 100 yards of setting off we entered an uphill sloping tunnel. There was a faint parping sound from the rear of James bicycle and he was off. For the first 15 seconds I thought it was just me getting used to the normal pace. I started panting. By 30 seconds my legs had started to squeal at the pace of the relentlessly pedalling Trusler. By the time we exited the tunnel my lungs were burning. They took 30 mins to lose that feeling. Seriously. 30 fucking minutes. We were less than 10 minutes into the toughest ride of the trip and we’d effectively started our marathon with a flat-out 400 metre race. I don’t remember Mo Farah ever adopting this tactic in the Flora 26….

Most tours I’m middle-to-lower Peloton. This mini-tour and I knew I was going to be at the back.

JT and Macca were known quantities. I’d also ridden with Neal and knew he was up there in the Macca-sphere somewhere. Andrew was an unknown quantity. JT had described him as ‘liking to get out front early before settling in to a rhythm. Strong rider’.

Over the course of the 3 rides I would describe Andrew a strong rider who likes to get out front early before settling into a rhythm.

What is particularly unusual is that in this instance James displayed some genuine human assessment to his rider categorisation. Normally his brain places people into 3 buckets.

‘Bucket 1, riders who are the same as, or better than I am. Bucket 2. Shit riders. Bucket 3. Riders ability unknown as mentally feeble.’

I know he sees me as firmly having two feet in bucket 3 with aspirations to climb into bucket 2. Macca has me pegged at the pre-bucket stage.

The ride finished with over 40 miles under the belt and nigh on 7,000 foot of climbing. That’s punchy in my book.

Friday’s ride was not much easier either. In fact, with the mileage in the legs from day 1, it felt the toughest of the days by a good measure. The climb after lunch was fairly relentless with a big high-teens ramp toward the end.

Whilst on the climb I came across a stationary JT. A few weeks earlier he had allegedly been severely injured in a freak accident at Center Parcs involving a waterslide and the wrangling of a small child. I didn’t like to probe. This injury however, whilst not apparent at the time (nor visible…. Nor complained about….or even talked about it seems) suddenly re-appeared on the ascent. A grudging acknowledgment of the severity of day 1 along with the unrelenting nature of the back-to-back-ness of day 2 was murmured.

Thrilled to have company at the back, I chatted light-heartedly until we arrived at Andrew, stationary on the steepest part of the climb so far, looking pretty fed up.

The sight of him stopped gave my brain all the excuses it needed to deploy the old executive decision to down-tools and break out the food.

I sat down under a tree.

I quite like sitting down.

The other two then buggered off.

I remained sat down.

The crest was only about 200 yards away as it turned out. When I got there, I felt done. Not since the last time, the fountain at Malaga I think, I had a little lie down. Again, not what you expect your average cyclist to be doing whilst out on a ride. I breathed deeply whilst listening the chitter chatter of the fellas discussing James’ alleged knee injury.

After the ‘CenterParcs vs small child’ explanation, Macca dwelt.

He narrowed his eyes.

There was complete silence.

His semi-sentient neural connection to the world wide web had latched on to a local wi-fi hot-spot and he had deployed a legion of web-spiders all armed with binary details of all of James’ symptoms onto the net.

His eyes lost all focus momentarily.

After a few seconds I think the first of the spiders returned as Macca suddenly arrived back in the present, eyes squeezed into a defined narrow gaze.

‘I think you have a damaged meniscus and in all probability a cyst on the inside of your knee’.

James pondered this for a moment. ‘You’re probably right’.

Behind Macca’s eyes, the fire raged. Fury and bile broiled in the pit of his stomach as adrenalin coursed through his arteries and soaked his brain.

Deep in his mind his basal ganglia fired messages to all parts of his thinking system and from the cold dark recesses of a structure billions of development years in the making, a dark, deep, cold voice uttered a single word……’Probably?’

Macca wanted to grab James by the throat and lift him off the floor and squeeze… his mind’s favoured Darth Vader manoeuvre. He wanted to lean in to him. Nose nearly touching nose. And quietly, in spittle filled words say ‘Probably?’

What he actually did was imperceptibly shrug his shoulders and gentle raise his eyebrows a couple of millimetres and softly said ‘seems likely’. The web spiders had started fighting amongst themselves. Macca calmed them down.

The rest of the ride was smattered with stops for food and some post-lunch ridiculousness in the form of immediate 20% climbs out of the town.

By the time the day had ended, we’d caught 2 cross-lake ferries, ridden a brutal 50 miles on top of the previous days efforts and were back at our lovely apartment for after-ride chitter chatter.

Saturday was nearly with us and general consensus was a rest day was required. All agreed.

The conversation slid to another climb which both Neil and James had done in the local area. Both riders had not managed to conquer this particular beast.

Massive gradient, brutal in a way that Mortirolo was…. but worse.

Brilliant. This was my chance. I’d been dying to put the needle into someone at some point. I was fed up of being the shit rider, now was my chance to lash out at the talent.

‘Wow….. I bet Macca could do it’.

That little bomb-shell deployed, I thought I’d settle back and watch it all unfold.

Whilst there was plenty of chatter about it, the white glove was not picked up off the floor. This was terrible. If Dripping had been here, the moment it was suggested he would have had a foot in a pink Rapha shoe, gels quickly thrust into jersey pocket, car keys in mouth, ready to go.

He would have failed of course, but Jesus H Christ he would have given it everything….!

Macca wouldn’t have failed. He is in phenomenal shape at the moment. Low on weight, big on power and with a ‘I will not be fucking beaten’ mindset, he would have crawled through broken glass to come out on top.

Still, I couldn’t convince him to give it a go. If he would have, I would have gone too. I would have given it a go. I would have failed. My mind, on seeing the ridiculous uncomfortableness of it all would have replayed the fact that Neil and James had failed, therefore there’s no shame in stopping, sitting down and having a bite to eat.

‘You know what today is don’t you?’ I parried in one last attempt to make the great seem mortal.

‘Chicken Saturday’.

It was a cheap shot. It was a final shot.

It didn’t work.

A great rest day followed where we swam in the lake, ate amazing food, sipped Negronis and generally relaxed in the loveliness of it all. Even went on a tour of a vineyard where unbeknownst to us, a small rodent-like creature ate half of James’ under-bonnet Jaguar.

The final day of riding was an early start and a just beautiful ride up and around the lake. Amazing scenery and some really lovely climbs.

What I came to realise during the course of the trip is that the Peloton needs its fair spread of performers. Being slower than the rest meant I rode pretty much every climb alone. Whilst Macca, Neil, Andrew and JT managed to broadly cycle tighter (I am assuming…didn’t actually witness much of this with my own eyes), I was at the back. Pushing against no-one. The other fellas had some competition. One trying to drop the other etc. This meant they all pushed hard, very hard at some point. At the back, a push resulted in the same thing as just grinding it out. Progress up an empty climb. It was not an easy 3 days of cycling by any means. 40 miles and 7,000 feet of climbing never would be. But did I ever empty the tank? No. Did I track someone down, hold their back wheel and then fuck the hell off when I sensed weakness? No.

For that sort of cycling in general, I need to rest of the lower-order Peloton and in particular, Dripping. I fucking hate being beaten by him. He has more capability and more sheer determination to suffer pain than I do. I beat him because the one thing I do focus on with a bit of bloody-mindedness is training. The day he does the longer training efforts, sharpens the weight, then I’m fucked. In the meantime, I keep plugging away and am just about keeping my nose in front…..just.

Cycling is different things to everyone. This trip also underlined the sheer beauty of the world we live in. Whilst cycling up the climbs I contemplated what was around me. I even took the odd photo. Competition and personal performance have their place. But…. and it’s a big but, for us mere mortals who don’t do this for a living, more eyes on the scenery and less on the heart-rate is probably a good thing. Perhaps in time as our performance inevitably wains the balance will shift a little and we won’t mourn the loss too much as we’ll appreciate the gain.

The white Jaguar piloted its way back toward Munich and made its way closer to my absolute tour highlight… ‘Pork Knuckle Sunday’. What a way to follow the disappointment of ‘Chicken Saturday’. Along with gravy, chips and a massive fucking pint of lager (technically not a pint, I know, but you get my drift).

James, not a driver for any of the world’s slow lanes, gave the cat a fair thump away from the service station following the pit stop. Pulling out (at velocity) onto the motorway, he snagged a yellow ‘engine warning’ light and the car went in to limp mode.

Macca’s eyes hazed over.

‘Please tell me the symptoms’ said Macca (whose voice tonality had suddenly gone all Alexa).

After James’ incoherent babble I casually thought for a moment ‘probably an emission thing after you hoofed it’ said I, not really caring as we still seemed to be moving and pork knuckle appeared to be at no particular risk.

There was a very quiet snort from the back-seat. Almost as if Holmes had just heard Watson’s completely amateur explanation of the what had happened to the murder victim in the hours preceding his grisly death.

‘I suspect’ started Sherlock McEvoy, ‘That an air and/or vacuum hose of some variety has become dethatched leading to the engine switching quickly into a self-preservation limp mode.  Likely cause? The Bavarian crested marmot. They like to digest rubber in the confines of a warm bonneted car’.

As dusk approached, the web-spiders where shepherded back to their pens and a calm quiet settled into the car.

In what has been an incredibly unstable year, I feel lucky that a flight to Munich booked pre-pandemic for some cycling in Germany ended up in Italy and played out exactly as it had. 2021 seems an awfully long way away. Success would be a full Peloton tour and narrow squinted eyes towards Dripping’s rear wheel.

Get out and ride my little schweinshaxe.

Hoppo

CelebMix caught up with Counterfeit. at Leeds Festival.

CelebMix: How was yesterday for you?

Jamie Campbell Bower: It was awesome! It was a blur, but it was a wild 35 minute rock show. We had a wicked time.

Roland Johnson: When I was a kid all my friends would come to Reading Festival but I was always on a family holiday so I always missed it. I said to myself you know the first time I go is when I play it, and this is the first time we’re playing so it is nice to tick that off from when I was young.

CelebMix: Do you have any festivals left on your bucket list to play?

Tristan Marmont: Download Festival and Rock am Ring.

RJ: And then Coachella.

JCB: I’d like to do a big Counterfeit free festival, so a Rolling Stones-esque show with all of our favourite bands, and just screw up Hyde Park.

CelebMix: So you’ve been on the European festival circuit this summer—what’s been your favourite so far?

Sam Bower: We played a festival called Woodstock Festival Poland, which is a free festival just like Woodstock. It’s like it all just carried on in Poland, they kept the spirit alive. I think that’s the idea of it, and that was mental. It was ridiculous.

RJ: It’s Europe’s biggest festival—Europe’s biggest overnight festival—and we got an 11 o’clock slot on the second day.

JCB: That’s PM not AM, so PM’s good you know. We like PM.

SB: Yeah, so that stood out for me. But we’ve been to some amazing places and played some amazing shows.

RJ: We went to Romania for a festival, you know, none of us had ever been to Romania, so it’s cool to tick new places off the list. There were some great festivals in Germany too, Hurricane Southside was great, so many amazing bands. I mean I look at the line up and I’m like “holy shit, we’re playing alongside these guys?”—some bands that are infamous basically.

CelebMix: Do you get much time to explore the cities that you’re in?

SB: Yeah, we try to. I think we always try and seize the day, as it were, if we’re not doing anything and we’ve got a bit of time going. We try and explore a bit—I think you have to always have a look around.

RJ: Some of the festivals though it’s like we get in, play the set, then we’ve got to leave straight away to make it to the next one. We did a festival recently that Blink-182 were headlining, and we were kind of pulling our hair out that we had to miss it, but hopefully we’ll see them soon.

CelebMix: You’ve been on the road quite a while now, do you guys get much time to write when you’re away from home?

JCB: It doesn’t really happen for us. I mean, I think the shows that we play and the way that we play is that we have to give everything. This means when we’re not on stage and when we have travel days or whatever, the time is rest and recuperation. Not only are we physically fucked but we’re mentally on the brink as well, and it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to what I would describe as the most beneficial creative process.

RJ: I also think that we’re a relatively new band, and we’ve been touring now for a year and a half, so we haven’t been on the road for such a long period that we need to be writing new material. We tour, we come back, things happen in between, maybe in the future if we’re on tour for ten months of the year, you then have to force yourself to write on the road—we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

CelebMix: You guys played a headline tour earlier this year, how was that?

JCB: It was amazing! We started in Europe and then we came home and it was wild, you know.

We’d just released a record and we went out to Germany and played these big shows, and it’s all of a sudden—I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time, and then now I look back and I think—it wasn’t a festival, it was an hour show, and people were coming to watch our band. That’s a difficult thing to wrap my head around really, but it was sick.

I think we had a wicked time. It was long, it was hard, it was everything that we wanted it to be and more. Difficult, which is good.

CelebMix: Do you have to approach things differently at festivals than you do at your own headline shows?

SB: I don’t have any switch, I don’t have a decision to make really.

RJ: I’ve just got to play every show better than the last.

SB: Yeah, I never really decide what it’s going to be like before I go on, it just happens.

JCB: You’re only as good as your last gig.

CelebMix: Do you have a favourite city to play in the UK?

JCB: I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a massive soft spot for Birmingham. Every time we play Birmingham it’s just wild.

TM: That’s like Glasgow as well.

JCB: Glasgow’s always a riot, it always goes off in Glasgow.

RJ: London as well, obviously.

JCB: Manchester too! Jimmy lives in Manchester, so it’s always an important gig.

Jimmy Craig: Manchester’s got an amazing music scene, and there are so many great venues as well. It’s quite a big city, so it’s always good.

CelebMix: Is it ever weird to play venues you grew up going to?

JC: It’s not so much strange it’s just a good feeling to have been able to achieve what you wanted to, to be able to play stages that you’ve seen shows on your whole life. It’s amazing, and you always feel lucky that people come and see you.

TM: We played The Underworld in London really recently, on our last tour actually, and that was pretty special for me because I’ve been there about 30 or 50 times to see other bands that I love. It was very weird being on stage for me there, but it was amazing, an amazing feeling.

JCB: Yeah it is an amazing feeling. I mean, if you want brutal honesty, when I was a kid and I was going to shows, I would try to imagine myself up there. So to be up there all of a sudden is a realisation that actually if you are that kid, it is 100% possible and 100% doable.

I remember standing at those shows being like “I cant wait to do this”—it was never a question of if, it was more of a question of when, you know, and I know that might sound odd but that’s the truth.

CelebMix: So music’s always been the goal for you all?

TM: It’s not really a goal, music has just always been a part of my life, so playing music is just an absolute bonus.

JCB: For me it’s where I feel most comfortable, it’s where I feel most like me. In that sense, it’s the most organic thing that I could possibly be doing. When I was a kid I wasn’t going to be a scientist, it just wasn’t something that I was good at, so this is 100%, it’s like music or jail.

CelebMix: Do you have anything in the works at the moment?

SB: There are a few things, yeah. We’re plotting also at the moment. Plotting world domination.

TM: There’s a short moving picture that should be arriving shortly, and also a new territory that we might be visiting.

JCB: That we’ve never played. I don’t think, apart from Jimmy, I don’t think any of us have even been to it before. And we’re playing the Don Broco show at Alexandra Palace.

RJ: That should be exciting, and then it’s just pre-production for the new album, which involves all of us getting in a creative space.

JCB: Getting weird—weirder than we already are.

CelebMix: Is there anyone that you’re excited to see play today?

JCB: I just watched Deap Valley, who I love, and I was just blown away never having had the opportunity to see them before, I’m just so stoked by that band. I clocked on to those guys maybe two and a half or three years ago, I think it was through an online magazine actually, and then I just loved the sound, so I was really happy to see them.

We’re all actually going back to Reading tomorrow, on Sunday, so we’re going to try and catch Architects, and Muse are on tomorrow.

CelebMix: So you’re playing The Pit stage later on today, what should we expect from your show?

JCB: Mayhem.

TM: A lot of sweat, a lot of sweat. There was a lot of sweat yesterday.

SB: If you want to see sweat, come to a Counterfeit show. See five guys sweating on the stage.

JCB: Uncoiling cables… Yeah, just carnage I guess, we sort of just go in there and we always do our thing. People tend to ask us “what is it that you do” and I don’t tend to know. I just tend to walk out there and sort of black out.

Five Great Lessons You Can Learn From Natural Gas Extraction

aka What do you Need To Know About NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION/Fracking - Most Americans like the idea, why?

DYK?  U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption are at the lowest level since 1994. Overall, carbon emissions from energy have fallen for five straight years. Natural gas, as the president pointed out, is having a direct impact as natural gas power generation is replacing dirtier coal power on a near 1-to-1 ratio. In addition to a big reduction in carbon emissions, the overall carbon footprint of natural gas extraction is becoming smaller.

DYK?  The manufacturing industry has announced more than 100 projects representing $80 billion to $100 billion in new investments thanks to fracking. The projects range from petrochemical plants to fertilizer manufacturers and are only possible thanks to cheap and abundant natural gas that's only unlocked by fracking.Photo credit: Chesapeake Energy.Fracking has fueled a 41% increase in energy-related jobs since the end of the Great Recession. The industry now supports 2.1 million jobs. It's expected to add another 1.1 million new jobs by the end of the decade.

On top of that, it's estimated that fracking has enabled the U.S. to add 530,000 manufacturing jobs since 2010 as companies took advantage of cheaper natural gas. Some analysts predict that another 5 million manufacturing jobs could be added to the economy by 2020 thanks to cheap natural gas that was unlocked by fracking.

DYK?  Over the course of drilling more than a million wells, the industry has continued to refine the process. Today's process of fracking is vastly improved from just a few years ago.

Halliburton is one of the companies leading the way to make fracking even better. The company has developed safer fracking fluids that are sourced with ingredients found in the food industry. The fluid is safe enough that Halliburton executives have even taken a sip at a conference.

Halliburton is also pioneering a water recycling solution that will enable it to frack new wells using water that is produced from other wells it fracked. The company hopes that by recycling it can reduce the freshwater usage in its fracking operations by up to 25% by the end of this year.

BTW - Please do your research – Was Civil War about freeing slaves – myth.  It was about taxation.  Were blacks in civil war times thought to be human – myth.  No, they were thought to be some sort of sub-species.  Did abolitionists cause a change in thought – True – But did it come from human decency or politics?  It came from North wanting South economy destroyed.  We need our statues and our history written as it was – as ugly as it might be – we never want it repeated, right?  This is how we learn from the past.

BTW -  Reparations?  Blacks, American Indians, Whites all bought and sold slaves, so who can we pin as the culprit? Of course we’re racist - from the Irish, Italians, Blacks and now Arabs and that won’t change.  We are human and fear other cultures and colors.  We can evolve with better ethnic education that will eventually lead to tolerance & admiring differences/abilities.When someone screams racist - I say yeah - so?  It’s a work in progress that NOT killing the target person or stuffing head in toilet is a great advancement.  Also, these feelings are coming from each race.  Maybe each race can tell tales about some other race and its unethical actions. The key to take home is that we are progressing.

Others are working on sustainable fracking initiatives. These will limit flaring, cut down on emissions, and reduce toxic chemicals used in fracking operations, as well as a whole host of other voluntary standards to clean up the process. That's in addition to stronger regulations that some states are placing on water testing and emissions. Bottom line: Fracking is getting a whole lot safer than many of its detractors realize. 

Many of the reasons the process is hated have either been disproved or have vastly improved over the years. That's why more Americans need to learn to love fracking, as it's doing a lot more good than many people realize. 

We should blame lack of education coming from Congress, right?

List of youngest members of the United States Congress!

What we have is a de facto House of Rep run by uneducated Democrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What qualifications do you think would be proper?

We need women in both parties. Representation of only one type of American female identity is problematic.  Check it out: 

North Carolina Teen Accepted to 113 Colleges, Awarded $4.5m in Scholarships

A Greensboro teen’s hard work paid off in a big way. Jasmine Harrison, 17, was accepted to 113 colleges and universities and awarded more than $4.5 million in merit-based scholarships.

Who are our female Senators and young House Rep?

The youngest female Republican House Rep is Elise Stefanik - what’s she up to?

Republican Senators:  Susan Collins,  Lisa Murkowski,  Deb Fischer,  Joni Ernst and  Cindy Hyde-Smith

Joni Ernst was the first female combat veteran and  Cindy Hyde-Smith  is the first woman from Mississippi elected to Congress.  Cindy Hyde-Smith ran on reigning in Fed Bureaucracy and the shutdown helped her.  Joni Ernst is singing my song  - cutting down on money spent 

All GOP both men and women are concerned with the subject of rape.   STUDY DESIGN: A national probability sample of 4008 adult American women took part in a 3-year longitudinal survey that assessed the prevalence and incidence of rape and related physical and mental health outcomes. 

RESULTS: The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year. Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, the majority occurred among adolescents and resulted from assault by a known, often related perpetrator. Only 11.7% of these victims received immediate medical attention after the assault, and 47.1% received no medical attention related to the rape. 

We started off as twin baby girls but today we are both US Judges.

A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption; an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion. 

Republican John James will run again, this time against Sen. Gary Peters The Michigan businessman’s run could shape the presidential race in a key swing state. 

CONCLUSIONS: Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual victimization. (Am J Obstet Gynecol 1996;175:320-5.)

If the victim is shy - there is still a way to conviction without evidence.   The GOP stance is victim accusations is not enough to convict - by itself.  Absolutely no crime can be substantiated with just an accusation.

Lastly, since most rapists are known to the victim, incidents go unreported and my fav solution is to shoot them evaporates - especially if a family member.

More and more women are coming around to this view.  Welcome to the GOP  or Republican Party!

A hero without a cape

Her name is Theresa Kachindamoto, and she is a senior chief - political leader of a region with a population of about 900,000 people.

She didn’t run for election; she was appointed, without her knowledge, while she was living and working in a completely different part of the country. She just received a call one day telling her to come back to her childhood home, because she was in charge now.

So she did; and when she arrived, she discovered widespread sexual abuse of children. She browbeat 50 uncooperative local leaders into accepting her decision to annul all the marriages. She then fired four of them when they continued to allow children to be married off in their areas. She still faces widespread opposition from parents who consider it their right to sexually abuse their daughters if they want to; but Kachindamoto very evidently does not give a fuck, and is continuing to use political and legal means to protect children in the region.

She’s not just an anonymous do-gooder; she’s an effective political leader despite incredibly difficult circumstances. Theresa Kachindamoto.

Child Bride World Wide Issue

The Noura Hussein Plea for justice

Arranged marriages are allowed and promoted in Islam as long as they are accepted by both the bride and the groom.

THE TRUTH – warning, may be brutal to your ears

DYK?  According to a 2016 census done by Global Slavery Index almost over 45.8 million live in slavery - nowadays.

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okay it’s midnight and I should get writing because I can’t sleep in all day tomorrow which would afford me the ability to stay up later (that sentence was horribly phrased but I’m too lazy to fix it so oh well). today was pretty great! some stuff not ideal but overall still pretty good. I woke up to my alarm at 9 and got dressed and got prepared for our first quest of the day, which was trying to get yet another pair of concert tickets for a KPop band Jess wants to see. This was one she cares slightly less about so we weren’t under quite as much pressure to get the good seats, we were just aiming for the cheap ones. So I put our usual breakfast order in on ubereats and it arrived shortly after she did at around 9:30, the tickets went on sale at 10. Since we’ve had not great experiences trying to get tickets up to this point we wanted to try to maximize our chances of getting them by using multiple accounts (which is probably cheating but tbh idgaf I���m sure the ticket scalpers are doing much worse with many more tickets) so I had my main one up in my main browser and then the one attached to my old email up in another one (it was funny, I logged onto it and it was under the name “Ann”- my mom’s name- and the credit cards stored on it expired in like, 2012 😂) and then Jess had hers up on the chromebook. Unlike the other ones thus far this one wasn’t doing the thing where they had a virtual queue form 10 minutes beforehand, so it was just whenever they decided to let you in. The lack of a virtual queue was objectively a good thing because it meant there weren’t as many people trying to get tickets, but it also meant it was just totally random with everyone who was there at that minute. But thankfully we got in after not too long and Jess was able to snag two tickets before anyone else clicked on them (because it does this really annoying thing where the page with refresh with the available tickets and you’ll click two but when you try to go forward it says somebody else already got them and then refreshes your page and it’s a pain in the ass) and after some slight panic over getting the right credit card the tickets were ours for the least amount of money, so we were pleased with that result. May is gonna be crazy, as it stands we have at least 2 concerts (well 3 for Jess being that she’s going to BTS twice) in the same week and are very likely going to end up with another when the Monsta X tickets go on sale on Friday (and of course for them we’re trying for Chicago and New York, so it might involve a NY trip as well). so that’s gonna be a lot, but nothing we’re not used to haha at this point I think we thrive in chaos. So once we had that taken care of we grabbed our things and headed out to Jess’ car. In case I forgot to mention this up to this point we were cosplaying as Ariel and Snow White in their pajama outfits from Wreck It Ralph 2 which is 100% a lazy cosplay but I really give zero fucks because it was comfy and easy. So we drove down to the convention center, this isn’t in the one that most of the Chicago cons are in out by the airport (northwest of downtown in the top corner of the city) but rather C2E2 is in the convention center that’s adjacent to the loop that happened to be the place that they used for my law school graduation and bar swearing in, so I’ve had some very different experiences in this building, lol. I did my make up in the car and was fairly pleased with how it turned out. Once we got there there was some confusion about parking, we were originally planning on parking in one of their lots that’s right connected to the place so we didn’t have to walk in the cold (we were leaving our jackets in the car so we didn’t have to carry them all day; I was in shorts but was wearing my extra thick ice skating tights underneath them so it wasn’t terrible) but that didn’t end up happening so we had to walk in the cold a little bit but we managed. Later in the day Jess mentioned that apparently all of their parking had filled up and there were people with tickets who couldn’t get in because they didn’t have anywhere to park, so the con probably oversold their tickets in that sense. So we got in fairly easily, it was already opened at this point since we were doing the tickets that delayed our arrival a bit. So we start walking the show floor a bit and then decide we should check out artist’s alley first, but try not to buy anything on our first walk through, just consider stuff. the issue of course is that artist’s alley is generally full of great art, but I have literally no room on my wall for anything haha and I still have to hang up my 3 photo ops from London (though they are only 6x9′s instead of the standard 8x10′s so hopefully that will make it easier) and my Matt Ryan one from Cleveland. so I could really only consider very small things, lol. but there was a lot of cool stuff, always a pretty great assortment of different art styles and subject matters. I spotted a few things I may come back and get tomorrow, we will see. I really wanted to see if they had any art from The Cursed Child but I didn’t see anything, besides one drawing that I’m pretty sure was supposed to be Draco but could conceivably be Scorpius from the way he was drawn (but he was with drawings of the original trio so probably not). still a cool drawing though. so that took a while, though definitely less time than it did last year. So after that we went in search of anybody we might know that was there but didn’t see anybody, so we started wandering the show floor. Now, in terms of not needing to buy anything, this was even worse because the solid majority of it is clothing, and we both already own way too much clothing, especially comics related lol. so we made our way through most of everything, some cool stuff, not managed to refrain from buying anything up till that point. We had checked the schedule for panels at one of the smaller stages (their main stage panels are super crowded and there wasn’t anyone we cared that much about) and Colin Donnell (aka Tommy from Arrow) was doing one at 1:30 and it was like 12:50 at this point, so we went over to the little row of food vendors they had and managed to get some decent food for lunch that we sat and ate before returning to the panel stage and managing to find seats right before it started. It was pretty entertaining, he is very pretty in person, though that’s probably not a shock to many. He talked about Arrow of course but also about Chicago Med being that that’s his current show and it is after all filmed and set in Chicago. He also talked about his background doing Broadway which I wasn’t aware of so that was cool to hear about. one of the questions they asked him was like “if you’re on jeopardy, what category would you want the final jeopardy question to be from?” and I was like “musical theatre trivia” (answering somewhat for myself but also for him) and right after I said that he was like “broadway trivia” haha so I felt validated, that is definitely what I would choose given that question. So that lasted about half an hour and was pretty fun. After that we went back to wander the rest of the show floor that we hadn’t made it to yet, most notably a few KPop/Anime/etc. themed booths that were wild, Jess ended up getting into a conversation with these like high school girls about going to BTS and they were like, unironically fans of them when Jess is only a very ironic fan, and they were like “oh who do you stan??” and then the girl said she stans the one guy Jess hates and I busted up laughing at all of it, I couldn’t stop myself, it was truly hilarious. they were talking about the concert and what nights they were going and the girls were like “oh yeah Sunday’s gonna be tough you know because it’s a school night!” and I just fucking died because they’re clearly like 15. So that was very amusing. Jess ended up convincing me I needed one of the hats they sold at that booth, they were the snapback style with the big plastic letters attached across the top which said “THICC” in pink and I got it for the pure reason to wear to ClexaCon next month and it’s gonna be great, I of course put it on as soon as I bought it too. We then went upstairs to where they host the main stage panels just to check it out, there were a lot of people in very long lines, and I was glad I wasn’t in one of them. So we hung out up there for a while just to chill out a bit. We ended up heading back downstairs to see if we could locate an internet friend who’s working the con but we weren’t able to find her today (probably will see her tomorrow) and ended up finally seeing some people we knew, so we sat with them for a while until they ended up heading out, and after that we did a little more wandering before deciding to call it a day, it was a little earlier than we’d normally leave but Jess was feeling kinda crappy and there wasn’t really anything else we were dying to do so it made sense to just go home. Drove back and got dropped off, I changed into comfortable clothing and didn’t really have anything I needed to take care of so I ended up sitting on the couch and watching the last four episodes of season 5 of The Americans, stopping somewhere in there to make two eggs for dinner (which was a bad plan, I go through weird phases with food and I had convinced myself that I was fine eating eggs but I really wasn’t), and then before the last episode to shower before returning to finish it. This season happened to have a fairly brutal finale, in my opinion at least- trigger warning here for self-harm/suicide. So the plot was basically that they had befriended this family that had just defected from the Soviet Union and for some mildly important reason they wanted at least the wife and their son to go back, so one of the methods they employ is using their fake spy son (not their actual child) who had originally befriended him make things at school really bad for their son to the point where he would be so miserable that his mother would want to return to Russia with him. Well, it didn’t look like it was working, and their fake son ended up advising his friend to “slit his wrists” in order to get his parents attention enough for them to take him back, and the spy apparently “showed him” how to do it without hitting an artery, and the spy is calmly recounting this to his fake parents, saying he was going to do it at 7 pm that night, right when his parents were supposed to get home. Of course their majorly alarmed but were split on what to do because they didn’t want to compromise the mission, but the dad ends up storming out of their fake home and walking to their friend’s home and are trying to get in when his parents arrive, and so they get into the house and sent the spy son up to the other son’s room, and a second later you hear him yelling for help, so they storm upstairs to find the boy unconscious on his bed with blood all over his arms and bed. And I mean, I knew going into this episode I would probably see this (they left the previous episode at a cliffhanger about them intervening) but I really was not prepared for that image. And then of course his parents start freaking out and his mother is just next to him sobbing while everyone is scrambling to call 911 and try to bind his wounds the best they can until the paramedics get there and like.....the whole thing just made me so mad. To be fair, the main characters were very alarmed that this was used as a tactic and think their fake kid way overstepped in doing telling him to do this, but the whole idea of basically risking sacrificing the life of a child for a part of your mission that was not even very critically important meanwhile you go home to your own children.....like how as a parent could you ever live with yourself?? And I mean, I know these are spies that regularly just shoot people, some innocent some not, but like, interfering in this boy’s life to make him absolutely miserable and it culminating in something as horrible as this really just pissed me tf off. and I mean that’s for obvious reasons, this is an intersection of two issues I care deeply about, mental health advocacy and the wellbeing of children. So that whole storyline left me pretty angry. And I mean I know, it’s fiction, this didn’t actually happen, but just to see the callousness to the life of a child portrayed like that was really disturbing to witness. But I finished the episode and then turned the tv off for the night and started getting ready for bed, and shortly after I started writing this and now I am here. It’s almost 1 am and I have an 8:30 alarm set, so I think it is time for me to go to bed. Goodnight babes. Hope you’re enjoying your weekend.

day 31

Hi friends. People have been giving me shit about my posting decline, and ugh I am sorry but I get tired at night!! I will try harder to be better :(

But I can tell you about many days today! Friday was pretty good. Liam and I got to talk about those companies he asked about. talking to my mentor was really great (and she was on time)! We went to this uber cute Italian place and I got some cheeses, and did a Barry’s class beforehand because I got out of work relatively early! So two Barry’s days in a row and they were both super intense. Even though I ate cheeses and bread that night, I woke up the next morning looking tight af!!! My tummy like was super flat and you could almost see abs. I was truly in shock.

Couldn’t really waste my time checking my self out though, bc boy did I have a wild time on the TRAIN trying to meet this BB banker. I facetimed w E beforehand, which was nice. But trains only leave my town on the weekends every like 2 hours, so I could only get on a 2:08 for a 3pm meeting, which SHOULD have been reasonable. But even though my mom said I would be taken, when I needed to leave, no one was home ??? So my dad had to race back home and get me to the station. Even though he rolled up to the house at literally 2:05, I somehow made it. Then I ran through the transfer station and made an earlier train to NYC than the scheduled transfer. But as SOON as I texted E saying “I’ve had relatively good luck with trains so far, let’s hope it lasts”, my train STOPS on the tracks for 20 minutes. I knew I was gonna be late at this point, so I emailed my guy and he seemed understanding but tbh who really knows. But that’s not ALL. I got to New York and got on the AC subway, as Google maps told me to, but when I got to west 4th, they told me they fucking wouldn’t be servicing spring, canal, or chambers, and I needed to get off and get on an E!!!! So I got off and waited for an E, which finally arrived, but it SKIPPED CHAMBERS AND WENT STRAIGHT TO THE WTC. I was actually embroiled with pure rage and sweat, and had to run back up to the agreed upon coffee shop.

I, a frizzy haired, sweaty, red faced agitated mess, greeted my networker in a daze and sat down. He asked me if I needed water, which I got, and after that the conversation seemed okay. Lasted a healthy 50 minutes, and he said he genuinely wouldn’t hold it against me for being late. So that was good I thought. After we parted ways, I simmered in a juice press with a comfort smoothie and then went to target across the street. I picked out a couple seemingly cute things, and headed downstairs to a dressing room. There were two. Two dressing rooms. And one was closed. And the other one had a line and a woman was in there for over 20 minutes!!!! After we banged on the door and security kicked her out, out she wheels “over 500$ worth of merchandise, guess you don’t want me to buy it then! And I’m so sorry you guys, there’s only one open room, what are you gonna do?” What a late stage capitalism bitch. Disgusting.

Then they found a used pad on the floor of the room, which they picked up, and then the room was ready for use! One top was cute so I bought it. Go me.

Then I walked up to have dinner with T after many reschedulings. But it was fun; she’s so adorable and so fun to talk to. I really hope we remain friends. We talked about work, boys, some crazy friends, uchicago, family, and the future. All good vibes. Our dinner was yummy Korean food, and we hung out for like over four hours! Walked around the WTC too and then she caught a train. What a doll, I honestly love her!

So then I went home, and I felt bad that I was in the city and didnt work out. I should’ve gone in earlier and taken a class at like 1 or something, but I got lazy. I wish I had more discipline :/

So Sunday though was relatively speaking way more chill. I got up at 10:30ish and went practice driving with my dad to Mont, and it was mostly fine except i missed an exit and kinda got rattled and parked badly in front of my house as a result. But I didn’t die! When I headed to Mont to meet @autonoesis for real, it went much better, and I parked great. He brought his friend Erin, which was really fun; she’s super cool. We ate at this SUPER yummy middle eastern brunch place (Joe’s idea!); I got the shakshuka, which was heavenly. After, we went shopping in the cute area, and I got some posters (one of fruits and vegetables), a few books as gifts, and a handmade facial scrub. You can imagine just how bougie this place was but i thrive on it.

Then we parted ways and I drove home, and then M surprise texted me and came over for a bit to chill. We talked about his ex, my ex, our lives, and his race he had that day which he did really well in! I would’ve done it if he’d asked lol. I may have convinced him to see John Mulaney. That shit would be worth it. And he invited me to go to the beach on Sunday… in his Jeep, which I think of as like the beachiest vehicle. I hope he takes the top off the car, or maaaaybe the half doors (?) but that still kinda freaks me out. Then it would be the MOST summery. But if I’m going to the beach, gotta work my butt off (more like my tummy off and my butt on) this week to show off a cute bod. Another motivator is E coming to see me next tuesday (and flying home Sunday)! But the biggest motivator is ME. Gotta keep myself going.

Today I went to work again, which was fine. I made some progress on the two pager, and got a new ballz high score lmao. I think I’m talking on the phone with a trader tomorrow, but he hasn’t emailed back to confirm, so we’ll see. Phone convos always freak me out a bit, so hopefully this one will go well. My lunch salad today was overdressed AGAIN! Definitely getting dressing on the side next time. Then I left at around 6ish for my 6:50 Barry’s class. It was HARD! I think it might be because I didn’t work out on sat or sun, and also the first round was just brutal (20 minutes of floor, THEN 20 minutes of treadmill with incline). But I did order a fuel bar shake. Protein powder tastes weird. And today I got another special treat: my dad came into the city for an unrelated reason and drove me home! So I got back really early.

Tonight at midnight I’m fting my old camp friend from the U.K., so hopefully that goes well/normally. It’s super coincidental that he reached out to me first. We maintain like a 25% friendship, which is enough for me. I’ve also been talking to @gossipmelons a lot more and she’s having a weird time, but I’m tryna support her from across the globe. Sigh just tryna live and all. I’m gonna reach out to this sorority sister and my childhood camp friend’s (a diff one) brother, who we like have a weird friendship with as a family. So hopefully that stuff works out. I’m just trying to chill tonight. Hopefully I get my workout mojo back and my academic/career power.

Ragethirst Highlights - Dragon Inn/Dragons Gate Inn

I was drafted by Hal and Dream into writing the highlights for this stream, so I preface this by saying that I had to ask @paint-the-wall-with-bullets​ for the plot a fourth of the way through, upon which I connected the dots.

The ragethirst was visited today by a smol, who graced us with kpop for a short time

ling tried to make moves on everyone assembled, as per usual

donnie appeared for all of five minutes in the beginning of the movie to look very pretty and to torture an official to death to establish the plot

many disparaging comments were made about his makeup

which were equally balanced out by those who liked it

(personally I think it was a bit Much, but he did resemble a peacock dressed in gold filigree, so 50/50, could take or leave it)

outfit 1

donnie’s playing a eunuch, which lead to us trying to goad @evocating​ into writing Forbidden City fanfic starring ballsless sex, because the rest of us don’t have the research background for this brand of historical erotica

the official’s entire family was killed except for one boy and one girl

our heroine, played by Brigitte Lin, who I referred to for the rest of the movie as ‘the lady drunkard who crossdresses and fights well’ appears at this point with a band of renegade mercenaries to snatch the kids off

donnie watches all of this from the cliffs above from the middle of his entourage

no really

outfit 2

there’s a lot of fighting on horseback and by ‘fighting on horseback’ I mean people turning horses around in circles, yelling, and waving around prop swords while the wind kicks up sand everywhere

donnie gets to use the Force

our heroes, kids in tow, sojourn to this inn in the middle of the desert near a pass through the mountains they can use

as framing for said inn we’re treated to a scene of Maggie Cheung, playing the role of the cannibal (more on that later) innkeeper mistress seducing a man and then brutally murdering him via several throwing knives to the face

down the chute he goes

for those interested, he gets turned into meat buns (that was the later)

the butcher is very skilled at chopping (I swear to god this becomes salient even more later)

our innkeeper Immediately susses out that the crossdresser is crossdressing because she is not attracted to her womanly ways

I say this but the next scene after the obligatory This Meat Tastes Off, Don’t Eat It bit is something like twenty minutes of a fight between our crossdressing heroine and the innkeeper in the bath that consists of knives shredding cloth and stealing clothes off of each other

words were exchanged to the effect of ‘you have a very lovely body’ ‘as do you’

the innkeeper loses

she ends up topless

while vaulting onto the top of the inn(??), the innkeeper is interrupted in the middle of her bawdy(???), topless(??????) song by the arrival of a third party

Tony Ka Fai Leung plays a doctor romantically involved with our crossdressing heroine

he arrives on two camels. Take this as you will.

He Banters with the innkeeper, who promptly decides she wants to keep him

there was so much crosstalk about “the weather” and “candles”

alas, this perfect setup for poly is not used

at some point all the asians in chat completely derailed the conversation by expounding on all the different kinds of meat and how good they were

Bone Marrow. Bone marrow was elected universal king

Special mention goes to the consumption of insects. Excellent source of protein!

At some point during above conversation government officials acting at donnie’s behest arrive at the inn, where they’re all conveniently trapped by the desert weather (it wasn’t Entirely a metaphor)

two of the officials’ party get struck by lightning and dragged off to be turned into meat buns

maybe a goat too

a very fake roasted goat makes an appearance

the butcher gets to show off his skills via deboning the whole thing and turning the meat into deli slices (I swear this is also salient)

there’s a very tension-laden showdown wherein two tables are broken and the doctor and the main official end up having ‘a toast to nothing’

our party is still stuck because of the weather and the officials keeping an eye on them

the doctor does a reverse honeypot to seduce the innkeeper into letting their party use the secret tunnels out so they can transport the kids

the seduction involves a one night stand after getting married by the government official of said standoff before

the doctor also does some Investigation at some point and discovers the people-chute

also terrifies the butcher by turning out to be alive

somehow the honeymoon turns into a fight

which quickly turns into a full-out brawl between all parties in the inn

shoutout to the innkeeper who literally grinds up one of the officials’ men in the fight, fills a bucket with his blood, and then throws in the old man official’s face before stabbing him while screaming about making him eat his own blood

so much fake blood everywhere

donnie and the army he’s leading arrive in the middle of this

the inn gets stormed by said army

horses ride all over it

in the ruckus of the fight above, our crossdressing heroine (who is no longer crossdressing and is probably a bit drunk from drowning her sorrows over the honeymoon that doesn’t involve her), tries to get the kids out

she runs into said army and gets shot by an arrow and has to come back

the innkeeper, faced with her imminent bodily safety, gets everyone through the tunnels (everyone being the kids, the doctor, the butcher, the crossdressing heroine, herself, and a kitchen sink)

the tunnel pops out behind the front line, but one of the kids accidentally lets go of a red sash, which Happens to drift back to where donnie’s sitting

upon which he Ｐ Ｒ Ｏ Ｍ Ｐ Ｔ Ｌ Ｙ   Ｆ Ｌ Ｉ Ｅ Ｓ onto a horse and starts chasing after them

outfit 3

his makeup has gotten Worse

donnie loses the horse to a stiff breeze and ends up chasing after the party on foot

the kids are sent ahead with the butcher while the rest stay to make a stand against donnie, who is naruto running across the dunes to them

A Fight Ensues

we can’t see shit because of the goddamn sand blowing everywhere

it’s mostly just dramatic swordplay at this point, but donnie loses his hairtie to a stray cut and also gets nicked in the face at some point??

???

he’s really rocking the chirrut colors here

there is a pause to regroup

upon which there is a long pan

it’s from donnie’s chest down his skirts to his ankles

why? we’re not initially clear

AS IT TURNS OUT THE PAN IS TO SHOWCASE THAT THEY’RE APPARENTLY IN QUICKSAND.

EVERYONE IS SUNKEN UP TO THE CHEST

INCLUDING DONNIE, WHO HAS HELD ABOVE POSE ALL THROUGH IT

Immediately after we realize the above fact, donnie changes his pose

he fucking. Landsharks through the sand

I honestly have no other words to describe it

he carves his own trench?? the sand flies up???

he fucking nyooms through the sand my guys

DO WE REMEMBER THAT VIDEO OF THE MOOSE JUST FUCKING CARVING ITS WAY THROUGH THE CHEST-HIGH SNOW IN CANADA

BECAUSE IT WAS LIKE THAT

“MOVE I’M GAY” - donnie in this fight

we have been laughing ever since donnie lost his hairtie because his goddamn face when it happened was ATROCIOUS, I hope someone screencapped it for posterity

BUT AT THIS POINT WE TOTALLY LOSE IT

I AM LAUGHING SO HARD THERE ARE LITERAL TEARS IN MY EYES

“MOOOOOOOOOO YAAAAANNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!” - the doctor, dramatically, overwrought, as the crossdressing heroine is stabbed

attempts to drive off donnie are made. they’re not very successful.

Breakdancing fighting ensues

the innkeeper leaves mo yan in the sand to die as she tries to help with the fight

“MOOOOOOO YAAAAANNNNN!!!!” - the doctor, as he dives for mo yan, sinking into the sand, and misses her hand in time to pull her out

she deserved a better death, honestly

the fight is REALLY not going well. Donnie makes a move to charge at the remaining party

upon which

a fucking second landshark

pops out of the dune to engage him

IT”S THE BUTCHER.

THERE ARE A LOT OF TERRIBLE SOUND EFFECTS? THERE’S A LOT OF FLAILING?? WE DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON

until the butcher disengages and scuttles off to fucking. Bury himself back into the sand in true landshark style

donnie tries to move, halts, looks down

“MY LEG!!!!!!!” - donnie in this movie, discovering that he has an EXTREMELY BADLY DONE skeleton leg from the knee down replacing his left leg?!?!?!?

THE BUTCHER DEBONED HIM

THIS IS WHERE IT BECAME SALIENT

“MY HAND!!!!!” - donnie in this movie, discovering after falling over that he has an EXTREMELY BADLY DONE skeleton hand from the elbow down replacing his left arm?!?!?!?!?

THE TEARS OF LAUGHTER ARE OVERFLOWING.

Oh my god, he gets up Somehow because the landshark butcher is coming for the rest of him

they exchange some blows

donnie stabs him fucking just shy of the crotch THROUGH THE SAND

THERE IS A GEYSER OF FAKE BLOOD

THEN FUCKING HAULS HIM OUT OF THE SAND AND PROCEEDS TO SWING HIM AROUND LIKE A SHIRT STRIPPED OFF AT A CONCERT MOSH PIT WHILE SCREAMING AT THE SKY

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!

there’s a quick interlude for the doctor to Resolve Himself with the innkeeper THROUGH WHICH YOU CAN STILL HEAR DONNIE SCREAMING

the doctor and donnie have one last dramatic clash that involves FLYING ACROSS THE SAND

DONNIE GRABS THE SWORD THE DOCTOR IS USING AS IT’S COMING AT HIM AND BENDS IT INTO A PRETZEL ONE-HANDED??

THERE IS FAKE BLOOD EVERYWHERE????

THE DOCTOR PULLS A STRAIGHT DAGGER OUT OF THE HILT OF THE SWORD AS DONNIE IS HOLDING IT AND STABS DONNIE THROUGH THE NECK

@twentyeightghosts​ is extremely mad about this still. Swords Do Not Work Like That

DONNIE IN A FINAL ACT OF DEFIANCE STABS THE DOCTOR IN THE CHEST WITH HIS BONY SKELETON FINGERS???????????

the doctor fucking FALLS BACK onto the sand COVERED IN FAKE BLOOD with this RIDICULOUS PROP SKELETON HAND AND FOREARM ATTACHED TO HIS CHEST

SOMEHOW DONNIE IS STILL STANDING

HE DOES A RIDICULOUS ONE-LEGGED HOP TO STAY UPRIGHT

THIS MAN.

donnie has one last dramatic yell in him. we’re treated to a shot of his skeleton leg crumpling to bits under him. He finally falls over. he’s dead. The evil has been vanquished.

There is a dramatic pan on mo yan’s flute on the sand with music going in the background as the doctor looks appropriately anguished and the innkeeper appropriately jilted by death

said doctor takes the kids through the pass on the other camel

the innkeeper and the butcher go back to the inn and burn it down

‘let us leave this evil place’ LADY, YOU WERE THE ONE TURNING DUDES INTO MEAT BUNS IN THE BASEMENT????

@xanderxcagex had a great joke about swordception [BWOOOOOM]

hal came back after having to take a break right as the movie finished

WE REWATCHED THE LAST TEN MINUTES AGAIN

JUST FOR DONNIE

THIS MOVIE IS APPARENTLY A TREASURED CLASSIC???

seriously, thank you so much for streaming for us @greymichaela​ and hosting our absolute madness. This was a ragethirst to remember, if nothing else for it being the strongest ending to a donnie movie I’ve caught thus far.

Kim, to Hal: you’re going to ask ‘What? Was that - ?” a lot in the last ten minutes, and the answer, every time, is going to be ‘Yes.’ Hal, Immediately: DID DONNIE JUST - Everyone in the chat, through their laughter: ＹＥＳ

Can Kamala Harris Win?

So here’s the plan:

Kamala is going to walk up to Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ from the left. At 12:50 p.m., Rodney Scott will greet her. She’ll enter through the side door and order at the second register, from the woman in the red shirt. Kamala, Scott, and Maya Harris—that’s Kamala’s sister and campaign chair—will sit and eat. Kamala will then exit through the front door and walk around back to look at the smoker. She’ll reenter through the front, cross the dining room, and exit through the side door to take reporters’ questions.

To hear more feature stories, see our full list or get the Audm iPhone app.

Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog, on the corner of King and Grove Streets in Charleston, South Carolina, is perfect—the kind of fast-casual, deeply American spot almost any voter can get behind: local pit master anointed by Anthony Bourdain, outdoor seating under tasteful white Christmas lights, wooden tables with wrought-iron legs, red stools. In the hour leading up to Kamala’s arrival, men walking and biking slowly down Grove Street give way to police cars, followed by unmarked cars. At T minus 10, the campaign’s 23-year-old South Carolina communications director, Jerusalem Demsas, asks, “Can we get Rodney out here?” She places Scott, handsome and regionally beloved, on his mark to the left of the door. After Demsas leaves, Scott mutters, “People with warrants must be running off the block.”

It’s all happening before you can even see her, so thick and aggressive is the press: the 20-plus reporters with TV cameras, boom mics, lenses larger than some dogs. Kamala shakes Scott’s hand; touches his arm; smiles her big, open, I-am-so-happy-to-be-with-you-right-now smile. She’s shorter, even in heels, than one expects. But she’s magnetic, authoritative, warm—leaning in, nodding, gesturing with both hands, moving those hands from a voter’s biceps or shoulder to a position of deep appreciation over her heart.

Kamala wends through the scrum of press, makes her way to the counter, and finds the woman in the red shirt, who happens to be Scott’s wife. Kamala greets her with a two-handed clasp (a simple shake would come across as too formal and masculine). Then, right there, a decision needs to be made on the fly: What is Kamala going to order?

Kamala Harris—the Democratic presidential hopeful and 54-year-old junior senator from California—is a prosecutor by training. She knows well that any misstep, anything you say or do, can and will be held against you. Her fundamental, almost constitutional, understanding of this has made her cautious, at times enragingly so.

Harris’s demographic identity has always been radical. She was San Francisco’s first female district attorney, first black district attorney, first Asian American district attorney. She was then California’s first female attorney general, first black attorney general, first Asian American attorney general. She was the second black woman, ever, to win a seat in the United States Senate. But in office, she’s avoided saying or doing much that could be held against her. As attorney general, she declined to support two ballot measures to end the death penalty. She declined to support making drug possession a misdemeanor. She declined to support legalizing pot. She declined to support a ballot measure reforming California’s brutal three-strikes law. The point is: She had power. She kept most of it in reserve. More important than fixing the broken criminal-justice system, it seemed, was protecting her status as a rising star. She had earned that reputation by the time the first major profile of her was written: San Francisco Magazine, 2007. The article also described her as “maddeningly elusive.”

It takes Harris a minute, but she decides on a pulled-pork sandwich, with corn bread and collard greens, and a banana pudding to split with Maya. They sit and eat, ignoring the two dozen recording devices in their faces, talking about Scott’s vinegar-based BBQ sauce and his recipe for banana pudding—good territory for Harris, as she’s a serious cook. Nearby, there are a few appalled customers, including a family that has driven 40 minutes to celebrate the father’s birthday and has no idea what’s happening, no idea even who Harris is, and would just like this rugby squad of reporters to move aside long enough for their son to refill his drink. But for the most part, the patrons are dazzled by Harris, whose star quality drew 20,000 people to her kickoff rally in Oakland. The dynamism she displayed there made the event feel like a cause, or a concert—Kamalapalooza—and gave her campaign significant momentum. (Laurene Powell Jobs, the president of Emerson Collective, which is the majority owner of The Atlantic, has provided financial support to the Harris campaign.)

After 15 minutes, right on schedule, Harris sets down her napkin and walks around back. She takes some photos near the smoker with Scott’s family and looks deeply into the eyes of his adorable 10-year-old son. She tells him she’s giving a speech later and she’d like him to let her know what he thinks of it. Then she walks back through the restaurant and exits, as planned, through the side door so she can gaggle with the press. (NB: Gaggle is now a verb in American politics, meaning “to answer questions shouted at you by a group of reporters.”)

Here, again, Harris is graciously, militarily on point. All good politicians stick to a script, but Harris speaks like a woman who knows that facts are ammunition. Everything you say can and will be used against you. Just this week she’s been in the weeds, so to speak, with Reefergate, a kerfuffle that arose when Harris was asked on the Breakfast Club radio show what music she’d listened to when she smoked pot in college and she said Tupac and Snoop Dogg. Social media erupted with gotchas, as those artists didn’t release songs until after she’d graduated.

Harris’s spokesperson said that she’d been answering a different question, about the music she listens to now, but even so The New York Times, The View, MSNBC, and Fox & Friends all picked up the story. Harris’s own father, who is Jamaican, flamed her on Jamaica Global Online for insinuating that she supported legalized pot because she was Jamaican: “My dear departed grandmothers … as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker.” The uproar caused the former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau to flip out on Pod Save America: “Donald Trump is president … We cannot be talking about this fucking shit again with the Democratic candidates.”

Harris on the trail in South Carolina. Once a stiff and guarded campaigner, she’s learned how to radiate warmth. (Phyllis B. Dooney)

But Harris, today, gaggling, is in top form: We don’t need a tragedy to enact commonsense gun reform. This economy is not working for working people. Every American needs a path to success. We need to speak truth. If Harris’s campaign has a mantra, that’s it: truth truth truth truth truth. She delivers her talking points while dressed, as she always is, in her uniform of dark suit, pearls, black heels. I know—you think I shouldn’t be writing about her clothes. But the clothes themselves are a smart, cautious play, one that Hillary Clinton, frankly, could have benefited from. If you wear the same outfit every single day, pretty soon the haters will run out of snarky things to say about your appearance and move on.

[Jemele Hill: Kamala Harris’s blackness isn’t up for debate]

Among Harris’s core traits, arguably her Shakespearean-tragedy trait, the one so central to her character that it has the potential to lift her to the highest post in the land but could also take her down, is her discipline. It is what has allowed her to play the long game, to protect her future. It has also infuriated constituents over the years who wanted Harris to take a stand and fight for them today, not when she reached a higher office. Yet Harris, on the trail, seems bolder than she has in the past. She’s declared that she’s for reparations, for the Green New Deal, for decriminalizing sex work and legalizing pot. She comes across as a woman who is cashing in her chips, taking all the political and social capital she was safeguarding for all those years and putting it on the table, declaring that her moment is now. She’s a black female prosecutor; we have a racist, misogynist, possibly criminal president. All of that caretaking of her political future—what was it for if not this?

By Harris’s side, on the road, is not her husband, Doug Emhoff, a Los Angeles lawyer she married in 2014, but her sister, Maya, who was a top policy adviser for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and, before that, the vice president for democracy, rights, and justice at the Ford Foundation and the executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. When the world is following you with boom mics and long knives, Maya told me, “it’s good to know there are people with you 100 percent. Ride or die. Not going anywhere.”

Harris’s parents, Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris, met in Berkeley, California, in the early 1960s, in the civil-rights movement. They’d both come to the United States to study at UC Berkeley: Shyamala, at age 19, from a Brahman family in India, to pursue a doctorate in endocrinology and nutrition; Donald, from Jamaica, for a doctorate in economics. As with almost everything else in her life, Harris has a set of stock stories she tells about her upbringing, all of which are laid out in her heavily vetted, surprise-free memoir, The Truths We Hold, which was released two weeks before she announced her candidacy. (The big vulnerable reveal in it is that Harris had to take the bar exam twice.) As a girl, she loved the outdoors; her father yelled at her, “Run, Kamala! As fast as you can. Run!” Her mother sang along to Aretha Franklin; her dad played Thelonious Monk. They divorced when Harris was 7. Before that, the family attended protests together. At one, Harris, a toddler, started fussing. Her mother bent down and asked, “What do you want?”

Harris said, “Fweedom!”

Shyamala, the daughter of a diplomat father and a mother who educated fellow Indian women about birth control through a bullhorn, was barely 5 feet tall, and formidable. She was supposed to return to India for an arranged marriage. She refused. “She had literally no patience for mediocrity,” Maya said. Her outlook was: “Be your best. If you’re going to do something, be the best. Work hard, the whole way.” En route to becoming a prominent breast-cancer researcher, she raised her girls primarily as a single mother. She took Harris with her to her lab when necessary and directed her to wash test tubes. She covered the kitchen in their small apartment with waxed paper and made lollipops and other candy. If she bought gifts, she set up a game in the style of Let’s Make a Deal. What do you want—Door No. 1 (the bedroom) or Door No. 2 (the kitchen)? Inside, the girls would find a blue bike with tasseled handlebars or an Easy-Bake Oven. In Harris’s telling, Shyamala didn’t coddle. If her children came home from school with a problem, she would ask, “Well, what did you do?,” in order to push them to solve it themselves. She raised her daughters in the black community, taking them to Berkeley’s black cultural center, Rainbow Sign, where Maya Angelou read poetry and Nina Simone sang. In 1971, when Harris was 7, Shirley Chisholm dropped by. She was exploring a bid for president.

When I asked Maya about her relationship with her sister, Kamala raised her eyebrows and cocked her head, like, This had better be good. “Well, she’s a big sister and …” Maya paused and turned to Harris. “Are you going to qualify that?”

Harris, laughing, declined. So Maya continued: “She was protective … Maybe just a liiiiiiiittle bossy.” If there was a problem in the schoolyard, Harris would assess the situation and make sure Maya was okay. The two organized a children’s protest to overturn a no-playing policy in their apartment building’s empty courtyard. Do I even need to say it? They won.

When Harris was in middle school, Shyamala took a post at McGill University and moved with her daughters to Montreal. Harris attended high school there. At Howard University, in Washington, D.C., she chaired the economics society, argued on the debate team, and pledged the AKA sorority, the first black sorority in the country, whose alumnae show up at Harris’s campaign events in force, dressed in AKA pale pink and green, a squadron of extra aunts. At UC Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco, Harris “found her calling,” as she writes in her memoir, and decided to become a prosecutor.

This was not an easy sell for her parents. Shyamala believed, as Harris writes, that America had “a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice.” Among Shyamala’s closest friends was Mary Lewis, a professor and public intellectual who helped lead the black-consciousness movement in the Bay Area. Donald Harris, meanwhile, had become an economics professor at Stanford University, the first black man in his department and one of about 10 black faculty members total. He was a left-leaning iconoclast who wrote and taught about uneven economic development around the world, particularly across racial lines, long before many Americans had ever heard the phrase income inequality. Colleagues found his progressivism threatening—he was called “too charismatic, a pied piper leading students away from neoclassical economics,” in The Stanford Daily.

Yet growing up at protests, Harris writes, she’d seen the mechanics of fighting for “justice from the outside.” That dynamic did not appeal to her. She wanted insider power, establishment power. “When activists came marching and banging on doors,” Harris writes, “I wanted to be on the other side to let them in.” Shyamala interrogated this logic. As Harris says, both in her book and in speeches, “I had to defend my choice as one would a thesis.”

It was the choice of a woman who likes control. Even sitting with Maya, post-barbecue, in a corridor of a black church in South Carolina before a town hall—when Harris is laughing and slightly slouched in her chair, seemingly relaxed—she’s a woman who maintains a tight grip on the narrative. No detail is too small.

“I stay with her a lot when I’m in D.C.,” Maya says, trying to tell me a story about how Harris likes to take care of people. (I experienced this myself. I showed up that day with a cough, and Harris instantly offered me cough drops and green tea.)

Harris corrects Maya, quietly but firmly: “Always.”

“Always … almost always,” Maya says. “Okay, mostly.”

Harris stands her ground: “Always.”

Maya—a Stanford Law School grad and one of the youngest people ever appointed dean of a law school—drops the point.

Harris will talk about cooking, specifically and in great detail, if you ask her. She’ll even get out her iPad and show you the recipes she’s marked from The New York Times’ cooking section, which she reads in the campaign van, after events, to relax. Chicken Cacciatore With Mushrooms, Tomatoes, and Wine—what’s oppo research going to do with that? I can tell you that her go-to dinner is roast chicken and that she’s cooked almost every recipe in Alice Waters’s The Art of Simple Food. In the kitchen, she’s a fundamentalist. “Salt, olive oil, a lemon, garlic, pepper, some good mustard—you can do almost anything with those ingredients.”

But turn the discussion to this moment in her life, to taking her shot—how she’s going to both protect this opportunity and go all out; where the line is between being too cautious and too open—and the specificity disappears. First she pivots away from caution. “I wouldn’t say cautious as much as smart. We have to be smart. We have to be strategic.” (This is a favorite move. For more than a decade Harris has talked about being “smart” on crime rather than “tough” or “soft.”) Then she turns to truth. “We have to speak truths, and in speaking those truths, some people are surprised that I’m actually saying that on a stage … So we have to push it.”

Lord knows we are all desperate for a president who values truth. But that wasn’t what I was getting at. There are a great many truths in the world. I wanted to know which ones were on her mind. Where is she going to be bold? Where does she feel she needs to hold back?

[Read: How Kamala Harris is running against 2020 democrats]

“I guess a lot of how I decide [what to] talk about is based on what people tell me they want to discuss,” Harris says. “Not so much what they want to discuss as what are the concerns for them.” This is going nowhere. “Certainly I do think in specifics. And when I’m in a smaller group where there’s more latitude to have a real conversation …”

I have limited time. I drop the question and move on, which of course was Harris’s goal.

Harris at her law-school graduation in 1989, with her mother, Shyamala Gopalan (center) and her first-grade teacher, Frances Wilson. (Courtesy of Kamala Harris)

It is truly a shame that Shyamala Gopalan isn’t here for this—her two daughters together, Kamala running for president of the United States.

She died 10 years ago. She had colon cancer, and when the end was near, Harris visited her in the hospital while running for attorney general. “She was starting to tune things out. She’d stopped watching the news and reading the paper, which was so unlike her, and she was tired. She was sleeping a lot. And I was with her in the hospital. I was sitting next to her—here’s the bed,” Harris says, motioning to her side, “and she was turned that way. We were just spending time together. And she said, looking away, with her eyes closed, I’m sure: ‘What’s going on with the campaign?’

“I said, ‘Well, Mommy, they said they’re gonna kick my ass.’ My mother leaned over and looked at me and had the biggest smile. Just the biggest smile on her face.”

Harris laughs. I ask what the smile meant. She says, “Bring it on. Good luck to them.”

America—at least the blue parts—came to see Harris as its potential savior in June 2017, when she questioned then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the Russia investigation. Sessions sat at a desk before the Senate Intelligence Committee, his mouth pursed in a boyish smirk, his white hair looking as though his mother had combed it for him, Harris regal on the dais above. Here was a man thinking he was going to get away with something, as he nearly always had. Then, in view of the world and this very smart black woman 18 years his junior, he began to realize he was not.

Harris, detailed notes in hand, had no patience for his “I do not recall”s and his long-winded responses to run out the clock. She just calmly and repeatedly demanded an answer to her question: “Did you have any communication with any Russian businessmen or any Russian nationals?” Her mental clarity was terrifying.

Sessions broke down after three and a half minutes. “I’m not able to be rushed this fast!,” he said. “It makes me nervous.”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, in September 2018, cemented many Americans’ belief that Harris was the woman to go after Trump. “Have you discussed [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller or his investigation with anyone at Kasowitz Benson Torres, the law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal lawyer?”

Harris—who, like any good prosecutor, knows not to pose a question to which she doesn’t already have the answer—asked this nearly verbatim six times, shining a hot and unflattering spotlight on Kavanaugh, who responded, in order, as capillaries appeared to burst all over his face:

1. “Ah …”

2. “I’m not remembering, but if you have something …”

3. “Kasowitz? Benson? …”

4. “Is there a person you’re talking about?”

5. “I’m not remembering, but I’m happy to be refreshed or if you want to tell me who you’re thinking of …”

6. “Do I know anyone who works at that firm? I might know … I would like to know the person you’re thinking of.”

Harris then said, “I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.” Finally Senator Mike Lee of Utah raised an objection and stalled her line of questioning.

Historically, the prosecutor’s office has been a hard place to run from on the left. You will never really be the progressive. By definition, you are defending the state. On the stump, Harris reframes her prosecutorial role: “My whole life, I’ve only had one client: the people,” which sounds nice coming from the mouth of a public servant. What voter is not for that? Yet when Harris entered a courtroom stating that she was there to argue “for the people,” she was not the voice of the underdog. She was the voice of enforcement, the voice of the law.

As California attorney general, Harris referred to herself as the state’s “top cop.” (Sasha Arutyunova)

Jeff Adachi, the city’s longtime elected public defender (who died of an apparent heart attack at age 59 not long after I interviewed him for this article), met Harris when she was a first-year law student at Hastings. “Did she always have the charm and ambition she’s known for today? Yeah,” he told me. Adachi was “a little surprised,” he said, when Harris aligned herself “with law enforcement and wanting to put people behind bars,” because “we had probably talked about politics before and she was always seen as more of a liberal progressive.” But there were very few prosecutors of color at the time, and very few women, and, Adachi said, the prosecutor path was “seen as a stepping stone to do something bigger or greater.”

When Harris ran for district attorney, in 2003, she challenged Terence Hallinan, her former boss, from the right. He was entangled in Fajitagate, a preposterous scandal that involved three off-duty police officers beating up two residents and then demanding their takeout fajitas. The public saw the department as an unprofessional and incompetent bunch of good ol’ boys. (Hallinan had a low conviction rate, and he did not help his reputation when he handed members of the Fajitagate grand jury a blank indictment form and asked them to fill in the names of the officers they thought should be charged.) Harris enlisted her mother to stuff envelopes and brought an ironing board to neighborhood campaign stops, to use as a portable table. She wasn’t a natural. She felt awkward talking about herself with strangers.

She’d had a much-discussed relationship with future San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who was 31 years older and estranged from his wife. Brown was a local kingmaker. Still, Harris did not assume that he would anoint her. During the campaign, her longtime mentee Lateefah Simon took a BART train into the Mission early one weekday. “It’s, like, 7:30 in the morning—legit,” she told me. “I’m coming up the escalator and I see Kamala Harris, by herself, in a suit at 16th and Mission.” The intersection then smelled like feces and was filled with drug dealers. Simon looked at Harris like, Are you stupid? What are you doing here, dressed like that, when people are still high from the night before?

“I’m trying to win this race!” Harris told her.

“She had on pearls!,” Simon said.

Once in office, Harris got straight to work cleaning up Hallinan’s mess. She painted the office walls, which no one had done in years. She replaced the jam-prone copy machine. If staffers tried to leave for the evening before Harris thought they should, she shouted, “Well, I guess justice has been done! Everybody’s going home.”

She endured one major scandal, over a rogue tech in her crime lab. The tech stole cocaine and mishandled evidence, which was bad enough. But then Harris, likely thinking she could address the issue quietly, failed to follow procedure and inform the defense lawyers in the cases involved. One thousand cases had to be thrown out.

Nevertheless, in her first three years as DA, San Francisco’s conviction rate rose from 52 to 67 percent. She even created a new category of crime—truancy—and punished parents who failed to send their children to school. Then, as now, no one contested the link between high-school graduation and a person’s future in a well-paying job as opposed to jail. Harris still talks about this. She stirs outrage at America’s collective failure to invest in the education of other people’s children, often citing the statistic that nearly 80 percent of all prisoners are high-school dropouts or GED recipients. But is arresting a mother whose life is so frayed that she can’t get her child to school the best way to set that child on the path to success? Many, particularly in the black community, answered no. They still do. “Identity politics is stupid,” says Phoenix Calida, a co-host of The Black Podcast, “if you’re not going to enact identity policy.”

Harris ran against the death penalty, and, in what was arguably the first and last truly controversial decision she’s made in her political career, she stuck to her position and did not seek capital punishment when a San Francisco cop was killed in the line of duty several months into her tenure. The pressure to reverse her campaign promise was intense. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who’d served as San Francisco’s mayor from 1978 to 1988, chastised Harris for not doing so at the slain officer’s funeral.

Still, Harris kept her promise—and paid for it. No police union endorsed her for 10 years. One plausible read of her political history suggests that this experience, less than a year into elected office, taught her to fear and avoid taking a stand.

Harris calls herself a progressive prosecutor, which she’s not, though she did lift up individual lives. She started one of the first prisoner reentry programs in the country, Back on Track. It helped young, first-time drug offenders find jobs and services and earn high-school degrees. But Back on Track served only 300 people; Harris never took the program to scale. She also mentored young women, among them Lateefah Simon, who went from being a high-school dropout to becoming a MacArthur genius-grant winner in 10 years, which has got to be a record.

Simon now runs the Akonadi Foundation, in Oakland, dedicated to eliminating structural racism. The two met when Simon was 22 years old, with a 4-year-old daughter. At the time, Harris was running a child-exploitation task force; Simon showed up at a meeting to advocate for young women who’d been trafficked by pimps and then charged with prostitution instead of being treated as victims of rape. Harris listened to Simon, recognized her intelligence, and took her potential seriously. “I was like, Who is this woman? No one listens to us,” Simon told me. “People hate us. We’re garbage, in policy and in public.”

Harris helped Simon raise money and throw events for her organization. She insisted that Simon enroll in college, and when Simon said that was impossible—she was already working and raising a daughter alone—Harris talked about Maya, who’d had a daughter herself at age 17 and then graduated from UC Berkeley and Stanford Law School. The powerful, polished black woman who believed that Simon could be a powerful, polished black woman too blew Simon’s mind: “This was before Olivia Pope!” But Harris’s role as DA took some getting used to. “Why would you want to do that?” Simon asked. “I so deeply knew what was happening with girls in the system, and the DA was our nemesis. The DA and the pimp, right? The DA and the pimp.”

Harris’s race for California attorney general was extremely tight—so tight that her opponent, Steve Cooley, gave a victory speech on Election Night, which he had to retract the next day. She campaigned as a progressive, figuring, perhaps, that many people think they support criminal-justice reform more than they actually do. “They like these talking points and these platitudes,” Phoenix Calida says. Let’s be smart on crime. “But her tough-on-crime policies—nobody’s really gonna complain, because they feel safe.”

Harris’s record in that office is marked more by what she didn’t do than what she did. She did not support a ballot initiative reforming California’s three-strikes law, which incarcerated people for life for petty crimes (an interesting family moment, because Maya, while working at the ACLU of Northern California, had championed a proposition to take three strikes down). She did not join the fight against solitary confinement. She did not support two state ballot propositions to end the death penalty (and when a federal court in California struck down the death penalty as unconstitutional, she appealed the decision). She did not support legalizing pot. She did not advocate for reopening several high-profile cases, including a capital one widely suspected to have resulted in a wrongful conviction. She did not prosecute Steven Mnuchin, the CEO of OneWest Bank and Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary, for more than 1,000 foreclosure violations. She did not take an aggressive stance on officer-involved shootings—most notably, she did not endorse a bill requiring independent investigations of them and declined to use the power of the office to investigate the killing of Mario Woods, who was shot 26 times by five police officers in 2015.

Harris has since taken strong progressive positions. But some of her constituents still feel burned. “California has had the most police killings, and we haven’t had any officers ever charged,” Tanya Faison, the lead organizer for Sacramento’s Black Lives Matter chapter, told me. “That was on her watch.” Sure, “it would be beautiful to have a black woman as the president,” Faison continued. But “it doesn’t matter if you’re black or not if your policies are not for black people. And her policies are not supportive of black families.”

To be fair, while in office, Harris did institute implicit-bias training for police officers. She did test a large backlog of rape kits. And she did negotiate well with the nation’s five largest mortgage firms in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. She walked away from an offer of $4 billion of debt relief for California homeowners and called Jamie Dimon, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase. She told him his side needed to come up with more money, much more. She ended up with $20 billion.

She won her Senate seat on the night Trump was elected. By then Harris was walking the line she’s on now: using “fearless” as a campaign slogan despite letting fear stop her from taking positions. Trump has been a productive foil for her, highlighting the value of her legal training, casting her discipline as flattering and calm rather than pinched and nervous.

In Washington, she hasn’t done much—let’s be honest, who in the Senate has in recent years? She introduced a few bills: one, with Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, to study reforming the cash-bail system; another, with 13 Democratic colleagues, to begin addressing the high mortality rates black women face in childbirth. She also introduced, with fellow Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker and Republican Tim Scott, a bill to make lynching a hate crime. This last one was classic Harris: tough on crime, seemingly progressive, entirely risk-free. It passed the Senate unanimously.

By 4:30 p.m., 1,000 people had packed into the gym of Charleston’s Royal Missionary Baptist Church, where the scoreboard read 2020 and AKA sorority sisters rolled in wearing full pink-and-green dress uniform. They are not even a little ambivalent about their candidate. She’s theirs; they love her. Who among us hasn’t been scarred by an early humiliation and retreated from hard decisions? They asked where the reserved AKA section was.

Backstage, Harris chatted her way through the photo line, a mainstay of the contemporary American political campaign: local officials and other VIPs get what is basically a school photo with the candidate—in this case, next to a state flag, backed by a royal-blue drape. She has an amazing ability to focus on the person right in front of her, even as a large and impatient crowd claps and shouts “KA-MA-LA” for her to come onstage.

“I ate with Rodney Scott today, so I’m happy,” Harris announced to cheers when she finally appeared. Microphone in hand, she slipped into a subtle southern accent. “We have to restore in our country truth and justice, truth and justice,” she said. The crowd, right there with her, called out: “Amen!” “That’s right!”

This Charleston event was a 1/20th-scale model of Harris’s campaign-kickoff rally in Oakland. There, Harris had clapped along with her 20,000 supporters as she made her way to the podium. Just the sight of a strong female candidate who was not Clinton came as a relief. Many Democrats remain traumatized by 2016, the matchup of a deliberate and dutiful woman, straining to mop up all messes, against an impetuous, state-trashing bully. But in dropping her guard a little, Harris has been trending away from Clinton and toward Michelle Obama—adopting a persona that’s less programmed, hipper, and more relaxed, all of which is more likable. Of course, we care intensely about likability, especially in our female candidates, so perhaps shucking the appearance of restraint is a prudent A-student decision as well.

Harris’s campaign is shorter on specifics than Clinton’s was (perhaps, again, in reaction to Clinton). It’s shorter on specifics than some of her fellow 2020 candidates’ campaigns, though she did lay out, in her Oakland speech, a basic platform, designed to appeal to a liberal base, not attract independents: Medicare for all; universal pre-K and debt-free college; a $500-a-month tax cut for low-income families; women’s reproductive rights; a path to citizenship for immigrants.

Then, at minute 32 of the speech, in a moment that managed to be both subtle and shocking, Harris addressed the thing almost nobody wants to say but everybody who is close to Harris thinks about: her personal risk. “As Robert Kennedy many years ago said, ‘Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.’ He also said, ‘I do not lightly dismiss the dangers and the difficulties of challenging an incumbent president, but these are not ordinary times, and this is not an ordinary election.’ ”

That line passed, and Harris moved on to pablum like “Let’s remember: In this fight we have the power of the people.” But Harris is a target. She knows it. Reports of hate crimes increased 17 percent during Trump’s first year in office. In late February, a Coast Guard officer was accused of plotting to kill Harris, along with 19 others, including journalists, activists, and Democratic politicians. The very fact of her campaign, Harris standing out there every day before crowds of thousands, presenting herself to the American people—some of whom will merely dissect her record; others of whom will see her female body and her brown skin, and want her dead—is bold and brave. “Through her career it’s been a very serious thing,” Harris’s close friend and adviser Debbie Mesloh told me. “She and I talked about it [regarding] Obama … The first day he had Secret Service. The first time I saw him in a bulletproof vest.” Even at the relatively small book talk Harris gave at the cozy Wilshire Ebell Theatre, in Los Angeles, a security guard stood behind her, not even off in the wings, visible to the audience the whole time.

After Harris finished speaking in Oakland, her family joined her onstage: her husband, Doug, who is white; her sister, Maya; Maya’s husband, Tony West, who is black (and currently the chief legal officer at Uber, formerly the third lawyer from the top in Obama’s Justice Department); Maya’s daughter, Meena; Meena’s partner and children. The family is beautiful and the family looks like the future—and not the future in which white nationalists win.

Alumnae of the AKA sorority, which Harris pledged at Howard University, turn out to her campaign events in pink-and-green dress uniform. (Phyllis B. Dooney)

It’s hard not to be ambivalent about a cautious person, particularly a person who has been working for you but holding back, saving for the future. In truth, it’s hard not to feel ambivalent about all the candidates. There are so many contenders, more of them popping up like white-haired crocuses every day. One is too old. (Well, two are too old.) One’s too mean to her staff. One said she was Native American and she’s not. One Instagrammed his trip to the dentist. So many Americans have conflicting desires for this election. They want a transformative leader who will push this country forward. They want a rescue, a captain to steady our faltering ship of state and restore the rule of law. Most of all, they want a winner—whoever that is, just tell them, they’ll vote that way. They want a sure thing. They need a sure thing. And then they feel scared and frustrated by all the options, because that’s not how the system works.

Among the many lines Harris offers on the stump is: I intend to win this. You don’t quite expect to hear a woman say that. But Harris has become very good at tapping into the emotions of a crowd of Democrats and delivering what they want to hear. The 2020 Democratic National Convention is 15 months off, though. Over the next year, the campaign is sure to get ugly—Trump hasn’t even given Harris a nickname yet. I asked her whether she thought that, as a black woman, she had an extra-narrow lane of acceptable behavior to maneuver in. “I don’t think so,” she said. Then she downgraded that sentiment. “I hope not.”

Has the United States dealt with its own racism and misogyny enough to elect a black woman president? There’s little rational basis for saying yes. But there was little rational basis for believing that a man named Barack Hussein Obama could win the White House either, let alone a huckster named Donald Trump.

That Friday night, on the 110-mile ride from Charleston to Columbia, South Carolina, Harris read recipes online. She flagged one for salted-caramel cookies and emailed it to Lily Adams, her communications director, who happens to be former Texas Governor Ann Richards’s granddaughter. (Adams later laughed and said, with genuine affection, “When do you think I’m going to bake these? I’m going to New Hampshire with you on Monday.”)

In the morning Harris, Maya, and Adams, and the whole rugby team of journalists, met up on Columbia’s Lady Street—yes, Lady Street—for some retail politics. First stop was Styled by Naida, a vintage-clothing store run by Naida Rutherford, who grew up in the foster-care system and was homeless before she steadied herself economically by hosting stylish garage sales. It was another ideal campaign stop: Rutherford, the success story, helped Harris pick out a hat and a black belt. Then, as Maya paid for the items, Harris noticed a brightly colored sequined coat, a chessboard of turquoise, purple, yellow, green, and sky blue. The jacket was just about the furthest fashion choice imaginable from Harris’s standard dark blazer. Still, Rutherford, a good saleswoman, encouraged Harris, a good candidate, to try it on, and Harris did. She looked in the mirror, the hoard of journalists to her back. “This really would be perfect for the Pride parade,” she said.

A nice, unguarded human moment. The jacket was way too big, and she’ll almost certainly never wear it anywhere but the parade. But you’d have to be a monster—and a tone-deaf politician—not to want to support Rutherford. Harris bought the coat.

That afternoon, Harris held another town hall, this time at Columbia’s Brookland Baptist Church, and sitting in her car in the church parking lot, waiting for the doors to open, was 77-year-old Gladys Carter. Carter had fought in the civil-rights movement. She was heartbroken and horrified by the turn her country had taken with Trump’s election, and she admired how Harris had handled Kavanaugh. But she had questions about criminal justice. “Some African Americans in my circle of friends have expressed concern about her actually imprisoning a lot of our people, more so than she did the others,” Carter said. “They say they have to really think hard before they’re able to trust her. She’s got to prove that she’s willing to come out and do some things differently.” At the same time, Carter felt that Americans have deeper, even more pressing problems—namely, our dangerous, lying president. Maybe a tough female prosecutor is our best hope. “This country has been controlled by white males for how many years? The way things are right now—they screwed it up.”

Harris made it home for dinner with her husband that evening. She slept in her own bed, in her own house, where she likes to relax by curling up on the couch in her sweatpants and reading more recipes. But by that night, social media had pounced on her brief moment of spontaneity, making fun of her sequined jacket, her amazing technicolor coat, harping on how stupid and frivolous it is for a woman to be trying on clothes on the presidential campaign trail.

It’s not easy out there. You can’t expect much forgiveness on Lady Street. Yet Harris, as ever, is playing the long game. She often repeats her most succinct one-line pitch to prospective voters: “We’re going to need somebody who knows how to prosecute the case against this president.”

She packed a bag for New Hampshire: all dark suits.

This article appears in the May 2019 print edition with the headline “Kamala Harris Takes Her Shot.”

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Disasters of the past years.

2016, Berlin.

Back in 2016, my life got a little twisted. I was living in New York City for awhile back then. As we all know, I used to be a heavy drug abuser. My relationship with heroin was stronger than ever. I loved it more than anything else in the world. I got high everyday.  I lived in an apartment for awhile,  wasting the money I got from my mother's inheritance on hard drugs, as well as I paid my monthly rent. I could do whatever I wanted to do. But until 2016, I saw my friends getting on drugs as well, and I strongly felt another psychosis coming through. It wasn't there yet, but I felt it coming. It all became too much. So, I moved to Berlin. Pretty much to die there. Because I was feeling seriously suicidal.  I said goodbye to some of my people here. But they reacted the same exact way as I expected them to say, "no, you won't kill yourself. I will see you around soon". And it made me mad. I wanted to move to Berlin, get high day and night, get my gun and pull the trigger. I wanted to push myself into the abyss. While I was there, I got seriously high, so fucking high, I could almost see heaven. I couldn't move, I was completely out of reality. I only felt the warmth, the rush in my veins. I was completely paralyzed for two weeks at least. I didn't eat, really. I didn't care for anything else but heroin and death.  In the night of May 1st,  I remember feeling really high, I may have put a little too much of the brown in my veins.  I remember thinking, smoking my final cigarette,  had my gun loaded, candles on.  Now is the time.  When I pulled the trigger, I thought I died. But I was still alive. I missed the bullet, although it went very closely along my head. I was too high to keep my focus. For an hour I thought I was dead, because I heard the loud shot,  and I still felt amazing because of the heroin.  That all ended when the police came to my door. The door I couldn't open because I was lying on the bathroom floor, too high to stand up and walk.  The police slammed my apartment door and came through. I didn't know what they were saying, since I was high and don't speak German very well. But they arrested me. Everything went blank for awhile.

I waited in jail that night to sober up. But even then, I couldn't speak. Because I felt so many emotions at once. I felt failure. Sadness. Anger. But failure the most.  I looked like a zombie. It turned out that my neighbours called the polizei that they heard a shot in the room next to them. They told the police the man who lived there never came out his apartment since he lived there. That was true. It was too suspicious, though. I am such a dumbass, was what I was thinking.  I felt really lonely and miserable. I had no idea what the police was about to do with me. I didn't want to end up in jail, because that's what they began to tell me at some point when I started feeling sober again.  But while I was sobering up,  I felt the errors showing up in my head again. I felt the psychosis continuing. I got very paranoid at some point and the situation turned into a disaster. I tried to stay calm with the police, but I couldn't control myself. I got wild. I wanted to run away. I don't remember what I said, but those were really vague sayings of mine. The police realized they were dealing with a psychiatric patient, not just a suicidal junkie. So instead of putting me in jail, they were placing me in a psychiatric hospital. Here we go again.

I went there for three months. It was the first time I've gotten anti-psychotics. My psychiatrist there couldn't believe his ears, when I told them at the age of 30, I had never been on anti-psychotics for schizophrenia. I told him why.  I told him I was not allowed because of my religion. Because I was scared for the Devil. I really was. When I told him that, he thought me believing in the Devil was another nonsense schizophrenia thing,  but I had to explain him clearly that I grew up in a extremist Satanism sect.  That, I had already let go of my religion for most part but still am damaged and afraid of the leftovers of Satanism.  Because I was raised with stories about the Devil since I was a kid.  Anyway,  the anti-psychotics did a good job on me. It didn't numb everything entirely, but I felt more clear in my head and in my actions. 

2016,  New York City.

When I got back in New York,  I had to wait until I could get anti-psychotics there. My girlfriend cared for me, day and night. She had her hands full on me. It made me feel guilty.  Sometimes I got angry and tell her,  "just leave me! I am not good for you. I am ruining your life. You deserve someone so much better",  and she would tell me that she don't care about that. She loves me. Clearly. She can't imagine a life without me. But until today, it's still hard for me to believe that.  But the longer I lived without medication, the harder my life became. During that time I got in a huge fight with my best friend K., he meant the world for me pretty much. But he emberrassed me. And he told shit about me. And I turned beastly furious. I remember being outside in the cold, as he yelled at me and hit me,  but I punched him even harder,  got in my car and hit him very hard. I laughed hysterically when I did it. He didn't die, unfortunately for me. But I really wanted to kill him. That happened in Toronto. While I was back in New York, the whole situation with K., clearly got my head twisted. I got really aggressive out of nowhere. I had dreams of killing him, and when I woke up I just wanted to take the next flight to come to Toronto and smash him with a hammer. My girlfriend had to stop me many times. My aggression comes in a very heavy rush, together with adrenaline, and it can be very dangerous. Because my girlfriend can try talking to me and stop me, but I couldn't listen to her,  I lived too much by my plan.   

At some point,  during the night, I woke up, still a little drunk from the evening before, and I had a very aggressive dream about murdering K.,  that I snuck out of the apartment so my girlfriend wouldn't realize it, to go to the airport.  But apparently, she heard. She came after me while I was walking to the car, in her PJ's. Screaming after me, "Come back here! Aleksander!",  people were on the streets looking at the scene. I started running to my car. But she was fast, and pulled me back before I got in the car. She was furious. She started shaking me, and soon her anger turned into sadness. She started crying. "Why do you do this? Why can't you listen to me?". But I didn't feel anything for her.  I got mad because I wanted to go to Toronto. I didn't listen to her. I started yelling that she needs to shut the fuck up and let me go. People on the street started to interfere. My girlfriend wouldn't stop crying, she didn't let go of me, she wanted to stop me. I yelled her to stop crying because people are calling the police. And she got mad because she was kinda sick of my stubborness and paranoia. Then I hit her. Very hard. Some big Mexican guy started to fight me because I hit her. People were calling the police. That's when I got arrested again. In jail, I felt so much regret. So much guilt. I still felt numb but I couldn't show off any emotion. The police asked me so many questions but my speech was kinda disorganized. I didn't even know why it happened, why I did it. Why the fuck did I hit her.  I stayed in jail for 2 days. My girlfriend left a note saying she went to her family in Italy for a few months to think about what happened.

I felt devastated. I started shooting up again in my apartment.  People were knocking on my door but I wouldn't open it for them.  After a month of isolating myself,  I made the decision to get myself completely boozed up.  It was about 3AM.  I took the car. I drove to the river to crash myself. I was too fed up.  I drove 50 mph on a straight lane, drunk. Crashed into the river. I was sinking. I was almost there, I thought to myself. The windows closed. I only saw darkness. I don't know exactly what happened anymore, because it was a very heavy moment and I was way too drunk. But eventually,  I got 'saved'. By a fisherman. It took him some time to get me out of the car, as he smashed my window, but it was too dark, and my body was too heavy in the water. I didn't want to go with him but he pulled me out.  I remember how cold it was when I sat with him on the jetty. And my mind went numb.  He told me all kind of things, since he was traumatized but I wasn't.  I just remember thinking by myself, "why do I keep getting saved? Why can't I just kill myself?".  I remember standing up and wanting to push him in the water to drown him,  but he was a very heavy man and I was this skinny guy. He pulled me back and yelled at me "What is wrong with you!?". I somehow, got in charge and started smashing him with a iron plate I found next to the jetty under a container. I wanted to kill him.  I punched him really hard with my fists. There was a lot of blood.  I remember. But everything ended as soon the police arrived. I got arrested, again. The fisherman, he wasn't dead, but heavily abused and hospitalized.  Me,  I was sentenced in jail for a year, for domestic violence. 

2017,  New York City.

Damn well, I deserved it. I deserved it so bad. I realized that. I remember thinking all the time, "what in the Hell am I doing?".  I hit my friend with my car, I abused my girlfriend, just like the fisherman who saved my life. I realized that I crossed the line, big time. The time I was in jail, I still had a lot of anger issues because all the men were assholes just like me. I am brutally honest with  everybody. I got punched a lot. There was a lot of drama. I was sober at the same time, so I was withdrawing as well. And that period of time was a living Hell. But I did get my anti-psychotics there, so things could be even worse. Jail was a difficult time for me. But I fucking deserved it. And it made me think about lots of things.  How can I win my girlfriends heart over again? What can I do to make it up to people?  I wasn't only a prick to my girlfriend and strangers in the streets, as well as very devoted friends of mine. Close friends. Very close friends. I realized that all of that is my own frustration, and I had to work on that to get my life  back. 

Once I was fired from jail,  I refused to get back on drugs. I wanted to look good, by eating well, and excercise. I started looking for jobs. I still have a degree on mechanical engineering and innovation sciences. It's just that drugs were more important to me than getting a serious job for a greater part in my life. After 33 rejections, I was finally approved by a company.  I work as a full stack/ Engineer in a company specialized for employees who have a similar background like me. So, I do a great job, I get to hear often. But they do know where I come from and give me all the support I need to accomplish my tasks there. It's a part time job, but I am very happy with it.  I had the job, I started to look better and healthier,  ready to visit my girlfriend again.

She went back to Italy once again, so I went to Italy to surprise her. Hoping she would give me another chance.  If she would turn me down, I would  be very disappointed, even though I understand.  I had the address of her grandma's home. She was the woman who opened the door, and I never even met her.  She looked at me, grumpy and all, and yelled at my girlfriend in Italian. She looked at me as if she knew what I did to her granddaughter.  Tara came down. And damn, she looked like a queen. I had to get her back. We went outside and started walking. She didn't say much, she couldn't even look me in the eyes. She looked at the ground. I couldn't find the right words but I tried my hardest.  I told her a hundred times I felt sorry. But there were no right words. I remember how we sat down underneath some kind of lemon tree or something.  I ran my fingers through her red hair, but she pushed my arm away. She told me that loving me is the hardest and most beautiful thing she has ever felt. I let her talk, and say whatever she wanted to get off her chest. She told me that for awhile she was very afraid of me, especially after hearing I almost beat the fisherman to death. She wouldn't let me touch her either. She said her love for me is so strong, it scares her.  When she finally looked me in the eyes,  I felt happy she did. I wouldn't touch her anymore.  I told her that things are going to change from now on.  She told me that she still needs the time to think things through, that she will be back in NYC in 2 weeks,  but can't promise me anything. I could feel from our conversation, her soft voice, and the entire energy around it that everything she told me is the truth. And I have to live with that from now on. It was okay.  It was worth the ticket to Italy, definitely.

While I was back in New York, I wanted to wake up the good inside of me. I know that I am a very polite, gentle person, naturally.  I am just really damaged by a lot of things in life. But I am really trying my best. I didn't have a warm, happy home. I have never had the family feeling, that everybody's talking about. I never gotten love from my family, except from my mother but that scared me and quickly was 'too much' for me. I was too young to understand love anyway. So when I hurt somebody I really love, I do ANYTHING to take them back. Except for my girl. She's the only one I have.  I am just very bitter and pessimistic. The drug habit didn't help me to become a better, more positive person, either. I know what it's like to have a good laugh with friends, to get tears from laughing, to goof around, I do all of that. But sometimes I go through phases when I just forget about what 'fun' is. And I need to get myself back on track before I lose everything.  I was already sober for more than a year,  I looked good and have a job now. I only need my girlfriend to trust me again and come back to me.  I still had a hard time to stay off drugs, and I really needed my girlfriend to support me and help me get through this awful, long phase. When I go out in the streets of New York, and I accidently end up in the wrong neighbourhood, I smell the scent of brown sugar everywhere,  I see the homeless getting high and wanna join them. But don't want to end up like them. It's very hard. I still think of it everyday. And I just want that everytime things get hard for me, to give my girl a long, big hug. And talk about it with her.  We always had so many good conversations, and I'm gonna miss that if she decides to break up with me.  

In the evening, still living and feeling alone in my city apartment everyday, I would spend the late hours watching some television and texting with friends. Maybe reading a book, now and then. I had to drink three glasses of vodka and 3 pills of anti-psychotics to get a bit of sleep. This was an everynight thing for me.  Everynight I hoped for Tara to come back, because I missed her next to me. I just knew everything is going to be so much better with her back in my life again.  During one night,  I heard something in the other room, thought it was our cat, so I went back to sleep.  I heard the sirens of an ambulance outside in the streets passing by. Some people yelling outside.  Later, I woke up and surprisingly saw my beautiful girl sitting next to me. We didn't say anything to each other, I just woke up and we held each other. She started crying. It was kinda beautiful. I felt a lot of emotions.  And I couldn't let her go from now on. I think we held eachother for an hour. I was so happy she came back. And we fell asleep together. And damn, I couldn't be happier.  Life has gotten so much better with her back in my life. I am so lucky to have her.

8 Fictions (and 4 Non)

12 more of my favourite reads in no particular order.

1. Steppenwolf - by Hermann Hesse

Harry Haller is Der Steppenwolf, a depressed and suicidal outsider in his own bourgeois society, until a beautiful dancer and her handsome friend “re-introduces” Harry to himself and teaches him a thing or two about how to embrace life, warts and all. Hesse is known for his writings on spirituality (Siddharta, Glass Bead Game) and this meta-physical work is essentially about self-realisation, and suggests the need to fully inhabit yourself as a prerequisite of contentment and peace.

2. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

“Here I am, Here I am, Here I am!

So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are!”

In this sprawling intergalactic caper involving a Saturnian moon, space (and time) travel, and a Martian invasion, Vonnegut casts his satirical eye over organised religion, free will, and the illusion of choice; concluding that man’s only logical response to the insanity of existence is, of course, love.

3.   Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

I was so smitten by 1984 that I was hungry for more George, and having already read Animal Farm this one seemed the next best choice. I was not to be disappointed. A story about a young man racked by feelings of failure and inadequacy is also, as is the norm for George, an astute observation about politics and society, in this case capitalism and middle-class anxiety. Despite the slight odiousness of main character Gordon Comstock, Orwell treats his characters with sympathy and humour, inviting empathy over criticism, in the process nudging readers towards recognizing, and accepting, their own flaws and insecurities.

4.  Women by Charles Bukowski

A visceral read, as I found myself gasping at the bawdy descriptions of Henry Chinaski’s sexual escapades, who at the age of 50 suddenly finds himself a famous poet and a lothario whose goal is to “fuck a 18 year old when I’m 80″. It sounds paradoxical to say, but despite the misogyny, abuse, and violence, I did get an inkling of real vulnerability and feeling in Chinaski for his women (and his women for him), absent in say, Celeste Price (of Tampa by Alissa Nutting) or even Humbert Humbert of Lolita.

5.  This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

A collection of short stories about love, lust, and sacrifice is also about immigration, displacement, and being Dominican in America, a running theme in Diaz’s work. Like Oscar Wao the Spanish/English prose is taut, realistic, and brutally effective, an absolutely essential read for anyone who has yet to discover the delights of Diaz. Or just anyone, really.

6. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Solaris is a planet. Or is it? This cult 1961 sci-fi classic has since been adapted into a film twice, first by Andrei Tarkovsky in the 70′s and then in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh. The setting is dark and claustrophobic, main protagonist Kris Kelvin paranoid and sinking into delusion just like Snow and Sartorius (the only other occupants of the space station orbiting Solaris), as he deals with ultra-realistic, persistent apparitions of his dead ex-wife Rheya. More Kubrick-esque psychological festering than white-knuckle Ridley Scott thrill, Solaris may not be your typical sci-fi adventure, but it was hugely visionary for its’ time and no small influence on the space sci-fi genre in general [see also Arrival (film)]. 

7. The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

A writer whose sardonic, side-splitting prose reminds me of Junot Diaz, not just because their work is mostly grounded in humanist issues of race, identity, and culture, but also because they are such astute chroniclers of contemporary America. An especially crucial read in the political and cultural landscape of today, The White Boy Shuffle is a satirical reminder, often LOL funny, of what we already knew: that regardless of what we look like, where we come from, or what we identify as, we all just want the same things. Namely to be a genius poet, basketball superstar, and to enjoy mail-order marital bliss. Well, that and not getting shot, basically.

8.   Love In The Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Some say it is the greatest love story ever told, because it is a tale of true unconditional love. As a young man, Florentino Ariza falls madly in love with Fermina Daza, but is thwarted as Fermina instead marries the affable and well-respected Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Even after having a lifetime of obstacles thrown in his way, Ariza’s love for Fermina not only persists, but becomes his defining life purpose. Pure fantasy of course, but so endearing, believable, and quintessentially Marquez.

9.   Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

My first Sagan book but most certainly not my last. Like most people I am fascinated by humanity’s second oldest question: Are we alone? Carl certainly doesn’t think so and I agree with him. What’s most important about Carl’s work however, isn’t his postulations on space-faring civilizations, the viability of space travel, or a colonization of Mars; rather it is his lamentations on the state of humanity in the wider context of our place in the Universe, our “mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam”, and how we treat it and each other, that is the real lesson.

10.  The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

Loneliness. The bane of human existence. A modern malaise. In this semi-diaristic book Laing seeks to address the universal and persistent problem of loneliness and isolation through the lives and work of some of contemporary art’s most enigmatic names such as Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, and David Wojnarowicz, and how they sought to exorcise the debilitation through their art. A most enlightening and comforting read, whether or not you think of yourself as a lonely person.

11.  The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton

A book I didn’t know I needed, as a fun holiday purchase turns out to be my veritable bible. Alain is the founder of The School of Life, an online “school” of philosophy, and this book is a neat introduction to the work of some of Western civilization’s most eminent philosophers such as Socrates, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. De Botton cuts through their often inscrutable writing and proposes a simpler way of looking at their philosophies, that is, by first identifying what kinds of problems they were trying to address, whether it be not having enough money, feeling hopelessly inadequate, or being heart-broken in love. The result is a lucid, concise, and often funny book that is infinitely re-readable, and makes an excellent gift.

12. The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

Trekking through the Himalayas in the 70′s with his biologist friend George Schaller and a ragtag band of sherpas, Matthiessen’s search is as much for blue sheep and snow leopards as it is for personal redemption, as he experiences epiphany upon epiphany in this brutal yet wondrous landscape. So beautifully written is this book that many times I only had to close my eyes to “feel” the icy cold on my face; or to “see” the wisps of wind blowing crystal snows off the peaks of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, and it became easy to imagine the deep spirituality and transcendence that Matthiessen so vividly describes. I will leave you with three of my favourite passages from the book, which given the context, is quite possibly the most memorable collection of words I have ever read:

“The wind blows snow from pristine points that glisten in the light, and there are magic colours in the clouds that sail across the peaks on high blue journeys”

“The sun is roaring. It fills to bursting each crystal of snow. I flush with feeling, moved beyond comprehension, and once again the warm tears freeze upon my face. These rocks and mountains, all this matter, the snow itself, the air - the Earth is ringing. All is moving, full of power, full of light.”

“I long to let go, to drift free of things, to accumulate less, depend on less, to move more simply.”

.

Until next time, happy reading!

May-Today at 7:55 AM

NeatGoals

1Starting point

May-Today at 8:08 AM

@Brandynette

Brandynette-Today at 8:09 AM

OHHHThe nuke, just dropping it like that!

May-Today at 8:11 AM

Huh?

Brandynette-Today at 8:11 AM

Nothing let me see how i do this!

[Human you have been selected!](Prepare to be taken an prosseded) #You will be made into a Cute Full of Milk Cow and then milked! *They take you onto a truck to drive you there*

May-Today at 8:19 AM

@Brandynette sounds nice

1

Brandynette-Today at 8:20 AM

and your reaction? how do you feel, give me some info i get fun out of the answeres

May-Today at 8:25 AM

I made me feel excited and happy, that i was finally going to live my dream and hopefully get bred by some big well endowed bulls

1

Brandynette-Today at 8:29 AM

<Live stock secured="Starting analizis...3...2...1") #DONE /* BREEDING COW IDENTIFIED */ <Asingn Nr="6245">

i hope you like slow ima a little disctracted im fighting the machienes here* (im installing the nadeko bot to test)

May-Today at 8:42 AM

(its fine, this has been fun)

Brandynette-Today at 8:42 AM

**The truck takes you to a Big Bull Breeding facilityyeah surehahaha. its really hard without anything prepared tbh

May-Today at 8:44 AM

Still wonder how they were going to turn me into a cow. But I'm exicited due to being chosen as a breeder

Brandynette-Today at 9:04 AM

#Arrived at breeding grounds <Scanned nr="6245"> **taken to Proccessig** [Medical Check](Specimen in good health health, ITS A MALE!) /* EXTENCIVE BODY MODIFICATIONS SELECTED */ <Injecting BIOMOD="G751">

(edited)TAKING TO NEXT STATION

May-Today at 9:20 AM

ouch its slightly painful but i look forward to my changes

Brandynette-Today at 9:30 AM

#X steps for full body modification! [Non invasive procedures](Hairgrowth factor aplied) <Injecting_secondary BIOMOD="MAMGLA 32"> [Cow Breasts Growth](+15%) [Male Reproductive system](-27%) [Cow Digestive Tract Expancion](+56%)

~Voices in the background~...and these TV guyse think we are brutal, why would we harm our livestock. Non invasive Genetical Modification...

May-Today at 9:36 AM

Moo~ i cover my mouth as I moo for the first time and moan as i feel my cock shrinking down

1

Brandynette-Today at 9:41 AM

<MOO DETECTED> **Picture flashes** <Caretaker comes in and says="Welcome my little girl,

from now on im going to be responsable for you.

We want this girl to be productive and happy!

Lets see how should i call you?">

/* Introduccion complete, Body Modification procces 50% complete */ <Initiating Domestication Brainwashing>

May-Today at 9:44 AM

Moo~ May Please i say nicely and smile

Brandynette-Today at 9:56 AM

<Caretaker says="HelloMay! You seem to be a happy girl, not scared at all,

was this your fantasy?

This is not new but really rare. I am happy, i will take good care of you!

I have contacts in the breeding department, i can arrange to get the right bull for you!

I suspect you will take advantage of this situation!"

May-Today at 9:57 AM

Moo~ Yes this is my fantasy... so are you going to finish my body modifications? Moo~

Brandynette-Today at 10:04 AM

Sorry i got carried away

/* Body modification Complete */ /* Taking to breeding ground */ /* Selcting Biggest Baddest Badass Bull */

May-Today at 10:11 AM

Moo~ i squeeze my new m cup breasts as my large ass attached to my breeding hips jiggles So I'm going to get any outfits moo~? i had full cow ears, horns, and a tail

Brandynette-Today at 10:21 AM

<Caretaker takes you to a dressingroom and says="Since you are such a well

behaved cow girl itll let you choose wich outfit">

<Caretaker says="I think this cute shot skirt, high white heels

a whit a long slewved jacked dress with black dots, just like a real cow"

May-Today at 10:25 AM

Moo~ i  pick out an outift similar to this one

Brandynette-Today at 10:27 AM

i was focusing on the pic from the girl with red hair

May-Today at 10:29 AM

Brandynette-Today at 10:29 AM

/* CLOTHING_SELECTED */ <dressing cow up and imediatly sending to the selected bull!>

who is your bull may?

May-Today at 10:30 AM

Moo~ i don't know yet, but hopefully he is nice an has a big cock

Brandynette-Today at 10:30 AM

could have been you had someone in mind

<Caretaker open the door and tells you="Time for your big debute! I will tie you to the pole,

expose you completly and make sure you get breed how you deserve it!

Make me proud you girl"> #takes you to the next room ties you up and conforts you while the big metal door opens! #you can smell it, 1000% Breeder bull he can take 5 to 10 little cows like you a day!

May-Today at 10:38 AM

Moo~ he looks scarymy ass was completely exposed due to my  outfit missing panties

Brandynette-Today at 10:46 AM

<Caretaker says="Well to be honest may i was afraid your first time was with that bull!

He wont go easy on you and hes is know to knok out the cows when mounting him.

But you where a male you have strong bones and a big hip you can take him!" <GET READY MAY! HERE HE COMES!>

May-Today at 10:47 AM

Moo~ i breath in and out and calm myself Ok.... but a kinder bull later

Brandynette-Today at 10:48 AM

why didnt you say anything

/* As the gigantic bull aproaches may, he starts to breath heavily from the exitement of a virgin breeder */ <he gets close and closer, the moment he wants to mount you...> /* A SCREEAM OF PAIN FROM THE BULL! HE FALLS OVER AND IS DEAD! */ <Caretaker wondering WTH="Well that happens cos he could never get enough.

May this is your lucky day!"> /* Robot comes in removed the dead monster */ <The next one is just how May imagined her first breeding would be> <She all set, he wanting her so the kind bull liks Mays face,

its like he knows she wants to but was scared of the big one>

(edited)

<Both now with lust and carnal desire start to breath with lust!> [He mounts May and lets her feel his big piece of meat, slowly hardening it and softening it, May was never so wet in her life. Her breats are starting to lactate from exitement!](He penetrates her and start to move with a nice firm rith. This is what May was hopping and now she is getting it. Her dream came true, She was transformed from a male, to a cute readheaded breeding cow. All dressed up and getting fucked by her strong but kind bull!)

new arrivals 3-30-17

in TODAY!! (thursday) NARDINI, NINOMusique Pour Le Futur LP  $29.99We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records present a reissue of Nino Nardini's e Musique Pour Le Futur, originally released in 1970. An experimental, musique concrete, sci-fi masterpiece, available for the first time since 1970. Originally recorded for Crea Sound Ltd., a sub-label of Louis Delacour's Neuilly imprint, Musique Pour Le Futur finds the French composer, arranger, producer, possible time-traveler, and all around music library legend Nino Nardini experimenting with synthesizers, percussions, prepared piano, echo, and special effects. Fans of electronic oddities, eerie cinematic audio-landscapes, Piero Umiliani, or Bernard Parmegiani, will rejoice at this full-length musical adventure that could very well be the soundtrack for a film in which characters from a '70s Italian horror movie visit a distant (forbidden) planet from a '50s sci-movie. It's bizarre, hypnotizing, slightly spooky, always out-of-this-world, and goddamn brilliant. Nino Nardini, also known as Georges Teperino, had a very fruitful career in library music, much like longtime collaborator Roger Roger. He composed a very large amount of works for French and British libraries which continues to be featured in numerous programs (radio, TV, films) all around the world. His passion for electronic music experimentations began in the late '60s and kept going until the '80s. Housed in a phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark, heavy cardboard sleeve. ALBERICH/LUSSURIABorgia LP   $19.99Following on from that hugely sought-after Green Graves issue by Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement (2016), Hospital Productions re-examine a longstanding tradition of industrial ambient music on this exceptional collaboration between two of the label's most consistently innovative, highly absorbing producers. Originally released in a private press run of handmade tapes in 2016, the collaboration was made in person with both Alberich and Lussuria making use of digital synths in homage to that distinctly European scene of the mid '90s that combined hardcore industrial textures with ambient pulses. It's a sound you'll be familiar with if you've immersed yourself in the most unnervingly quiet sections of the last few Prurient albums, building a kind of futuristic soundscape situated somewhere between David Lynch, Kevin Drumm, and a more dystopian variant of Brad Fiedel's distinctive soundtrack to The Terminator (1984). Alberich's instinct for harsh propulsive rhythms is tempered here by Lussuria's weird topography, the digital rendering adding a kind of artificial foundation quite removed from the throbbing earthiness you'd find on a hardware session. Instead, the more linear trajectory of so many dark ambient excursions is replaced with a constantly shifting landscape, veering from an oddly displaced vocal narrative into pounded, crumbling rhythms at some points, while those sinking sub bass sands keep things resolutely atmospheric for the duration. There are no concessions to that blackened aesthetic here, if you were into Green Graves or want to immerse yourself in one of the most brutally atmospheric albums you'll hear this year, check this out. Edition of 500. AFRO SUPER-FEELINGS LED BY SEGUN OKEJII Like Woman LP  $25.99Soul Patrol Records present a reissue of I Like Woman. This is an album comprised of two super-rare Afro-beat disco/funk tracks from Lagos by the band Afro Super-Feelings, led the by artist/musician Segun Okeji. Segun Okeji was the tenor sax player in Fela Kuti's Koola Lobitos band in Nigeria in the late 1960s before changing their name to Africa 70, and this record, originally released in the late 1970s, uses that first-hand experience and influence to maximum effect with a pair of devastating sidelong saxophone-led jams. Up-tempo, chugging drums and a crack horn section, bass, guitar, organ, and backing vocals coordinate to achieve the hypnotic call/refrain/chant crescendo that was Fela's hallmark in his peak years. Players include Tunde Daudu on drums (The Benders), E. Ngomalloh on organ (Fela Kuti), Tutu Shoronmu on guitar (Fela Kuti), and others that played on releases by the C.S. Crew, Sonny Okosun, Orlando Julius, and Tony Allen. Edition of 500. ORPHXArchive 93-94 2LP  $25.99Mannequin Records present an archival collection from the genesis of Orphx's sound. Inspired by early industrial music and new waves of noise from Japan and Europe, the compilation is gathering together some of the best material from their first two cassette releases, released in 1993 and 1994, along with previously unreleased tracks recovered from the original four-track tapes. Mastered by Rude 66; Graphic design by Alessandro Adriani. Edition of 500. DIAFRAMMASiberia LP  $23.99Mannequin Records celebrate their nine year anniversary with a reissue of Diaframma's Siberia, originally released in 1984. A masterpiece of '80s Italian new wave, and a cornerstone of Italian rock. At the end of the '70s Federico Fiumani, together with two classmates, gave life to CFS. The acronym is formed by the initials of the members: Gianni Cicchi (drummer), Fiumani (guitar and voice), and Salvatore Susini (bass). Later, Susini was replaced by Cicchi's brother, Leandro. The new incarnation of Diaframma was born, with the singer now replaced with Nicola Vannini. From their earliest moments, they shared the same stages as Neon, Pankow, and Litfiba, who all contributed transforming the Tuscan capital into the epicenter of post-punk in Italy. After their first single Pioggia / Illusione Ottica (1982), a split with Pankow (1982), and the mini-album Altrove (1983), the beautiful lyrics of the guitar player and leader Federico Fiumani exposed the band as one of the most popular in the Italian scene. In 1984, Diaframma signed onto IRA Records and Nicola Vannini was replaced by the painter and sculpturist Miro Sassolini. With Miro on board, Diaframma recorded Siberia, 3 Volte Lacrime (1986), and Boxe (1988), unwittingly laying the blueprint for the future generation of Italian alternative music scene. Siberia is one of the most successful attempts to combine derivative Anglo-Saxon musical styles and songs written in Italian. Siberia's title track is a masterpiece that highlights Fiumani's skills, drawing trajectories with his guitar in line with the metaphorical descriptions of a "big chill", reflecting the mood and social climate of Italy in the early '80s. Epoch-making is actually an adjective suitable for the album, filtered through the sensibility of memorable songs like "Neongrigio", "Amsterdam", "De Lorenzo", and "Specchi D'Acqua". An Italian breath, where the lyrics of Fiumani are totally lost in the symbolist poetry, represents a perfect model of harmony between the Italian metrics and the sound and rhythm of English post-punk. Siberia pictures Italy's first attempt to emerge from the exciting comfort zone of the "underground" to deal finally with the real market (IRA sold approximately 50,000 copies at the time), where the tradition of the Italian song-writing was merging with the musical forefather, such as Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen, and Television. In February 2012, Rolling Stone placed Siberia as #7 on their poll of the 100 most beautiful Italian records of all time. Edition of 600. BYRON & GERALDUnity LP  $34.99Eremite present Byron And Gerald's Unity, a private press free jazz album recorded in 1969 at Howard University and the first release on Byron Morris's EPI label. It is the only hardcore free jazz record out of 1960s DC, and a viscerally powerful cultural dispatch on the sociopolitical upheavals of its time. From Byron's 2017 liner notes: "In the early spring of 1969, several months before moving to Poughkeepsie, NY, Gerald Wise and I, along with the recording engineer Len Jones, conceived of the idea to gather a group of musicians who were like-minded concerning 'The New Thing' (Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Booker Little). Most of the musicians we asked to be part of this experiment we knew from jam sessions or were already part of Unit Five. Eric Gravatt suggested we invite two of his musician friends from Philadelphia, Byard Lancaster and Keno Speller. I wrote a musical composition for the date dedicated to my father, 'JWM+53.' My friend Earl Snead wrote the other composition, 'Black Awareness.' Earl passed shortly after the session. The recording session took place at the studio of an experimental TV channel that leased space on the campus of Howard University. Gerry and I welcomed all the musicians and thanked them for being part of the session. The scene immediately took on a magical atmosphere, with everyone going about their tasks as if they had cue sheets. In the center of the room we laid out our instruments on two 4x8 tables. That way we could just pick up any instrument and play when the spirit hit us. I had two altos (one plastic) and a curved soprano. Jerry Wise had his trumpet and some hand rhythm instruments. Byard Lancaster had an alto sax, flute, trumpet, and some hand rhythm instruments. Vins Johnson had a tenor and a baritone sax. Keno Speller had a bell tree, tambourines, claves, drum sticks, felt-headed mallets, and a set of amplified conga drums. Inside the tables our two drummers, Eric Gravatt and Abu Sharrieff, sat face to face with two full drum kits and microphones all around them. Next to them were our two bassists, Fred Williams and a young man named Chris (whose last name, sadly, I cannot remember). To this day, I wish the proceedings had been filmed. The energy level was so high that Byard Lancaster did push-ups when not playing (I believe I remember Vins Johnson and Keno Speller also doing some). In spite of all of the excitement, everyone wanted to make a serious musical statement and cooperated in taking directions from Len Jones, Gerry, and me. It was orderly excitement, the collective 'We' caught-up in the moment. Ornette's Free Jazz (1961) and Trane's Ascension (1965) address much of what we were attempting in the studio that day in 1969. . . . In point of fact, most if not all of us had witnessed firsthand the physical excitement and, in some moments, pure terror of the urban riots set off in the spring of 1968 by the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Washington, DC, exploded with anger and the looting and burning of businesses throughout the city. U.S. Army troops, along with Air Force and Navy/Marine elements, were sent in to quell these massive urban disturbances. During the recording of Unity our collective emotions were still raw, to say the least. Here and now, nearly a half of a century later, I can still smell the tear gas and the burning tires. I get chills just thinking about it. But the music got us through that time... and the music gets us through now!" NACE/CHRIS CORSANO/PAUL FLAHERTY, BILLThese LP  $25.99" 'Wherein we come upon three visceralists who have been collaborating for years - innumerable instances in a roulette wheel of settings -- finally shacking up in a studio and fashioning a proper trio record. Glory be. Let's listen in-- 'These.' It's a phrase that never gets started, and an apt title for this record, which right off bolts from the barn and burns so brightly it nearly gets away from you by the time you're done twisting your head around looking for whoever it was that left the door open. 'He asked me when I planned to come back. Always, I said.' Nace's guitar mines savage depths, egging on the propulsive swing of Flaherty and Corsano. The results are as beastly as the heart itself. Swing. Bounce. Joust. Jab. Uppercut. Flutter. Wink. Sneer. They all play with anguish and ecstatic rupture -- the frustrating joy of pushing an instrument to its limits, fashioning a necessary and brutal needlepoint. They move with all the otherworldly elegance and mania of moths at a lamp show. The music asks no specific questions, but wrenches open a space for all manner of questions -- this is one of art's most vital functions! It deals in shades, no matter how sharp the apparent angle. Check out the second track on the first side: the solemn bells of Bill's guitar signal not so much a funeral, but a new dawn after a tragedy. Flaherty's saxophone sounds innocent, almost tentative at first, but as Chris' drums chime in, Paul starts to wrench the fabric loose. The track builds into a fierce and alien vista, charting a territory all its own -- a simmering judgement. It becomes hard to talk about. Didn't you ever try to eat your own tail in the midday sun? No? These three, whose veins are coursing straight through with a nuanced emotional lexicon and the smarts to harness it, have given us a record that expands potential with each listen." --Matt Krefting, Holyoke, MA 2017 WEISS, KLAUSTime Signals LP  $29.99Trunk Records present a reissue of Klaus Weiss's Time Signals, originally released on Selected Sound in 1978. This hectic mix of dark drums with plugged-in, way-out, funked-up studio gear has been high on library geeks' want-lists for years. Made by Niagara drummer/library overlord Klaus Weiss, and including the monster that is "Survivor", originals are super rare, going for up to $300 if you can ever get near one. Standard black vinyl comes in a varnished bronze sleeve - a replica of the original LP. Jonny Trunk on Time Signals: "It was way back in the mid-1990s when fellow record collector and library music head Gareth Godard (AKA Cherrystones) first played me Selected Sound library LP 67, Time Signals. At the time -- and I think it's still the case -- Gareth was into Klaus Weiss. Weiss was the drummer for Munich supergroup Niagara, he could be found on library LPs we were digging up on the Conroy and Golden Ring labels, and his name would appear across early 1960s jazz LPs from Germany. His drumming sound was mechanical, peculiar, unpredictable and distinctive. But nothing he'd done that I'd heard sounded quite like Time Signals. It was more manic and experimental, and the sounds and slightly offensive rhythms burrowed into my brain almost instantly. It probably took about another three years to recover and find myself a copy, and even then I'd found the sounds completely at odds to anything else I knew about. A few years later Gareth also pointed out to me that this LP was all over Rockin' With Seka, a jet set hardcore movie from 1980 starring Swedish sensation Seka and Big John Holmes. Obviously the sound department on the film got busy with Selected Sound as another cue from the LP Nymphe (1979) is also on the soundtrack. But that is exactly what library music is for; Selected Sound produced these amazing library LPs, all beautifully recorded, sent them out in their shiny bronze sleeves around the world with rough guides to what they might be good for and waited for the royalties to roll in. Time Signals is probably the most desirable LP in the 9000 series catalogue. It sounds like nothing else and there are many high points, certainly something for everyone. And as musical tastes change and develop, Time Signals just seems to move along and fit. What seemed like otherworldly music to me two decades ago now seems like the norm. So here is Time Signals in all its odd glory, offering you a futuristic musical trip like no other." BROTHER AH Divine Music 3 cd set   $34.99"Following the reissues of Brother Ah's three studio albums in 2016, Manufactured Recordings is proud to present Divine Music, a collection of three unreleased albums from this jazz visionary: The Sea (1978), Mediation (1981), and Searching (1985). Moving from rich spiritual jazz to more meditative ambience, Divine Music further explores Brother Ah's unique sound and musical vision. Released a 3xCD package, Divine Music includes an extensive interview with Brother Ah by Pitchfork and Resident Advisor contributor Andy Beta. Recommended for fans of Laraaji, Alice Coltrane, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Popul Vuh, and the recent new age renaissance. The renowned French horn player known as Brother Ah (aka Robert Northern) is one of the most prolific and respected musicians in the history of jazz music, with a recorded output spanning more than 40 years. Born in 1934 and raised in the south Bronx, Brother Ah was playing jazz trumpet as early as fifteen years of age. Following a classical French horn education at Austria's Vienna State Academy, he emerged in the late '50s and established himself as a skilled and consistent session musician, playing with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra, and numerous Broadway theater orchestras. Brother Ah recorded well into the '60s with some of the most illustrious names in the genre, including Donald Byrd, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Gil Evans and, perhaps most influentially, Sun Ra. In 1969, Ah formed his own group, The Musical Sound Awareness Ensemble, and released several works under his own name from 1974 onward. In the late '60s, his interest in non-western music developed, and his '70s and '80s recordings, incorporated elements of Eastern and 'Third World' music, fusing them with jazz structures." HOSONO, SHIGERU SUZUKI & TATSURO YAMASHITA, HARUOMIPacific  LP  $25.99Victory present a reissue of Pacific, originally released in 1978. Reuniting the best session musicians Japan had to offer to make an album that would evoke the atmospheres of the South Pacific islands, the kind of places Japanese people spend their vacations. Pacific is a treat to the ears; its theme of the southern Pacific ocean and its warm cerulean waters relax its listeners with a fusion of city pop, soft jazz, and that good old 1970s funk while remaining surprisingly fully instrumental throughout all contributions from artists Haruomi Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki, and Tatsuro Yamashita. A true cult LP and an inspiration for a lot of so called "vaporware" music. LP includes insert. GREENBERGER/GLENN JONES/CHRIS CORSANO, DAVIDAn Idea In Everything  $15.99CDWhen David Greenberger first embarked on what has become a life-long journey, drummer Chris Corsano was not yet five years old! In 1979, after graduating from art school in Boston, Greenberger took the job of activities director at the Duplex Nursing Home, an all-male elder care facility in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and began collecting the stories, poems and music reviews of its aged patients for what became his Duplex Planet project, an undertaking that would eventually encompass nearly 200 issues of a digest-sized magazine, a series of CDs, books, comics, and performance art. Eventually the nursing home closed, but David has remained engaged in what has become the central art form of his life: the "art of conversation." Three decades later, Chris Corsano set in motion the project present here. With guitarist and banjo player Glenn Jones, a longtime friend of both Greenberger and Corsano, the three began recording in Greenberger's living room in upstate New York. In just three days, with no advance preparation, they recorded the 28 tracks that make up An Idea In Everything. Corsano improvised, Jones invented new tunings for his banjo and guitar on the fly, and Greenberger selected and read stories in direct response to the music. Everything was spontaneous and live. Despite the dark and sad feeling of some of the texts (dealing with aging, memory loss, etc.), there is also humor, joy and grit. The resulting is a rollercoaster of emotions, a glittering patchwork of sonic atmospheres and an oral encyclopedia on dozens of subjects. David Greenberger on the release: "When newcomers hear that I have regular conversations and interviews with elderly people, they assume I collect oral history. What that assumption implies is that when one grows old we become solely a repository of our past. From the start, my mission has been to offer a range of characters who are already old, so that we can get to know them as they are in the present, without celebrating or mourning the loss of who they were before." Recorded by Chris Corsano in Greenwich, NY, February 2013; Mixed by Matthew Azevedo and Glenn Jones in Jamaica Plain, MA; Mastered by Matthew Azevedo at Endless Audio, Providence, RI. Illustration by Gwénola Carrère. Co-released with David Greenberger's Pel Pel label. PARRISH, THEOParallel Dimensions2LP on SOUND SIGNATURE   $29.992017 reissue with new artwork. Originally released in 2000. "If you're keen to track down some truly creative house music that sounds like it indeed could be the soundtrack for a parallel dimension, look no further. This is it. That said, Parrish's style of house isn't just abstract for the sake of being abstract. It's actually quite musical and brilliantly crafted." --Jason Birchmeier, AllMusic