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argumentl · 3 years

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The Freedom of Expression Ep 58 - [NSFW] The truth behind the DIR EN GERY misprint, and a mysterious voice...

K: Hi, this is Dir en grey's Kaoru, with this week's episode of the Freedom of Expression. Joe, Tasai, welcome...Um..

T: Ah!

J: What is it?

T: No way!

K: Its 'Young Jump'

J: Ah, Young Jump.

K: I think you already know about this, but we put an ad on it like this *shows back page*.

J: Oh, looks great!

T: Yeah, it does. Very impactful.

K: Its good, isn't it?

T: Yeah, great impact.

K: There's something a bit odd about it.

J: Haha

T: Huh? Where?

J: Eh? Something odd?

K: Yeah, its a bit strange. There's a bit of a mistake.

J: Is the kanji for Oboro correct?

K: Yeh, and this is right, about the release on the 28th of April.

J: And Wenesday is correct, right?

K: Yeah, and the explosion screening schedule is ok.

T: Yeah, it is.

K: The ticket price info is also all fine.

J: Yep.

K: After that there's only this bottom section.

J:Yeah.

T: DIR EN...

T, J: GERY, haha.

J: Has a new band formed?

K: We screwed up.

J, T: Hahaha

K: Its hard to believe, right?

J: Incredible. I did not expect this..Dir en gery.

T: I thought it was like a trick or something.

J: Oh, to make it go viral or..?

T: Yeah, going with Dir en gery.

J: Kaoru, what was it?

T: We'll find out about it here.

K: It was a total mistake.

J, T: Hahaha

J: Seriously? Eh? Really?

K: Yeah.

T: Does that mean it was done on a hurry, if its a seroius mistake?

K: Yeah, I guess so.

J: Well, Tasai, you work for a newspaper, and I also work for Rolling Stone, so we understand this, but our work is handed in for checking, you know, proof-reading. And they do spot mistakes, but honestly, I have never seen mistake of this size before.

T: Yeh. This is at the level of 'accident'. However, there is a case for saying that we cannot attack this. What I mean by that is that we too make mistakes.

J: Yes, thats true. There is that. Well, this goes for magazines etc too, but if you do proof-reading within the organization, for example, if the writer writes an article, the editor will proof-read it, and they may intend to, but if everyone is really busy with loads of other work, they will run out of time. Then they will get it checked by an external proof-reader. Even then there are sometimes still typos left over.

T: Yeah, there are.

J: There are, right? Human error happens.

T: Yeah, like if I misspell a name or something, I can correct it on the digital version, but on paper it appears on every copy out there.

J: Yeah..

K: But like this?!

J: Yeah, we say this, but we've never seen a typo this bad. Like, I've mistaken small details in names and stuff before.

K: Yeah, like Young Jump becoming Young JumP, right?

J, T: Yeh, haha.

K: Not like this! *points to 'GERY'*

J: Haha, this is...

*Sound of strange voice occurs in background - On screen text: 'What was that voice?! One more time.. (Clip of strange voice re-plays) No-one during the filming heard this. Its a mystery voice'*

J: Tell us what happened?

T: Yeah, lets ask.

K: Um, we had the design made, and the designer made the regular logo and put it down here in this fixed spot, so it looked as if the logo was done, even though there was a mistake in it. At the time, I wasn't looking at the band name, I was looking at the overall design, and ths impact it had. Like this image of Kyo from RokumaykanGIG. My eyes were drawn to the best parts of the design. It wasn't really designed to emphasize the band name. Its designed to showcase this top part, so I, like, didn't see it. Die didn't even see it, and he normally checks these really carefully. Even if we miss something, he normally spots it straight away.

J: Ah, even Die didn't notice it! ???*1

K: Yeah. We were too busy checking that there were no mistakes in the tour schedule.

J: Yeah.

K: But the information is all correct, so if its just the band name with a mistake, well, maybe its ok.

T: This could become a really rare item in time to come.

J: Yeah, cause there isn't gonna be a misspelling with Dir en grey again after this. That point will be strengthened.

K: Not for a while yeah. A long time ago, we had a single out called 'Filth', and there was a mistake in the title of the song on the cover jacket.

T: Eh? So this is the second time this has happened to you?

K: Well...yeh.

T: Hahaha

K: Well, we occasionally make small mistakes *2, but...

T: This is big.

J: Can I suggest something? Good things come in threes.

K: Ah, terrible.

J: So there will be a third time to come, imagine it, it could be both the title and the band name with a mistake.

T: Hahaha

K: Well, what can I do about it now? If you buy the single 'Filth' even now, its still like that. So filth is spelled f-i-l-h..huh? h-f...um, it's..

T: ..t-h

K: f-i-l-t-h, but the i became f, I mean h. So because there were two h's I realised the mistake. If there really is only one h, it could be that they just made the letters look in that style, but they look the same to me.

T: Ehh? I want to line Filth up next to this magazine.

J: Yeah

J, K: Hahaha

T: Don't you have it here? Filth?

K: We do.

T: Lets put them out together!

K: When I saw this (*Young Jump*) though, well, I thought it was quite rare*3, it could become a talking point. If you take a bad thing in a smooth way, someone will notice, so I thought we could just go with it.

J: Brilliant!

K: And then I posted on Twitter, like 'Ooops'. And that was a photo of the actual magazine, so it really was like 'ooops'.

T: As soon as I saw your Tweet, I was like 'Huh?!' and I went to the convenience store and bought it. haha

J: Well, in that sense it is a rare item

T: Can we decide on the correct reading for this? How would you say it?

K: Ge-ri?

J: Dir en gery (ge-ri).

K: jeri? geri?

J: geri? jeri?

T: gari?

J: Its geri, right? Well, jeri is like..

K: In the basic form its geri, right?

J: Yeah. jeri might have to be 'Gerry' with two r's. Which is best Dir en jeri or Dir en geri?

T: Should we decide? Even though it doesn't really matter.

J: Yeah

J: Dir en geri sounds like a struggling country rock artist or something, haha. Dir en jeri has jellyfish vibes.

T: The official name: Dir en Gery (jeri). haha.

J: I want you guys to do a joke live show as Dir en gery. You could switch parts, like Kaoru, you could be on drums.

K: Ah, but we did kinda do that once, we changed parts on stage. I just made a load of noise.

J: Ahh, so you could do that as Dir en gery somewhere officially and play one song.

T: Ahh, thats a good idea.

J: Do a cover or something.

T: You could do ???*4

K: Er, no. haha.

J: Haha, this will getting bigger and bigger.

T: But I heard recently at the MeguroRokumaykanGIG screening, Kyo said that Toshiya used to play guitar a long time ago.

K: He was playing guitar the first time we saw him playing in a band...well, I don't know if he was playing it, or just waving it around a lot.

T: Yeah, Kyo said the stage was going wild.

K: Yeah, he wasn't playing.

J: So, when you guys switched instruments on stage, what did you do Kaoru?

K: Drums.

J: Oh, drums?

K: Thats the one I wanna try out the most.

J: So if you guys played as Dir en gery, Kaoru, you would be..?

T: Drums?

K:...Nah....*imitates playing the castanets*

J: Tambourine? Oh, castanets? So, it doesn't necessarily have to be the same instruments you play at the moment?

K: Yeah. As long as we play as a proper band.

J: Yeah, so Kyo could play the recorder..

T: Someone could hit the ???*5

J: Yeah, yeah. Oh, that would be good.

*The single Filth gets passed over*

K: I'll just get it out.

*K shows cover jacket to J*

J: Oh, here, right?

K: Can you see, there are two h's.

J: Yes. I see.

*K shows it to T*

J: The first h is a typo?

K: Yeah.

T: Its a bit difficult to spot though.

K: We didn't even notice, we thought it was just the design.

J: Yeah. Put them together now.

*K puts magazine and CD together*

J, T: Hahaha

K: By the way, it was the same person who designed both of these.

J, T: Haha

K: When he saw it he was so pained.

T: Its ok, ???*6

J: Ahh, well, it can't be helped though.

*On screen note: Again? (weird voice appears)*

J: Even if there is a spelling mistake, its conveying the atmosphere that is the main thing.

K: Yeah, thats the emphasis.

J: But on the other hand, you could say that as soon as 'Dir' appears, people recognise it as Dir en grey, even with this kind of misspelling. The name is that well know.

T: Hmm, yeh

K: Hm, well, yeh, if you look at it up to here. But for us, its impossible.

J: Well, I guess yeah. It goes for Rolling Stones too. For example, if the last n in Rolling Stones became an m, you wouldn't immediately spot it. If it came up all of a sudden, you would just think 'Ah, the Stones'. It's that kind of name recognition. You could see it in that way. But I didn't know it was the same designer who did it both times.

K: Our boss was pretty mad about it.

J, T: Hahaha

J: Really? I see.

K: He couldn't believe it.

J: Well, yeah. Its also the most important part.

T: Well, yeah, and cause its already in circulation.

J: Yeah. Well, everyone can keep it as a treasure.

K: Where's Kami?

J: Yeah, isn't he here?

Kami: Oh, Im here, I was just listening the whole time. People make mistakes, right?

T: They do.

Kami: This is just a mistake. So its wrong to point blame.

T, J: Yes.

J: Kami, have you made a mistake recently or something?

Kami: Im always making mistakes, and always getting into trouble.

J, T: Haha

Kami: As soon as you've made a mistake, it hurts, right?

T: Yeah, I know that feeling.

Kami: Yeah.

J: Yeah, the person who made the mistake knows it, you don't have to tell them.

T: Yeah, that hurts the most.

Kami: I bet if you made a mistake like this though, you'd get into big trouble.

T, K: Haha

Kami: I think you really would.

T: Well, heh, yeah. But if even Die overlooked this..its like a demon interferred..

J: Yeah, unbelievable.

K: But, anyway, Im taking it in a good way. Well, I mean, it's not good to take just any old thing in a positive way, but....its a bit like those remarks by Mori that we discussed recently.

J: Oh yeah.

K: Like how to move on with it.

J: Yeah, we can learn from that.

K: Yeah.

*Sound cuts out. On screen note: Suddenly, we were unable to record to voices. Was it linked to that sound we heard earlier?*

K: Um, the sound..

J: It seems as if the sound went off.

T: I wonder whether its to do with what we just talked about?

K: What, like, 'Stop this conversation?'

J: Haha, like from ths designer's perspective...'Please stop it!'

T: Haha, yeah, 'Please!'

J: So, what about the Oboro single?

K: So, we're at the last stage, just the mastering, and a little more discussion, and we're about finished. And then the packaging. Well, there's just a little bit longer till the 28th, about another month.

J: Well, Im looking forward to it.

K: Ok, lets finish here for this week. Thank you.

*On screen note: The voice that no-one, including the staff, heard during recording was recorded into the mic data.*

*1,4,5,6 Couldn't catch

*2, 3 Not entirely sure

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#dir en grey #the freedom of expression #tfoe #kaoru #薫

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bjy-on-ao3 · 3 years

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Fic Friday: Helping Hand

(As usual, you can find the AO3 version of all my uploads [and some things I don’t post here to tumblr] via my Masterlist blog page.)

This story feels like fan content-ception to me, as it spawned from some NSFW art I made featuring Izaya, which was made from doodles to start with. Still scheming, but a lot more simple than my other fics with Izaya. Leaving this one a little open-ended in case I came back to it for Izaya returning the favor as he suggested. Not currently decided for sure though. I recently got my first request for Izaya and am brewing that, though it could be some time before I can get something down. It should be pretty fun though and spicier than this. (Note: Apologies for no cut - I am not sure how I add a cut with the new editor :/) Summary Invited over to Izaya’s apartment, Reader arrives too early and interrupts the informant’s alone time. And unfortunately (or fortunately), Izaya has no qualms about asking for a little help. Tags/Warnings Blowjobs, Come Swallowing, Hand Jobs, Oral Sex, Reader-Insert, Shameless Smut

Helping Hand (F! Reader/Izaya Orihara)

Arriving at the non-descript door in the hall of the impressive-looking apartment building, you hesitated. A few quick glances confirmed the numbers by the door matched up with the information listed in your phone’s address book. A few times before you had been to the apartment, but you hadn’t memorized everything about the address. All things considered, it was surprising you weren’t late this time, as you had been each time in the past. Maybe you were improving a little.

You raised a fist and drummed it against the door, starting light and polite. Nothing. You rapped harder. Surely that was loud enough to be heard? Your assumption was disproved when all that met you was silence, leaving you alone still in the hallway. You frowned in frustration and impatience. You knocked a third time, waiting a minute, wondering if he was preoccupied or just enjoying making you wait. When all remained quiet again, your frown deepened.

You looked back down at your phone, silently navigating to the texting feature and typing you a message irritably.

(X:XX PM): I’m here. I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear it.

You didn’t need to wait more than fifteen seconds before your phone buzzed in reply. Two words met your gaze, followed after a moment by a second slightly longer message.

Izaya (X:XX PM): You’re early.

Izaya (X:XX PM): I’m a little busy right now.

You paused, your scowl becoming confusion, and you scrolled back up through the conversation. The log confirmed the time you had been told and the one in the corner of your phone matched. ‘ Early? Right. Don’t tell me Izaya of all people forgot.’

(X:XX PM): I checked and either I’m on time or you screwed up and sent me the wrong time.

Arguing with him wouldn’t do you any good one way or another; Izaya wasn’t one to genuinely apologize for any inconveniences he caused others. But correcting him made you feel a little better and somewhat less cross at least.

Izaya (X:XX PM): Oh, did I?

Izaya (X:XX PM): Well, if you don’t like waiting, you can just come in. Door’s unlocked.

Your face twisted again, now into a skeptical surprise. Izaya just left his door unlocked? Izaya Orihara, the man who had probably as many enemies as he had clients, decided it was smart to let whoever wanted to waltz right in. Yeah, that made sense. You wondered if he enjoyed the excitement of the potential danger.

(X:XX PM): Hardly seems like a good idea for YOU to leave your door unlocked, but whatever.

With a dismissive shrug, you tucked your phone into your pocket and reached for the knob. Pushing it open, you stepped inside quickly and closed it gently behind you. You took a step away before pausing, turning back and locking the door as an afterthought. Izaya could endanger himself all he wanted, but you would rather there be at least some kind of barrier between whatever messy trouble came looking for him.

Walking past the foyer, you expected to see him perched on his chair, clacking noisily away at his keyboard, fixed on the screens of his computers and cellphones or something of the sort. The chair was empty though, turned away from the screens. You scanned the area for the ever-frustrating information broker. Quickly, you noticed him tucked away in the corner of the dark-colored leather section, his back facing you. His head rested against the couch, one long arm lying curled over its back. For someone supposedly busy, Izaya looked pretty relaxed from where you were standing.

“You don’t look real busy to me,” you accused once you spotted him.

Izaya shifted, tilting his head further back to glance over his outstretched arm at you. “Oh, I am, I assure you.” He looked and sounded as collected as ever, as if nothing could or should trouble him. Except… was it just you, or did his face seem a bit red? “But I’ll be just a few minutes. Feel free to wait for me there,” Izaya suggested. There was something off as well about the quality of his voice you couldn’t place.

“Uh huh,” you said, unsure if you felt unsettled or just irritated still. Maybe a little of both.

He had told you to wait, yet your curiosity nagged at you viciously, demanding to see what exactly preoccupied him. Or maybe it was indignation needing to see what was so pressing he couldn’t remember the time he had told you. You took a few steps, intending to round the recessed floor area and the sectional to see what he was doing.

“You really should wait over there,” he warned you casually, the strange tone of his voice sounding stronger, but still indecipherable.

You scoffed, ignoring the warning and carrying on. When you swept around the corner of the area though, what you saw stopped you dead in your tracks, poised on the lip of the steps down. At first the strangled squeak that burst from your mouth didn’t quite register, nor did the immediate hot flush that fell across your face.

Izaya looked very comfortable where he sat, leaning back into the plush cushions. From the top-down, at first he looked perfectly normal, if a little flushed, one of his usual ‘v’-neck shirts tantalizing displaying a bit of his delicate-looking collarbones. Though the picture grew more suspect the further you went. The hem of his shirt was lifted, askew and higher on one side than the other, exposing his lean torso. That wasn’t nearly so scandalous though, as even further down.

He sat nude from the waist down, his pants and belt pooled around his ankles. His cock stood prominently between his splayed legs, a flushed tone to match the rosy tint in cheeks and leaking pre-cum. As if walking on Izaya with his pants literally down wasn’t mortifying enough, one hand was wrapped leisurely around his cock. Obviously he had been in the process of jerking off, and still was, having not bothered to stop even once you had caught him in the act.

What you were looking at hit you all at once, and a stream of half-finished sentences exploded out. “I’I’m sorry, I-- But what are you--? Why would let me come in if that’s what you’re busy doing?! You began in an apologetic voice, though your apology quickly turned to indignation at the fact Izaya’d had plenty of time to put himself away before you came in. Before he invited you, for example, and then before he greeted you.

“Well, I did warn you.” Izaya’s speech held no hint of apology. The shameless, steady stroke of his hand up and down confirmed he was not bothered whatsoever. “Besides, you’re the one who wanted to show up early and be nosy, darling.”

At last you recognized the tone in his voice you hadn’t been able to place before. Something husky and thick, a silky accent to his already smooth voice. You felt stupid not being able to put two-and-two together from his voice and face.

“I’m not early! I-it’s not my fault you told me the wrong time,” you tried to hide the shakiness in your voice with anger, though you knew Izaya was a master at seeing through masks.

You wanted to turn, to look away, but you found yours glued to the sight of him, stunned like a deer in headlights. Maybe it was his audacity that was truly so stunning. I’m just gonna go and come back later,” you ground out through teeth after you tore your eyes away from the enticingly lewd scene.

“Oh? But like I said, I’ll only be a little bit.” You nearly choked again from Izaya’s boldness. He really expected you to just wait around while he jacked off like it was nothing? For someone who claimed to love humans and all their emotions and behaviors so much, you really wondered how much he really understood them sometimes. “You know, if you wanted to lend a hand, it might be even sooner.”

You made another embarrassing noise, your eyes snapping back around and fixing on his own. The expression in his sharp brown eyes told you he wasn’t just you or making some inappropriate joke, not completely. Izaya was dead serious suggesting you ‘lend him a hand’ with his current ‘business’. You should have been mad. You should have been uncomfortable. You should have walked away then. But something else was creeping up and up, suppressing what you should have done, leaving behind the sense that you didn’t quite hate the idea.

You weren’t ready to give in completely, though, not yet. “Was that your plan when you invited me over?” You tried to deflect once more, but your angry speech was half-hearted.

He gave a small shrug, still languorously pumping his hand up and down, smearing a new bead of pre-cum along the head of his dick. You licked your lips, and you weren’t sure whether it was from nerves or hunger. “Who knows? Maybe, maybe not.” Of course Izaya would give you a nonsense answered that told you nothing.

“Can you just put your pants on, please?” You tried weakly, a last ditch effort to squish down the hot feeling suffusing you and to call his bluff. But Izaya wouldn’t be moved.

“Weren’t you leaving though?” He questioned calmly. “So why should I? Then I can’t take care of this.” You groaned mentally at his ‘logic’ that amounted to his typical games. “So, what’s stopping you?”

You didn’t speak, listening only to the slick sound of Izaya stroking himself, as if trying to come up with an appropriate excuse. But there was none. You were still there because you wanted to be. You sputtered some nonsense at first, before sighing in defeat.

“I...I just… fine,” you mumbled, unable to meet his cutting gaze when you agreed.

He didn’t seem bothered or surprised by your admission, and when you looked back up, he was smirking widely, as if he had expected you to crumble and play right into his hands. “Well, what are you waiting for then?”

You nearly scowled at the impatience of the question, but shook your head. You approached quickly, stopping once you stood in front of him. You licked your lips again and swallowed thickly, kneeling between his legs. Up close and personal with his cock, it you for real the favor you had submitted yourself to. It made your stomach twist in a way that was pleasantly hot, but with a nervous flutter. But even if he would probably let you, there was no back down now. You had dug your hole and you intended to stay in it.

Feeling Izaya’s eyes burning down onto you, you lifted a hand tentatively, more intimidated than you would have admitted. You nearly jumped when the hand he had been pleasuring himself with seized yours. Your face was on fire as he guided your hand over his shaft, helping you wrap it around the heated skin. He made a small sound in the back of his throat at the contact, his palm lingering over your hand. Gingerly, you shifted your hand up and down, mimicking him, the skin hot and velvety under your fingers.

“There, just like that,” Izaya cooed, his hips rocking up into your touch. His hand left yours to bury itself in the cushion beside him.

You chanced a subtle glance up, past his exposed torso and up his chest. His head lolled back against the sofa back, and his chest rose and fell deeply in more noticeable, pleasured breaths as you stroked. He seemed more than willing to sit back and fully indulge in your touch, apparently a far more exhilarating experience than his own.

“What a good girl,” he praised as your grip tightened you pumped his cock more surely, enjoying the noises that vibrated up his chest. They were low and smooth, containing all the richness of his speaking voice, yet none of the frustrating teasing or condescension. “Mmph, a little hard, don’t be shy,” he coaxed, giving a particularly eager buck of his hips, a new drop of pre-cum beading on the head of his dick.

You did as instructed, and the sound of his breathing deepened more, the small, pleasant sounds morphing into longer, bawdy groans. “How’s that?” you prompted, the confidence from watching him come slowly undone steadying your voice, the sheer arousal in it surprising you.

“Mm, good, keep going.”

You stuck to the steady rhythm you had set, your tongue wetting suddenly dry lips again as you alternated between watching Izaya’s blissful form above you and his throbbing cock in front of you. You moved your idle hand up, cradling his balls in your palm and rubbing gently, rewarded with even more erotic noises. You weren’t sure whether you were more turned on by the eroticism of the sounds themselves, or the fact you were hardly ever heard Izaya sound so unrestrained.

Your gaze stopped, lingering on his cock, and you decided if you were going to help out, you may as well have a little more fun, as well as satisfy the hunger building in you. You bent forward, your breath fanning over the head hotly, and you barely caught a shiver roll through Izaya. You leaned closer, opening your mouth and licking coyly at the flushed head, the bitter taste of pre-cum flooding your senses.

“ Oh .” The word was surprised, excited almost, made even more so by the breathiness that carried it. “I didn’t even have to ask you to do that.” Your faced burned with embarrassment you fought to ignore, letting your lips wrap around the head, swirling your tongue along the underside. “More eager than you let on, I see. But I’m not complaining.”

Izaya relaxed more limply against the cushions, save for the rhythmic roll of his hips meeting the hot, wet touch of your mouth. You sank down on his cock more, slowly, trying to account for the motion of his hips to not choke yourself on his length. Fortunately, though it was steady, his pace was languid, letting you adjust easily. You took as much as you could without inciting your gag reflex, shifting between dancing your tongue along his skin or pressing flat against the underside or teasing the head where it connected to his shaft.

Above you, Izaya’s dulcet chorus of groans and mumbled words escalated and his fingers met the top of your head. They curled loosely, massaging methodically, neither forcing you down or adjust to a new pace.

“Hmm, and they say I’ve got a talented tongue,” Izaya hummed huskily and you couldn’t stifle a low moan in answer, the sound shooting through Izaya and making his hips stutter. “Sure seems like you know to use yours though,” he praised again, and you could make out the teasing tone you were so used to among his lusty, strained voice.

Izaya fell silent for a time, or at least he fell wordless, panting and groaning his pleasure, the sounds accentuated by the wet noises you made while you sucked him off. But Izaya’s was a mouth that couldn’t stand staying silent for long. “You can take a little more, can’t you?” He asked insistently, his fingers tightening their loose hold. He thrust his hips more roughly into your mouth as you sank down again, as if punctuating his question.

Tears stung at your eyes for an instant as the tip of his dick touched your throat and you inhaled deeply to relax it. You took in even more of his cock, noticing the roll of his hips slow, as if accommodating you to take his length more easily. When you pulled back, his hand only let you go so far, effectively keeping you from pulling away. You indulged him, satisfied with the even more ragged breaths replacing his words and more of the salty fluid leaking from him.

Your jaw was beginning to ache, but you ached elsewhere as well, and it urged you to continue. With your mouth wrapped around him so intimately, you could tell Izaya was getting very close to cumming, from the increasing cant of his hips to the harsh pitch of his breath to the way his cock twitched, even more hard.

“Mm, that’s it. Almost there.” Izaya confirmed your suspicions, the lustiness of his tone adding to the urgency. “If you don’t want a mouthful, you might want to stop,” he warned you, surprisingly considerate in the moment.

Your eyes flickered up, but you didn’t stop, trying to hum your acknowledgement around a mouthful of his dick, working him even more eagerly.

“Oh, shit, you’re more obscene than I thought. If that’s how you want it,” His excitement pierced his arousal again, as if he hadn’t expected you to be so wrapped up in servicing him.

Thrusting into your mouth more desperately, his hips finally stuttered as he finished, filling your mouth with hot ropes of thick that you swallowed as soon as the bitter taste swept over your tongue. Several especially long, feral moans drifted from Izaya’s lips as you drank him down, until at last he was spent and there was nothing left for you to swallow. You drew away, wiping a smear of drool and some stray cum from your mouth with the back of your hand and resting back on your knees.

“There, that’s taken care of,” you said, your attempt to sound level and collected ruined by your own arousal making your voice overly breathy. “Now did you actually have a reason for inviting me over?”

Izaya laughed breathlessly, as if amused by your change of pace, lying boneless against the sectional. “Of course, my dear,” he answered when his laughter died, tipping his head forward to look at you. “I wouldn’t lie to your like that. Though, if you’d like, I can return the favor. It sounds like you need it.”

#izaya orihara #durarara!!#writing #fanfiction #ao3 #archive of our own #reader-insert #fic friday #nsft #n/s/f/w/#drrr!!

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dyxnamicart · 5 years

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my stupid highschool oneshot thing

look im not a writer, (I used to be when I was fourteen, haven’t done it since then so ya know, you dont use it you lose it lmao)

Anyways this has been highly requested that I post it, im a bit mad because its not exactly how I wish their dynamic was, I’m not great at writing banter (or anything i’m an artist now plewse) but ya know Also DISCLAIMER: This is a piece of fiction, it in no way reflects real life Dan and Phil (In fact my au switches up their personalities a fair bit) and do not tag them okAY P E O P L E They dont wanna see it and I dont want them to see it (Even if this isnt a particularly shippy piece lmao people are getting very angsty as of late) I also don’t have an editor so sorry for any mistakes Anyway here ya go heathens

Dan didn’t notice the opposing teams jock barrelling towards him, not until his leg had swept under his own, causing him to fly through the air, ball no longer in his possession.

In fact it all flew by in a matter of seconds. Dan didn’t really have time to process exactly what was happening until he felt the shock of pain that travelled up his wrist and down his arm as he landed heavily onto it, crying out as he rolled once or twice before coming to a stop… He couldn’t really tell. There was a whistle blow, but the bustling around him seemed dull in comparison to the loudness of the pain in his wrist.

He hissed as he was righted, pulled up and put steadily on his feet, being ushered to the benches, it only felt like five minutes before the game was back on course, bar Dan to be left on the sides, a few claps on the back from his teammates as he let his head come down from the spinning it was doing.

The nurse on staff did a pretty shoddy job of bandaging, but to her credit she did ask if he wanted an ambulance. If his dad knew an ambulance was called because he hurt his wrist... he didn’t even want to imagine the searing look of disappointment he would receive.

So he just declined.

The game was one of the final ones of the season, they were playing against the local private school, which had a surprisingly amount of suspiciously beefed up kids, though with private school money Dan wasn’t surprised they probably had some ins with the law and extra ‘help’.

He really wanted to play in the final, in fact his coach had even been considering him for the team, not that Dan was amazing at football, but he wasn’t the worst. He was passable at best, probably why his parents weren’t here right now to witness the semi, something he supposes he should be counting his lucky stars for now he had an injury as mediocre as a sprained wrist, but now there was a nagging pull in his gut of his own disappointment.

He waited out the game on the bench, figuring he should at least be there for his team for the results, even with a sprained wrist he didn’t want to run away without at least talking to a few of his mates afterwards.

Phil didn’t see the tumble.

He was perched up in the bleachers, trying to ignore the way the mild and darkening sky had began to stew whipping winds that tore right through the threads in his sweater, by sketching insurmountable things he could see.

He didn’t usually go to games, not only was it not his scene, but he would either end up insanely bored or find his eyes following Dan Howell’s god damn limber body. But this was the semis, and he totally wasn’t here to occasionally glance at a certain panting number 91, he at least wanted to show his support for the school. It wasn’t his fault this game was boring and his sketchbook looked far more inviting.

He only looked up when there was a big murmur and gasps coming from the crowd around him, and he couldn’t see who it was at first, but there was a boy sprawled on the ground.

It didn’t take long to figure out it was Dan, and his eyebrows furrowed deeply, closing his sketchbook and shoving it into his bag. He ended up walking down a few rows in the bleachers, just trying to see if the daft idiot was okay, and he sat down again much closer. The nurse did an awful job at bandaging his hand, he could see that from here, and he would have to fix it after the game. Well.. he didn’t have to, of course, but he figured Howell was too much of an airhead to fix it properly and as much as the other grated on him he at least wanted him to be comfortable.

When it came to the end of the game, Phil’s school lost, and there was a brief celebration for the other school as they paraded off the field, while Dan’s team just huddled around to talk to the coach and then walk to the locker rooms, obviously trying to act casual even if they had essentially just been eliminated from the finals.

Looking around, a lot of the families and students were milling out, many of them disappointed by the outcome of the game.

This was their star team, and there had been a surprisingly large turnout for the event, to have it all end this anticlimactically felt a bit wrong, if he was being honest, even if sports definitely weren’t his thing.

Phil headed down towards the locker rooms, some of the boys were already heading out, chatting and bumping into each other as they walked. Boys were talking, over half of them shirtless. He tried to avoid looking at them, while Phil had come to terms with his sexuality internally, he wasn’t out to his school, despite the obvious digs lots of the jocks and ‘cool kids’ would make. He wasn’t exactly subtle.

Dan hadn’t noticed him, he was sitting on a bench and chatting to a teammate, but some of the boys closer to the entrance had.

“Ay! It’s Danny’s little bitch, what’s new Lester?” A boy Phil knew as Jason laughed, throwing an arm around his shoulders, leaning heavily on him.

Phil grunted, and shoved him off. “I’m not anyone’s bitch. Especially not Howell’s.”

There was an ‘oo’ that rippled through the boys, and it was safe to say that Dan had noticed him. He furrowed his eyebrows, and stood up.

“A teacher told me to help Dan.. carry his stuff with his hand like that.” He faltered off, because that half baked excuse really did make him sound like someone’s bitch. But by this point people were beginning to lose interest and ended up either packing up to leave or going back to chatting amongst themselves about a hot girl or something Phil honestly couldn’t care less about.

Phil walked towards Dan, throwing on a mastered look of indifference and annoyance.

“What are you doing back here?” The brunette sighed deeply, running his good hand through his hair. “As if I don’t already get clowned on enough from seeing you during actual school hours.” He said dryly.

Phil rolled his eyes. “I saw that sad excuse for a nurse ‘wrap’ your hand. I’ve seen children under the age of 4 wrap toilet paper around themselves better.”

Dan groaned as he fell back to his sitting position on the bench. “Good deed Lester huh? You aren’t a guardian angel you know.”

“Are you going to turn down actual help with that wrist, Howell. Seriously.” He dropped his bag on the ground, and knelt down, ignoring the few whistles he got from the people still in the room.

Dan rolled his eyes as he looked down at Phil, arched eyebrow and holding his injured wrist with his hand, like he didn’t trust him. “Fine.” He sighed, setting his hand down on his leg, looking down at Phil with a suspicious and unless he was imagining it, flushed face.

Phil carefully lifted the brunettes injured hand, frowning at the small pang of guilt he felt when Dan hissed in a sharp breath, quiet, as if being a little louder would shatter his reputation in one fell swoop.

By now the locker room had basically emptied out, Dan’s mates sauntered away, hefting their heavy gym bags over their shoulders as their voices echoed down the hallway and slowly faded into the cool night air.

Dan and Phil sat in silence for a few moments as Phil examined the bandage. Dan seemed to relax a little, and he allowed the feeling of calm to wash over them now there was no eyes examining their every move. The indifference and hostility seemed to drain from the air.

He didn’t know if it was the late night game or the lack of people, but he felt as though he was back before highschool, back before their fall out. Before their life became a series of quips and tension seeping into the fond memories he once had for the boy in front of him.

“Why do you play, when you end up hurting yourself like this?” His question was genuine, none of the concealed fire that was usually behind his voice when he talked to Dan.

Phil used his other hand to unroll the bandage. He had seen the first aid kit it came from, the contents being the single bandage, two band aids and a single cotton swab. Not the most ideal for a sport like this, hands on and physical, but their school wasn’t really known for their state of the art resources.

Dan looked unsure of whether or not he should give a witty response or answer seriously. In the end he seemed too exhausted to spit out a clever one liner. So he opted for the truth.

“I don’t know..” Dan huffed a breath out of his nose, like he was out of practice with talking about his emotions. “The guys are cool.. people like a jock you know?” He pauses for a moment, like he was struggling with whether or not he wanted to continue. “And I kind of want my dad to be proud of me? You know my dad. I want him to think.. I’m one of the lads. One of the boys.. not a royal screw up son.” He snorted, good hand rubbing the back of his neck like he was trying to play off his words as ridiculous.

But Phil didn’t laugh.

“Proud of you?” He repeated, slightly quieter as he slowly started to wind the bandage around Dan’s stiff wrist.

Dan shrugged, looking away and seemingly focusing on a spot far across the room, like he was trying to be anywhere but here, talking to a friend who had been distanced by time and change.

But Phil remembers, he remembers his curly brown hair bouncing around when he was excited, when he was jumping around playing cops and robbers, he remembers his loud and boisterous laugh and the way his cheeks dimpled and filled with colour. He remembers a time when he knew the boy in front of him more then he knew anyone in the world. When he thought Dan was his forever friend and that nothing would ever change that.

Guess something changed.

“You know I’m proud of you,” He continued, not looking up from bandaging. He could feel Dan’s eyes on him now, he could feel the incredulous and doubtful eyes bore into his skin, see into his soul. He didn’t seem to have expected an actual answer in response. “I’m proud of you when I see you play piano. When I see your eyes light up and when you lose yourself in the keys. When you recite dumb Shakespearen poetry and when you are on stage commanding the spotlight, when the only person who matters is you. That’s what I’m proud of. That’s what makes me think, THIS is Dan Howell. THIS is who he is meant to be. Not a shallow jock with a sharp tongue and attitude. I’m proud of the real you.”

He clipped the bandage pin on the end of the roll, now safely locked on Dan’s wrist, and he went to pull his hand away but was stopped by a hand placed over his.

Dan’s eyes were how he remembered, not in way they were for the past two years, glazed over as he tried to cram his way into a puzzle he didn’t fit into, but filled with an unfathomable tenderness and something he couldn’t quite put his finger on

They didn’t need to exchange words, the soft smile Dan gave him spoke a thousand words, making up for time that felt lost before now.

He stood up, finally dropping Phil’s hand and grabbing his jacket off the bench. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

Their silence was welcoming as they walked down the hall towards the exit. The last few years had been full of quips and jabs, fast insults and banter that sometimes toed the line as not quite friendly. This silence, it was new, but it felt right. Dan couldn’t quite understand, but there was a shift that felt comfortable.

Dan had known Phil a long time, longer then anyone in this god forsaken school. He was quiet and reserved and he enjoyed painting and drawing. He was creative, and he didn’t care what people thought of him. He was unapologetically himself, and that was something that he only wished he could be.

For the longest time it was him and Phil. Dan and Phil against the world, playing Mario cart and watching shitty movies, always at each other’s houses like they belonged together.

Then high school happened.

The desire to fit in hit Dan like a ton of bricks. While Phil was content to remain a Mario kart loving geek, Dan couldn’t stand being the butt of the joke. He couldn’t stand his dad being disappointed whenever he brought Phil home to do something nerdy. As the years went by it became a sort of crutch for him and Phil to make snide remarks at each other as they passed in the halls, glaring across the halls and that’s how it stayed.

Don’t get him wrong, he loved to see Phil riled up. He loved to see his eyebrows furrow together and his eyes roll. His arms crossed and his posture unimpressed. If anything that was his favourite part, the way his voice flooded with heat and passion, as he stared at him with the intensity of a bonfire. He loved to tease him and play his surprisingly short temper like a fiddle.

But he wasn’t attracted to him. No way. Phil wasn’t a pretty girl. He did NOT find his eyes pretty and the way his hair sometimes fell into his eyes and his hands didn’t itch to run his hands through it.

He was straight. He had to be.

His heart dropped a little, and he couldn’t explain why, but he looked over at Phil, who was walking beside him.

They were outside now, and it was raining, not too heavily but enough to get you fairly wet. Despite the fact Phil was wearing a sweater and long overalls, he could see him shiver, the fabric of the sweater probably allowed the biting wind to nip tight through it.

He shrugged off his jacket, and gently wrapped it around Phil’s shoulders, forcing them to stop momentarily. The street light cast a soft light over them, and his eyes met the other boys, and for a moment they stared at each other, Dan watching as raindrop followed the contours of Phil’s face, a drop following his cheekbone and the slope of his jaw.

He coughed, rubbing the back of his neck again as he started walking. “Okay okay, lets get you home, Lester.”

“Are you sure you aren’t cold?” Phil enquires inquisitively as he sped walked a bit to catch up with him.

He shrugged. “Still running on adrenaline I guess.” It was a lie, he was slightly cold. But it felt right, and he continued to walk with him in silence.

Phil was holding the jacket around himself as they approached his house, and they stopped just under the porch, the light flickering on to illuminate his face.

Dan stuffed his good hand in his pocket, and he clicked his tongue as Phil went to shrug off the jacket to give back. “Nah, wash it first, don’t want your nerd germs on my clothes.” Despite the insult, he found himself smiling warmly, and Phil too just chuckled.

“Alright, I’ll give it to you on Monday or something, Howell.”

Dan saluted as he turned to walk away, and he could feel Phil staring through his back as he walked back into the rain. They were only a street apart, but he knew that was going to be one long walk.

#mine #stick to drawing Hayley u idiot #ur right i should #but this only spawned at like 2am so im sorry #highschool au

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entrepreneursbloguk · 5 years

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Entrepreneur Quotes (99 Inspirational Quotes)

Being an entrepreneur is a journey, it can be challenging, frustrating, rewarding, disappointing and exhilarating. Here are 99 inspirational quotes for entrepreneurs. These inspirational quotes that will help you keep motivated along your entrepreneurial journey.

1. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.–Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple

2. “Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” –Confucius, Philosopher

3. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” –Albert Einstein, Physicist

4. “Stay self-funded as long as possible.” –Garrett Camp, Co-Founder of Uber

5. “If you are going through hell, keep going.” –Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

6. “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.” –Michelangelo, Artist

7. “Business opportunities are like buses: there’s always another one coming.” –Richard Branson, Chairman and Founder of Virgin Group

8. “Done is better than perfect.” –Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

9. “Any time is a good time to start a company.” -Ron Conway, noted Startup Investor, SV Angel

10. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” –Tony Robbins, Motivational Speaker

11. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” –Socrates, Greek Philosopher

12. “If you want to build a successful business, make sure you have three things—a big market opportunity, great people, and more than enough capital.” -Richard Harroch, Venture Capitalist, Author, and Entrepreneur

13. “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” -Vince Lombardi, Famed Football Coach

14. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”-Mark Twain, Writer

15. “Everyone has an idea, but it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you with the idea.” –Jack Dorsey, Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Twitter

16. “It’s not about money or connections. It’s the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone when it comes to your business. And if it fails, you learn from what happened and do a better job next time.” -Mark Cuban, Entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” Judge

17. “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.” –Seth Godin, Author

18. “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’” -Dave Barry, Humorist

19. “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.” -Ted Turner, Entrepreneur and Businessman

20. “The price of inaction is far greater than then cost of a mistake.” -Meg Whitman, CEO of HP

21. “If Plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters.” -Claire Cook, Author

23. “If you had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” -Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company

24. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” –Thomas Edison, Inventor

25. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” –Muhammad Ali, Boxing Champion

26. “Never tell your problems to anyone … 20 percent don’t care and the other 80 percent are glad you have them.” -Lou Holtz, Football Coach

27. “You can have everything you want in life if you just help enough people get what they want in life.” -Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker

28. “There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don’t like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause the company to succeed. I don’t spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities.” –Michael Dell, Founder of Dell Computer

29. “100 percent of the shots you don’t take, don’t go in.” -Wayne Gretzky, Hockey Legend

30. “Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.” -Dale Carnegie, Author and Motivational Speaker

31. “Make your team feel respected, empowered, and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.” -Tim Westergen, Founder of Pandora

32. “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.” -Seth Godin, Author

33. “You must put your head into the lion’s mouth if the performance is to be a success.” -Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

34. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” -George S. Patton, U.S. General

35. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” -Albert Einstein, Physicist

36. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” -Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

37. “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” -John Maxwell, Motivational Speaker and Author

38. “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.” -Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist and Philanthropist

39. “Screw it, let’s do it.” -Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group

40. “There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” -Aristotle, Greek Philosopher and Scientist

41. “If you are offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.” -Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

42. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” -Albert Einstein, Physicist

43. “If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” -Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker

44. “Goals aren’t enough. You need goals plus deadlines: goals big enough to get excited about and deadline to make you run. One isn’t much good without the other, but together they can be tremendous.” -Ben Feldman, Actor

45.“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States

46. “Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.” -Jerry Rice, Legendary Wide Receiver for the San Francisco 49ers

47. “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” –Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

48. “If you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.” –Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook

49. “If you’ve got an idea, start today. There’s no better time than now to get going. That doesn’t mean quit your job and jump into your idea 100 percent from day one, but there’s always small progress that can be made to start the movement.” -Kevin Systrom, Founder of Instagram

50. “Research indicates that workers have three prime needs: interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.” -Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker

51. “Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.” –Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

52. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” –Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder

53. “Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.” -Albert Einstein, Physicist

54. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou, Author and Poet

55. “Whatever you do, be different—that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.” –Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop

56. “Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese.” -Billie Burke, Actress

57. “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.” –Bruce Lee, Martial Arts Expert

58. “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars; I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” –Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

59. “The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.” –Oprah Winfrey, Entertainer and Entrepreneur

60. “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” -Steve Martin, Comedian and Actor

61. “Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.” -Conan O’Brien, Talk Show Host

“When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there.” –Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple

63. “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” -Donald Porter, British Airways

64. “Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.” -Samuel Johnson, Writer and Editor

65. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” -Jack Welch, Former CEO of GE

66. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations.” -Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple

67. “Social media is here. It’s not going away; not a passing fad. Be where your customers are: in social media.” -Lori Ruff, Chief Brand Evangelist

68. “People want to do business with you because you help them get what they want. They don’t do business with you to help you get what you want.” -Don Crowther, Social Media Expert

69. “Always deliver more than expected.” –Larry Page, Co-Founder of Google

70. “You must be very patient, very persistent. The world isn’t going to shower gold coins on you just because you have a good idea. You’re going to have to work like crazy to bring that idea to the attention of people. They’re not going to buy it unless they know about it.” -Herb Kelleher, Founder of Southwest Airlines

71. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” -Mark Twain, Author

72. “Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.” –Brian Tracy, Entrepreneur and Author

73. “Do an evening review at the end of the day to reflect on what went well, and what you’d do differently next time.” -Marilyn Suttle, Author

74. “Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.” -Marian Wright Edelman, Activist

75. “You must take the time to do something that brings you joy. If you are saying to yourself, ‘I can’t do that because I have to pick up the kids, and run my business, and … and … who’s got time for fun? Are you insane?’ If you don’t have time for fun, you’ll be forced to take time for illness. Then what?” -Beth Ramsay, Author

76. “In business, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.” -Anonymous

77. “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” -Colin Powell, U.S. General

78. “The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” -Nolan Bushnell, Entrepreneur

79. “You are what you think. So just think big, believe big, act big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, love big, and live big.” -Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist and Philanthropist

80. “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” -Yoda, Star Wars

81. “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” -Woody Allen, Actor and Director

82. “Business is like poker. You have to be able to read people. You have to understand the odds of a particular endeavor. You need to make calculated bets. And you have to get lucky.” -Richard Harroch, Venture Capitalist and Co-Author of Poker for Dummies

83. “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” -Charles R. Swindoll, Author

84. “What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Iterate. Fail. Try again. Change the world.” -Simon Sinek, Author

85. “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack.” -Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister

86. “Even a correct decision is wrong when it was taken too late.” -Lee Iacocca, Former CEO of Chrysler

88. “Don’t wait for perfection. Life isn’t perfect. Do the best you can and ship. Real people ship, and then they test and then they ship again. Then you wake up one day and you have something insanely great.” –Guy Kawasaki, Entrepreneur

87. “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. President

89. “Success … is no longer a simple ascension of steps. You need to climb sideways and sometimes down, and sometimes you need to swing from the jungle gym and establish your own turf somewhere else on the playground.” -Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

90. “Be nice to geeks; you’ll probably end up working for one.” –Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft

91. “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.” -Thomas Edison, Inventor

92. “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.” -Napoleon Bonaparte, Military Leader

93. “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” -Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple

94. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” -Albert Einstein, Physicist

95. “Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.” -Jim Rohn, Entrepreneur, Author, and Motivational Speaker

96. “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are asking, what’s in it for me?” -Brian Tracy, Entrepreneur and Author

97. “When you’re first thinking through an idea, it’s important not to get bogged down in complexity. Thinking simply and clearly is hard to do.” -Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group

98. “Behind every adversity is an opportunity. If you lament over the adversity, you will miss the opportunity.” -Ajaero Tony Martins, Entrepreneur and Investor

99. “What business should you start today? One that you are passionate about, has a big market opportunity, can be up and running quickly, and that doesn’t require a lot of initial capital. Think Internet, apps, e-commerce, and mobile.” -Richard Harroch, Venture Capitalist, Author, and Entrepreneur

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icechuksblog · 4 years

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The Nigerian literary community is currently engulfed in controversy over the sack of the Deputy Editor of Brittle Paper, Otosirieze Obi-Young, resulting from an article he wrote addressing Hadiza Elrufai's reaction when her son threatened to "pass" someone's mother around to his friends. On Sunday, April 12, Bello El-Rufai, in a series of tweets, had threatened to "pass" the mother of another Twitter user to his friends after describing the woman as a "whore." Bello wrote in a private message to the follower after they argued about politics: "Tell your mother I’m passing her to my friends tonight." "No Igbo sounds please!" Bello El-Rufai added an ethnic attack, having thought the Twitter user was Igbo. Twitter users were incensed by this and they tagged Bello's mother, Hadiza El-Rufai to tweets about her son's threat to gang rape someone's mother. Hadiza El-Rufai responded: "All you people talking about @B_ELRUFAI Don’t @ me. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. "All is fair in love and war. My belief: Respect everyone, but take no shit from anyone. I didn't see any threats of rape. I would never condone that." Her response attracted criticisms from Nigerians who accused her of supporting her son's rape threats. She later issued an apology, stating: "When I posted the tweet below, I assumed it was just the usual Twitter gbas-gbos. Having read the tweets chronologically, I have had conversations with Bello. Never ever should sexual abuse be employed as ammunition in public/private exchanges, no matter the provocation." Deputy Editor of Brittle Paper, Otosirieze Obi-Young wrote an article condemning Hadiza El-Rufai for her tweet supporting her son and it was published on the Brittle Paper platform. However, the article titled "Novelist, Feminist & Kaduna First Lady, Hadiza El-Rufai, says all is fair in love and war after son’s gang-rape threat draws backlash" was pulled down from the platform on April 14 and Brittle Paper released a statement saying that the article was pulled down because it did not meet the editorial standard. On April 15, Otosirieze revealed that he woke up to see that he had been logged out from all Brittle Paper accounts. He added in the lengthy statement that he had been fired from BP where he worked for 4 years. Otosirieze said that despite editing the article as Aniehi instructed she still called him and informed him that she was pulling down the whole article completely and fired him from his position. He wrote: "The Founder called me and expressed concerns about my criticism of a Nigerian newspaper in it and the informal and strongly worded tone addressing said novelist. I edited the post, removing the relevant sections. "The Founder called back a few minutes later and said she wanted to take down the report. That was unacceptable to me. I saw no reason why my post-publication edits, which removed my opinion and restricted it to reportage, were not enough. "I saw no reason why her concern about my lack of objectivity was not something that could be fixed by her own edits or rewriting. So I cut short the conversation: I said I no longer wished to discuss this report, that she should take it down if she wanted." He added that he was then fired without reason. He continued: "Removing me from Brittle Paper is part of the political agenda to subsume Nigerian literature and make it difficult to be an honest writer here. Their takeover is now complete." Otosirieze's statement had a far-reaching effect as Nigerian writers took to various platforms to call out Brittle Paper, known to be one of Africa’s leading literary platforms that encourages writers to express themselves freely. They accused BP of silencing and censoring writers in Nigeria. Nigerian writers then indicated that they were boycotting Brittle Paper and some asked that their articles published on the platform be pulled down. Chibuihe Obi, a contributor to Brittle Paper who also won the platform’s anniversary award, also released a statement stating that he was rescinding the award BP gave him and asked that his works be pulled down from the platform. "I am publicly rescinding the award Brittle Paper gave me in 2017 and will forthwith return the cash that came with the prize. i have written to ainehi edoro to demand that my works be pulled from their site." Chibuihe wrote on Facebook. US-based Nigerian literary critique, Pa Ikhide Roland Ikheloa, also condemned BP, writing: "?Let me suggest this to readers of conscience: Boycott Brittle Paper until its “high” editorial standards stand up for justice and the truth, and do not coddle despots, genocide enablers and rapists. Do not read Brittle Paper until it apologizes for protecting thugs like Elrufai.?" Elnathan John, author of Born on a Tuesday, who once wrote that some members of the Nigerian literary community have been bought over by the Kaduna State Government, also condemned Brittle Paper, writing: "My final word on Brittle Paper shame... In the words of Lagos philosopher Brymo: Person wey befriend rat e go chop shit." A number of other people also called out the platform, leading the publisher of BP to respond. Ainehi Edoro, who is the founder/publisher of Brittle Paper explained in her statement that Otosirieze flouted editorial guidelines of the company "and was unwilling to make changes in the report." She said her problem with Otosirieze's article was that she "found the title inflammatory and unnecessarily incendiary". She added that the report seemed fine "until I got to the last paragraph. It was then that alarms rang in my mind." She said Otosirieze's last paragraph which "did not only sound strong but also criticised other Nigerian papers." The last paragraph of the article in question reads: Interestingly, four hours after backlash began to her response, an article appeared on ThisDay titled “Endearing Qualities of Kaduna First Lady, Hadiza El Rufai.” It is exactly as shabbily-written as you would expect of a hastily assembled, face-washing gimmick. But it is not as unintelligent as the one on OperaNews. There must be a name for this feminism whose reply to “Tell your mother I’m passing her to my friends tonight” is “I didn’t see any threats of rape.” A feminism that agrees to raise men to be better but says “All is fair in love and war” when their ethnic-bigoted men-children threaten violence on women’s bodies. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Do better. Ainehi wrote in her statement: "It was not clear why he was accusing two Nigerian newspapers of writing “hastily assembled, face-washing gimmick” and another of being “unintelligent”. And why was the diatribe “shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!” being used in what should have been a plain reportage of facts and written statements and tweets? It seemed to be histrionic, inflammatory, even melodramatic and totally not in keeping with the seriousness of the matter he was addressing. "I felt, and feel, Otosirieze’s outrage. I am both a woman and the mother of a daughter. Suggesting that a woman should be sexually assaulted is unconscionable and needs a hard and swift response. But in condemning such statements, it is important that we ourselves do not stoop to the level of those making them. It is important that we do not abandon completely all principles and ethics in how we write." She also faulted the use of "gang rape" in the title where she said, something like "lewd comments" would have sufficed. She explained that Otosirieze agreed to delete the last paragraph but "he refused to change the headline – which led to the misunderstanding." She added: "Unfortunately, this all occurred at a time I had to prepare time sensitive lectures for my students, and without sufficient time to edit the post. The time difference between Nigeria and the U.S. also left me with little time to act quickly, so I pulled the post down as the exigent thing to do." She also revealed that "the ex-Deputy Editor hung up the phone when she attempted to have a conversation." She further stated that contrary to public opinion, Brittle Paper has never been funded by the Kaduna State Government. Ainehi Edoro's statement further divided members of the Nigerian literary community as some took sides with Ainehi, accusing Otosirieze of trying to spoil the company's name while some said Ainehi's comment doesn't add up and that she could easily have edited the parts of the headline she had a problem with and left the article up. @KateCHampton tweeted in support if Ainehi: "This cancel culture is getting completely out of control. Trying to bring down a respected publication with YEARS of proved integrity based on hearsay of one angry bro trying to call a professional, intellectual woman a gang rape apologist? Pls. If that's not sexism, what is?? "She made the only responsible choice in that situation and he still managing to screw her. Imagine if he'd begun this vendetta and still had access to their site and accounts? I've seen too many toxic 'feminist' men in literary communities to buy any of what he's serving." While writer Sally Kenneth Dadzie took Otosirieze's side, writing: "Ainehi saying that she didn't have time to edit the title of the article makes no sense to me. How many seconds would it have taken her to erase the part she claimed was problematic and insert a more appropriate title she was certain would have sufficed?" She added: "Clearly, @ainehiedoro you were the one who didn't want to be reasonable. How did you go from having a difference of opinions to logging your editor out of @brittlepaper? How did that happen so fast? You couldn't even call, text or email. No notice? Haba! You messed up." Otosirieze took to Facebook amid the controversy to issue another statement after Ainehi's response. He wrote: "When you speak truth to power, when you dare refuse to be compromised, there will be consequences. You will be maligned, marked to be destroyed. You will be up against all their machinery, all lies to deceive the public. But if you can afford it, please stay true to yourself. Nothing is better than waking up with your dignity intact, being true to yourself. It is the foundation for a happy life. "Remember what was said and what was done. Remember who did. In time, the truth will shine."

http://icechuks2.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-article-about-elrufais-wifes.html

#http://icechuks2.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-article-about-elrufais-wifes.html How an article about Elr

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meleloomis1983-blog · 4 years

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Opinion | How Screwed Up Is American Democracy?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device:

Apple Podcasts | RadioPublic | Stitcher | Spotify | Google Play

In the latest episode of the Opinion podcast, “The Argument,” the columnists debate just how rotten America’s democratic system has become and how it could be fixed. David Leonhardt chastises Republican attempts to suppress voter turnout in North Dakota and Georgia. Ross Douthat thinks voter suppression — like voter fraud — has little effect on who wins. Instant Cash Loans And Michelle Goldberg ticks off Republicans’ other electoral advantages, like gerrymandering and the Senate.

Then, Ross challenges his colleagues to think about the midterm elections outside the partisan box. Finally, Michelle recommends your next feel-good, left-leaning political binge-watch: CBS All Access’s “The Good Fight. CHECK24 | Das Vergleichsportal ”

Credit...David Maung/Epa-Efe, via Rex, via Shutterstock, via David Maung, via Epa-Efe, via Rex, via ShutterstockRoss Douthat

I’ve been an Op-Ed columnist since 2009, and I write about politics, religion, pop culture, sociology and the places where they all intersect. I’m a Catholic and a conservative, in that order, which means that I’m against abortion and critical of the sexual revolution, but I tend to agree with liberals that the Republican Party is too friendly to the rich. I was against Donald Trump in 2016 for reasons specific to Donald Trump, but in general I think the populist movements in Europe and America have legitimate grievances and I often prefer the populists to the “reasonable” elites. I’ve written books about Harvard, the G.O.P., American Christianity and Pope Francis; I’m working on one about decadence. Benedict XVI was my favorite pope. I review movies for National Review and have strong opinions about many prestige television shows. I have three small children, two girls and a boy, and I live in New Haven with my wife.

Michelle Goldberg

I’ve been an Op-Ed columnist at The New York Times since 2017, writing mainly about politics, ideology and gender. These days people on the right and the left both use “liberal” as an epithet, but that’s basically what I am, though the nightmare of Donald Trump’s presidency has radicalized me and pushed me leftward. I’ve written three books, including one, in 2006, about the danger of right-wing populism in its religious fundamentalist guise. (My other two were about the global battle over reproductive rights and, in a brief detour from politics, about an adventurous Russian émigré who helped bring yoga to the West.) I love to travel; a long time ago, after my husband and I eloped, we spent a year backpacking through Asia. Now we live in Brooklyn with our son and daughter.

I’ve worked at The Times since 1999 and have been an Op-Ed columnist since 2016. I caught the journalism bug a very long time ago — first as a little kid in the late 1970s who loved reading the Boston Globe sports section and later as a teenager working on my high school and college newspapers. I discovered that when my classmates and I put a complaint in print, for everyone to see, school administrators actually paid attention. I’ve since worked as a metro reporter at The Washington Post and a writer at BusinessWeek magazine. At The Times, I started as a reporter in the business section and have also been a Times Magazine staff writer, the Washington bureau chief and the founding editor of The Upshot.

My politics are left of center. But I’m also to the right of many Times readers. I think education reform has accomplished a lot. I think two-parent families are good for society. I think progressives should be realistic about the cultural conservatism that dominates much of this country. Most of all, however, I worry deeply about today’s Republican Party, which has become dangerously extreme. This country faces some huge challenges — inequality, climate change, the rise of China — and they’ll be very hard to solve without having both parties committed to the basic functioning of American democracy.

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scifimagpie · 5 years

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Louie C.K. and the Sith Lord Dilemma

Happy new year!

(These are the kinds of headlines I only get to write because I don't have an editor to whom I answer. Whee!)

We still have Nazis, so let's talk strategy. I'd also like to talk about something related - the infamous, often contested Centre. To keep advancing leftist ideals (such as healthcare, housing, and basic needs coverage for all; universal access to education and higher education; equal and fair pay for all genders and backgrounds, and accessibility resources for those who require mobility devices or have medical problems, among a few other things!) it can help to figure out who we're trying to talk to - and sometimes, who we can trust.

The time before #MeToo and after it are now crisply delineated by this social event. The freedom to talk about and voice the universality of sexual harassment and assault against people of various genders (yes, men too) has really shaken things up. It's just the beginning of making things right, and society in North America and around the world has some serious adjusting and compensating to do, but it's a good step in the right direction.

#MeToo also torched a lot of sacred cows, exposing people we previously trusted as participating in very bad behavior. Kevin Spacey, George Takei, Stan Lee and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, among others, are a couple who surprised and disappointed me the most. But it seems like some of the people who transgressed are already trying to stage their comebacks - not understanding, it seems, that it shouldn't be up to them to decide when their stint in the time-out corner is over.

As discussed here, it would seem that Louis C.K., who previously admitted to sexually harassing women by masturbating in front of them without consent, has taken a turn for the dark side. Making jokes about transgender people and school shooting survivors, and apparently, insulting black and Asian men, is now part of his comedic repetoire. So much for "learning and listening."

But he continues to be defended by a few people who - apparently, come from the centre - and want to believe that he still has good intentions somehow. To quote that Huffpost article, however -

"C.K.’s new set, according to its leaked version, doesn’t merely punch down; it stomps, pettily, to the bottom. None of it is smart or brave; it is simply cruel."

And how did Louis C.K. - and for that matter, J.K. Rowling - start to internalise and support such negative beliefs?

Star Wars and political strategy

So here's the thing about the two people I've alluded to - they're both wealthy, and they've both been criticised. Now, being criticised is hard at the best of times. But wealth tends to make people more fragile. Is the answer, then, to just not criticise anyone ever? (That probably sounds like a stupid thing to even say, and it kind of is. But the internet likes a good reductio ad absurdum argument, taking things to their most logical extreme, so I'm going to follow that format - as I often do in my posts!)

That would seem to be an over-correction, and to make advancement impossible. But how to we criticise someone without alienating them?

Well, I'm still working on the "doing it right" part, but I can tell you about how not to do it.

In the much-maligned prequels of Star Wars, one of the concerns expressed about Anakin Skywalker is that he's too old to learn the Jedi ways and be successfully indoctrinated in their belief system. In the following movies, as Anakin goes through puberty and discovers that at least one girl exists, this is quickly proven - so it seems - to have been an accurate fear. A lot of people have argued that the way the Jedi turned their back on him as soon as he started to screw up and the way they endorsed such extremist perspectives on emotion had doomed him to fail in the first place. I would say that Anakin actually got a lot of second chances, but the ideology did set him up to fail - and because a single misstep was seen as an inevitable sign of failure, how could he help but find himself tempted by the apparent freedom of the Dark Side?

But as we see examined in The Last Jedi, fearing someone's future and darkness and treating them badly on the basis of that can, in fact, lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. By assuming the worst of Ben Solo, he becomes Kylo Ren. Now - you could argue about the role of fate in the Star Wars universe, and even in our own, but it's not a discussion I can brook in good faith because if fate was as iron-clad as it is in fiction, all psychics would have 100% accuracy in their predictions - and that, obviously, is not the case.

But are we repeating the mistake of the late-era Jedi Order? Are we scaring off allies when we call them out for bad behavior, or scaring off future allies when they see Leftists chewing someone out?

A digression on the centre, which cannot hold

Oh, the Centrists. The Left hates them, the Right courts them, and they usually don't even identify as such. Most of the time - from what I've seen - Centrists are actually people who would identify as liberals or Liberals, but haven't caught up to every nuance; alternatively, they're soft conservatives. The centre isn't so much a fact as a product of two overlapping political bell-curves, more of an illusion than a real political movement. After all, the centre and centrists usually tend to have either conflicting beliefs or a reluctance to engage with certain groups.

But the centrists that I tend to hear about, as a leftist, are generally the ones who still fall on the liberal side of the equation. Now, here's the thing - I'm not saying that being conservative or liberal are, arbitrarily, either good or bad on an objective scale. BUT - right now, in North America and in a few other places, it sure seems like conservatism has relied too heavily on courting xenophobia in various ways. And that has led to an association of conservatives with racist, sexist, generally horrible beliefs - for instance, the Republicans in the US, and more locally, the UCP. (United Conservative Party, not to be confused with the Progressive-Conservative Party of Canada. They're very good at being polite and rewording their racism and homophobia, because this is Canada, but the underlying platform and beliefs is disappointingly rote.)

But is falling to the racist wayside the fate of all centrists? Should leftists treat anyone who fails to meet certain standards of conduct with suspicion and curtness, because they're inevitably going to betray any progressive ideals in favor of the fear-eater, conservatism?

In terms of the radicalization of young men, a number of people have spilled ink and filled hard drives creating better and more informative videos and articles than myself. And a lot of them also struggle with this problem: who can be reasoned with, and who is a die-hard danger to humanity?

No. Be nice sometimes, but don't hug every Nazi.

All of this is to say that I think the way we deal with people who don't act in good faith and the ones who do act in good faith need to be set in two different streams. It can be hard to tell, and people can switch motivations during a conversation - deciding to troll or being interested enough to start learning, for instance. But I think it would help the Left to confine some of our sharpest criticisms to internal dialogues - you know, saying things with the door closed. We have to meet people on their level.

Unfortunately, sometimes that level is also going to mean putting boots on the ground in terms of showing up to protests and engaging in adequate self-defense against Nazis.

So when it comes to Cousin Jason or Brayden saying that he thinks these dudes wearing yellow vests and talking about how we need to reduce the number of immigrants coming to Canada "might have a point," I would suggest being hard on the ideology and empathetic with Jason or Brayden himself. There's a difference between being empathetic and being a doormat - but we have no choice except to take on these conversations whenever we can, even when we're exhausted. The problem is that people in the centre often agree with us - but are too scared to speak up, or too tired, or even too confused.

We have to make a better future and present by walking the line between having boundaries and making it clear to people that we care about them and their rights. As frustrating as it can be, emotional labour from a person in a position of power, or even an oppressor, is still emotional labour. And we cannot take for granted that people will educate themselves, or yell "educate yourself!" in every conversation. That doesn't mean the most oppressed person should always yield their time and energy to people who may be acting like blockheads - but it does mean that anyone who considers themselves an ally needs to step up or be willing to tag-team something to avoid their own exhaustion.

This stuff is intricate. The problems don't have quick, glib, easy fixes. But they're also not insurmountable, because our opponents aren't monsters or fictional villains. They're people. And most of them actually want what we want - to live in happiness, health, and safety.

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find her all over the internet: The mailing list * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * OG Blog

#nazi #louis ck #new year #politics #left #leftist #centrist #movement #metoo #me too #assault #weinstein #harassment

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gamingtipsandtrickshacks · 6 years

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Far Cry 5 Gets New Patch on PC; Console Versions Coming Soon

If you’re like me then you’ve been having a blast screwing around in Hope County, Montana these past few of weeks. However, that’s not to say that the game isn’t without its fair share of bugs, and Ubisoft is hoping to address some of them. The developer has officially released a brand new patch for the game, which fixes a slew of different issues.

Most importantly the patch fixes and improves a number of different features in the game’s co-op mode, including connectivity, voice communication, and it even fixes a bug that was causing Hurk to blow up certain players.

In addition to that, Far Cry Arcade, the game’s map editor and multiplayer, was also addressed. Players should find that they are able to download maps faster and match with other players quicker.

Of course, that’s not all the patch does, those are just some highlights. If you want to check out the full patch notes straight from Ubisoft, you can do so below.

Players should be able to download Title Update 4 on their PC’s right now, with the console versions set to go live on Monday, April 9, 2018.

Far Cry 5 was originally released a little over a week ago and is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PC. If you want to pick up the game on Amazon, you can do so by clicking here.

This post contains an affiliate link where DualShockers gets a small commission on sales. Any and all support helps keep DualShockers as a standalone, independent platform for less-mainstream opinions and news coverage.

Stability & Performance

Fixed low occurrence crashes and walkthrough breaks

Additional quality bug fixes

Fixed low occurrence save corruption

Companion, Enemy, & Animal AI

Fixed low repro AI issues

Design & Mission Progression

Fixed issues preventing silver bar purchase

Fixed minor bugs

Gameplay & UI

COOP and Online

Improved COOP connectivity

Fixed low occurrence COOP specific walkthrough breaks

Fixed voice communication issue where players could be permanently muted

Hurk was blowing up the client player when in a helicopter, fixed that.

Far Cry Arcade

Improved map download efficiency

Fixed various Arcade gameplay issues

Fixed issue where map textures would be extremely low

Improved PVP matchmaking

Fixed lobby loadout selection and map selection issues

Map Editor

Fixed issue with Arcade Editor crashes

PC Patch Only:

Fixed issues that were causing incorrect spawn if the game was minimized during loading

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digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

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The Worst Social Media for Business Mistakes of 2018 So Far (and What You Can Learn from Them)

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/the-worst-social-media-for-business-mistakes-of-2018-so-far-and-what-you-can-learn-from-them/

The Worst Social Media for Business Mistakes of 2018 So Far (and What You Can Learn from Them)

Social media for business is supposed to help promote brands and endear them to the public. But things don’t always go according to plan.

Bad jokes, silly scheduling, and even downright incompetence can leave companies scrambling to make quick apologies and save face.

While social media for business screw-ups can leave a company’s PR team working overtime, the good news for brands is we live in the age of the 24-hour news cycle. One embarrassing headline-grabbing mistake only lasts so long before it’s replaced by another business’s blunder.

The worst #socialmediamarketing mistakes of 2018 so far (and what you can learn from them) Click To Tweet

Here are some of this year’s social media fails that deserve the biggest facepalms—and how you can avoid making the same mistakes.

1. New York Times – Millennials and snake people

While not exactly a social media fail per se, the New York Times became the source of both jokes and confusion when one of its editors forgot to turn off a satirical browser extension before editing an article. When the newspaper published a digital-only piece about Donald Trump’s trade claims, readers quickly discovered it included a nonsensical quote from Time Magazine.

After social media followers began pointing out the error, the newspaper quickly issued a correction, stating an editor had copied and pasted the quote using the Millennials to Snake People browser extension. Apparently, the editor didn’t notice his mistake before publishing.

As well as replacing the word “millennials” with “snake people,” the extension also replaced some other words and phrases with random gibberish.

The original quote from Time Magazine read, “America’s trade deficit narrowed dramatically during the Great Recession.”

But when copied and pasted with the “Millennials to Snake People” add-on, it read, “America’s trade deficit narrowed dramatically during the Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks.”

Justin Banks, the offending editor, sheepishly apologized on Twitter:

I'm horrified to be the guilty editor here. But thankfully @YLindaQiu's excellent work stands so far above it.

Also, I have now deleted the excellent Millenial-Snake Person Chrome extension. https://t.co/rd4KH2469r pic.twitter.com/Mh057RMCp9

— Justin Bank (@bankonjustin) March 7, 2018

When Gizmodo asked Eric Bailey, the creator of “Millennials to Snake People,” if he had anything to say about his work making it into The New York Times, he replied: “Computers were a mistake.”

How to avoid this fail: Always proofread your content before sharing it on social media for business. It’s also good to have a second pair of eyes check over your posts for accidental errors.

2. Snapchat – Users troll support bot

When Snapchat users started experiencing issues with Snapstreaks in July, the company tweeted the issue was being fixed in an effort to reassure its followers.

We're aware many Snapchatters are experiencing crashing on the app. We're looking into it and working on a fix!

— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) July 11, 2018

But what the company didn’t anticipate after setting up a bot to auto-reply to unhappy users was that they’d start gaming the system.

One Twitter user caught on quickly and decided to test Snapchat. It’s safe to say the company didn’t pass.

Test: my snap streaks disappeared. This is a test, if you tell me to go to your website I'm done.

— Robin Wetterhall (@RWetterhall) July 11, 2018

Thanks for reaching out! We're happy to help. Please go to: https://t.co/pLsBLYE56r and select ‘My Snapstreaks disappeared’ 🔥

— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) July 11, 2018

Another user, Scott, quickly figured out what was going on.

I think it's a keyword bot. If you say something like streak or lost streak it should automatically pop up

— scott foster (@scott6518) July 11, 2018

And that’s when other users decided to join in the fun.

England have lost there world cup streak. Any way they could get it back?

— Jack Scott (@JackScott__) July 11, 2018

Like snapchat i really lost my streak snap ing pictures of your mom

— 59 (@zXBennyXz) July 11, 2018

I'm lost but there are people running around naked, should I streak?

— Stephen Bubb (@Theyoutub28) July 11, 2018

Lost blablablablabla streaks

— Seynox (@SeynoxToxic) July 11, 2018

so I lost my cat yesterday. he was the light of my life. I don't understand why he just ran away. he always comes back but this time, he disappeared. I don't know how long this streak of him being away will last.

— Rip x (@MikeyMakesMusic) July 11, 2018

Thanks for reaching out! We're happy to help. Please go to: https://t.co/pLsBLYE56r and select ‘My Snapstreaks disappeared’ 🔥

— Snapchat Support (@snapchatsupport) July 11, 2018

How to avoid this fail: Automation is a great way to save time, and in this case, quickly tweet users a reassuring message and point them in the right direction. But users are smart and will quickly figure things out if they think you’re treating them like numbers. While Snapchat’s bot no doubt helped a lot of users who were having issues, the company could’ve owned this blooper by recycling it as a meme.

3. Snapchat – Tone deaf Rihanna ad

When Snapchat ran an ad asking users if they’d rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown, the “Diamonds” singer told the app to go and delete itself—and the company subsequently lost $800 million from its share price.

In what the company described as an oversight, it approved and published an ad for a game called “Would You Rather” that asked users whether they would prefer to “slap Rihanna” or “punch Chris Brown.”

Is it just me, or is this ad that popped up on my Snapchat extremely tone deaf? Like what were they thinking with this? pic.twitter.com/7kP9RHcgNG

— Royce Mann (@TheRoyceMann) March 12, 2018

The distasteful ad callously references the 2009 incident when Brown violently assaulted Rihanna, his then-girlfriend, to which he later pleaded guilty.

Rihanna took to Instagram—Snapchat’s rival—with a lengthy statement on Instagram Stories that called out the platform for intentionally shaming victims of domestic violence.

Snapchat’s response was that the ad was made by a third party and not the social platform itself. A spokesperson for the platform told The New York Times the ad was removed immediately and the advertiser blocked.

“This advertisement is disgusting and never should have appeared on our service,” the spokesperson said. “We are so sorry we made the terrible mistake of allowing it through our review process. We are investigating how that happened so that we can make sure it never happens again.”

Rihanna’s comments sent the share price value of Snapchat parent company, Snap, down by nearly 4 percent—erasing nearly $800m from the company’s market value.

How to avoid this fail: As far as fails go, this one was costly for Snapchat. To avoid falling into the same trap, properly review any third party content that is displayed on your site and subsequently shared to your social media for business. Stay well-clear of referencing sensitive subjects and making light of serious circumstances.

4. Miele – International Women’s Day Misfire

How do you celebrate modern women on International Women’s Day? By reinforcing the 1950s housewife stereotype. The appliances manufacturer probably thought it was cute to share an image of four women excited over a washer and dryer, but completely missed the mark. Miele deleted the Facebook post a few hours later.

How to avoid this fail: Don’t rely on old-fashioned stereotypes for your marketing. Know your target audience. Understand what drives them and use this information to inform your social media for business campaigns.

5. US Air Force – Yanny/Laurel joke bombs

In the midst of the Yanny/Laurel craziness back in May when this audio clip split the world into those who heard “Yanny” and those who heard “Laurel,” brands took to social media to react to the infamous debate.

From Barnes and Noble and Coca-Cola to Warby Parker and its more subtle promotion of its Laurel model of glasses but calling it Yanny, brands were quick to join in the fun.

Then, in the midst of a bombing campaign in Afghanistan, the US Air Force crossed the line with a tweet stating Taliban forces would rather have heard “Yanny” or “Laurel” instead of the noise of an A10 dropping bombs.

«Les talibans auraient préféré entendre Yanny ou Laurel plutôt que le bruit de notre A-10»

Ce tweet de l'US Air Force qui annonce le bombardement d'une ville est d'une violence 😭 pic.twitter.com/bWxbGWegvG

— Florent Derue (@florentderue) May 17, 2018

The tweet was widely condemned for being insensitive and diminishing the potential loss of civilian lives in the Middle East due to the ongoing War on Terror. The original tweet was quickly deleted and the US Air Force issued this apology:

We apologize for the earlier tweet regarding the A-10. It was made in poor taste and we are addressing it internally. It has since been removed.

— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) May 17, 2018

How to avoid this fail: Be careful about how you leverage popular memes on social media for business. For a sensitive topic like death, or in this case war, think twice about using humor. If you’re not sure whether a joke is going to be well-received, just don’t do it. Always make sure that any news stories you try to piggyback on make sense and align with your brand.

6. Burger King – Free Whoppers for World Cup babies

Burger King’s Russian division came up with a rather crude and sexist promotion for VK—a Russian social network—after the country’s 5-0 opening game win against Saudi Arabia.

The burger chain offered women a lifetime supply of Whoppers and 3 million Russian roubles if they conceived a child with a World Cup soccer player.

Burger King promises $50,000 and lifetime whopper supply for Russian women able to get pregnant from any football celebrity (to transfer good genes to Russia) pic.twitter.com/su8lyfkt6N

— English Russia (@EnglishRussia1) June 19, 2018

In English, the ad reads:

“Burger King, as part of the social responsibility programme has announced a reward for women who get pregnant from the world recognized soccer celebrities. Each will receive 3million rubles and a lifetime supply of Whoppers. Women who succeed in genetic progeny will be responsible for the future success of Russian football team for generations to come. Let’s do it! We believe in you!”

It’s no surprise there was an immediate backlash to the promotion, including from social media and news outlets, and the campaign was removed.

Burger King apologized for the ad, in a statement saying:

“We are sorry about the clearly offensive promotion that the team in Russia launched online. As soon as it was brought to our attention, we had it removed. It certainly does not reflect our brand or our values and we are taking steps to ensure this type of activity does not happen again.”

How to avoid this fail: It’s obvious advice, but avoid social media for business campaigns that are sexist, demeaning, and crude, no matter who your target audience is.

7. Starbucks – Blonde espresso

Starbucks debuted its new “blonde” espresso in January, featuring a brightly colored campaign with somewhat confusing messaging.

Where Starbucks ads in the past have usually been fined tuned into the current political climate—even openly declared the company’s political leanings—the blonde campaign took a very different route. For a start, the landing page features this confusing wording: Uhh… what?

I’ve read this so many times and it still doesn’t make any sense to me.

So… Starbucks is saying that they’ve been telling people for 43 years that espresso has to be intense, but then they decided it doesn’t…? It’s a weak piece of copywriting for a social media for business campaign if you ask me.

What’s more, the campaign’s tagline is “Blonde breaks rules.”

It seems to be a nod to the old-fashioned expression, “Blondes have more fun,” a phrase attributed to a series of Clairol commercials from the 1960s. The ads feature young women who find their lives become better when they dye their hair blonde and enjoy fun parties, marriage proposals, and even improved tennis skills.

Yes, the ad is kind of flirty but it’s also regressive and it doesn’t really make any sense for the brand. Does Starbucks simply want to give people the excuse to ask baristas for a tall blonde? I’m not the only one who thinks this campaign is a bit off:

This morning at Starbucks I asked for a Tall Skinny Blonde and my barista said, “That’s not a real drink, but I see what you did there.”

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) January 12, 2015

at Starbucks: I'd like a tall blonde flat white

at the Strip club: I'd like a split shot cappucci- *getting thrown out* ..nnNOOO

— wizard statue (@stoned_wizards) July 3, 2018

When an old man gets that impish look on his face and asks for a “tall blonde” at #Starbucks… pic.twitter.com/S8SF42rJYF

— lillionaire (@lillionaire1) May 16, 2018

How to avoid this fail: Whether you agree with me on this one or not, it’s important that your own social media for business campaigns send a clear and effective message to your target audience. Run your campaign past others outside your business before sharing on social so you can make sure it doesn’t come off like an inside joke or weird gibberish.

8. Kaiwei Ni – The stray hair

Here’s an obscure one I’m slipping in even though it’s technically from December 2017. But I couldn’t resist because it takes clickbait to a whole new level, introducing the world to swipebait.

Chinese sneaker manufacturer Kaiewei Ni published a Black Friday ad to Instagram Stories with a stray hair in the center. Whoever made the ad designed it to look as if there was a stray hair on the phone screen of the person viewing it.

There is a fake hair on this ad to get you to swipe up.

Someone needs to stop these “growth hackers.” pic.twitter.com/FpqMdMOP2m

— Blake Robbins (@blakeir) December 9, 2017

What was clever, but also incredibly sneaky, about this ad was its goal—to trick users into swiping up on the ad so the user would be redirected to Kaiewei Ni’s website.

Not surprisingly, Instagram removed the ad for violating its policies and disabled the account from advertising in the future.

How to avoid this fail: People don’t like being treated like fools and engaging in tactics like this will only alienate potential customers. When you try to game a social platform, it’s only a matter of matter of time before you’re caught out and your social media for business account is suspended. If you really want to know how to advertise properly on Instagram, check out How to Advertise on Instagram: A Step-by-Step Guide.

How to avoid social media for business mistakes of your own

While the thought of making an embarrassing blunder on social media might be horrifying, knowing why mistakes happen is the first step toward avoiding them.

Having the right social media management tools in place, knowing how to use them, and establishing a meticulous approach to crafting campaigns and reviewing them, as well as having a solid marketing strategy, will ensure your brand’s communications are always on message.

Always review your #socialmedia campaigns meticulously to avoid social media fails Click To Tweet

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The post The Worst Social Media for Business Mistakes of 2018 So Far (and What You Can Learn from Them) appeared first on Revive Social.

Source: https://revive.social/social-media-for-business-fails/

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irenenorth · 7 years

Text

New Post has been published on Irene North

New Post has been published on http://www.irenenorth.com/writings/2017/08/whats-it-like-in-a-newsroom/

What's it like in a newsroom?

If you walk into a newsroom on any given day, you’ll see people banging away on their keyboards. Some are swearing it’s too slow. Others are jamming the keys so fast, you’re amazed at the words that come across the screen.

The Star-Herald on Saturday is mostly empty. There’s a reporter and two people on the copy desk. Sometimes, the Special Projects Editor is there, too.

On this particular Saturday, there was plenty of banter. It usually involves yours truly “walking into an insult” or ten. The conversation eventually turned to grammar.

Candice, our lead copy editor, began discussing how much she hates when people mix up the use of “that and “which,” which immediately got me panicking as to whether or not I screwed it up in my stories.

It was a busy day. I had four interviews and had to get three of them completed, along with the photo galleries to go with them. I knew I had used both words. Now, I began to question if I’d used them correctly.

“You know, I don’t have a problem with there, their and they’re or to, too and two, but sometimes which and that get me,” I said. “When Steve was editor, he used to give us paperwork to help us out and I’ve still got most of it at home.”

“You didn’t keep any of that crap I gave you,” Steve said. Or something like that. It’s been a long day. He laughed an remarked he was sure I tossed it all out. I didn’t. It’s useful stuff to reference from time to time.

“Just make sure to use ‘many’ and ‘a whole gob of,'” Steve said. We all laughed. “No really, say that many people did something, not a gob.”

Candice was saddened by those who don’t know the difference between than and then.

“Oh and about that apostrophe in farmers’ market,” Candice said.

“Never going to stop doing that,” I said.

And then I went on a little tirade.

“The farmers’ market is owned by the farmers. There is more than one farmer and it is their market there for the apostrophe goes after the “s” because more than one farmer owns the market. I know what AP says and I know Spike and Jeff hate it when I do it, but it’s correct that way. When Bart was the editor we had a long discussion about it. He agreed with me.

“I don’t care. AP is not right in this case and I’m not changing it.”

“But AP says no apostrophe,” Candice said. “And you have to follow AP.”

“Who says?” I asked. “Not me. AP is wrong. I’m going to keep spelling it f-a-r-m-e-r-s-apostrophe. If the copy desk wants to change it, go ahead. But I will never do so.”

Candice laughed. It was all she could do. I’m right. It’s farmers’. I’m not ever going to change on this one word.

And here’s a chart proving me right.

I went back to working on my photos. They had to be cropped and cutlines put onto them. Candice went back to proofreading my story.

“Your ‘whiches’ were right,” she told me. I think I still got a “that” which should have been a “which,” but it’s all fixed now.

We talked some more about stupid grammatical errors. I mentioned the time I told my previous editor Bart something had piqued my interested.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “And how do you spell that?”

I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. I didn’t think pique, peak, and peek were that hard to differentiate. Apparently, he’d had reporters mix them up quite a bit. It happens a lot because I found many photos on the internet describing the differences.

As I was finishing up cropping my photos, Candice was almost done reading my story on the Pride picnic.

“Hey, you have LGBTQ in the story, but you only define LGBT,” she said.

“What’s the Q?” I asked. “Queer right?”

“I think it is queer.”

We spent the next few minutes trying to figure it out by looking in the AP Style guide. I looked in the 2008 edition while Candice looked in the 2012 edition. It’s in there. I had this discussion with my previous editor. The problem is LGBT isn’t easy to find in the guide. If you go with L – lesbian – it tells you to look up the word gay. That’s not helpful either. We couldn’t find where the term was located in the book.

“I wish I had an online subscription to the guide,” Candice lamented.

“Maunette has one,” I said. But she wasn’t in the office. The online guide is much easier, you type what you want – LGBT – and the answer pops up.

So we googled it. I made a joke about using the Urban Dictionary meaning. Hint: don’t use Urban Dictionary for serious work, even in this case where it was correct.

We came up with the same results, most notably, we found the same USA Today story at the same time. In it, LGBTQQ was mentioned.

“LGBT — meaning lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — is a widely accepted initialism. However, a fifth letter is increasingly making its way into the line-up: Q.

“USA TODAY Network talked with experts and individuals in the gay community about what the Q means, why it’s used and who is saying it.

“Q can mean either ‘questioning’ or ‘queer,’ Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that lobbies for LGBT rights, told USA TODAY Network. Either interpretation is accepted, he said.”

“Well, we don’t want to use two Qs do we?” Candice asked. “We just want one.”

“Ugh. Should we just not use the Q?” I wondered. “Look at what my story from the first picnic said.”

“What does Panhandle Equality use?” Candice said.

“I think they use the Q,” I replied.

“Q is being recognized more often now,” Candice said.

“Yep,” I said.

We looked it up. In pretty much every instance, Panhandle Equality uses the Q. We decided to put it in.

“I’m going to change your sentence then,” Candice said.

“Okay,” I said.

And that’s how what I wrote, “LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” became “LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer.”

“I hope we don’t get any phone calls over it,” I said.

“Me either,” Candice said. “But I’m off on Monday.”

“I’ll be at Agate on Monday,” I said.

We both laughed.

…..

I fully expect Candice to find a mistake in this article. It’s not farmers’ though. That one is correct.

#grammar #news

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flauntpage · 7 years

Text

Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.)

Three stars of comedy

The third star: This Predators fan—We'll get to the whole P.K. Subban dancing controversy in a bit, but let's just say that Nashville fans get it.

— Preds Warmup Signs (@PredsSigns) April 30, 2017

In related news, the Rangers can do stuff like this in the warmup and apparently nobody cares.

The second star: Chris Pratt—OK, technically, this is from three years ago. But Pratt just reposted it on Twitter recently, and it was the first time I'd ever seen it, so we're grandfathering it in.

Sudden Death really is just about the greatest movie ever made. We broke down the mascot fight in the YouTube section four years back, but that's not really enough. We should probably do another scene from that movie some time soon. Hmmm...

The first star: Taylor Hall—Apparently he listens to the podcast.

Officially adding

— Taylor Hall (@hallsy09) April 30, 2017

My favorite part of that joke is that it's still only the second funniest lottery-related tweet of Hall's career, trailing this one from two years ago.

Outrage of the week

We're three weeks into the playoffs, and you know what that means. We've reached outrage overflow mode, that inevitable point in the postseason where everyone is on edge and there's so much happening that our capacity to rationally discuss anything just disappears completely. We're going to have to break out the lightning round this week.

The issue: Sidney Crosby has another concussion after an ugly collision with Matt Niskanen, one that was helped along by a nasty Alexander Ovechkin slash.

The outrage: The play was dirty!

Is it justified: Seeing Crosby down and out like that was awful, just about the worst-case scenario for any hockey fan. It doesn't matter who you cheer for—hell, even if you're a Capitals fan—you don't want to see the league's most important player out with another head injury.

That said, the play itself was anything but black-and-white. I'm pretty sure I've watched it hundreds of times so far, and I'm still not sure if it was dirty. I didn't like the Ovechkin slash, which should have been at least two minutes. But Penguins fans just finished spending the last few weeks telling us that a hard slash on a puck-carrier is a hockey play, so that outrage only goes so far. The Niskanen half was the tough one, and I still see a player realizing that a falling opponent is about to crash into him and putting his hands up to protect himself.

Not everyone agrees. Maybe Niskanen really did sense an opportunity to target Crosby's head. But I'm still not sure, and I lean towards it ultimately being careless and maybe even reckless, but not dirty.

The issue: The Department of Player Safety didn't suspend Niskanen, or even hold a hearing.

The outrage: The DoPS never suspends anyone during the playoffs!

Is it justified: We've been over this before. If you want tougher sentences during the playoffs, have the GMs and owner instruct the DoPS to call it that way. But based on the standards that have been established over the years, it's no surprise that Niskanen didn't get anything beyond the game he'd already missed as a result of being ejected. It would have been unusual if he had.

The issue: Pittsburgh reporter Rob Rossi challenged Washington coach Barry Trotz about the play, wrote a column accusing the Capitals of intentionally targeting Crosby, and then made the media rounds to push the theory.

The outrage: That take is nuts. Let's spend the next two days talking about it!

Is it justified: The accusation about Capitals players planning Crosby's demise was out of bounds, especially in a post-Todd Bertuzzi league. He was widely criticized and mocked, and rightly so. Rossi's done some good work over the years, but there's no defending that take.

That said, as Elliotte Friedman pointed out this week, this seems to be the direction that a lot of sports journalism is headed. Lots of people wrote measured, thoughtful takes on the Crosby injury. If you ended up talking about Rossi instead, well, that tells you all you need to know. Attention is the currency of today's media, and now more than ever, you get what you pay for.

The issue: Nick Bonino drew a crucial penalty on Wednesday by embellishing a high-stick from T.J. Oshie.

The outrage: Hockey fans hate this stuff.

Is it justified: Sure, but the problem is that this is how the game works now, diving and embellishment works. There's a good chance you get the call. Every now and then, you'll get called for faking, but most of the time the ref will still take the other guy too. Unless you're completely obvious, they'll almost never take just the diver. Lots of players do this stuff, Oshie included.

Could the league fix it? Not totally, although encouraging refs to just take one guy more often would help. So suggest cranking up the post-game fines—drop five figures on someone who pulls a Bonino and at least a few guys might think twice. But you can never get rid of this stuff entirely, short of making everything open to review. And it's hard to think anyone wants even more reviews.

The issue: There aren't enough bathrooms in the new Edmonton arena and now their media want everyone to start peeing in the sinks.

The outrage: That's... wait, what?

Is it justified: Yeah, I don't get this one either. Let's just keep moving.

The issue: Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs says he doesn't think the NHL will go to the Olympics because it's not worth the effort for "the four people that watch it".

The outrage: The NHL really does hate its fans.

Is it justified: I'm sure the league's key television partner was thrilled to hear Jacobs trash-talking the viewership potential of an event it pays billions to broadcast. Just a thought, but the NHL might want to ease up on side-eying anyone else's ratings. But it was certainly interesting to see an owner as influential as Jacobs say "I don't think it's going to happen" about something we've already been told definitely won't happen. Gosh, it's almost as if the league is still posturing here.

The issue: P.K. Subban danced during a warmup and Mike Milbury called him a clown.

The outrage: Nobody likes Mike Milbury.

Is it justified: The clown take was terrible and pretty much everyone knows it, including Milbury, who backed off the comments fairly quickly. The NHL needs a lot of things, but more lectures from the fun police isn't on the list. Here's hoping Subban dances all the way to the Stanley Cup final.

The issue: This is too much outrage.

The outrage: Seriously, we're all exhausted.

Is it justified: Pace yourself, we still have five weeks of this stuff to go.

Obscure former player of the week

Earlier this week, Ottawa's Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored four goals in a game, becoming only the 12th player to do so in the last 30 years. So who's the most obscure player in that group? Well... it's probably Pageau, to be honest. But it seems a little early to hand him those honors, so let's go with Tony Hrkac.

Hrkac was taken in the second round of the 1984 entry draft when the Blues decided to show up for a change. He made his NHL debut in 1987, and played part of three seasons with St. Louis before being traded to the Nordiques. That would be the first of many moves over the course of his career; he'd go on to be traded six times, sign five free agent deals, get claimed on waivers once and be picked in the 1998 expansion draft.

All in all, he played for nine NHL teams over his career, despite spending several years in the IHL in the mid-90s. He appeared in his last NHL game for the Thrashers in 2003, although he continued playing off and on in the minors until 2010.

There are two things most fans of the era remember about Tony Hrkac. First, his last name was pronounced "hur-kuss", so everyone called him "the Hrkac Circus". And more importantly, he had one of the best playoff games ever as a rookie in 1988. That night, in game five of their first-round series, Hrkac lit up Chicago's Darren Pang for four goals including a short-handed winner in a 6-5 Blues win.

Hrkac's four-goal playoff game was the first that the NHL had seen in almost 24... hours. Buffalo's John Tucker had done it the night before against Boston. But the feat wouldn't be matched again for 12 whole days, when Mark Johnson pulled it off against the Capitals. What can I tell you, the late-80s were fun.

Be It Resolved

Saturday's draft lottery resulted in three longshots moving into the top three picks, including the Flyers, who had the 13th worst record but will pick second. Meanwhile, terrible teams like the Avalanche and Canucks and the expansion Golden Knights all dropped way down.

Is that fair? Not really. The lottery is kind of a mess. But if that's news to you, then you haven't been paying attention over the years. And you can't start complaining now just because your team was the one that got screwed.

First things first: We shouldn't even have a lottery. There's a far better system for determining draft order while still weighting everything in favor of the worst teams. It's called the Gold Plan, I've written about it a ton, and you're probably sick of me mentioning it. But it's roughly a million times fairer than random ping pong ball drawings, and a lot more exciting to boot. If you're not already on board, now's a good time to join us.

But let's assume that the league wants to keep a lottery system. After all, this is the NHL, the league where everything is fine and nothing should ever change. If you want to keep the ping pong balls and the weighted odds, then sometimes, the longshots will win. That's a feature, not a bug.

This whole thing is classic NHL. Design a system that we all know could result in a specific scenario; appear to be totally fine with that possibility; wait until that scenario inevitably plays out; then demand the system be changed because the thing you always knew might happen finally did.

We already did it with the Connor McDavid lottery a few years ago, when the Oilers won for a third time and everyone complained even though we knew Edmonton had decent odds going in. We did it with the skate-in-the-crease rule that everyone insisted was just fine right up until it showed up on a Cup-winning goal, at which point it was immediately scrapped. We're doing it right now with the offside review and puck-over-glass, badly implemented rules that won't be changed until they cost some team a playoff series. Which they absolutely will. We just need to wait long enough.

Should teams like the Avalanche have better odds? Maybe. Should teams like the Flyers have any odds at all? Maybe not. But these were all questions to be asking before Saturday's drawing. If you didn't have a problem with the system then but do now, you're either being disingenuous or you don't understand how probabilities work.

Either way, it would be nice for this league and its fans to want to solve a problem in advance for once, instead of slipping into knee-jerk reaction mode whenever the inevitable happens.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

So the Washington Capitals are peppering the Penguins with shots, but can't score because Marc-Andre Fleury is playing like some sort of mid-90s action hero. You know what other Penguins' goalie played like a mid-90s action hero?

Oh hell yeah.

If you're not familiar with Sudden Death, you should a.) acknowledge that you have fundamentally failed as a person somewhere along the line and b.) head over to this excellent SB Nation tribute. But if you need the short version: The Blackhawks and Penguins are facing each other in game seven of the Stanley Cup final, terrorists are trying to blow up the arena, and Jean Claude Van Damme is here to karate fight everyone in the building.

At this point, we're well into the move. We've already seen Luc Robitaille swear and Van Damme use a supersoaker full of lighter fluid to end a dude, but have not yet seen a helicopter crash at center ice.

Also, Van Damme has already killed the Penguins' mascot with a dishwasher. Have I mentioned this is the greatest movie ever made? It totally is.

So at this point, we're late in the game and the Blackhawks are leading. Even worse, Penguins' starting goalie Brad Tolliver has left the game with the flu. Fun fact: Tolliver was played by former Penguin Jay Caufield, even though Caufield wasn't a goalie. I'm starting to think this movie might not be very realistic, you guys.

Van Damme has stolen Tolliver's uniform because of reasons, and he returns to the game. Well, he returns to the bench, where he sits in the middle of all the players, the way goalies do. His coach comes over and orders his unhealthy player back onto the ice, because this was 1995.

By the way, the two announcers are the Penguins' real life duo of Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald. I love that Mike "Scratch My Back With a Hacksaw" Lange has his own IMDB page.

Brad Tolliver wasn't a real player. But as we hear from the arena announcer, the guy he's replacing is: It's Ken Wregget, playing himself. This game is going to end with the arena getting blown up by a helicopter, making it the second biggest hockey-related disaster Wregget has ever been a part of, behind the 1984-85 Maple Leafs.

"I don't know what he did back in the locker room." Uh, he has the flu, guys. I'm pretty sure we can narrow it down to a couple of options.

We get an extended sequence of Van Damme trying to figure out where to look and how to stand while praying the puck won't come near him, aka "the Brian Elliott". He eventually responds to a breakaway by charging out and flipping his opponent into the air, which is completely ridiculous because only a psychopath would ever do that.

"He hit his head on the ice... he hit it so hard his kids will be born dizzy." In the modern remake, this is the point where the concussion spotters will call down and the movie will end.

Tony Amonte gets his second breakaway of the shift because apparently the Penguins are being coached by Jared Bednar. Still woozy from his brain injury, Van Damme drops down and makes a highlight reel glove save. In what stands as easily the worst part of the movie, his Penguins teammates celebrate by raising their sticks in the air like they just scored. This is so stupid that I'm amazed The Love Guru didn't think of it.

This is the point where our clip ends, but it's not the end of Van Damme's goaltending adventures. He realizes that he can't save the world if he's stuck on the ice, so he does the only reasonable thing: Grabs a random Blackhawks player and sucker punches him to start a line brawl. Because the script writers have never actually seen playoff hockey, this results in the referees actually giving him a penalty, getting him out of the game and back into the terrorist-murdering business.

Sudden Death came out in December 1995, because the world had been good and deserved a Christmas present. It made several billion of dollars and won every Academy Award, but ushered in the Dead Puck Era of the NHL because the league's goalies now had access to Jean Claude Van Damme game film while coaches started focusing on defending the neutral zone in case a helicopter crashed there.

There have been 20 Stanley Cup finals since this movie came out, and the Blackhawks and Penguins have combined to win 25% of them. You do the math.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at [email protected].

Down Goes Brown Grab Bag: Crosby's Injury, Playoff Outrage, And The Draft Lottery published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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lorrainecparker · 7 years

Text

Working With Clients-28 Weeks of Post Audio-Week 25

1 – Be helpful, be supportive, help them tell the best story with sound that you can.

Some gigs are just amazing. It’s an exciting project, made by an exciting team and you are just happy they chose you to do it. Many times however that is not the case. It’s a dry read about auto parts for a technical video, it’s a pick up for an audio book that does not interest you, it’s a mix for a program on a subject that does not inspire you.

Always remember that you are getting paid for the privilege of working on their program or segment. They have worked hard on it, sweating the details, getting things just right and allowing you to take them over the finish line. While it might not “be your thing” this is the most important aspect of their day, show the proper respect for their hard work.

2 – It’s not your show, you can offer thoughts but the choices are not yours to make.

Mixing Food Network’s “Mystery Diners” with Producer Steve Pilot and Otto

Making a movie or TV show involves many people and many choices. Often you are asked for your thoughts and opinions as well. This is sacred ground and it is always a good idea to feel out the people. I always suggest offering comments in a positive light and, certainly in this case, less is more. Remember first that the show is locked, so wayward comments that won’t change a thing are not useful. Stick to talking about the audio and not other aspects of the show. If they want the music softer, make it softer. If they want the sound effects louder, make them louder. Even if you feel that it is the wrong choice or a mistake, it’s not your movie, it’s theirs. I’ve done many shows where choices made were very different than ones I would have made. That is OK because it is not my show. When it is, then I have the leeway to make the “wrong” choice.

3 – Find solutions, not problems.

Sometimes programs come with many built-in problems. That is why you were hired in the first place. Make it count and make things better. Don’t talk about how bad the location recordings were, that the pick-ups were recorded with an iPhone, that all the submitted music is in mp3 format. You can talk about ways to make things better for them, but don’t scold or intimate that they screwed things up. There is always room for a bit of light-hearted banter at the appropriate time, but in the thick of the work, stay focused and tell them how you can make it all better.

4 – Don’t take impossible jobs with impossible people.

Some jobs can’t be done well. They were off right from the start and no amount of noise control, sound design or mixing will ever make it right. Some people are just difficult to deal with. They have an off-putting manner, are condescending or are just plain not very nice. In this profession, everyone is a “star”, is “somebody”, is “connected”. In my experience these can become untenable situations. These same folks typically have unrealistic expectations, can keep coming back with changes and at the end of the day renege on schedules and payments. Sometimes your time, patience and sanity are worth more than a single job. Sometimes you just need to be too busy or too expensive for some of the work that comes your way.

5 – Understand that not all problems can be fixed and know when to move on.

I think I’ve spoken in the past about my 10 or 15-minute rule. If you are working on a moment that you just can’t lick – stick a pin in it and move on. These problems are typically a very small part of a much larger piece and time will just tick away as you work and rework a single moment. I have always found that moving on after a reasonable amount of time was spent is the best option. Psychologically you can then get much more work done and then just have a few things to go back and keep working on. There is a point where no matter how much fussing is involved the benefits are nil. I have another handy rule, if all the effort only makes things marginally better – call it a day on that. Not every problem can be solved. If it could you’d be President of the world! Just know that you did what you could and it’s time to move on. Typically when watching things down that brief hiccup will be unnoticed by anyone except you.

6 – Learn to say yes.

Voice recordings with Josh Gad

No is easy. Yes can be hard. If you are working on a project do you best – your name will be on it and you are there to make a contribution. This does that mean you can do the impossible. See #5. That being said, by working a client’s notes, oftentimes it will force you take a new look, reach for new tools and find new solutions. And that being said – if you can’t make it work – move on.

Yes is a very powerful word that can open many doors. It is said that people come at the world from one or two places – they are either an emphatic yes! Or an emphatic no! – and work forward from one of those two very simple principles. Learn to be a yes.

7 – Don’t nickel and dime on price or on your time.

When you make a commitment to do the work – keep it. If you’ve taken a low rate, for whatever reason, work just as hard as if it was the most exciting project and the best paying gig you’ve ever had. In my experience great work keeps folks coming back. However, even the simplest things can make the memories not memorable. “Yeah, the soundtrack sounded good but remember we kept getting billed for the smallest things…” “I thought it was one price, then it was another…” “we kept getting bumped because we weren’t one of their big ticket clients…”

You want to be remembered as “the one who did it all”, “they made it happen” “took a lot longer but never charged us a dime more…” Always be the one that goes the extra mile. I work Holidays, weekends, nights, emergency sessions, whatever it takes to get the client happy with the work or make the changes required. There is a reason many businesses fail – one of many is that the client doesn’t feel taken care of, special, worth the extra effort.

8 – Give it your best.

Being lazy is easy. Ask any couch. Getting things right can take time, and serious effort. This is a career, not a simple way to make a buck. This is not hawking hot dogs at a ballgame. This is a contribution to someone else’s vision. Hopefully, you’ll be able to look back at a body of work. Don’t listen to an old show or movie and hear simple things that could have easily been dealt with but you let slide.

Your name is on it, your time and sweat is in it. Everything you do should be done with purpose, with conviction, with an eye (ear) to longevity. Of course you learn and grow as you work. There may be things that you watch back that were done early in your career that in retrospect could have been done differently, could have been done better. The tools change, your abilities improve, but the goal of always putting your best efforts forward should always be the goal. Otherwise, perhaps hawking hot dogs at a ballgame is a better pursuit for you. No shame in selling hotdogs – all in a day’s work. Selling hot dogs forces best practices too, but its demands on your skills, on your pursuit of excellent are far less complicated than a feature film mix, with a set of split tracks, specific loudness compliance and story-telling with sound.

9 – Stay alert and engaged.

When clients bring me their projects, it’s been a long process with many hands, many hours and many dollars. It could be a TV commercial, it could be an audio book, it could be a feature film, it could be a late night infomercial. No matter the project, no matter the inherent “value” of the work – it is someone’s hard fought vision and you’ve been tasked to make the audio the best that it can be. Honor the commitment you’ve made when chosen to do the work.

I once had an intern who flipped magazines and checked his texts as we worked through a show. I was deep in the mix and could not stop for a few minutes until I figured out the best approach to solve the client’s note. Once I made the change to the satisfaction of all concerned, I told the intern to come out to the lobby with me for a moment. I told the client I’d be right back and on the way out the intern grabbed a chocolate from the client’s review table where we kept some snacks. I put him at a desk in the front and finished the session by myself with my client.

When the session was complete and the clients were gone, I read the guy the riot act. He was disrespecting the hard work of the client. It was not his place to be bored or uninterested in their work. It was his job to be engaged, supportive and positive. These folks paid me hundreds of dollar per hour to do the work and his actions said loud and clear to them – I’m not interested in what you’ve created. This is an insult and not to be tolerated. Even if it’s, in your mind, an inconsequential work that will never see the light of day – you’ve been chosen to help them tell the story. Do your best, be constructive and make the work shine. At the end of the day it’s all going to be only three combinations of elements – dialog, music and effects. Do your best work so that you will be around to work another day.

10 – Have fun. This is what it’s all about no?

This series, 28 Weeks of Audio, is dedicated to discussing various aspects of post production audio using the hashtag #MixingMondays.

Woody Woodhall is a supervising sound editor and rerecording mixer and a Founder of Los Angeles Post Production Group. You can follow him on twitter at @Woody_Woodhall

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