#women love my geometry skills
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i think it’d be pretty easy for the captain to accidentally cut their own tentacle off during that cutscene
#splatoon#agent 3#captain 3#it grows out again eventually#tempest is the kind of splattershot pro player that spams markers and gets cool ass kills with it#women love my geometry skills
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Madonna - Like A Prayer
After establishing a persona of material excess and precision vapidity Madonna just went ahead and released an emotionally honest personal album. The fact that it not only works but ranks as one of her best albums is a testament to her skills as a performer and songwriter. Funky danceable tracks and slower tender ones mingle side by side without ever resulting in mood whiplash. I think that all of Madonna's 80s output has significant merit, but Like A Prayer is my favorite.
The Rolling Stones - Aftermath
Rolling Stone wants me to listen to the US version of this album. The US version replaces Mother's Little Helper with Paint It Black and cuts several tracks to bring the album's length down. I will not play along. I'm gonna review the UK edition. So anyway this album really hates women. It starts Mother's Little Helper, which berates housewives for having pill addictions and then goes into Stupid Girl, a song that just hates women for existing. Under My Thumb is about dominating a woman until she lacks any autonomy. Just wretched stuff I really love it. Why'd they write these? They're so unnecessarily mean. The Stones were experimenting with some psychedelic sounds in the first half but from Goin' Home onward they really just default back to being a wannabe American blues rock band. Btw I'm being harsh because you probably already know if you really love or really hate this kind of music, but for the record I love it. The mysogyny is so comically extreme that it genuinely makes me laugh. Stupid Girl could be an incel anthem. It should be.
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing.....
This album transcends everything. It exists out of time out of genre. Endtroducing..... stands alone as a human achievement that is only paralleled by the sublime geometry of Islamic art, the elaborate architecture of gothic cathedrals, the surreal beauty of German expressionist film. In case you can't tell already, I'm not gonna be normal about this one. The album comes from the hip hop and turntablist scene of the 90s with the ethos of plunderphonics and an atmosphere that draws equally from funk, soul, and R&B as it does from ambient, tape music and drum & bass. It doesn't sound like anything else I've ever heard. Hypnotic bass grooves will transition into frenetic drum loops and back before picking up a melodic element from three tracks ago and turning it into a new drum solo or bass groove. It moves so smoothly and with such deliberation. Every sound is irreplaceable. I don't have a singular favorite record, but this one has a particular Enigma Of Amigara Fault effect on me. Like this is my album, it was made for me.
Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City
I don't mind Vampire Weekend, but they are little more than a generic indie rock band with futile aspirations towards art rock and baroque pop. Many of the songs keep up enough energy to not leave me totally bored, but they never really capture my interest. I'd be much happier if Ezra Koenig focused his efforts where they belong, convincing Netflix to give him another season of Neo Yokio.
The Who - Live At Leeds
There are at least four versions of this album out there. The original only contained six songs out of the 30ish played during the concert and the version I have is the 95 cd release that contains 14 tracks. The expanded version has some tracks from Tommy and a real nice version of B-side Heaven And Hell, but I will focus on the six original tracks, Young Man Blues, Substitute, Summertime Blues, Shakin' All Over, My Generation, and Magic Bus. I love the choice of tracks. Three covers and three older singles. Nothing from their recent album Tommy. And all the songs are performed so much rougher and heavier than their album counterparts. My Generation goes on for 15 minutes and includes interpolations of songs from Tommy and extended guitar solos. It ends on a seven minute version of the objectively lame Magic Bus and they make it kick ass. The who gives a shit energy of this concert is apparent and the fact they released this at all is great, it's one of the best live albums because it actually sounds like a live show.
Prince - Dirty Mind
Prince was so fucking good. This is the horniest album. Every song is about sex, even his breakup songs are really fucking horny. And what the fuck is up with Sister? What maniac would write that? What a legend. This is such a funky danceable album, but it's over so fast. You can basically listen to this and his debut back to back and that would equal a full length album. Unfortunately we don't get to see much of guitar god Prince on this one, but every prince album from the 80s is good so who cares?
Jerry Lee Lewis - All Killer No Filler
Oh fuck off. Jerry Lee Lewis couldn't maintain a rock career after he married his thirteen year old cousin so he became a mediocre country musician because that was the only crowd that would have him. So why the fuck would I want a compilation? He has like three good songs and then most of his career sucks ass. Here's an alternative. An album that definitely isn't on this list but should be. Mustt Mustt by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Ali Khan was an amazing vocalist who sang Qawwali, which is Sufi devotional music, and Mustt Mustt was his first attempt to develop a Qawwali fusion style. This album is an amazing combination of traditional Qawwali and alternative rock styles. Don't listen to Jerry Lee Lewis, listen to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan!
Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Coldplay are not Radiohead. This is so sad because they really want to be Radiohead. If you like this album then I'm sorry. But also you should listen to OK Computer by Radiohead because that is what they were trying to make here.
#madonna#the rolling stones#dj shadow#vampire weekend#the who#prince#jerry lee lewis#coldplay#500 album gauntlet
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MATCHUPS OPEN
Good afternoon,
Submitting my character if this is still open. If not, I hope you at least find the read entertaining. Sorry if this is a bit of a mess, this is my first time putting the character on metaphorical paper, and I overthink about it as much as she does. Feel free to let me know if I messed anything up.
Name: Asel Kha
Age: 28
Gender: Female [She/Her]
Height: 5'2"
Orientation: Disaster Biromantic Asexual, leaning towards women. [open to queerplatonic pairings.]
Personality: Tends to struggle with reading others and the mood of the room, leading to her holding her tongue a lot when in conversations with strangers. She gets better with practice and exposure to different people but will still have moments. Has some temper issues that she's working to keep in check. As well as a small pessimistic streak. Both lead to sarcasm and gentle teasing of others.
Protective, of the twins in particular. This increases after the bloody banquet and the vault. idolizes Y'stola and Cid. Sees the Scions as family. Overthinks and at times overprepare.
Hobbies: Crafting, Alchemy in particular. She likes to make her own weapons. Giving in to her wanderlust and just going for walks. While not the most fun, she spends a lot of spare time working on keeping her arcane geometry knowledge sharp so she doesn't fail her spells. She has a notebook for it and everything.
Likes: Learning new things and seeing new lands; her lackluster navigation skills be damned. She became an adventurer for a reason. Being helpful to those around her. Using acquired knowledge to help others learn. Puns, though she'll never admit it. She finds the sounds of the ocean to be calming. Spoiling those close to her with small presents she finds on her travels. She does get some small enjoyment from sparring but this is another detail she tries to hide.
Dislikes: Being the center of attention, crowds, and being the center of attention of a large crowd. Bullies [I.E. Blanstyr pre-character development] Praise flusters and embarrasses her. Excessive self-deprecation. Willful ignorance. Allagan architecture and its tendency to throw her like a ragdoll. Letting people down, whether she truly has or perceives herself to have. Random head pats from strangers. Being called "old girl"
Race in game: Xaela Aura
Class/job in game: Scholar; does have ninja training
Thank you for your time,
Alyssa
~~~~~~~~
This is a one time answer, they were really respectful about asking so here we are. I won't have match-ups open for a long long while. They take too much time, and overrun the inbox.
I see Yugiri as a match.
Both of you are quiet and reserved types. With massive obligations that you carry out gracefully. She can teach you ways of shinobi and ways to try and master stealth while also making it fun between you both. You would spend time looking around Azys Lla together, to study different allagan technology, while also adventuring around Azim Steppes for the same and looking at the different ways of the nomad traditions. Alot to uncover still out there and it provides a lovely place next to Yanxia's moon gate where you can spend time in talking away from the trials presenting itself as wol and advisor to Hien.
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12. The Mom Interlude
a/n: this is a different pace, a different sort of fic. But I think it’s important, y’know? The action will pick up next fic.
Read the others!: Masterlist
Sally was baking.
Again.
She had given all the cookies from before to Leo and Luke. Not that she minded. Paul was off at a teachers convention this weekend, which left her alone in the apartment.
The apartment itself was not very big. It had limited square footage, and had to be kept in a particular order. It didn’t take very long for the place to seem cluttered and messy. The couch made it a little difficult to navigate through the living room with the new coffee table, and she had to be careful when she was taking the laundry to the rooms because the hallway was narrow, and if she moved the wrong way with the basket in her arms, the pictures could be knocked off the wall. In the kitchen, she had mastered the art of cleaning as she went when she cooked or baked anything, as well as the skill of stacking dishes. The table usually doubled as a desk for various degrees of homework, so they had a little shelf area that was always strewn with papers. It had been a stretch when Paul moved in with Sally and Percy, and Sally had to do some real rearranging in order to accommodate Luke. Sometimes, she felt like she was going to go crazy, living with so many people in such close quarters.
With Percy and Luke gone, the apartment felt too big now.
Sally was washing dishes, a little lost in thought while she waited for the timer on the last batch of chocolate chip cookies.
She may have been wary about allowing the young man who spent nearly four years trying to kill her son to move in with them, but when she actually met Luke, she saw what Percy had meant when he had Iris-Messaged to ask her if it would be okay.
Luke just needs someone who cares about him.
Percy had given Sally the basic rundown about Luke, and his behaviour. What happened to Thalia, what happened with his mom, how long he had been at camp, his quest. From what Sally could tell, Luke had just been a kid who was angry and upset and manipulated by someone who had thousands of years to figure out how to get people to do what he wants.
It hadn’t taken very long for Luke to feel like a second son. He was respectful, quiet, and a hard worker. He insisted on paying Sally back for the clothes and monthly transit pass she had purchased for him. Sometimes, she found Percy at the table with Luke, quietly explaining something to the older demigod. On those nights, she would be brutally reminded that Luke had run away at such a young age, he didn’t understand a lot of school concepts. And Percy might not be the most diligent student, but he was patient when he explained them.
She smiled at the memory of Luke and Percy realizing that geometry could be used for swordplay and battle strategies. They must’ve sat there for an hour, a real feat for two demigods with ADHD and Dyslexia, mapping out ten different strategies together.
The timer went and Sally shut off the water, drying her hands and put on her oven mitts, pulling the cookies out of the oven when the buzzer sounded.
She shut the oven door and rushed over, just in case it was Percy, or Luke, or even Annabeth or Rachel, just, anyone with more information. Luke hadn’t given her a time frame, he merely told her soon.
She pressed the speak button. “Hello?” She said quickly, trying not to sound excited.
“Uh, hi, sorry, is this the Jackson residence?” An unfamiliar woman’s voice came through the speaker.
Sally furrowed her eyebrows. “It’s Blofis actually, may I ask who is speaking?” She said slowly, glancing over at the celestial bronze sword Luke and Percy had insisted they leave with her and Paul in case of emergencies.
“Oh, sorry, I must’ve got the wrong address from Chiron, I’m so sorry,” The woman apologized profusely.
“Chiron?” Sally repeated, an image of the kind centaur flashed through her mind. “From Long Island?” She asked, still a little uneasy.
“From Camp, yes,” The woman answered, a little more quiet. “He told me I could find my son here.”
“Son?” Sally was bewildered at the statement.
“Yes, my son, Luke. My name is May Castellan.” The woman told her.
Sally stared at the receiver for a moment. May Castellan? How had she managed to get all the way here? From what Percy had told her, Luke’s mom was nearly incoherent in Connecticut, having been driven out of her mind by the curse on the Oracle of Delphi.
“Hello, are you still there?” The woman claiming to be May Castellan spoke up again.
“Yes, yes, sorry. Let me buzz you in.” Sally was pulled out of her reeling mind and buzzed her in, putting on a pot of coffee.
It was quiet. And awkward. The two women sat at the table, coffees in hand and cookies on the table as the seconds ticked by.
“So… you’re Luke’s mom then,” Sally said, looking down at the picture May had brought as proof of a young Luke and her.
She almost didn’t recognize it as Luke, without the scar, but his eyes were the same, and his blonde hair.
It was enough proof for her.
“Yes, is he here?” She asked curiously.
“I, uh, no, he isn’t.” Sally told her. “He’s off on a quest.”
“A quest?” May repeated, leaning back in her chair.
Sally nodded. “He’s going to save my son, Percy, and bring him home.” She explained.
May was quiet for a moment. “And how long is that going to take?” She asked.
Sally sighed. “I don’t know,” She admitted. “Luke told me they would be back soon. That’s all I know.”
“When were you talking to Luke?” May asked, perking up a little bit.
“Last night,” She told her honestly. “He stopped in with another camper and-”
“He was here?” May demanded, standing up. “Then he shouldn’t be far away, right? Is there a way to contact him? Can you bring him back, just for a minute?” She asked frantically.
“May,” Sally stood up, gently taking her hand and sitting her down again. “Demigods can’t use phones, it attracts monsters. And we can’t Iris-message them, we can only accept.”
“Maybe you can’t, but I-”
“Have the sight?” Sally guessed. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.”
May got quiet and sipped her coffee, eyeing the cookies. “Luke likes chocolate chip cookies.” She mumbled. “I always burnt them.”
Sally watched the woman worriedly. “May, I don’t mean to be rude, but the last I heard, you were under a curse from the Oracle. How did you get here?”
May sighed, like she had been expecting this question. “One day I woke up. There were sandwiches and cookies and juice boxes all over the kitchen. I… it’s murky. Time kind of just, blended together. I have a couple memories, one of Luke coming home, except he was older. He looked like his dad.” She paused. “And then his dad did show up, and he caught me up on a lot of it. He said Luke was safe. And put me in contact with Chiron.” She sighed, swirling the coffee in her mug. “Luke hates me, doesn’t he?”
“We’ll be safe, don’t worry mom.”
It echoed in Sally’s mind. She sighed and took one of the cookies off the plate. “I don’t think he does,” She told her softly. “I don’t mean to sound harsh, but if you were under the curse, I’m not sure Luke knows the real you enough to hate you.”
May took a shaky breath and looked back down at her coffee. “I thought if I took on the Oracle, it would be easier on him. I could be in his world more.”
Sally’s heart ached for the woman in front of her. “I know.” She whispered. “Why don’t you leave your number with me? When Luke comes home, I’ll have him give you a call. Or maybe we could drive out to Connecticut?” Sally offered. “He was studying for his learners permit before all of this, it might be good practice for him.”
May nodded slowly and stood, collecting her jacket. “Thank you Sally, for… everything. For this. For looking after my boy. For accepting him into your home. For giving him a chance.” She said as she wrote her number on the paper Sally had placed in front of her. “If you talk to him… can you tell him I’m sorry. And I miss him. And I love him.” She begged.
Sally nodded with a kind smile, walking May to the door. “Have a safe drive home May,” Sally told her.
May nodded and shook her hand before heading out of the apartment and down the hall.
Sally closed the door and took a seat in the chair Percy had occupied when he and Luke were reviewing the battle plans and sipped her coffee, staring at the chair across from her, eating another cookie thoughtlessly before her shoulders slumped forward.
And Sally cried for the boys whom she missed very much, and wished she could hug them one more time.
#Luke Castellan's Second Chance#luke castellan#percy jackson#Percy Jackson and the Olympians#pjo#hoo#Heroes of Olympus#May Castellan#Sally Jackson
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1166
survey by ecpjll
What year were you born?
1998.
Are you female or male or don't classify yourself as either?
Appreciate this question. Am female.
Do you have a pet? If so, what is it?
Yes, I have two dogs.
Are you closer to your mom or dad?
I would say I am closer to my dad, but our relationship is still very casual. Like I’ve said in other surveys, my parents aren’t people I would confide with or even hug. We just weren’t able to build such a relationship.
Do you have any siblings?
Yup, I also have two.
What continent do you live on?
Asia.
What country do you call home?
It is barely a home at this point so to speak, but the Philippines. I rarely say it proudly though lol.
Have you finished your education yet?
Yes.
Have you ever been to a school dance?
I’ve been to my own school prom and have been invited to a dance of another school as well. Not my favorite event, but I did enjoy the food for both hahaha.
Do you have an account on YouTube?
I do have a channel, but I never comment or post videos of my own. I just use it to be able to tailor my homepage to my interests, to like videos, and subscribe.
Do you like to read?
I do, but as I grew older I’ve since gravitated to mostly non-fiction. I like reading essays and memoirs, and will take forever (assuming I do progress) with fictional works.
Are you any good at Math?
To an extent. I’m fairly comfortable with advanced algebra, statistics, and geometry; but I draw the line at trig and calc lol.
Do you enjoy watching cartoon Disney movies?
Some, not all of them.
Do you think Johnny Depp is talented?
I haven’t watched much of his filmography since his reportoire admittedly doesn’t fall under my taste in movies, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think he is talented. If anything, his wide range of roles over the last few decades speaks for itself.
Have you ever tried beer?
Yeah. It’s not my favorite and I am already saying that nicely; but I will still drink it in a social setting. I’ve never gotten over the burps that you can get out of it though. Absolutely nasty.
On a scale of 1-10, how attractive do u think you are?
Like 8 on a good day, 5 if I’m feeling blah.
Have you ever tried a new food, and threw it up right away? What was it?
I have never done that with any dish. The most I would do is wince if I really don’t like it, then work my way through chewing until I can swallow it and just choose not to take a second bite.
Did you ever fall off the top of a slide as a kid?
I don’t think so. I never had any nasty bumps or falls as a kid, and most of my wounds and cuts were gotten from me running and tripping.
How about falling off monkey bars?
No. I was actually scared of monkey bars so I rarely flocked to them.
Fallen off a swing?
Never happened.
Were you ever beaten up when you were younger than 10 years old?
No. My eldest cousin and I liked getting into horseplay as kids, but he always stopped once I asked him to. I was never beaten up in school either but that is also because that’s not the culture here, at least in all-girls schools.
Are your grandparents still alive?
I have three grandparents still alive and fortunately still very much healthy.
Do you know how to skip (jump rope)?
Yes, I jump roped a lot as a kid and the skill didn’t get lost over the years.
Did you play outside A LOT as a kid?
Yes, nearly every afternoon. My neighbors were kids of the same age so we always got together. I wonder where they are now...
Did you like where you grew up?
Yes, I found it to be a quiet and peaceful place for a kid to grow up in. But since I’ve lived in residential villages all my life, it’s also about time I spread my wings a little bit so I can’t wait to be able to move to a big city.
Did you have friends in your neighborhood to play with?
Yes, I just mentioned that.
Did any of your friends have a pool you swam in?
Just one of them, Raegan; but she was also filthy rich, so. Hahahaha. Her house also had a huge garden, a bar, and a theater. I’m also pretty sure we weren’t even shown the entire house.
Is it called "junior high" where you live? (before high school)
Now they do. During my time as a student, Grade 1 to Grade 7 was just called grade school, then it was followed by high school. Now that we’ve adjusted our school curriculum to be more similar to Western standards, we’ve also started to adopt junior high as a term.
Or is called "middle school"?
No one calls it middle school here.
Can you NOT start your day without a cup of coffee?
I would preferably start it with coffee because it helps me feel energized to do my tasks in the morning; but I have days where I go without it. I can go both ways.
You love: men or women? (sexually)
Eh, mostly ace here.
Have you ever read an Archie comic?
A few.
Did you grow up in the 1990s?
I was barely conscious during the 90s, so I really don’t think I get to say yes.
Did you have a cup of tea with breakfast growing up?
No, I had my breakfasts with Milo instead.
Was your family ever on social assistance/welfare?
Nope.
Was anyone in your family ever physically abusive?
I wouldn’t say so, because that implies it’s a habit. I can think of family members who had the occasional tendency to resort to violence when drunk, though.
How about verbally or emotionally abusive?
I can definitely think of one from my immediate family alone.
Can you run as fast as you can for more than 5 minutes at a time?
No.
Do you have a favorite singer or a fave band?
I have one for both.
Was it different when you were a kid? (your taste in music)
I didn’t have much of a taste as a kid, tbh. The ones that have lasted with me to this day are Paramore and Beyoncé, but I was already 10/11 when I got into them.
Your 1st crush was...on who? How old were you?
I would say it was Andi. I was around 12 when I started feeling all fuzzy around her, but not long after she migrated to New Zealand so I was never able to do anything about it.
Are you currently working/have a job?
Yes.
Are you trying to lose weight?
Nope. If anything I’m trying to gain some; I’m too light.
Whose side of the family you prefer? Mom's or dad's?
Mom’s. I don’t know most of my dad’s side outside of his immediate family, and I remember our family reunion three years ago barely feeling like one because I couldn’t recognize a lot of the people there.
Do you consider yourself a good kisser?
Sure.
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Naruto Manga is complex
~ Understanding Naruto Manga ~
🧠🏯📖🔦🕯️💡✏️✒️🖊️
[Phylisophy and interpretation🕯️ >>>>> than punches🥊]
... Such an infinitesimal and superficial leafing through the Manga infuriates me🤬
Naruto Manga broaches so many interesting and unique topics and far TOO MANY people still waste time into arguing whose character is stronger than the other and whose punches are stronger *sigh* 😩 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♀️
List of Naruto Manga themes and subjects:
1. Camaraderie - - as per particularly studied on soldiers, the bond of camaraderie between war soldiers is so strong that it stands on par with family bonds and even goes beyond; warriors are ready to die for each other and to save a friend. Same feelings and bond that's used as liaison to concept the dynamics between Ninja 3 man cells (Team 7, Team 10...);
2. Cosmogony - - the origins of the universe as imagined and depicted by the author in Naruto Universe, based on the Yin-yang dichotomy (the skeleton of the manga is constructed on the Yin and Yang parallelism - - Naruto and Sasuke);
3. Feminism and women empowerment - - the pioneers of the feminism in Naruto Manga (who also made an insidious and questionable disappearence in the parenting guide new Boruto Series 🤔 - - Tsunade and Ten Ten are a welcomed addagio in a deeply rooted patriarchal society, which should have been caresses and developed more, in addition to approaching and pulverizing the discrimination of childfreeness (see Kakashi, Gai sensei, Tsunade, Ten Ten...);
4. Politics - - needless to say that Naruto manga offers an ample introspection into politics and studies of security in a complex and intricate manner. The repertoire explores tyranny, communism, totalitarianism, democracy, anarchy, as well as the role of secret services and Intelligence (Itachi, Danzo, Uchiha, The Root), supported by illustrative characters;
5. Phylisophy and classic literature - - these avant-garde elements are a fresh dive first into the inner coordinates of every characters and highlight the author's superb analytical skills coupled wirh vast, deep savviness and knowledge of classic literature and phylisophy. Arthur Schopenhauer's nihilism, negativism and Antinatalism, Nietzche and Machiavelli's "The Prince" are just few notable examples of how the Manga's smart construction intertwines with classic notes, nuanced and valences. The entire construction and phylisophy of the Uchiha Clan is constructed based in phylisophy.
Uchiha Itachi's famous quotes paraphrase excerpts from Machiavelli's "The Prince" : "Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be - and are ruined" (his words to Sasuke prior to their battle finale - - "all men like with false preconceptions that they call reality")
"I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it" (Niccolo Machiavelli) ~~ "The current system created THIS problem... I will execute the Five Kage in the Infinite Tsukuoymi... I want to become Hokage and change the world... What I want is... REVOLUTION!" (Uchiha Sasuke 😎)
"Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are." (Machiavelli) ~ "All of you, without measuring your own capacities... Had no idea of mine" and "How far are you able to see with THAT Sharingan of yours, Sasuke?" (Uchiha Itachi)
And probably the most iconic catchphrase that became the definition of the HOKAGE in the Manga "IT'S NOT TITLES THAT HONOR MEN, BUT MEN THAT HONOR TITLES" (Niccolo Machiavelli) ~~~ "You don't become Hokage to be acknowledge by everyone. The one who is acknowledged by everyone becomes the Hokage" (Uchiha Itachi).
... And examples are teeming.
You can't not love this mange, for it's abounding in brainy elements and phylosophic concepts, about the propose of life.
6. Bildungsroman - - as the German concept refers to a prose that portrays the development of a character form childhood to adulthood. Needles to say that Naruto manga is picture frame perfect definition of this principle of construction for we follow the main characters from childhood to adulthood in all the splendor of their complexity, dynamics and inner emotions.
7. Religion - - I'm always delightfully amazed at the author's genius to perfectly and objectively carry us on a journey through the phylisophy and dogmas of the Main World Religions. The elements of Buddhism and Hinduism perfectly blend with Christian notes (the Biblical reference of Eve and the original Sin are the foundation of Kaguya Otsutsuki the chakra progenitor aka Eve the first woman , Black Zetsu aka the Serpent and the Chakra Fruit aka the Apple of knowledge).
8. Love - - even though the Manga is an action oriented shonen manga, love is the antagonist feeling of pain that preserve and supports the tryumph of goodness, light, democracy and hope, as it produces the effect of catharsis or purification through Art. We have the grandios story of Sasuke and Sakura written in a sumptuous realistic romance and Naruto and Hinata as the complacent, peaceful and comfortable homey cohabitation as illustrative for an idealized family picture.
Love "come in many forms" (thank you, Uzumaki Karin) in Naruto Manga as the ultimate bond between shinobi.
9. Art and the Genius - - Deidra and Sasori are two unique, refresh and polivalent interesting characters, for they explore two themes that are rare in modern literature, namely the condition of the genius and the torment and inner demons of an artist. Their anthitetical plylosophy about the concept and the purpose of art as healing, everlasting and cathartic is brilliant. Sasori suggests that art encaptures the soul and emotions and the very "heart❤️" of the artist into a creation that preserved and defies time - art is supposed to encapute eternal beauty, art never dies, never grows old, art remains forever. While Deidra suggests that wet is a transient moment of shock, of pure visual impact that engages all the senses into a devastating "blast💣💫💥" that's irresistible and no one can escape it's fulminant powers.
The torment of the GENIUS, the hallucinating pain of a brilliant, introspective superior mind that's perceived as encompassing as harrowing and irresistible is perfectly limned through the evolution of the Manga Geniuses; all undergo tremendous physical and psychological torment that rams deep and consummate their very souls to the point where they borderline insanity and madness - Sasuke, Madara, Danzo, Itachi, Orochimaru.
10. Discrimination - - this is one of the Manga's laitmotif; nearly all the Manga conflicts stem from a form of discrimination, from the discrimination and ostracization of the Uchiha Clan and Naruto as the natural fear of the strongest from the weaker average men, to the discrimination of poor. And also we have some nuances of the discrimination of black people but the author does a great job into emphasizing their qualities (The Land of Lighting - - A, Killer B...) (I love the Rap references as the usage of art and music to voice their feelings and pain as a retort to discrimination and long-term oppression and white supremacy).
11. Paleo astronomy and ancient aliens - - that's definitely a bold, brave and new approach from the Master Masashi Kishimoto - sensei, which I can't help but applaud 👏👏👏 paleo-astronomy and ancient aliens link our terrestrial human life to extraterrestrial forms of life which dwleve deep into the origins of our hystory, existence, origins and evolution. Some claim that vestiges of their interference can be found in lost ancient temples, as well as irrefutable evidence of extraterrestrial and UFO contact with our ancestors (the Great Pyramid, the hierogliphs, the Nazca Lines, the Mayans and Inca temples, Stonehange...).
Boruto Manga revolves around the idea that Naruto Manga tossed in its closure; that aliens are in close contact with terrestrial beings. Otsutsuki Clan brought the chakra from the space and offered it to humans / Otsutsuki use the chakra to feed on themselves / Hagoromo's brother eloped to the moon and life evolved since then keeping portals on earth that connect the two planets.
And more recently, Sasuke is tracing Kaguya and the Otsutsuki while searching for ancient temples and hystorical vestiges from the Otsutsuki aliens (Kaguya's castles and ruins), just like a veritable paleo-astronomer.
Hats off for the author's avant-garde approach and vast knowledge 🎩
12. Pitagora's theorem, Euclid, the Tree of Life and Immortality - - Orochimaru in a nutshell. Orochimaru is the genius scientist who craves to defy death, obtain eternal life and endless knowledge. The basis of Pitagora's theorem has deep implications into unlocking the secrets of eternal life, as well as his geometry and Euclid's theorem; it's no coincidence that the theorem fits the construction of the Great Pyramid. And we have the Tree of the Chakra Fruit as the symbol of the Tree of Life that represents immortality and knowledge.
This list is nowhere near exhaustive, for the complexity of Naruto Manga spans further that my modest understanding of its concepts.
#Naruto manga#Naruto Manga interpretation#Naruto symbols#Naruto Manga is complex#Naruto interpretation#Naruto Manga analysis
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Math and Myself
Not to sound like the stereotypical autistic white cis male, but math is my current special interest.
I think the reason as to why the autistic community views this stereotype as harmful (and it is harmful), is because allistics don’t really grasp the idea of what a special interest is? A special interest isn’t something you’re necessarily good at but it gives that delightful burst of joy and happiness in our lives. It is not an obsession but an escape, a things that is ours personally. So at the risk of sounding like a stereotype, I’m going to reflect on my special interest in math and my tumultuous relationship with it.
Like every other “gifted” child, I was put into a special math program from second until fourth grade. I did have the basic skills, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, but due to the special math program, I never developed a good foundation in geometry, fractions, decimals and the like. After a while I got lazier and lazier, I understood nothing and our teachers expected us to know everything, like some omnipotent deity. Fifth grade served me no better when our class was given a particularly moody math teacher who would sometimes mock our efforts and take some (I’m not sure if these things are even offensive to neurotypicals, but I was once taken aside because I had written “my dad helped me” on one of my homeworks).
Come high school, I had grown to hate math with such a passion. Our new teacher was sort of on a weird power trip most of the time, but I have to admit I came to have some of the small rush of happiness with the introduction of algebra. Eighth grade came and I went back to treating math indifferently. It was simply another subject to get over with. In fairness to math, I was focused on another recurring special interest, biology.
9th grade was the worst. Our teacher never made math easy to understand, he was difficult to speak to, and constantly did some pretty horrible stuff like gaslighting and group punishment. He convinced me that I was simply not trying hard enough, or d*mb. If I didn’t hate math in my elementary years, I hated it in 9th grade. I not only hated math but I grew scared of it and would just fail my exams. I will not continue writing about my 9th grade experiences in this post. I still get upset when I think about it.
I regained some of that respect for math back in tenth grade, but I was still deeply scarred emotionally. My teacher, who I am very fond of, cultivated some confidence back in me and I came to enjoy math a bit. However, I still viewed it as merely a tool and something to get over with.
I didn’t really take math in senior high school, but I had one general math class which I actually liked, even though our teacher was often absent. I understood the concepts and I had some of that rush sometimes. After that class though, math was nothing to me. In my entrance exams, I would guess the math portion and not even bother reading the questions.
Now comes college. I originally was in biology for premed, but switched to physics after I suddenly lost almost all interest in biology. I made a logical argument with myself. If I did well in my math and physics classes in my first term, I would shift to an actual physics program, if not, I would go back to biology. If I merely survived, i would remain in premed physics.
I didn’t expect to love math. Our professor was a rumored terror of the math department, so I began studying in advance. I recited in class, did the problem sets, and when the first test came, I got a measly 78%. (78% is quite low by Philippine standards. It is a passing grade, but not that good.) I was really disappointed as I was used to inputting a certain amount of effort and getting the expected results for that amount.
So I studied harder, I tried understanding the logic behind trigonometry, inequalities, and functions, and over time, I did. I really really adore my math professor, she was able to teach this kid (me) with almost 0 foundation in mathematics. I started acing tests and I got a rush anytime I did math, (just realising now I sound like I’m on meth hahahha) and I looked forward to my math classes everyday. Damn, I even started stimming so wildly in math class, jumping and hopping and flapping, because I really felt like a bird! In FIlipino, we have a word that describes the fluttery feeling when you see your crush called “kilig” but I get this feeling when i do math. And I love it.
I’m now on my third term of taking college level math, and although the online classes have dampened my happiness with it, I still love it, and I don’t see myself losing interest in the near future. I escape into math lessons when I feel stressed, and although math is difficult, and I do have difficulty with it sometimes, it rewards my efforts and helps me get back into shape. This is also probably why I dislike people interrupting me in the middle of my math homework/lesson.
Here are some things I learned from my journey with math:
1. Special interests don’t mean someone knows everything about it, but that they are so willing to learn about that certain special interest, simply because it is exciting and brings happiness to their life. It gives them something to be assured of, to process at their own time.
2. I have a braincrush type. Slightly sarcastic but understandable in the context because they express their thoughts quite clearly. Also, very passionate about their field of study and love teaching others about it. Ok I’m going to stop.
3. We should not mistake passion for intelligence. The only reason I came to be “good” in math (in the formal, academic sense) is because I learned to love it and so wanted to understand it, and not because I could understand it.
4. Anyone can do math.
(insert Ratatouille reference here)
I am totally against the stereotype of autists automatically being math geniuses, but I am also an advocate for more women in STEM fields. I understand that allistics still exist and they would not have the same experience of autists with special interests in math, but it is good to share knowledge, passion, and love.
In most classes, math teachers are biased against women, or people presenting as female, so these groups are easily discouraged in math. I think teachers should make math more understandable and intuitive instead of using vague and complicated terms on new lessons. Math is wonderful, and not a burden, but a language to be understood and loved.
I’m going to study sequences and series now, but I feel good after writing that down. i’ll write more on this because one post isn’t enough to explain my complex relationship with math.
Please comment your thoughts on math and how it relates to autism!
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Geometry For Non Breathing
From the series Not Declared Geometrical Reasons
I was walking through the city, smelling those odours coming from the secret below of the streets, dirty gases mixed with shiny dust, while my smile was returning to me so slowly.
I might never deny my loss and the one that could be my unique love. With this I want to say that I never lied to other women when I said “I love you” or certain words full of sentimentalism ; however, there is only one point in time when someone knows for sure who is the person that can let free our intense, irreversible and explosive passion covered by our deepest love.
Who might have said some years before that I would end up loving a blinded woman, lost in fears in some days ; others just not having the certainty of what she can achieve, but with all the variables against her. In some aspects her love for the music and her imagination were the most powerful weapons that she had… or should I say “she still has” ?
I smiled because even though time passed, a fucking inherent skill inside me avoids my intentions to erase her… maybe many might want to have it, the well known named “Long-Term Memory”, but they don’t know what means to be condemned to remember even the most fragile aspect or characteristic of some event.
Memory is like a Merciless Executioner !
It searches for you and puts you on your knees without permission, and while so many could see the ground before receiving the pain from “Memory”, in my case It put me on my knees watching the skies and I just took care to remember the geometrical arrangement of the buildings hoping that my real pain never scapes from those sealed iron structures, the closest friends of lights, with beautiful crystals and creators of sky holograms.
Through those glasses sometimes I still see her reflection…
© Serge Klavier :
#serge klavier#art#composition#mexican photographers#writers on tumblr#mexican writers#perfections#architecture#great talents on tumblr#skies#contemporary art#b and w#artists on tumblr#clouds#photographers on tumblr#original photography#yes we are magazine#visual poetry#literature#gifts#magic#visual art#compo science#submission
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How you fell in love in HanMei? Is there an interesting story behind it? 🙂
Story time!
When I first got into the fandom, McHa///nzo was (and still is) my biggest NOTP in the OW fandom (I simply don’t see the appeal, if you need a reason, but hey, Im just a heterosexual, and apparently people like me have no place in the fandom 🤷♂️) But I suppose I have to thank McHa///nzo for letting me find HanMei honestly…
Because of me being exposed to McHa///nzo, it really drove me into trying to find a Hanzo ship that wasn’t Hanzo with another dude. Then I found out about Hanzo’s ships with the women, with all of them being rarepairs like WidowHanzo, Healing Arrow, and one ship called HanMei.
I like WidowHanzo, but honestly the ship didn’t really “click” with me, I liked them more as a Platonic relationship (I still reblog art of them, and I’m currently writing a fic about them!) and I shipped Healing Arrow out of spite against Gency LOL. (But I now fully ship Gency after I found HanMei, so no discourse here friends)
Speaking of that, when I found HanMei, I was really intrigued. Hanzo and Mei look so cute together was one part, but what made me really start shipping them is the large amount of headcanons and sort of “What If’s?” For these two.
Here you have a smol adorable and optimistic scientist marshmallow and a guilt ridden and cold (personality wise) archer who is very depressed, suicidal, and can’t manage his feelings very well. The thought of Mei meeting Hanzo and literally cheering him up through her optimism and adorableness and Hanzo slowly developing a crush on Mei made me giggle happily honestly.
What made the ship really click into place for me was when Mei’s animated short came out. At first I was only thinking about Hanzo falling in love with Mei, but with Rise and Shine, I began to think about it both ways. Mei has been through a lot of trauma. Just like Hanzo. More importantly, I believe they both harbor almost the same feelings of guilt and depression, that I think they can both help each other out, and it could eventually evolve into romance, both of the two falling in love with each other.
On top of that, Mei and Hanzo actually have a lot in common, they are both really smart because Mei being a scientist and Hanzo being very observant and having a love of math, (rip simple geometry lol) they both love tea, and they are both badasses, on top of that, (this is more of a headcanon with Mei) they both value honor very highly.
Speaking of badass, Mei can really prove herself to Hanzo that she isn’t some victimized woman, she is a fighter and she can bite. I think Hanzo could really respect that and her skills and can even help her train (cause he has a bit more experience than she does.)
All and all, HanMei is more of entirely of 98% headcanons mostly because the two don’t even interact in game and have not met in the canon lore. But I think Blizzard has dropped some very subtle hints (it could be entirely coincidence, but I’m hopeful) and its just the two copying each other’s voice line. Mei says Simple Geometry when scoring an elimination in the Snowball Offensive brawl, and Hanzo says Cold As Ice as one of his Winter Event voice lines, Mei also says Cold As Ice as one of her voice lines when she scores a final blow on an enemy.
There’s so much untapped potential with these two, I’m just hoping Blizzard gives them an interaction at the very least!
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Debra Granik Q&A.
“I’m trying to make small films. I’m not trying to create stars. I’m trying to create roles where women don’t have to take off their clothes to be interesting.”
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (as Tom) with Debra Granik on the set of Leave No Trace.
Following her 2010 sleeper hit Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik’s newest film Leave No Trace follows a father and daughter who have been living undetected on public land until their presence is noticed and the authorities step in.
Based on Peter Rock’s novel My Abandonment (itself inspired by a real-life event), Ben Foster plays Will, a former soldier living off the grid with post-traumatic stress disorder, while Kiwi newcomer Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie is his teenage daughter, Tom, through whose perspective the story unfolds.
Letterboxd sat down with Granik in New York City to talk about filming in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, the challenge of filming an invisible condition (PTSD) and how she weathered the pressure of finding another Jennifer Lawrence. We also asked her to tell us about the films that she returns to again and again because they feed something in her—that list is here.
How are you feeling about the response to Leave No Trace so far? The audience we watched it with at BAM Cinemafest was captivated.
Oh, thank you. The bedrock is relief, because you can’t predict how a film can be received or understood or enjoyed. Nothing can ever predict that. What I really love is that some of the themes are being discussed. I really like that. I love that when it’s engendered by other people’s films, so of course it makes me excited to be part of storytelling tradition that would facilitate that. And I also really like that, because it’s regional, it exposes some of the glory of a particular part of the continent, and that people can appreciate it and look into it.
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Tom) and Ben Foster (Will).
The film is deeply immersive in its nature setting. There are ways of filming that are certainly good-looking, and then there are ways of filming nature where you feel you’re actually in that forest, and that’s what you and your DP Michael McDonough have done. Some of our Letterboxd members (Melissa, MasterLundy) wanted to know why you’re so drawn to filming in a rustic setting, in nature rather than in cities, and how you approach that in terms of your filming.
I think maybe it even surprises me! I think one logistical reason is that it is actually easier to film outside of a city, you know? I mean just in terms of garnering your resources and keeping a small footprint… though I’m excited by the photography of the metropolis and will endeavor at some point to do something like that. In fact, in my first film, it was just interesting seeing them come into the city. It was a big deal, you know, sort of the bridge and tunnel experience was very photogenic in some ways.
I love the idea that when you film outside of a big city you can actually almost take your time more, in some ways. And I think the immersion is very related to some of the comfort that the actors can feel with Michael; that he’s willing to wear knee-pads and crouch down and be part of that inner circle of connection. Near a tent, near the fire-pit, or when they’re ministering to each other. And when that happens you feel a sense that you’ve been allowed to come close and that you’re with them.
And then of course to show the splendour and scope of the forest, stepping back and using the cinema tools that allow that: a wider lens, and the tripod, and stabilizing, and allowing the frame to be as big as possible.
So I think that outdoor spaces allow for that, whereas the indoor space is the box and the confinement and the geometry. It is much more established and familiar.
It’s cool to hear what Michael was doing physically. Quite often a camera is a long way away with a certain lens but in this case it felt, watching, that there were three characters—Will, Tom, and the camera.
At times, for sure, because the scenes were quiet. Coming in close, being very quiet about it. When we do those things we’re not using lights in the forest, we’re using all natural light, so maybe that’s also a really big help. You know, we’re reflecting things gently, we’re shielding certain hot spots but it’s done with flags and silks and bounce cards, not with big lights.
You’re not bringing in huge 6000Ks to the forest?
No, no!
Director of Photography Michael McDonough with Debra Granik.
You filmed the unfilmable in a way, which is PTSD. These types of mental health conditions, which we can’t see, rely so much on character rather than action. Why was the notion of filming this condition so interesting and important to you and what have you learned about it along the way?
I was very influenced by a book called The Evil Hours by David J. Morris, that is a chronicle by a marine—who is also a journalist—who put such specific words to what it was like to try to understand what was happening inside him and inside other men. And he also was informed very much by a woman, because another very significant sector or arena of PTSD is through sexual violence.
So, he looked back in history to how other philosophers and people in the medical and ‘helping’ professions had tried to understand it, and he looked really specifically at WWI and the poets of the UK who were able to put words to it. And then a couple of really humane doctors who were then the receivers of their words and it really opened the doctors’ minds because the poets could put such precision to it.
And so he looks at this almost miraculous time of gentle understanding and almost posits ‘can we have that now? Could we understand these ways? Could we replicate some of the things that were done in the British VA [Veterans’ Affairs] system after WWI?’, you know?
But the only way to get at this—I resonate with your point so much—is to try to extrude what is it that makes this particular person [Will] not want to come back in. What is he trying to stabilize and how is he doing it? He’s trying to find an environment in which there are very few triggers for him, where his hyper-vigilance is maintained at a kind of even keel, and where he’s very selectively choosing the things that he can still have faith in, that he can still admire and love on, which would be the elements of the forest, and his very loyal companion, his daughter. And to strip away that which clogs his system or causes such jitters that he doesn’t feel well.
So the practitioners, of course, that is one of their responsibilities. By administering certain kinds of tests and surveys, the VA tries relentlessly and tirelessly to say ‘hey, these are some things you might be feeling. You’re not alone’. They do a beautiful job in trying to put words to that which becomes one of the greatest mysteries, right? Why do we feel what we feel? How potent the brain is with its neurochemistry, and then what a formidable kind of organ the conscience is! The conscience can’t be quieted easily. It asks for answers. It asks for contemplation, you know?
So then, the story gets really interesting because, intersecting with Will’s PTSD, you have his daughter, a teenage girl, also coming of age, also coming into her consciousness. Can we talk for a while about finding Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie? She lives far away from you, in Wellington, New Zealand, and is mostly unknown outside her home country. You saw her audition tape via casting agents Kelly Barden and Paul Schnee. What was it you saw in that tape that led you down the path of choosing her?
In the tape it was, I think, the fact that she had immersed [herself] in the script and in reading the book. It was palpable in the way that she was choosing to be in the scene, and what she was expressing in the scene. But it’s very hard to tell off of one tape. That’s a very uncomfortable situation, so it required conversations to flush out the rest and the conversations were lyrical. She’s a very open-hearted person who’s generous of spirit in terms of how she wants to conduct a conversation.
So this is going so well and I’m actually really enjoying this conversation so much, her sincerity, and I said ‘wow’, after talking to her, to the people back home here. I said ‘I’d like to talk to her again because this is leaving a big imprint’.
And as I saw some of the auditions locally, I realised that some of the television and theater training had maybe taken away some of the gentle spontaneity that Thom’s been able to retain.
Because of Winter’s Bone and what it did for Jennifer Lawrence (earning her a Best Actress Oscar nomination), did you feel any responsibility along the lines of ‘Debra Granik’s making another film, there’s another role for a young breakout star, who’s it going to be?’. Or did you try to ignore the fact that there might be a lot of attention on it?
Yeah. The attention feels more intimidating than productive. So, you know, I don’t welcome that so much because I think to do things requires a lot of quiet. I think many actors that get blown up really big feel that every move, everything they say, they change their hair, oh my lord, it becomes so relentless and it becomes very hard to function within that, I believe. So I try to put some of that aside really and say ‘that’s not what I’m looking for’.
In terms of responsibility, I don’t wanna take that on. I don’t want to have that foisted on me. I need to just be ornery and say ‘back off!’ you know? ‘No!’ I’m trying to make small films. I’m not trying to create stars. I’m trying to create good roles for young women that go beyond passing The Bechdel Test, you know? I’m trying to create roles where women don’t have to take off their clothes to be interesting.
Thomasin and Ben did a lot of rehearsing together, and they had some intensive skills training with outdoor survival consultant Dr. Nicole Apelian. Without any spoilers, there’s a scene in which the weather turns cold and things become dire. It’s visceral and tense, they have to work fast to build shelter or someone could die. Can you give us a sense of what those filming days were like?
Yeah. Well. Even making that shelter is intense because it’s a very multi-tiered process. The skills trainer was on the set that day, and the trainer she’d also enlisted to help (named Alan). Ben was very committed to it. They’d already constructed one in rehearsal. He wanted it to be—and Nicole did too—a really viable shelter that would be the kind of shelter that could save a life, through just this basic, I wanna say geothermal engineering of heat retention. Trapping heat, that’s the goal. Trap it in the clothing and then the shelter.
It was intense because halfway through the day you know there’s a really big risk of losing time. And then we also had a really bad dilemma where sun came really strongly that day. The morning had been really misty and good for it, and we didn’t have the kind of silks where you can just block it out, and when the sun comes out robustly it just doesn’t matter, there’s not really much [you can do]. So we had to basically take the gamble that it was going to be the day-for-night. For the DP it was less of a gamble because he knows how to do it - it allows the illusion of night-time light.
But the day was hard. It had all of these physical things to navigate and so by the end when the shelter was built and they were finally in it, we had to do it as a rolling series, you know. We didn’t have time to do takes! They had to try a couple of versions.
I felt like a failure. I felt that how was it that I couldn’t figure out how to pace this day so that by the time they actually need to have their exchange we’ve got eleven minutes.
But you got it.
We got fragments of it that then can gel to give the ambience and the circumstances of how that night became dire for them.
Could you share with us any films that showed you a storytelling pathway for Leave No Trace?
I really relied on three documentaries as inspiration for this film and they were all done by British crews. One of them’s available on YouTube and it’s a very beautiful film called Soldiers in Hiding, and it’s about Vietnam-era soldiers who had hidden on Federal parklands not far from where we filmed, on the Olympic Peninsula.
The second documentary is called Hidden Heroes. That one I believe is hard to find.
And then I also really valued so much the work of a filmmaker called Michael Grigsby. He did a beautiful film about the lives of soldiers, We Went to War [a sequel to his 1970 documentary I Was a Soldier]. So those films were very influential.
Finally, tell us about some of the films that you return to again and again because they feed something in you.
Werner Herzog’s Stroszek. Lukas Moodysson’s Fucking Åmål/Show Me Love. I love the way parents are portrayed in that film. I love the depiction of high school, of not knowing who you’re going to love and how that might happen. I love the conflicts in there and the incremental changes. It’s just a very rich kind of social realism for me. Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood. Aki Kaurismäki’s The Other Side of Hope.
For social realism in the US, something that I’ve been looking at a lot were the films that were in the 40s that dealt with realistic looks at financial crisis, the films of William Wellman. And then I would say also Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a British kitchen-sink film. That’s produced by Tony Richardson [director: Karel Reisz]. And one more, in honor of Ermanno Olmi: Il Posto.
Leave No Trace is out in US cinemas 29 June 2018. Our thanks to producer Linda Reisman, Miranda Harcourt, and the team at Falco Ink for interview arrangements.
#Debra Granik#Female directors#directed by women#ben foster#leave no trace#winter's bone#jennifer lawrence#letterboxd
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Courtesy: Mrs. Sumathi Manohara
On 6 October 1536, William Tyndale, fondly called 'Father of the English Bible' was strangled and burned at the stake after being tried and convicted of heresy and for translating the Bible into English.
William Tyndale was born in 1494 at Melksham Court, Stinchcombe, a village near Dursley, Gloucestershire. The Tyndale family also went by the name Hychyns (Hitchins), and it was as William Hychyns that Tyndale was enrolled at Magdalen Hall, Oxford.
Forty years before his birth, two important events occurred in Europe which would have a great impact on Tyndale's life and work. In May, 1453, the Turks had stormed Constantinople, and the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire fell to the Moslem invaders. Greek scholars fled westward and brought with them a scholarship which had been almost forgotten in the West. Greek language studies of the classics increased, and the Scriptures began to be studied in the original Greek, rather than the Latin Vulgate.
The invention of the printing press in 1454 was a second important development. The printing press would eliminate copyist errors and make the Scriptures more easily available in quantity editions.
In an attempt to restrain the influence of Wycliffe's followers, in 1408 Parliament had passed the "Constitutions of Oxford" which forbade anyone translating or reading a part of the Bible in the language of the people without permission of the ecclesiastical authorities. Men and women were even burned for teaching their children the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments in English.
In 1506, William, age twelve, entered Magdalen School, the equivalent of a preparatory grammar school located inside Magdalen College at Oxford. After two years at Magdalen School, Tyndale entered Magdalen College, where he learned grammar, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, rhetoric, logic, and philosophy. He also made rapid progress in languages under the finest classical scholars in England. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1512. He enrolled into M.A. course which allowed him to study theology, but the official course did not include the systematic study of Scripture. As Tyndale later complained: "They have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture, until he be noselled in heathen learning eight or nine years and armed with false principles, with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture".
Tyndale earned his master's degree in 1515. Before leaving Oxford, Tyndale was ordained into the priesthood. He was held to be a man of virtuous disposition, leading an unblemished life. He was a gifted linguist and became fluent over the years in French, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, in addition to English. Between 1517 and 1521, he went to the University of Cambridge. Erasmus had been the leading teacher of Greek there from August 1511 to January 1512, but not during Tyndale's time at the university.
William Tyndale discovered the doctrine of "Justification by Faith" when he read Erasmus's Greek edition of the New Testament. He became a tutor for the children of Sir John Walsh at little Sudbury Manor. Walsh often entertained the local clergy at his table. Sitting with them, the scholarly Tyndale was appalled at the lack of knowledge the clergy had of the Scriptures. In one heated exchange with a clergyman, he exclaimed, “If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.”
The words of Erasmus: "Christ desires his mysteries to be published abroad as widely as possible. I would that [the Gospels and the epistles of Paul] were translated into all languages, of all Christian people, and that they might be read and known." kindled a passion along with the doctrine of "Justification by Faith" in the heart of William Tyndale, to translate and place the Scriptures in the hands of the English people.
With this unquenchable passion to make the Bible available to every Englishman, William Tyndale went to London and requested Bishop Tunstall if he could be authorised to make an English translation of the Bible, but the Bishop would not grant his approval. Tyndale realized that England would never be evangelized using Latin Bibles. He came to see that "it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scripture were laid before their eyes in their mother tongue." With encouragement and support of some British merchants, at the age of 30 he left England as a fugitive in 1524 and sailed for Germany. England’s religious and political leaders launched a propaganda war against him. Tyndale replied by publishing pamphlets.
In Hamburg, he worked on the New Testament, and in Cologne, he found a printer who would print the work and smuggled back into England. However, news of Tyndale's activity came to an opponent of the Reformation who had the press raided. Tyndale himself managed to escape with the pages already printed and made his way to the German city Worms where the New Testament was soon published. Six thousand copies were printed and smuggled into England. But it was banned. The English Bishops did everything they could to eradicate the Bibles. Bishop Tunstall had copies ceremoniously burned at St. Paul's; the Archbishop of Canterbury bought up copies to destroy them. Tyndale used the money to print improved editions!
In response to objections to translating the Bible into English, Tyndale answered, “They say our tongue is too rude. It is not so. Greek and Hebrew go more easily into English than into Latin. Has not God made the English tongue as well as others? They [allow] you to read in English of Robin Hood, Bevis of Hampton, Hercules, Troilus, and a thousand ribald or filthy tales. It is only the Scripture that is forbidden. It is therefore clearer than the sun that this forbiddal [forbidding] is not for love of your souls, which they care for as the fox doth for the geese.”
On 2 October 1528, Tyndale responded with "The Obedience of a Christian Man", a pamphlet arguing that a good Christian obeys the king in so far as the king obeys God. He supported his points from the Bible, declared that Scripture is the Christian’s final authority in matters of faith, and attacked teachings such as salvation by works. He wrote: "The church of Christ is the multitude of all those who believe in Christ for the remission of sins, and who are thankful for that mercy and who love the law of God purely, and who hate the sin in this world and long for the life to come". A copy of Tyndale's "The Obedience of a Christian Man" fell into the hands of Henry VIII, providing the King with the rationale to break the Church in England from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534.
John West, a friar, was dispatched from England to the Continent to apprehend the fugitive Tyndale and bring him back. West landed at Antwerp, dressed in civilian attire, and began hunting for Tyndale. He scoured the cities and interrogated printers. Sensing the pressure, Tyndale remained in Marburg. He spent the time teaching himself Hebrew, a language that had not been taught in the English universities when Tyndale was a student. With this new skill, Tyndale began translating the Pentateuch from Hebrew into English.
In 1529, Tyndale moved from Marburg to Antwerp. This thriving city offered him good printing, sympathetic fellow Englishmen, and a direct supply route to England. Under this new cover, he completed his translation of the five books of Moses, but he felt the danger was too great to stay in this large city. He realized that the Pentateuch must be printed elsewhere. So Tyndale boarded a ship to sail to the mouth of the Elbe River in Germany and then to Hamburg. But a severe storm struck the ship and it was wrecked off the coast of Holland. Tragically, his books, writings, and the Pentateuch translation were lost at sea. He had to start the work from scratch.
Tyndale eventually made his way to Hamburg. There he was received into the home of the von Emersons, a family with strong sympathies for the Reformation. In this protective environment, Tyndale undertook the laborious effort of retranslating the Pentateuch from the Hebrew language. This task took from March to December 1529. In January 1530, the five books of Moses in English were printed in Antwerp, then smuggled into England and distributed.
In 1535, Tyndale, was finally found by an Englishman who pretended to be his friend but then turned him over to the authorities. He was arrested and jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde (Filford) outside Brussels for over a year. Tyndale’s work was denounced by authorities of the Catholic Church and was brought to trial for heresy -- for believing, among other things, in the forgiveness of sins and that the mercy offered in the Gospel was enough for salvation.
In early August 1536, Tyndale was condemned as a heretic, degraded from the priesthood, and delivered to the secular authorities for punishment.
On Friday, October 6, 1536 after local officials took their seats, Tyndale was brought to the cross in a small town in Belgium. He was given a chance to recant and he refused to do so. Then he was bound to the beam, and both an iron chain and a rope were put around his neck. Gunpowder was added to the brush and logs. At the signal of a local official, the executioner, standing behind Tyndale, quickly tightened the noose, strangling him. Then an official took up a lighted torch and handed it to the executioner, who set the wood ablaze. Thus William Tyndale was burned alive at the stake publicly for denouncing the false teachings of the Catholic Church and for preaching, translating, printing and circulating the scriptures in English language. English historian John Foxe records that as William Tyndale burnt to death, his last words were "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!"
His prayer was answered first in part when three years later, in 1539, Henry VIII required every parish church in England to make a copy of the English Bible available to its parishioners. Today, Tyndale's prayer is fully answered, not only are the King's eyes opened, but the Bible a universal instrument.
In 1611, the 54 scholars who produced the King James Bible drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as from translations that descended from his. Today, 90% of the King James Version of the Holy Bible and 75% of the Revised Standard Version are from the translation made by Tyndale. It is largely due to his labours, and many of the very phrases you read in it retain the flavour of his understanding of the Greek and Hebrew.
John Foxe went so far as to call him "the Apostle of England." There is no doubt that by his monumental work, Tyndale changed the course of English history and Western civilization. Steven Lawson calls William Tyndale as "Prince of Translators".
Biographer Brian Edwards, states that not only was Tyndale "the heart of the Reformation in England," he "was the Reformation in England." Because of his powerful use of the English language in his Bible, this Reformer has been called "the father of modern English."
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/prince-translators-william-tyndale
http://www.tyndale.org/tyndale.htm
https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/scholarsandscientists/william-tyndale.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale
https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/william-tyndale
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/always-singing-one-note-a-vernacular-bible
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Vimana Baikonur
THIS is the Magister of the Light that will carry us all into the glory of Space Age, lift us up so we’d leave the cradle of Earth and reach to the stars. This is the embodiment of hopes humankind had and still has about space travel, of escaping this rock and living in the sidereal heavens, where our hearts of hearts long to be. Their gestation was long - the spark of Spiritus Dei that would become Vimana was kindled in humanity the moment Eve looked upon the sky with longing and hope rather than fear for tomorrow, but it was Yuri Gagarin, who carried this hope with him as he breached the firmament that allowed Vimana to be realized, and his safe descent upon Earth is what allowed them to connect with humankind through love, rather than loathing - should Yuri burn down like Icarus, Vimana theoretizes they’d be as Dark as they’re now Light.
Vimana is both a spaceship, a habitat and a person inhabiting it. From afar, one could mistake them for an Angel - the clean, sacred geometry of their form, the solar sails catching the winds bearing life-giving energy into their systems, gleaming white, with colorful lights of their sensors dancing on their silver hull, all of this makes it so Vimana wouldn’t seem out of place in Heaven. They, however, are firmly rooted in the Light, in the desire of eternal human survival amongst the stars, so even if the ecosystem of this fallen, Prosaic World should die, that they’d still have a place to live, in comfort and with hope. That stars are so far away, that most doesn’t exist within Creation, is but a small problem that Vimana would deal with, once humanity’s Space Era begins in earnest.
Vimana represents the Estates of Reaching Upwards, Starships, Exploration and Solar Power. Reaching Upwards and Exploration once belonged to other Light Magisters, but to catalyze Vimana’s birth within the hope of Yuri Gagarin, they donated their pieces of Creation to the nascent Magister, hoping it would result in a child of Light as well - and this hope had paid off so far.
Estates:
Reaching Upwards:
....Provides the motive force to ambition
.... Doesn’t rest on laurels
..... Is the engine of progress
...... Lets you transcend your limitations
Starships:
.... Escape gravity using powerful explosions
.... Gleam with glass and metal
..... Sail through the void
..... Require upkeep and expertize of those aboard to function
..... Provide shelter from the hazards of outer space in return
Exploration:
.... Breaks the known horizons
..... Leads to new ideas and experiences
.... Sets the trail for others to follow
.... Gives insight into foreign lands
Solar Power:
.... Catches sunlight into maze of glass and mirrors
..... Cares for the enviroment
..... Generates power during the day
......Works best in hot, desolate places
Locus Baikonur:
This gleaming spaceship is the living body of Vimana Baikonur. Unwilling to sacrifice so many humans that believe in them, and unable to conduct power extracting rites from the Actuals, Vimana enchancelled themselves - when their spirit is battling Excrucians in the deep layers of the Spirit World, their heart and body must be cared for, requring upkeep like any lesser starship. It’s mortal basis was the International Space Station, and it docks frequently there, the astronauts clued into th Mythic Reality by becoming Anchors of the Power of Spaceships. The interior of the ship is itself utopian - a strange, but harmonious ship of socrealism and art deco, where bas reliefs of idealized women and men enjoying pastoral life on exoplanets mix with chrome fins and sinuous shapes, all of it well-lit and capable of sustaining life of those aboard indefinetely, provided the ship is cared for. The souls of dead astronauts are given new bodies here, idealized and free of fraility, to work in the heaven that is the hope they embody realized. Vimana’s four Powers serve as the senior administrators and caretakers of the station, and are under strict orders to never harm any of the embodied astronauts.
Stats:
Attributes
Child of the Ash: 3 (5 MP)
Domain (Reaching Up, Exploration, Spaceships, Solar Power): 0 (5 MP)
Creature of the Light: 2 (5 MP)
Treasure: 0 (5 MP)
Skills:
Superior Zeitgeist (2)
Superior Spaceship (2)(5 while using Ascension power of Child of the Ash)
I want to uplift you! (2)
Logistics (2)
Bonds/Afflictions:
Bond (5): I carry humanity’s hopes for Space Age in my heart of hearts *
(The bond used with Immersion power of Creature of the Light)
Bond (2): Even as I reach for the stars, I must remain grounded, so I won’t endanger my people
Affliction (3): I lack a sense of smell, touch and taste, even in my humanoid body-form, as it is mostly made of metal and mother of pearl.
Bond (3): I tacticly and covertly support any Noble attempt at escaping Creation, provided that they take steps to allow human beings survive Outside too.
Chuubo’s:
In Chuubo’s, Vimana has Child of the Ash 2+, Creature of the Light + and possibly some Allegory. Notably, this isn’t the typical Lightlord setup, but it suits Vimana just fine (even if I could see them with Impressario and maybe even Awakening, if I’d go with the zeitgeist route more, it would make their spaceship form their true form, and humanoid form the ‘avatar’)
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Art Nouveau Woodblock Prints vs Contemporary Digital Art Prints
Art nouveau thrived from 1890-1910 and is considered to be the “bridge between Victorian clutter and Modernism.” (Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. 6th Edition. Pg 212) At the time “art nouveau” was coined in Paris, the style was considered the ‘new art.” Art nouveau's most identifiable features were it’s free-flowing lines, subjective color, floral motifs, and it’s rejection from traditional art forms. Artists of the time primarily created books, posters, and advertisements; producing beautiful artworks which drew inspiration from gothic arts, Victorian paintings, nature, fantasy, and Japanese woodblock printing. Artists of the time primarily used the woodblock printing method for sharing their new art with the world. Many countries had distinctive styles within the umbrella of art nouveau, but an international new style emerged with technological advances in printing presses, and the market for art for middle and working class people increased. There was a demand for art depicting everyday people, activities, and scenarios, rather than images of unrelatable people and places. Women enjoying life’s pleasures such as drinking and dancing were a huge subject matter for posters. Additionally, some books of the time had illustrations so scandalous they were outlawed in England. Oftentimes artists gained notoriety due to the controversy of their artworks.
“Woodblock prints were a careful collaboration between publisher, artist, block cutter, and printer. The publisher financed the production of a print and coordinated the work of the other three partners. The artist supplied a separate drawing for each color. These were pasted onto woodblocks and the negative or white areas were cut away, destroying the original drawing in the process. After all the blocks for a print were cut, printing began.” (Pg.209) This extensive planning and tedious work that went into some illustrations for printing show the skill of the team at the presses. Mistakes could easily be made while carving the woodblock that could compromise the integrity of the original art, so highly skilled etchers were sought out. Aubrey Beardsley was briefly a renowned artist during the art nouveau period and found a solution by using the “photo engraving process to transfer his artworks from paper to woodblock press, retaining complete fidelity to the original art,” unlike hand carved woodblock illustrations. (Pg. 219)
Besides the team of hands required to produce prints during the art nouveau period, other contingencies posed issues in the woodblock printing process. Inks had to be applied expertly and quickly during printing which posed another problem at times. Only limited colors were available in the past, and only so many could be used per design for fear of colors bleeding and muddling the details. The printing process required a lot of time and manpower to complete, and a plethora of expensive materials were wasted in the trial and error process, unlike today, where we have unlimited digital tools at our fingertips with thousands of colors available to us.
The art and process of making art today is much more efficient, cost effective, and convenient. Contemporary art has many focuses, styles, and mediums thriving. One of my personal favorite styles is digitally created psychedelic art, which draws inspiration from multiple religions, spiritual beliefs, psychedelic experiences, flowers, animals, the nude body and music.
Throughout psychedelic graphic art there is use of repeating or kaleidoscope patterns, sacred geometry, surreal imagery, with vivid and contrasting colors. Oftentimes there’s a sense of a journey, the unknown, or out-of-body experiences. Art of today focuses more heavily on storytelling, entertaining and creating an ambiance or statement in a room, versus depicting the day to day life of the public. A lot of contemporary art can be described as hyperrealistic, as the line between a painting or a photograph is hard to identify at times. Artists of today have the ability to bend reality within photographs, sometimes without detection. Digital art mediums such as Surface Pro’s and IPads are easy to transport and make art easily accessible, in places traditional mediums would be too messy.
Android Jones is a digital artist who is extremely accomplished in our contemporary times, from his fantasy dreamscape artworks to his own graphic design programmed called Microdose VR, which operates conveniently on surface drawing pads. In his artistic process he is able to single handedly make artworks that would have in past times required a team to make. The burden of mistakes, spacing, and wrong colors is removed from the creative process as digital paintings can be erased, redrawn, skewed, recolored, and resized endless times- all without wasting paper or inks. Creating digital art allows for quick, easy, high quality printing. In fact, you can have your artwork printed in as little as an hour as of currently, and there are self service options which would allow you to create prints, from start to finish completely autonomously. Producing a print was a feat in the 1890s-1910 which could easily take months.
I must conclude that contemporary digital art is better versus art nouveau woodblock printing for the fact that supplies are not wasted in the process of making digital art, the process of making prints requires only yourself and the person running the printer, every color and brush imaginable is available in digital art programs, and finally, contemporary art is what I have grown up around, what I can deeply relate to, and what inspired me to start painting myself. There’s nothing I love more than making paintings and I owe that appreciation to the artists whose exhibitions I stood in awe of before at the Smithisonian.
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I’m a Witch.
Witch.
Why use that word? Mostly, because it's true.
Also, because it's an incredibly important word.
As Madeline Miller explains in her brilliant Guardian article, From Circe to Clinton: why powerful women are cast as witches, the word witch "reflect[s] our ideas about women back to ourselves." This lone syllable is a palimpsest of information about women's history: forms of feminine power, fear of feminine power, and the independence of women who hold power.
I learned I was a witch at age 11. Unfortunately, not by owl.
When I was 9, my progressive Episcopal school hired a remarkably conservative pastor. He taught my third grade Bible class that women were inferior members of the Christian faith. Convinced of my equality, I fought him openly. When the class reached Corinthians, I was exiled to the hallway.
Fortunately, I also spent that year studying Scandinavian history and mythology. I thus realized that pre-Christian spiritual alternatives existed, but the old gods still seemed distant, found only in fairy tales and books of ancient history.
Two years later, I stumbled on a curious volume at a used book fair. It was pink, with an picture of a beautiful woman on the cover and a compelling title: The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries. I took it home and devoured it in one sitting.
Running into my mother's bedroom, waving the book like a flag, I hollered, "Mom! I understand now! I'M A WITCH! Everything makes sense!" I was deliriously happy.
My mother lowered her newspaper and said levelly, "OK. But you can't ever say that to anyone else. They won't understand."
If you've met me, you know I'm a rules-follower. (Well, except when my Bible teacher tells me to accept my subservience.) I didn't speak the word "witch" to anyone else for nearly ten years.
Yet, I was a lucky wee witch: I had little supervision, an allowance, subway tokens, and all of New York City at my disposal. I bought a tarot deck at a comic book shop, made a wand from a branch found in Central Park, taught myself to meditate, and spent hours on the floor of Barnes and Noble devouring feminist classics and occult texts.
I paid scant attention to pop cultural depictions of witchcraft. It seemed a bit dangerous: would my curiosity indicate that I was, indeed, a witch? Also, I didn't want to get my information from Willow. I wanted real magic.
When I reached Duke University, I found a trove of resources in the Divinity Library, which was often empty and had a forgotten copy machine in the basement. I studied there, Xeroxing whole chapters from Doreen Valiente's works after I finished my homework.
I also found mentors: a married pair of witches raising their young daughter in the craft. They took me in, filled the many gaps in my knowledge, taught me how to perform rituals with proper tools and other witches, and coached me through many challenges. But they practiced in secret, because North Carolina wasn't a safe place to be a witch in the 1990s. So I practiced in secret, too.
Until I met my husband. Nominally Christian, he was remarkably sanguine about my beliefs and befuddled by my secrecy. We spoke Methodist vows at our wedding, but did so bathed in sunshine and surrounded by flowers, bees, and butterflies, so that I could feel the presence of the divine.
I stuck a toe out of the broom closet after my daughter's birth. As her primary role model, secrecy and sneaking around seemed like a terrible precedent to set. We decided to become an interfaith family: our daughter was baptized, but also included in my observances. Today, we celebrate all pagan holidays and some Christian holidays. Openly.
Yet, I didn't really leave the broom closet until we moved to Asheville, where I found allies, resources, and wise teachers including Byron Ballard, Becky Beyer, Sarah Chappell, Maia Toll, Jodi Rhoden, and Katie Vie. When I stopped hiding, I found my tribe.
--
So, what do I believe now?
Animism
I am an animist, which means that I perceive all natural things - rocks, plants, trees - as in some way alive. I also believe in divine immanence - an organizing force in the universe that is both holy and present in all natural things. I believe we can perceive divine order in the patterns of sacred geometry - pentagrams, spirals, stars, whorls, the Fibonacci sequence. (Here, let Donald Duck explain!) Thus, I believe nature is to be cherished, protected, and venerated.
Views about classic theological questions - the soul, the afterlife - vary widely among animists. Personally, I think our bodies and consciousness return to nature, but I really don't know what that means. I doubt my mind is capable of understanding it.
Paganism
Paganism is a polytheistic religious practice. I believe it is difficult for the human mind to approach the divine without some organizing principles. Gods, goddesses, myths, and stories help us conceive of the divine in a concrete way. Forming a relationship with one of these manifestations is a way to venerate the divine in the material world.
Views about classic theological questions vary as widely as you might expect among pagans. We have a "family goddess" and organize our veneration around her symbolism and incarnation.
Witchcraft
Witchcraft is a practice, not a religion. Thus, one can be pagan and a witch, pagan but not a witch, and a witch but not a pagan. I happen to be both. There are too many strands of witchcraft to list here.
Witchcraft, as I define it, is the practice of magic.
I think of magic as the conscious direction of intention on the material world. My practices are informed by Reclaiming, Norse, and Dianic Wiccan practices. (But I no longer use materials created by trans-exclusionary authors.) I'm also starting to learn about Appalachian folk magic, since I'm surrounded by it. However, I also think of magic and science as a spectrum: magic can be defined as a collection of observed (and still somewhat fuzzy) knowledge that has been passed down along generations but not incorporated into the laws and rules of "science." I read Sagan and Einstein along with spell books.
My daily spiritual practices include meditation; reading tarot; caring for our land; invoking, spending time in the presence of, and making offerings to our family's matron goddess; working on our family altar; casting spells; and taking classes in herbalism, mysticism, or history. Special spiritual practices are reserved for holidays known as sabbats and esbats.
Sabbats are the eight holy days observed by many Euro-American pagans and witches. They represent spokes on the Wheel of the Year. These are holidays for our family, and we have special traditions associated with each. Many are revivals of pre-Christian festival days, and fall close to popular holidays. Samhain is one of the holiest days of the year, often referred to as "The Witches' New Year." Yule is a lot like Christmas, so our family observes a full week of wintry celebrations. Imbolc is the return of the sun, a better version of Groundhog Day. Ostara is very similar to Easter. Beltane is May Day, and my daughter's school actually celebrates a version of it with costumes, maypole dancing, treats, and games. Summer Solstice, or Litha, is a time for staying up with the sun, catching fireflies, drinking champagne in the grass, and making strawberry shortcakes. Lammas is the first harvest festival; we visit local farms, make bread, and learn about food systems. Mabon, or Autumn Equinox, is the big harvest festival, and I see it as the kickoff of the "season of the witch," when everyone is getting ready for Halloween and I can luxuriate in feeling normal for a month! We carve pumpkins, pick apples, and decorate like love children of the Addams and the Griswolds.
Esbats are rituals held at the Full Moon and New Moon. These are special times for holding rituals and casting spells, so I set up a small ritual for my daughter wherein I teach her some new skill like grounding or casting a circle. Then I do my own rituals and spellwork after she's in bed.
--
My decision to leave the broom closet was informed by (1) a new sense of safety, because witchcraft is extremely popular right now, but also (2) a new sense of responsibility, because of the misogyny unearthed in the 2016 election.
Clearly, the election itself was informed by a persistent hatred of powerful women. "Witch" played a strong role in misogynistic descriptions and depictions of Hillary Clinton. For younger women, especially witches like myself, this was alternately infuriating and thrilling. It was both a denigration of us as individuals and a recognition of our political power.
As Kristen Sollee has explained, “Witches have always been politically radical, in my opinion, but it seems that even more American witches are these days because the internet allows for a new kind of organizing on a larger scale." After the election, activist witches began to organize, often via the internet or in spaces created by feminist entrepreneurs. W.I.T.C.H's many outposts. Intersectional feminist events at Hauswitch, Catland, Ritualcravt. (And many more I'm surely leaving out.)
Women who were witches - and women who weren't - began to see themselves reflected in the activism of witchcraft.
Then Donald Trump co-opted the term "witch hunt." It rang hollow. As Josephine Livingston said:
On the one side, we have the young woman. Her natal chart is fully indexed; she can read tarot. She knows that Planned Parenthood guards her liberty. Her interest in witchhood is bound up with her political conscience, gender identity, and sense of humor. On the other, the President of the United States. His witchhood is, by contrast, a simple claim: that enemies hunt him for no good reason.
Like Livingston, I believe that "the only sorcery effective against him is solidarity: more magic, more craft, more witches."
If you can hex, do it.
If you can work to regenerate the earth, do it.
If you can bind, do it.
If you have the power of persuasion, use it.
But above all...
If you're a witch, use the word.
It's a powerful word. It rings with history, beauty, pain, and magic. We could all use a little more magic right now, by which I simply mean a little more intention in our relations with the material world, and a little more faith that our intentions matter.
Then, as Miller asks, "perhaps we can at last celebrate female strength, recognising that witches – and women – are not going away."
“We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn.” It’s not a biological claim. It’s a tribal cry of belonging. A recognition of my powerful foremothers, the women who were called “witch”: Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn, the herbalists, the alewives, the midwives, Hillary.
I’m a witch.
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10 best Chinese food restaurants in the Long Beach area for takeout, delivery – Press Telegram
It is, easily, the most iconic to-go container in culinary history — a Totem of Takeout, an origami box built for noodles, pork, shrimp and chicken. It’s technically an isosceles trapezoid solid, a three-dimensional representation of a high school geometry problem.
The Chinese food takeout container was born in the last decade of the 19th century, when it was known as an “oyster pail” because, well, it was used for to-go orders of oysters. It was also used, for many years, for honey — and was until after World War II, when Chinese takeout competed with pizza for the food most Americans took home to eat while watching The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” on small black-and-white TV screens. And for most Chinese restaurants, it’s still the standard for takeout.
This white, waxed container more often than not comes with a red drawing of a pagoda on the side (which is, of course, Japanese) and the words “Enjoy” and “Thank You” emblazoned on the top, and over the fold. Some years ago, the Smithsonian paid tribute to the container with an exhibit called “Sweet & Sour: A Look at the History of Chinese Food in the United States.” And the phrase “sweet & sour” is especially apt, for this is not a container built for searing spices of Szechuan and Hunanese cooking. I guess dim sum will work okay in the boxes. But dim sum isn’t what comes to mind.
Rather, the box is for the classics of Chinese-American cooking. For meals consisting of one from column A, two from column B, white rice and fortune cookies at meal’s end. It meant chicken chop suey, pork fried rice, sweet-and-sour something or other, egg foo young, and lots and lots of tea. It was something you ate on Sunday nights with family. And an hour later, in the old American anti-vegetable parlance, you were hungry again. Or at least you were if your basic diet consisted of white bread and deep-fried everything.
Chop suey is the defining dish when it comes to Chinese-American cooking. The name may (or may not) come from the Cantonese sap seui, which translates as “mixed leftovers.” It was a mishmash, created in the mid-1800s by Chinese immigrants to make their native food more appealing to American taste, what there was of it.
Since there was no bok choy or white radishes or soybean sprouts to use, celery, bell peppers and onions became the ingredients of choice, with shredded meat added, and enough soy sauce to turn the white rice black. Louis Armstrong recorded a song in the 1920s called “Cornet Chop Suey.” It was culinary jazz. There’s an Edward Hopper painting called “Chop Suey” — which is not of food, but of two women, seated in a restaurant, with a sign out the window that reads “suey.”
And it was chop suey that I went looking for. Or at least chow mein and lo mein. In the case of chop suey, old school Chinese-American cooking. In the case of chow mein and lo mein, the Cantonese cuisine which faded in recent years behind a veil of super-spiced cooking. In either case, this is soul satisfying food to take home, and be filled with nostalgia, as you sip your tea, eat your rice, and enjoy your chow, eaten directly from the container with chopsticks, if you can’t muster the energy to put it on a plate or in a bowl.
This is food that tastes good no matter how you gobble it. And if you want, you can still find Ed Sullivan on YouTube. This is a journey into the past, taken one bite at a time.
2930 Clark Ave., Long Beach; 562-982-4288
Let us begin, then, with a Chinese restaurant that exists for takeout only — the perfect restaurant in these difficult times.
The original Yang Chow in Chinatown (with a branch is Pasadena) has been a much-loved destination for those hungry for a cult collection of Chinese dishes — especially the Slippery Shrimp, a dazzling, and deeply addictive creation of chubby shrimp, tender and firm textured, battered, crisped, then cooked in a sauce that’s both sweet and spicy at the same time.
Yang Chow 2.0 is not far from Long Beach Airport, with a handful of tables and a limited menu. There’s Slippery Shrimp, Slippery Chicken and Slippery Tofu, along with sweet & sour chicken, sweet & sour pork, beef with broccoli, Szechuan beef, Szechuan chicken, string beans and a handful of fried rice dishes. The only appetizer is the spring roll. That’s pretty much it. And aside from not offering my much-loved cold noodles with sesame and chicken, I’m happy as a clam to grab an order to go, which emerges from the kitchen with crazy speed.
I’m told the original chef from Chinatown is making the dishes. He’s been working the wok for decades. One bite, and it’s clear — and the food travels very well.
Egg rolls are a tasty starter for a lunch or dinner featuring Chinese food — and also make a wonderful snack anytime of the day or night. (Shutterstock)
What’s known as an oyster pail — a folded, waxed or plastic-coated paperboard container — is the perfect transport vehicle to keep Chinese food deliciously hot from the restaurant to your home. (Shutterstock)
Chinese noodles, fried rice, dumplings, Peking duck and dim sum are among the Chinese food favorites seen here. (Shutterstock)
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Chinese food, including stir-fried pork with red sauce, has long been a tasty option for takeout and delivery. (Shutterstock)
18349 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia; 562-924-4567, www.nankingchineseca.com
Can you be both post-modernist Indian and old school Chinese at the same time — with a menu that often combines the two? Nanking Indo-Chinese manages that hat trick, which is no small accomplishment. This is a classic Chinese restaurant and not a classic Chinese restaurant at the same time. Here, they manage to walk and chew gum at the same time, with no trouble at all. You want chow mein with chicken or shrimp? There it is. Ditto kung pao lo mein (“kung pao” is code for “cashews and peanuts”), kung pao vegetables, fried rice, chili-garlic fried rice, and hot & sour soup.
Nanking offers the food of both the leading cuisines of Artesia, both Indian and Chinese, under one roof. It’s a restaurant where you can order both chicken tikka masala, and kung pao cashew chicken, at the same meal. And why wouldn’t you want to? Variety, after all, really is the spice.
Defining the cooking at Nanking can be a tad challenging, even for the restaurant. At one point on the website, the owners say they “offer traditional Indian, Chinese and Nepali food.” A few sentences down, the cuisines fuse into “Indian-Chinese food.” One sentence later, Nanking is a “truly Indian restaurant.”
Even the name of the city is somewhat befuddling. Nanking is the capital of Jiangsu Province, on the eastern edge of China, not far from Shanghai. But far from India. It’s all a big jumble. Which would be bothersome, if it weren’t so much fun. Especially when it comes to parsing the roots of the dishes, most of which are either Indian or Chinese, but several of which hit both points on the culinary compass.
There is, for instance, a dish called Chinese bhel. It seems to be a modified variation of the snack dish called bhel puri, a very tasty mix of puffed rice, veggies and tamarind sauce — one of the many small chaat dishes that you’ll find at the numerous Indian snack shops in Artesia. In this case, it’s made “Chinese” with the addition of thin crunchy noodles, in a spicy-sweet sauce. Is it Indian? Is it Chinese? Is it both? Whatever…it’s a good snack, and goes well with beer.
That’s also the case with the Szechuan fries, which is just what they sound like: French fries flavored with Szechuan spices. If anything, they’re more an American-Chinese dish; Rachael Ray has a recipe online, and there are numerous YouTube videos of how to make it. Which doesn’t take much skill. Less skill than the chicken lollipops, which are essentially Buffalo chicken wings, but once again with a Szechuan sauce. It’s nice how a few spices can turn one cuisine into another.
Perhaps the most blended dish on the menu is the Szechuan paneer, which involves tossing usually bland Indian paneer cheese, which is like a child of cottage cheese and ricotta, with that same Szechuan sauce, turning spiceless into happily spicy — a very good idea. Under the enticing heading “Bombay Style Chinese” — Szechuan prawns, chili chicken, shrimp & cashew curry and so on.
Four of the five noodle dishes are straight-forward Chinese, with the red curry spice Malaysian noodles being the outsider. There’s a very small section of Nepalese dishes, just four. But among the rice dishes, the cuisines of origin move around Asia; Kashmiri pulao, Chinese fried rice, Szechuan fried rice, Thai fried rice. The desserts are solidly Indian — though I’m not sure of the mango soufflé, which may be French, and causes that much more ethnic confusion.
6563 E. Pacific Coast Hwy., Long Beach; 562-430-6888, www.nomadasianbistro.com
Like Nanking Indo-Chinese, Nomad Asian likes to move around the map — appropriate for a restaurant named “Nomad.”
In terms of old school Chinese dishes, there are plenty. Chow mein (described on the menu as as “spaghetti chow mein noodle”), with chicken, beef, shrimp, vegetables or a combo three-flavor. The chow mein is also available “handmade” (“wide flat noodle”) for $2 more. There’s Three Flavor Spicy Curry Fried Rice (“blendo” time again!), three-flavor fried rice, and Singapore noodles.
The menu stretches to about 100 dishes. And among them, you’ll find many of dishes so many of us grew up with — good, old-fashioned chop suey, made with chicken or beef. (And with sole, which is a new one on me.) There are wonton “stars,” filled with cream cheese and “krab.”
If you long for wonton soup, here it is. The classic dishes here are well prepared — they bring back lots of happy memories of the Chinese food we used to live on. I’m happy to dig into a plate of spring rolls, with chicken or with veggies. The honey-ginger chicken wings are pretty sweet, maybe too sweet, but that didn’t keep me from inhaling them. And much the same can be said of sugary preparations like the orange chicken, the honey-ginger fried chicken, the orange beef, the honey walnut shrimp and so forth. A reminder that back in the day, we liked our Chinese food sweet.
Indeed, we probably liked all our food sweet; remember Jell-O salads? But times change, and tastes evolve. Which is why the Hui dishes (or at least the dishes from the Northern Provinces) are so appealing. Northern Chinese cooking involves a lot of lamb — and over there, more likely mutton than lamb.
The cumin lamb is a wonderful thing — tender and sweet, as lamb tends to be, in a thick basting of pungent cumin. The lamb with scallions, is also heavy with garlic and ginger — a major flavor explosion. There’s lamb with pickled cabbage and dry red chiles, and lamb with garlic and jalapeños. There’s lamb tripe and lamb offal. Which is not a dish for those who dream of fried rice. Lamb offal is also served as a soup. And, there’s lamb with pickled cabbage. A litany of strong flavors that set Nomad apart.
11740 Artesia Blvd., Artesia; 562-809-3887, www.omarskitchenla.com
You’ll notice that there’s no pork on the menu at Omar’s Halal Chinese, for “Halal” refers to the Islamic code of permissible ingredients, of which pork (akin to kosher) is not one. The menu also notes that the chicken, beef and lamb are “100 Percent Zabihah” — which means they’ve been slaughtered following a well-established code of ethical rules (once again, akin to kosher).
This is the cooking of northern and western China, with its sizable Muslim population. And of the Uyghur people who live in the adjoining regions — and have their own adjoining section of of dishes on the menu. And having taken care of the technical details, let me tell you how good the food is. If it’s the classics you hunger for, there’s kung pao beef and kung pao chicken, General Tso’s chicken, orange chicken and Szechuan chicken. There’s chow mein with lamb, beef, chicken or shrimp; and fried rice with the same foursome.
But beyond this, what dominates is a menu of lamb and spice heavy dishes. Indeed, an entire section of the menu is dedicated solely to lamb — 17 dishes that, recited in a row, sound a bit like the classic Monty Python Spam routine — jalapeño lamb, basil lamb, curry lamb, lamb with green onion, kung pao lamb and so forth. There are also lamb kebabs, cumin lab, cumin lamb kidneys, cumin lamb ribs, lamb dumplings and lamb potstickers. And lamb soup, which sits on the menu next to haggis soup — which is made with lamb parts.
I don’t think there’s any lamb among the seafood dishes. But I could be wrong. And the Uyghur cumin lamb dishes are so intense, they can be tasted days later. Their cold noodles are an exercise in taste, texture and temperature — the cold noodles with cumin lamb is essential at Omar’s. The fried lamb ribs with hot pepper sauce isn’t for the faint of palate. Luckily, there’s homemade yogurt to cool you down — though this is yogurt for those who love the sourness of yogurt; this isn’t Chobani. This is the sort of food that makes you sweat, cooling you off on a hot day in Artesia.
Tasty Noodle House
11316 South St., Cerritos; 562-809-1333
For those who keep track of such things — and there are more than a few of us who do — there are plenty of “tasty” Chinese restaurants around. Here in Southern California, there’s China Tasty, Tasty Dining, Tasty Duck, Tasty Wok, Hunan Tasty, Asia Tasty, Tasty Zones, Xi’An Tasty, Tasty Goody, Tasty Chinese and Tasty Garden. (Sadly, the wonderfully named O’Tasty, in Washington DC, is closed.)
And, for those collecting their “tasties,” there’s the Tasty Noodle House chain, with branches in Irvine, Hacienda Heights, Walnut, Chino Hills, San Diego — and right here in Cerritos, where every day, all day, you can get tasty noodles and tasty dumplings to go! How tasty is that? You could probably eat here a dozen times, and never order a noodle dish at all. With a dozen appetizers, nine non-noodle soups, 16 dim sum items, about 20 rice dishes, and more than 50 entrees, the noodles of the name can get lost. Though not for long. There are some some 50 noodle soups and noodle dishes as well.
But I wouldn’t pass on the the green onion pancakes, the chive and shrimp dumplings, the cilantro fish dumplings, and the soupy xiao long bao — a dish with a cult following that’s easy to understand, and which travels unexpectedly well.
Did I mention the grilled pork bun? I should; and I now I have. And I do need to segue into the noodles, if only to kvell over the spicy cold noodles with shredded chicken, a longtime passion of mine, that always makes me wonder why I love cold noodles so much. The taste seems so much more intense when the noodles are cold than when they’re hot — though that may be an illusion. But then, much of what we perceive as taste is hard to define.
As a vegetable dish, and there are many, I ate too much of the pan-seared green chile peppers, which aren’t quite as hot as they sound, though they are hot. Not hot at all, and maybe even better, was the eggplant and mixed mushroom with basil. But then, I have a thing for both eggplants and mushrooms, and lots of them. And for spice. It makes the long evenings at home so much more bearable.
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Early Refills for the Lonely Girl’s Soul
Chapter One: “Life Skills to Kill”
“The tide is high but I’m holding on.”
And the tide is made up of 75 (edit: 80mg actually, they allowed me an increase today) milligrams of thick Methadone that runs a marathon through my bloodstream. It always wins the race for nothing. It’s all for big nothing.
Welcome to the static years. I’ll be your unreliable narrator with a heart of a darkness. Did anyone else read that in University English-lit? I couldn’t get through that book. Then again, I could barely get through campus mid semester.
Die with the lie? (Insert French for yes)
I’m questionable at best. And a terrible fake crier at worst. I need my Methadone every morning or I think about stabbing the walls of my apartment. I need my coffee for the ride to the clinic or I think about crying in the middle of the parking lot. Middle-class tragedy. Spoiled since day one. I NEED. I NEED. I NEED. I need you to read this.
My death wishes used to be bad-girl-charming at 22. Cute in that worried type of way. “She’s such a mess, isn’t it fabulous? I just love how complicated Cat makes everything.” Fast forward three psychiatrists, two evictions, one overdose and a series of voided lovers. Currently they’re just a broken record of empty. No! Really! I look in the mirror and regret it instantly. These days I see right through my own smoke and static; the attempts to distract my social circle from the rattling pharmacy bottles. There’s not enough black lipstick to mute a friend who cares. But there should be. (MAC, take note.)
Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the shameful of them all.
You are. You really are.
End of Chapter One
But maybe it’s mandatory for an author to have a loud reputation. You know what?A writers persona should be shrouded in rumors anyway. Fuck it. The checkered past. An affair with their professor. Or maybe their student. A secret arrest during the holidays years back. Maybe a forgotten relative with unfinished business. A hit and run inspired by Johnny Walker Red. A blood soaked sweater in the back of their closet to remember.
I have convinced myself that every writer deserves a notoriety to keep the masses at arms length. My, my, my, the mystery!
But the troubled-addict-writer is a cliche. And writers hate cliches. But writers also hate themselves.
Well, the good ones do anyway. What? Too far? And where was I before I launched a tangent of misplaced-poor me-bullshit?
Mmmmm. Methadone. My clinic has the pink kind.
I’m not the only one hurting myself, I tell myself over and over.
I think about how dramatic I’m trying to be, wanting to sound right and profoundly right at that. I feel like a bad actress in a dying career resurrecting a classic play. No need for an encore. Just cut. Besides there’s an after-party that I need to disappear into for eight hours.
I hate introducing myself in the first blog. Anything I write feels like the wrong thing. It’s so forced, I’m convinced no one knows themselves that well. Especially not I. Isn’t it better to keep a distance? Perhaps we can be strangers who make prolonged eye contact across the room.
Hi, I’m Cat. I feel like I just moved here. (Wherever here is.) I don’t know how to describe myself without comparing myself to the status quo. So, shallow generalizations about women, here I come!
Most girls find peace in an afternoon of shopping. Or make-up at Ulta. They get lost in the aisles and yell funny remarks to their friends about fashion sensitive culture. Maybe I’m jealous. And by maybe, I mean, absolutely.
Or perhaps They stalk their ex’s social media for clues about them, as if they were solving a murder. A new Facebook friend? An instagram story that makes no sense? It’s not adding up now, but it will. Oh, it will. By the way, who the fuck is Alicia and why are you tagging her?
I’ve always been sicker than the others.i win! Damnit. As the in crowd of seventh grade used to call it, I am “fuckin’ weird, no offense.”
“None taken” I nodded back taking a knee during gym class.
I do like to shop, although always by myself in the lonelier corners of shopping centers. And duh! I stalk many lucky persons on a semi-regular basis. It’s the American way at this point, I do it for my country. But on top of these typical hobbies of the expected feminine divine, I’m orbiting a different side of town. The side that no one thinks to go to for good reason; it smells weird and has no relevance to most standards of living.
Bare with me.
I’m a curious party. I’m also a drug addict in the harshest way. The combination of these two factors equal my favorite hobby; reading pharmacology research papers. Yes, sir. complete with abstracts and hypothesis that outlines the right balance of factual accuracy. Gets me giddy just thinking about it!
I like knowing what the new, FDA approved antidepressants are categorized as. And why they aren’t as good as Prozac. But better than Paxil. And less harmful to the female orgasm. Ladies, you know what I mean. It’s a cruel game when you finally stop thinking suicidal thoughts but suddenly can’t orgasm. God is really a piece of work. A sexist piece of work, come to think of it.
These new prescriptions hold possibilities, a potential change for an addict in the screaming cycle of addiction. It’s hope, baby. I’ve got that shit, I can’t play the bad ass who doesn’t care about anything anymore. I’ve been there and got the t-shirt. I had to rip it off.
Goodbye apathy. I’m blowing you a kiss. Of death.
I’ve been a pharmacy baby since day one. Hell, I was a pharmacy baby hopeful-groupie-wannabe-poser before ever cashing my first Celexa prescription. Or maybe it was Lexapro. Oh well. Same thing. I was so excited to be an official member of all the statistics I read about.
The few. The proud. The prescribed.
It began with therapy in ninth grade for a knot of emotional problems that caused me to isolate and skip class 80% of the school day. My counselor found this worrying. I thought nothing of it. Who gives a fuck about geometry? I wanted to listen to Celebrity Skin on my disc man and walk around the outdoors. If life was a one off, I was going to sit in this meadow with Malibu blaring my ears into deafening bliss.
Girl power. I understood my selfishness on a promising level, one that spoke volumes about who I was going to be, a stunningly poised sociopath with nothing to offer most of society. Adults felt the aura on me most of the time and soon their would be meetings about my “goals” and “friends.”
No wonder people were worried. I was a walking red-flag of rage and I hadn’t even gotten my first period. I didn’t have many good reasons to be pissed off and I was usually morbid about something if I wasn’t in my bed. This wasn’t looking ideal for a freshman with zero college ambition and no interest in recreational activities that would accompany academia and no doubt introduce me to new social groups. I wasn’t athletic enough to play school sports, and I was too wrapped up in my depression (which had no real cause, according to my family).
And they were rightful in their judgment. I was better off than most of my school friends, sporting the latest lava lamp that glowed my room a deep purple or concert tickets that we would countdown the days too. I got to see Ja Rule and Ashanti up close and personal much to the dismay of my classmates deep in the bleachers bitching constant complaints.
I didn’t have it bad. And I knew it, which made me feel worse. I hadn’t the faintest idea what my problem was. I couldn’t smile anything or even pretend to for the sake of my parents, who just wanted me to have a normal teenage existence that didn’t kill every mood with some invisible, existential threat. I must have been the most annoying fourteen year old with a lava lamp.
This stubborn depression led me to weekly ninety-dollar checks that were flawlessly made out to one Dr. Pat. Pharmacy Baby’s first shrink. Awww!
We all have to start somewhere. My start was Thursday’s at 4pm. This appointment made me vacate the bu on an earlier stop than the routine one. Kids soon began to take notice. And they couldn’t comprehend why I had to see a doctor four times a month. I must have leukemia or some other young person disease they saw on Dawson’s Creek. I must have been really sick, dying really! Afterall, my sole school-bus pal Kendra saw her hair stylist more than her primary care physician and the dentist combined. Highlights are a serious thing, she would state this as seriously as a heart attack. It made me chuckle and she never understood.
Unfortunately, the punchline was that I was dying. At fourteen years old I knew this was the start of a love-hate relationship with “irony.”
At my worst I was existing and not knowing why. I was wanting to sleep life away. Sleep was the answer.
At my best I was killing my old-self, the girl who reeked of unexplained trauma and bad moods and now this annoying trademark “irony.” The metamorphosis came around the third month of counseling. An anniversary with Dr. Pat meant we drank hot cocoa and did worksheets revolving around behavior and choices. Fuck prom, I had Dr. Pat! I was blossoming.
And i was learning about the power that was “change” and how it could empower you like a butterfly. Or whatever insect fit the worksheets. I sometimes felt like a spider, but I never told Dr. Pat this.
It’s never easy to kill the old you. Even more demanding to bury the old body, and just praying it won’t come back from the dead and replace you. Hoping wasn’t enough. I had to ask with my eyes closed.
I wanted to be a butterfly. I needed my wings. (Commence the beginning of secret plans that were thoughtlessly detailed in my diary, ready to be exposed any minute to a league of jealous girls re-enacting Mean Girls). The writer inside me cringed. Privacy truly died before Twitter. No girls thoughts were safe. They would never be safe. I would need to find new ways for my secrets and dreams. Then, I would fly away into the night, into a new city of strangers, outside of a small minded town of familiars. I wouldn’t need numbers in my yearbook. I was going to find what I was looking for.
But what the fuck was I looking for. Sweet sixteen started to taste sour.
I remembered Dr. Pat told me, “Happiness is a butterfly.”
I wrote it down in my diary, much to my own dismay, hoping that it would be both safe and true.
By: Caitlin Alysabeth Thomas, March 10, 2020, “pharmacy baby blogs,” “Romance in the Vice.”
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