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fancy-feast-official · 2 years

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some character sheets for an ace attorney oc :-) he's a coroner for the lapd, and has been friends with miles since high school

he's also the main character of a fic i'm writing called loser's turnabout! set between "turnabout goodbyes" and "rise from the ashes," it features an unsolved murder, a falsely accused coroner, and lots of weird gay drama >:-)c

alt text below the cut

[Image 1: In the top right corner, the artist has written "Francis Bones" in all lowercase cursive with a purple marker, and has drawn a simple eye and a bone. In the top left corner is a side view of Francis, facing right, with brown hair and a braid just in front of his ear. Below that is a paper collage of a suit with a black jacket, black slacks, and a purple tie. Below the suit is a drawing of Francis facing forward, his uncolored hair floating upwards. He has 7 eyes, each colored a different color of the rainbow. under where Francis' name is written is a drawing of his hands, with multiple rings and a bracelet on that says "6.9.10." Below that is a drawing of a Victorian style house with a large observatory on top, which is labelled "Seeker's Eye," and has the caption "Built by Clifford Seeker in the early 1900s, it's been in for family for 5 generations. Shame he doesn't live there anymore..." Below the caption is the phrase "GB-5" written in large, purple letters. Next to that is another drawing of an eye. END]

[Image 2: A drawing of Francis, with his customary braids, wearing a a sweater with a suit jacket over it, along with slacks and wingtip shoes, and holding a briefcase. There are four arrows pointing at him, the first pointing at his shirt: "Only really dresses up for court," the second pointing at his right arm: "Loves sweaters," the third pointing at his right foot, where you can see his socks, printed with small hearts: "Funny socks," and a fourth pointing at his briefcase: "Full of autopsy reports." On the left side of the page are four drawings. The topmost one is a drawing of Francis' hands with the same rings he's wearing in image on. There are three arrows pointing at his left hand, stating "Nails always painted," "Wears lots of rings," and a third pointing at a scar on the left-side of his left hand that states "Got this scar when he was attacked by Killian." Below the right hand is a drawing of Francis crying with a bloody nose, which is labelled "Cried a lot during his arrest/while in prison." To the left of this drawing is a small box labelled "Loser's Turnabout," which says: "While getting ready to celebrate winning a case w/ Edgeworth, and his friend + assistant Vickie Tam, Francis Bones and Tam are attacked in her apartment. When Bones wakes up after being knocked out, Vickie is dead, but when he calls the police, they arrest Bones, as there's no sign they were attacked except Vickie's body and Bones's broken nose." Below this box is a drawing of Vickie Tam, labelled with her name and age (20). She has almond-shaped eyes and dimples, and her hair is in a bun. To her right is a drawing of Killian Wrong, labelled with his name and age (30). His hair is slicked back and he's looking to the right with a smirk. END]

[Image 3: A drawing of Francis Bones (left) and Miles Edgeworth (right) in 2006m when they were 14 years old. Francis is looking to the left, with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. He's also wearing long shorts and Converse sneakers. Instead of the two braids in front of his ears he has a Padawan braid. He also has a septum piercing. Below him, there's an arrow pointing to a label that states, "Bones came out when he was 10, so Edgeworth only know him as a guy until they got their freshman yearbooks." Edgeworth is earing a vest, slacks, button-up shirt, a jabot, and wingtip shoes. He's listening to an iPod with earbuds. Between the two boys is a paragraph that says: "Edgeworth + Bones originally met at the high school they both attended, bonding over their feelings of being in the wrong place. While Edgeworth was quickly accepted into the Bones family, Bones himself was banned from entering the von Karma household, as Manfred found him annoying and to rebellious. After high school, the two wrote letters often, but only coincidentally ended up in the same district as a coroner and prosecutor respectively." END]

[Image 4: A drawing of Francis wearing a PE uniform (shorts and a t-shirt with his last name written on it). He's holding a baseball bat over his right shoulder, and his hair has been styled to cover his right eye. Next to this is a drawing of Edgeworth with a bruised left eye, glaring at something to the right of the page. Francis (not shown) is asking him "You okay, KM?" to which Edgeworth responds, "I got hit in the eye with a baseball. What do you think?" Below this drawing is a drawing of Edgeworth playing Silent Hill on a TV, with Francis hovering over his left shoulder pointing at the screen and saying "There's something in the fog over there." Edgeworth responds, "Quiet. I'm trying to listen," and Bones replies, "Listen to what?" These three sketches have arrows pointing to them that indicate the events take place in 2007. At the bottom right of the page is a drawing of Francis (right) and Edgeworth's (left) heads, facing away from each other. Francis is saying "KM," while Edgeworth says "Bugs." A caption below the drawing says "2008, got in an argument but hate ignoring each other." There's also an arrow pointing at Edgeworth that says "IDK how to draw cravats." The final sketch, at the bottom left of the page is of the top halves of Francis (right) and Edgeworth's (left) faces. They're looking at a small cat between them, which has an arrow indicating that his name is Pavlov. Below this is a caption that says "3 weeks before... 2010." END]

[Image 5: At the left of the page is a drawing of Francis and Edgeworth (wearing the same outfits they were wearing in image 3) standing in a doorway. Francis has his left hand over his mouth, and is holding his right arm out to prevent Edgeworth from entering the room. In the bottom right corner of the page is an arm. There's a caption in the top right corner of the page that says "On June 9, 2010, Francis Bones and Miles Edgeworth returned to the Bones residence after going to a local grocery store for popsicles. They planned to go to Francis's room upstairs, but when his parents did not respond to their called greetings, Francis and Miles went to the kitchen, where they found Ambriel and Rosalind bones dead on the floor with their throats slit. Investigators later found that they drank lemonade laced with near-fatal amounts of oxycodone. END]

#ace attorney #ace attorney oc #miles edgeworth #francis bones #arlo flowers art tag #death mention #tw murder

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clumsyclifford · 4 years

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hi bella i'm here bc t-shirt by thomas rhett w jalex?????? totally not bc we're listening to the song and have the same brain???? never??? not at all??? ok ily bye

sam the fact that you will just indulge me like this...........i adore you. anyway here’s some thomas rhett jalex to soothe your soul thank you for asking me to write this after i told you i wanted to write it dlgkmdfklgmfj

ao3 link!

Jack has a table when Alex arrives.

“Hey, hey, hot stuff,” he hears, and looks up to see Alex leaning over the patio fence.

“Wow, and only ten minutes late,” Jack says, making a show of checking the time on his phone. He gives Alex his most look-how-impressed-I-am face.

Alex laughs and reaches through the fence to poke at Jack’s shoulder. “I’ll be in in a sec,” he says, and then retreats to go around front. Jack figures he can wait a little longer. Alex will probably stop in the bathroom before he joins Jack at the table, anyway.

A few minutes pass, and then someone tugs gently at Jack’s ear, so Jack puts his phone away, this time for good, and turns a smile to Alex.

Alex looks good. He always looks good, would look good even in a paper bag, even in nothing at all (especially then), but there’s something about the all-black combination that makes Jack’s heart race. Clothes were invented, Jack decides, to be worn by Alex. All clothes.

Leather jackets in particular.

“Hi,” Alex says warmly (he’s trying not to say it warmly but Jack knows he can’t help it), before dipping his head to kiss Jack. “How was work?”

Jack smiles. He always smiles around Alex. He’s probably in love with Alex, but in a relationship this young it’s hard to say, and Jack falls so easily it’s actually ridiculous. The words taste sweet under his tongue, so he leaves them there for the moment. For whatever it’s worth, he imagines he’ll have many days on which to share them.

“Fine,” is what he says instead, as Alex sits down. “Some of this paperwork is going to be the death of me, but you don’t want to hear about that.”

“I do,” Alex insists.

Jack shakes his head. “I promise you, you do not. I was telling Zack about it on my lunch break and I’m pretty sure he fell asleep.”

Alex chuckles. “Well, Zack’s not your boyfriend.”

“That you know of.” Jack waggles his eyebrows. It makes Alex laugh, which is always the goal, and Jack laughs too, mostly to show that he’s joking, but also because Alex’s laugh makes Jack laugh.

“Fair enough,” Alex concedes. “Well, lucky for you it’s Friday, so no more work.”

“It’s Friday for you too.”

“Yeah, but I have lesson plans to draw up, papers to grade, et cetera.”

Jack squints. “Do you…do you think I don’t have work to do over the weekend?”

“Gonna be honest, I still don’t fully understand your job,” Alex says good-naturedly.

Jack grins. “That’s okay,” he says. “You look amazing tonight.”

It makes Alex look down at himself, only to look back up at Jack, and under the multicolored string lights of the patio (why are there still Christmas lights up in June?), Jack can see a blush rising. “Thanks,” he says. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”

“Thank you,” Jack says. It’s just his work suit. Their date night restaurant is within walking distance of Jack’s office, for convenience reasons, and Jack is still in his suit for the same reason. “I thought I’d make a bit of an effort, you know. Once in a while.”

“Well, if you set the bar low, you can only ever really surpass expectations,” Alex points out. Jack claps triumphantly.

“Exactly!”

The waitress approaches then, asking for drinks orders and informing them of their deal on appetizers, two for the price of one. Jack orders a beer and Alex gets water, because he’s driving, and as the waitress leaves, they decide almost without conversing that they’ll be taking extreme advantage of the two-for-one deal.

For the rest of dinner they make small talk, except it’s not really small talk, because Jack cares so much to hear about the inane things Alex’s students have done that day; he’s been dying for an update on the gossip about the history teacher and the math teacher, and gasps when Alex shares how a student actually asked Mr. Hood if Mr. Clifford was his boyfriend. (“I’ve literally never seen Calum speechless like that,” Alex says, smirking. “It was almost hilarious.”) It doesn’t feel like small talk to hear about Alex’s day and to talk about his own, because Alex’s eyes are trained on Jack with so much focus that Jack feels like he’s explaining something much more complex and profound than just the broken coffee machine in the break room at work. It would be small talk if they had nothing else to talk about, but they have, and just aren’t; for two hours, while they slowly work their way through their own food and each other’s (Jack shamelessly nicking mozzarella sticks off Alex’s plate), they just catch up.

Jack is probably a bit tipsy as they reach the end of the meal. After Alex pays — immune to Jack’s myriad efforts to stop him, including but not limited to stealing his wallet — they sit at a mostly cleared table, waiting for the check to come back, and Jack stares at Alex. He finds himself doing it more often lately, and he can’t put a finger on why, except that Alex is so goddamn pretty it’s impossible not to stare.

“What?” Alex says, bracing his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. He leans forward. “What are you lookin’ at?”

Jack folds his arms over the table in front of him and mirrors Alex. “You’ve got something on your face,” he says. Alex starts, frowns; Jack giggles. “I’m teasing. You don’t. You’re just so fucking good-looking. I can’t believe you’re mine.”

The blush from before returns with a vengeance. “Careful,” Alex says lightly. “Talk like that might get you into trouble.”

“Are you trouble?”

Alex doesn’t waver. “I might be.”

“That’s where I wanna be, then.” Jack grins. “You wanna come over after?”

“No way,” Alex says, but he’s lying, or joking. There’s a glimmer in his eye that might just be the ridiculous Christmas lights, but Jack has seen it before. “I’ve seen your place. You messy bastard.”

“Hey, I cleaned!” Jack protests. It’s stupid, but he had, and not just because he’d hoped to bring Alex back with him tonight. (Okay, mostly for that reason.)

Alex laughs and pulls Jack into a kiss across the table, and it settles in Jack’s sternum, warmth throughout his chest. He can tell Alex is holding back, and he likes it.

“Fine,” Alex says, as they break. “Twist my arm. I’ll come over.”

“Yeah, you will,” Jack says, smirking, and just then the waitress returns with the check.

They don’t even make it to the landing.

Well, they do, but clumsily, with a lot of tripping and almost-falling. Jack’s not sure if he’s holding tight to Alex so they don’t have to stop kissing or because he’s legitimately afraid to fall over. He’s mostly sober, just tipsy enough that he’s laughing at things that aren’t that funny, like when they reach Jack’s door and Jack realizes he’s forgotten to get his keys out.

“Shit,” he giggles, and instead of searching for them he just kisses Alex again. Alex is no help at all; he melts into it like every other one, arms securely around Jack’s waist. For a minute Jack forgets that this is supposed to be the beginning of the night, and not the end. Alex’s hands find their meandering way up the back of Jack’s shirt, and Jack makes a quiet noise at the cold of his fingertips against Jack’s skin. He pushes gently at Alex’s chest. “Okay,” he says, slightly sobered, “let me get the door open, you impatient fucker.”

Alex just gives him a cheeky smile and leans in for one more kiss. It’s really fucking hard to turn Alex down, and for a second Jack wonders if he should even bother. Then he feels Alex’s hand dip into his back pocket, and when Alex pulls away this time he’s holding Jack’s keys.

“Too slow,” he says, mouth curling into an enticing smirk.

Jack shakes his head. “Your fault,” he says as Alex unlocks the door, admitting them both to the apartment. The keys clatter as they land on the dining room table; Jack’s going to forget they’re there later, and Alex will inevitably remember. Both of them kick off their shoes somewhere in the general direction of the front door, and by that time Jack’s grown impatient himself. When Alex looks first at Jack and then past him to the bedroom, a question in his eyes that’s also an answer, Jack wastes no time.

It’s messy, but it’s always messy; Jack loves that about Alex, that he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty, to play rough and leave Jack satisfied but wanting more. Anyway, Jack feels they’ve earned the right to be a little messy. Alex is a middle school teacher, and Jack’s working an office job, for fuck’s sake; if Alex wants to be the reason for wrinkles in Jack’s shirt, Jack’s in favor of that.

After, Alex cuddles himself into Jack’s chest, face pressed into Jack’s neck, trying to absorb Jack’s warmth. Jack doesn’t have control over the air conditioning in his building, and as a result it’s always either slightly too cold or hot. In summer months it’s the former, and Alex isn’t wearing a shirt, which is probably lending to the chill. Jack could suggest that Alex get dressed, but he likes Alex like this, clingy and cuddly, leeching heat out of Jack’s skin. Alex runs cold, unfortunately for him, but Jack runs warm.

(It’s just another way they’re perfect for each other. Jack keeps running into them, the things that make Alex and Jack complementary, like how Jack doesn’t like pickles and Alex does, or how they don’t share any of the same favorite breakfast cereals so they’d never eat the other’s, or the fact that somehow, having held hands with many people in his life, Jack’s never felt his fingers fit as well as they do between Alex’s. Maybe he’s just romantic, but fuck if he doesn’t feel like he and Alex belong together.)

“You could put a shirt on,” Jack murmurs, pressing a kiss to Alex’s forehead, after Alex shivers and curls tighter against Jack.

“Boring,” comes Alex’s muffled voice. It sends a buzz through Jack’s skin. “Zero points for creativity.”

Jack laughs. “Come on, Al, you’re freezing. Take one of mine.” Alex makes a noise of protest. Jack gently pats his back. “Alex, you’re a big boy. Don’t be stubborn.”

“Your mom’s a big boy,” Alex says, but he rolls away and, with a great dramatic sigh, crosses to Jack’s dresser to rifle through his t-shirt drawer. “Any suggestions?”

“I suggest you put a shirt on.”

Alex shoots him a look. “Duh.” He pulls out one of Jack’s Orioles t-shirts and grins. “Oh, this is it for sure.”

Alex pulls the shirt over his head, and when he resurfaces his hair is hopelessly messed up. Jack can’t help but smile at it, at the whole picture. It’s too much for him, Alex in his Orioles t-shirt and boxers with the fucking American flag on them, which is his idea of a joke (and had, of course, made Jack laugh).

“What?” Alex asks. He does a spin as if showing off the new look, and Jack snorts and shakes his head. “Stop staring at me, you creep.” He takes a running jump towards the bed, landing with a screech beside Jack and crawling over him. Their legs tangle together, and Jack gazes up at Alex, overwhelmed, hoping he never stops feeling overwhelmed by Alex.

“You just look super hot, that’s all,” Jack says gratuitously. His pulse racing, he tugs Alex down into a kiss. Alex goes willingly, and Jack closes his eyes, drowning in everything Alex; the image of Alex twirling around in Jack’s shirt, the cold of Alex’s skin where Jack’s fingertips graze his hips, Alex humming quietly in the back of his throat as he deepens the kiss, Alex’s hand in Jack’s hair, Alex’s cologne permeating the whole room, Alex’s mouth on his, and all of Jack’s senses Alex Alex Alex until nothing else matters, just him and Alex and the universe on pause.

(He almost says it, really, almost ends the kiss with I love you, you know?, but he stops himself. That’s the kind of thing people do when they don’t have the time to wait, and Jack has time. They have all the time in the world.)

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asht0ns-world · 5 years

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Masterpost Masterlist

So I thought I’d make one post with all my Masterposts that I’ve done up until now. I’ll update this as I go. You’re always welcome to send me requests as specific or non-specific as you want. click here🖤🖤🖤

Number of Requests: 31

ALL MASTERPOSTS

Ashton Irwin 🖤

ALL

thighs

black button up with red roses

BDE

Ashton in red (all)

Ashton in red Part 1

Ashton in red Part 2

Ashton in red Part 3

Ashton in red Part 4

sweaty stage Ash

button ups that aren’t really buttoned up

Guitar Ashton

Ashton with glasses

Bandana Ashton

Bandana Ashton pt. 2

Ashton’s beard appreciation

favorite gifs

painted nails

patterned button downs

Jingle Ball/Valentine Genius video

red shirt with black polka dots

leather jackets

scruffy Ashton

stripes

chest hair appreciation (this is long af and I’m not even sorry)

b&w checkered shirt

B I C E P S

Dimples

Hands

Tongue

Hoodies

Pink Shirt

Suits

Tattoos

Blood Moon

Wrist Tattoos

Neck Tattoo

2016 Ashton

cuddly Ashton

Ashton’s eyes

all black

curls

fetus

Calum Hood 🖤

ALL

2016

Blazers

blonde streak

Frat!Cal

Soccer!Cal

best outfits

Flannels

Calum in yellow

Calum in red

Calum in Hoodies

cuddly Calum

backwards Snapback

Duke and Petunia

HANDS

Calum in green

Luke Hemmings 🖤

ALL

#TiddiesOut

soft boyfriend!Luke

Luke with his tongue out

Converse Luke

Luke and Petunia

Duke and Petunia

Luke and flowers

Michael Clifford 🖤

ALL

oversized sweaters

cuddly bromances

#Lena does masterposts #Lena stop talking #5sos #5 seconds of summer #ashton irwin #luke hemmings #calum hood #michael clifford #masterpost #ashton masterpost #luke masterpost #michael masterpost #calum masterpost

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malenipshadows · 6 years

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*** White House aides were blindsided when Rudy Giuliani, T-rump's recently added attorney, said Wednesday that the president had repaid Michael Cohen for $130,000 that was given to Daniels to keep her quiet before the 2016 election about her allegations of an affair with T-rump. Giuliani's revelation, which seemed to contradict T-rump's past statements, came as the president's newly configured outside legal team pursued his defense, apparently with zero coordination with the West Wing. ... Giuliani told The New York Times that T-rump had repaid Cohen $35,000 a month "out of his personal family account" afte r the campaign was over. He said Cohen received $460,000 or $470,000 in all for expenses related to T-rump.But no debt to Cohen was listed on T-rump's personal financial disclosure form, which was certified on June 16, 2017. ... Giuliani said the payment was not a campaign finance violation, but also acknowledged that Daniels' hushed-up allegations could have affected the campaign, saying: "Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton." Questions remain about just what T-rump knew and when. ***

#adult film actress Stormy Daniels #Stormy Daniels AKA Stephanie Clifford #Stormy Daniels alleges T-rump never signed confidentiality contract #Stormy Daniels suing T-rump over breach of payoff contract #T-rump admits reimbursing Cohen for $130K Stormy Daniels payoff #T-rump denies link b/w campaign and Stormy Daniels payment #but Stormy Daniels payoff clearly WAS linked to T-rump election campaign #Stormy Daniels payoff clearly rushed before T-rump election #by definition Stormy Daniels payoff WAS part of T-rump campaign #T-rump reimbursed Cohen for Stormy Daniels settlement says Giuliani #Giuliani directly links T-rump to Stormy Daniels pre-election payoff #Giuliani botches role as T-rump attorney #Giuliani compromises T-rump by admission on T-rump payment to Stormy Daniels #as T-rump attorney Giuliani undermines defense in Stormy Daniels suit #T-rump administration: Orwellian nightmare #Trump presidency a disaster believe me

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vegasthedog · 5 years

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kyms thoughts on tonights bitch ass episode

• ARCHIE REALLY DID DIE???

• oh you know what fuck you jughead

• VEGAS!!!!

• archie w black hair > archie w ugly ass orange hair

• dont get back w archie v stop acting like you dont got a WHOLE REGGIE

• wooooooooooooow she gonna do reggie like that

• jug acting like he running the fucking yakuza

• CRACK? IS THAT WHAT YOU SMOKING ALICE? CRACK?

• look at fp lookin like a MEAL

• FUCK EM UP FRED

• see archie, when you do clownery, the clown comes back to bite

• rip veronica x reggie, it was fun while it lasted

• clifford 2.0 is boutta be the sheriff? fuck this

• A 600 SKSKSK ARCHIE REALLY IS DUMB

• i cant believe fangs really joined this fucking cult

• v singing in spanish she tryna get that DICK

• i know reggie mad LMAOOO

• they really got hal in this hannibal lecter ass cage

• reggie not hearing none of this shit

• reggie would fuck archie up any day idk why he acting like big dick richard

• hiram is such a bitch yo can someone just kill him

• I KNEW HAL’S STUPID ASS WAS THE FUCKING WEIRDO IN THE STICK SUIT

• if fangs dies.....

• TALL BOY????

• thats what you get for opening your BIG FUCKING MOUTH REGGIE

• penelope wanted to fuck ugly ass jeffery dahmer...

• can hal just choke on his prison food please

• these two ALWAYS fuckin

• NO THEY DIDNT WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE!!!!!

• WHO THE FUCK JUST SHOT HIRAM????

• THEY FINALLY BREAKING UP YES

• this is why you dont let kids play with guns.

• what is fp doing involved with hermione !!!!

• REGGIE AND VERONICA FOR THE FUCKING WIN!!!!!

• FP IS THE FUCKING SHERIFF !!!! MY WIG!!!

• heard archie the alcoholic

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roselukes · 5 years

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2800 Miles - Ch 7 - l.h.

Previously

Summary: Luke knows what he wants, but he also knows he can’t have it

Tag List: @sassy-asht0n @happycrimiscalum @rosesarered516 @hoe4hemmo @heartbreakashton94 @climatehood @calumspeachy @dukehoods @holidayhood @wrappedaroundcal @mistletoemichael @plainwhiteluke @irwinkitten @hereforlukescruff @astroashtonio @catchinqcalum @irwinvalentines @hollyjollyhood @biggestslutforcalum @calumhampton @angelmikeyy @hotmessmichael @curlyhairedpopstars @meloncal @lukeschestnuts @thecashtonexpress @calsjackets @boytoynamedcalum @alyssarester @ssophisticated-simplicityy @calistajs @merryashmas

Disclaimer: plot was inspired by the app Choices’ story The Royal Romance

After lunch, everyone went to the shops along the coast while the royal family sailed their own race. They finally started arriving back at the shore long after everyone had eaten and shopped. “I’m getting hungry again.” Gwen sighed, leaning against the car.

“It’s been nearly 6 hours since we had lunch.” Michael nodded.

“You mean, it’s been too long.” Gwen huffed. “I need more meals than this.”

“You should really eat less. I think you’ve actually gained weight since you arrived here.” Alyssa smirked from where she stood with the other suitors. “A queen can’t have thighs as big as yours.”

“My thighs aren’t even big, you stuck up cunt.” Gwen snapped.

“Guinevere, a word please.” Michael said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her away from the group. “You need to think before you speak here, okay? You can’t be saying things like that to the other suitors.”

“Michael, she called me fat. I’m clearly not fat yet.” Gwen crossed her arms.

“I know, Gwen. You’re not fat, you’re incredibly beautiful, but you can’t say things like that to her. It only fuels her to say more. If the press caught you saying that shit to her, they would drag you through the mud. You would be ruined.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t deal with people saying things like that to me. You have no idea how much I struggled with my weight growing up. You’ll never know the things I’ve been through.”

“I know how traumatic your childhood must have been, but you need to find a way to work through it. You have to find a different outlet for your anger. You can’t take it out on her.”

“Then, I’ll take it out on you. How about that? Is that what you want, Michael?” Gwen asked, shoving him back.

“Dammit, Gwen. Why can’t you just act like you want to be here?” Michael groaned, shoving her back. Gwen glared at him.

“I want to be with Luke, not waste my time playing princess.” She shoved him again.

“Why are you so stubborn?” Michael groaned again.

“Get used to it.” Gwen crossed her arms.

“No, I’m gonna do something about it.” Michael grabbed her by the waist, throwing her over his shoulder.

“Michael! Put me down!” Gwen screamed, kicking her legs.

“No.” Michael walked to the end of the dock, ready to throw her into the water.

“Michael, don’t!” Gwen screamed, kicking her legs again. “Somebody help me!” She screamed.

“Michael Gordon Clifford, set her down nicely on the dock. Right now.” Luke spoke sternly as he stood behind them on the dock.

“No, she needs to be taught a lesson.” Michael huffed.

“She’s been in the water enough for now. Everyone wants to eat, so put her down.”

“Yeah, asswipe. Put me down.” Gwen huffed.

“Talk shit one more time and I’ll throw you in.”

“My God, you two. Just put her down, Michael.” Luke crossed his arms. “I swear, if I didn’t know you, I’d think you two actually were brother and sister.”

“Great talk, can I get down now? I’m starting to get light headed.”

“Come on, Mike. Put her down.” Luke sighed. Michael huffed and set Gwen down on the dock.

“Thank you, asshole. Now, let’s go eat.” Gwen crossed her arms and walked away from the two boys, Luke’s eyes on her ass the whole time.

“Hey, eyes off my sister, mate.” Michael chuckled, patting Luke on the shoulder.

“Wh-what? I w-wasn’t..”

“You were, but keep it PG. We don’t need another scandal in this kingdom.” Michael smiled and walked over to everyone else.

“What do we get to eat tonight?” Kira asked from her seat at her table.

“Tonight, we serve hotdogs and sloppy Joe’s.” The chef announced.

“Sloppy Joe’s?” Gwen perked up. “Y’all have sloppy Joe’s here?”

“No, we don’t.” Alyssa crossed her arms.

“Prince Luke requested we serve hotdogs and sloppy Joe’s tonight.” The chef shrugged.

“And, why would he do that? He could’ve had you make something much more sophisticated.” Alyssa rolled her eyes.

“He wanted Lady Gwen to feel more comfortable with these American style foods. It also gives the chefs a night of easier work.” Hattie explained. “I heard him talking to the chef this morning when I was at the palace for breakfast.” Alyssa groaned and sat down.

“I am not eating this. This is the food of poor people.” Alyssa crossed her arms.

“Suit yourself.” Hattie smiled and took a bite of her sloppy Joe.

“This is the one night we’re allowed to get sloppy.” Paige giggled, dousing her hotdog in ketchup and mustard.

“You people disgust me.” Alyssa shook her head.

“Have fun starving.” Luke smiled at her and ate a sloppy Joe. Gwen sat at her table with the boys, quietly enjoying her food.

“Gwen, come swim with me!” Hattie smiled at her.

“Okay, hold on.” Gwen giggled and finished her soda. The two of them ran to the water’s edge and peeled off their clothes to reveal their bikinis.

“She’s so beautiful.” Luke sighed, watching Gwen and Hattie run into the water. “I can’t imagine not having her here. She’s made this whole thing so much easier on me.”

“You’re falling for her, aren’t you?” Ashton chuckled.

“I really think I am. And, it terrifies me.” Luke looked at him. “How am I supposed to go through the rest of the social season when I already know that she’s the only one I’ll ever want?”

“Well, if you really want to be able to choose her, she’s gonna need to start acting like she belongs here. She needs to fix her potty mouth.” Michael sighed.

“She called Alyssa a ‘cunt’ to her face today.” Calum laughed.

“Did she really?” Luke widened his eyes.

“Well, Alyssa did say that Gwen couldn’t be queen with thighs as big as hers.” Ashton explained.

“Alyssa called Gwen fat?” Luke nearly choked on his soda. “She’s always been a bitch, but never like that. And, especially not about people’s weight.”

“Gwen was pretty hurt by it. She mentioned something about struggling with her weight as a kid, but I didn’t get much more into it.” Michael sighed. “She told me a little about growing up in the orphanage, and, my God, it was awful.”

“I wish I could do something for her, but I never get to spend any time with her without people around.” Luke sighed, looking out at the water where Gwen splashed around happily.

“What about a sunset boat ride? The yacht’s there.” Calum wiggled his eyebrows.

“Maybe I will. Lord knows I won’t get any time with her tonight. As soon as the music starts, Alyssa’s gonna be all over me.” Luke rolled his eyes.

“Just tell Gwen to wait for you tonight, then take her out for a boat ride to get your alone time.” Ashton shrugged. “You can deal with Alyssa for a few hours if it means you get to spend more time with Gwen.”

“I will.” Luke smiled and stood up, just as the music started.

“Lukey! Come dance with me!” Alyssa giggled, running over to him before anyone else could.

“Just give me a second.” Luke nodded to her before jogging to the water. “Gwen!” Luke called out to her.

“Hold on, Hattie.” Gwen smiled and walked over to Luke. “What’s up?”

“Wait for me on the dock after the party. I want to take you somewhere.” Luke smiled and kissed her cheek before going back to Alyssa.

“What was that about?” Alyssa asked, looking up at him.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.” Luke shook his head. “Ready to dance?”

“Of course, I am.” Alyssa smiled and pulled him over to the section for dancing. After a long night with Alyssa, Luke was more than ready to go out with Gwen on the yacht. As everyone was leaving, Gwen went and sat on the dock with her feet in the water. After a few minutes, Luke joined her.

“Today has been one of the longest days of my life.” Luke sighed, leaning back on his hands.

“Yeah, for me, too. Especially since I hardly got to see you at all.” Gwen looked up at him.

“Come on, let’s get on the yacht.” Luke stood up and held his hand out to her.

“A yacht? Well, aren’t you fancy.” Gwen giggled and took his hand, standing up. He laughed softly and lead her to the side of the dock where the yacht was waiting. “I’ve always dreamt of getting fucked on a yacht, you know.” Gwen giggled.

“Oh really? Why’s that?” Luke chuckled, letting her board first.

“I’ve just always thought of getting a sugar daddy with a yacht.” Gwen laughed and waited for Luke to board.

“I could be a sugar daddy of sorts.” Luke smiled and closed the gate behind him. “If you need more money for gowns and shit, you just let me know. I’d be more than happy to take care of that for you.”

“Michael gave me an allowance, I should be fine.” Gwen smiled and sat down on the small couch.

“Michael gave you an allowance? He can hardly afford to buy himself dinner.” Luke furrowed his eyebrows.

“What?” Gwen looked at him.

“Michael’s family is broke. They’re probably gonna lose their entire estate.”

“Is that why he’s sponsoring me? So his family won’t lose their estate?”

“That’s part of it, I guess. He needed a way to help his family and, by doing this, he’s helping me and his family. He’s all his parents have, he’s gonna do anything he can to help them.”

“Do you think he’d have still sponsored me if his parents weren’t broke?”

“I think he would, yes. He’s always wanted a sibling and he’s always been a great friend.” Luke sat next to Gwen. “I think he’s becoming really fond of you, too.”

“He’s a fun guy.” Gwen smiled, laying her head on Luke’s shoulder. “Oh, thanks for the American food today. You have no idea what that means to me.”

“I wanted you to be comfortable. Not everyone can get used to the fancy foods we eat.” Luke wrapped his arm around her.

“I’ll get used to it, but it’s nice to have a little taste of home.” Gwen smiled and looked up at him. “I don’t miss New York, per se. I just miss the weather and the atmosphere.”

“The weather?” Luke looked down at her.

“We had all four seasons there. Here, you just get heat all the time. I’m gonna miss the snow.”

“Lucky for you, next week we’re going to the Swiss Alps.”

“The Alps? Really?”

“Yeah, Alyssa’s house is hosting the court, so we’ll be at her land.”

“Oh, great.” Gwen rolled her eyes and stood up.

“Gwen, she’s not that bad.” Luke sighed.

“She is that bad! She called me fat in front of literally everyone and then I was the one that people were mad at.”

“People are just scared to stand up to her.” Luke stood up and looked at Gwen.

“I’m not scared to stand up to her, but that doesn’t make it any easier to listen to her.” Gwen crossed her arms. “She’s not the first girl to ever make fun of me.”

“I know, Gwen. But, she’s had her share of hard times too.”

“That doesn’t make it okay for her to say those things to me!” Gwen threw her hands up in exasperation.

“I never said that made it okay, I just think you should go a little easy on her. She’s not used to coming in second, and now that you’re here, she has to.” Luke sighed and cupped Gwen’s cheeks. “She’s always been the only girl that anyone thought I’d end up with. Now, you’re here. She has to actually compete against a girl I actually like. She’s not used to not being liked.”

“She’s still a fucking cunt.” Gwen pouted, looking up at Luke.

“You’re so hot when you swear.” Luke laughed softly and kissed her deeply. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed back. Luke trailed his hands down to her ass, pulling her closer. Gwen pushed Luke’s shoulders, pushing him down on the couch. She straddled him and kissed him again. “Fuck, we could get in so much trouble for this.” Luke chuckled, slipping his hands under her shirt.

“Who’s gonna catch us? The yacht driver?” Gwen giggled, playing with the hem of his shirt.

“The fish are gonna know what we did.” Luke joked, pulling his own shirt off. Gwen laughed and pulled her striped sweater off. Luke’s eyes drifted down to her breasts, the sight making his heart beat faster.

“Enjoying the view?” Gwen giggled, reaching up to untie her bikini top.

“Absolutely.” Luke chewed on his lip as her top fell to the floor. “Fuck..” Luke groaned softly, cupping her breasts. He rubbed his thumbs over her nipples, watching her eyes close in pleasure. Gwen moaned out his name as he took her nipple in his mouth, sucking gently.

“Oh, fuck.” Gwen whimpered softly and gripped his hair. Luke smirked and laid her down on the couch, settling between her legs. He kissed down her stomach as he pulled her shorts off.

“You’re so beautiful.” Luke grinned and pulled her bottoms off. “So fucking beautiful.” He licked her clit, flicking it with his tongue.

“Shit, Luke.” Gwen gasped, arching her back. Luke smirked against her and sucked on her clit harshly. Gwen moaned louder and gripped his hair. His tongue wandered down to her entrance, gently dipping his tongue in. “Oh, my God.” She gasped, tugging on his hair.

“You taste so good.” Luke hummed, pulling her closer to him. Gwen moaned out his name and arched her back off the couch. He smirked and inserted two fingers. She moaned louder and tugged on his hair.

“Fuck, that feels so good.” She moaned, bucking her hips. Luke smirked and thrusted his fingers quickly, curling them. Gwen moaned loudly, clenching around his fingers. “I’m so close.” Luke pulled his fingers out and sucked them clean. “What the hell, Luke?” Gwen whined.

“Shh, I don’t want you cumming yet.” Luke chuckled, pushing his swim trunks down. Gwen huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Hey, stop that.” Luke grabbed her arms and pulled them away. “You’re blocking my view.”

“You’re such a man.” Gwen rolled her eyes and giggled as she pulled him down to kiss him.

“I’m your man.” Luke smiled and kissed her gently. Gwen giggled softly and wrapped her legs around his waist. Luke lined himself up with her entrance and pushed in slowly. Gwen gasped and gripped Luke’s bicep.

“Holy fuck.” She whimpered softly.

“Too much?” Luke asked, stilling inside her.

“No, no, it’s perfect. Please keep going.” Gwen moaned, looking up at him. He nodded and kissed her gently as he thrusted slowly. “Faster.” Gwen moaned, bucking her hips. Luke groaned and gripped her hips, thrusting harder and faster. Gwen moaned louder as Luke pounded into her. “Fuck!” She moaned loudly, the pleasure becoming almost too intense.

“You feel so fucking good.” Luke groaned, bringing his thumb down to her clit, rubbing fast circles against it. Gwen’s thighs shook as she moaned loudly.

“Luke, oh, God. Fuck.” Gwen gasped out as she came around him. “Don’t stop.” Gwen begged, bucking her hips. Luke grabbed her hips and flipped her over before thrusting into her again. She moaned loudly and gripped the edge of the couch. Luke groaned and pounded into her harder. Luke brought his fingers back to her clit, rubbing fast circles once more. Gwen moaned loudly and clenched around him.

“Jesus, fuck.” Luke groaned and pounded harder.

“I’m close.” Gwen whimpered, resting her forehead on the arm of the couch. Luke pulled her hips closer to his and rubbed her clit faster. Gwen gasped out a moan as she came once more. Luke groaned lowly as he released inside her.

“Holy fuck.” Luke grunted, pulling out.

“Holy fuck is right.” Gwen giggled breathlessly. Luke chuckled and sat on the couch next to where she laid. “You’re pretty experienced for a prince, you know.” She raised an eyebrow and looked at him.

“Well, you’re the second girl I’ve been with. You know, Alyssa was the first.”

“Ugh, her name makes me want to vomit.” Gwen rolled her eyes and got dressed.

“I know you don’t like her, but you have to at least pretend to get along with her.” Luke sighed and put his swim trunks on.

“I’m not going to pretend to get along with her. She’s a stuck up cunt and I’m going to remind her of it every time I see her.” Gwen crossed her arms and sat down.

“She wasn’t always a bitch. Things happened and now she’s just cold.”

“Stop defending her!” Gwen yelled, turning to Luke.

“I’m not defending her! I just don’t see how you can dislike her so much over one comment.” Luke shook his head. “People aren’t always going to like you, you have to be able to deal with that.”

“I know people don’t like me. I know that Kira and Paige aren’t too find of me, but they have enough self control to keep their comments to themselves or to the times I can’t hear them. Alyssa has no reason to say things out loud and to my face.”

“That’s just how she is. No one can do anything about it.”

“You could! She clearly likes you, she’d listen to you! Is your image too fragile that you can’t stand up for someone?”

“Why do you need someone else to stand up for you? Can’t you do it yourself?!”

“I am doing it myself, Luke! But, every time I do, I get in trouble for it! This is the exact same thing that happened to me in high school.” Gwen sat down and put her face in her hands.

“What happened in high school?” Luke asked, sitting next to her.

“Why should I tell you? You’re gonna defend everyone that’s ever hurt me.”

“Gwen, you know that’s not true. Tell me what happened.”

“I tried to kill myself, Luke. The same type of girls that are here, I went to high school with. Alyssa is the typical popular girl. She thinks she’s the shit because she’s pretty and rich. She thinks that her status makes it okay for her to put down other girls. All throughout high school, I was told I was too fat or too ugly. I was 14 and I was starving myself and making myself throw up. I felt as ugly as they told me I was. I told adults at my school, I told adults at the orphanage. They all told me I couldn’t hate those who hurt me because I didn’t know their side of the story. But, I don’t need to know their side of the story to know that they ruined my life. I spent 8 months in the psychiatric ward of the hospital after trying to commit suicide.”

“Gwen, you should’ve told me sooner.” Luke whispered, holding her hand.

“No, you should’ve listened to me sooner. You shouldn’t have ever defended Alyssa. She’s a classic bully and excusing her behavior just encourages her to do it more.” Gwen shook her head. “Someone needs to put her in her place, and if I’m not allowed to stand up for myself, someone else has to.”

“I know, but that’s where things get tricky with the courts. If I speak out against her, she’ll file a complaint about the fairness of the social season. I could be abdicated, just like Jack was.”

“Has Alyssa ever acted like this to anyone else? She hasn’t been mean to anyone else, but me.”

“She’s not usually mean to people, unless she feels threatened by them.” Luke sighed. “She knows how much I like you, and she’s jealous.”

“I won’t be able to hold myself back, if she tries to talk shit again.”

“I’m sure Michael will hold you back.” Luke chuckled softly. Gwen smiled a little and rested her head on Luke’s shoulder.

“We should probably head back. It’s late.” Gwen yawned.

“I wish you and I had more time together.” Luke sighed.

“Me too, but we’ve got rules to play by here.” Luke nodded and wrapped his arms around her. The yacht slowly made its way back to the port. The two of them made their separate ways back to the palace.

“Where have you been?” Michael asked as Gwen walked into her room.

“Uh, I was with Luke?” Gwen looked at him confused.

“You need to stop being alone with him like this.” Michael shook his head and stood up. “It’s too dangerous.”

“What are you talking about? You encouraged me to spend time with him.” Gwen crossed her arms.

“That was before this was taped to your door.” Michael handed her the note. Gwen took it and read it aloud.

“‘Your arrival in the court will end in flames. Leave now to save yourself from scandal.’”

#5sos #5 seconds of summer #luke hemmings #5sos smut #5sos imagine #5sos fic #fa #fanfiction #imagines #imagine #smut #my writing #calum hood #ashton irwin #michael clifford

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blog-bishop · 4 years

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I love vinyle #205 Helen Merrill - Music Makers, 1986

J'ai découvert Helen Merrill aux alentours de 1989 avec un vinyle (eh oui ma bibliothèque de quartier ne proposait alors que des microsillons et à l'époque on ne les mettait pas en tas dans un coin de la pièce pour faire genre, on les écoutait !) Cette galette c’était Music Makers, sortie en 1986, enregistrée à Paris, sur un label français. Un album pris un peu au pif, peut-être pour le nom de Grappelli. Un magnifique album, très mélancolique, (pléonasme), avec :

Piano, Electric Piano – Gordon Beck Soprano Saxophone – Steve Lacy Violin – Stéphane Grappelli Vocals – Helen Merrill

Même si par la suite j'ai été touché par Ella Fitzgerald, Helen Merrill reste pour moi une déesse envoûteuse, sorte de sirène à la voix fêlée, toujours sur le fil, prête à se briser, mais encore intacte en 2020 et dont les sortilèges opèrent sur moi avec la même force, près de 30 après ma découverte. (Retrouvé en vinyle à Croco Jazz, 64 Rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève, 75005 Paris)

Une série de 10 émissions lui est consacrée par Alex Dutilh sur Fr Musique : https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/open-jazz/helen-merrill-1-10-30510

Son accroche était juste : « Une chanteuse culte, l’une de ces références que l’on ne confie, à voix basse, qu’à ceux que l’on aime. » Chez certains, j'ai senti des résistances à son écoute. C'est une chanteuse exigeante. Qui, comme tout ce qui compte, se mérite !

Ma playlist personnelle avec liens Youtube quand ils existent :

1954 Album Helen Merrill - Don't Explain 1954 Album Helen Merrill - you'd be so nice to come home to 1954 With Clifford Brown 03 - What's New

1955 With String (Richard Hayman Orchestra) 04 - Beautiful Love 1955 Lilac Wine - With String (Richard Hayman Orchestra) - Lilac Wine 1955 With String (Richard Hayman Orchestra) 03 - Mountain High Valley Low

1955 With Strings - 05 - Comes Love 1955 With Strings - 06 - End Of A Love Affair 1955 With Strings - 12 - Wait Till You See Him

NEW 1956 Dream of You - I'm A Fool To Want You 1956 Dream Of You 01 - People Will Say We're In Love 1956 Dream Of You 08 - Where Flamingos Fly

1957 Merrill At Midnight - Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair 1957 Merrill At Midnight - It's A Lazy Afternoon (21.02.1957) (erreur de pochette, le titre ne se trouve pas sur l'album dream of You) 1957 Merrill At Midnight (feat. Hal Mooney and His Orchestra) - 12 - Blue Guitar 1957 Merrill At Midnight 06 - If You Go 1957 Merrill At Midnight 10 - I'll Be Around (son très moyen)

NEW 1958 The Nearness Of You - Summertime 1958 The Nearness Of You 03 - I See Your Face Before Me

1959 You've got a date with the blues - The Thrill Is Gone 1959 You've Got A Date With The Blues 06 - (Ah, The Apple Trees) When The World Was Young

1960 Parole e Musica - Why Don't You Do Right 1960 Parole e Musica - You Don't Know What Love Is 1960 Parole e Musica - Willow Weep For Me 1960 Parole e Musica - I've Got You Under My Skin 1960 Parole e Musica - Autumn In New York

1961 Helen Merrill In Italy 01 - My Only Man. 1961 Helen Merrill In Italy 05 - Why Don't You Do Right 1961 Helen Merrill In Italy 06 - You Don't Know What Love Is 1961 Helen Merrill In Italy 07 - Willow Weep For Me 1961 Helen Merrill In Italy 08 - April In Paris 1961 Helen Merrill In Italy 10 - Solitude 1961 Helen Merrill In Italy 12 - Autumn In New York

1962 Helen Merrill & Piero Umiliani from Smog - My Only Man

1963 Helen Merrill In Tokyo & Sings Folk - Motherless Child - Lullaby of Chugoku-Chiho 1963 Helen Merrill In Tokyo & Sings Folk - Donna Donna 1963 Helen Merrill In Tokyo & Sings Folk - Lullaby of Chugoku-Chiho 1963 Helen Merrill In Tokyo & Sings Folk - Wayfarin' Stranger 1963 Helen Merrill In Tokyo & Sings Folk - Greensleeves 1963 Helen Merrill In Tokyo & Sings Folk - Lullaby of Itsuki 1963 IN TOKYO - 03 - Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered NEW 1963 IN TOKYO - 07 - I'm Fool to Want You NEW 1963 IN TOKYO - 08 - My Favorite Things 1963 Sings Folk - Black Is The Color

NEW 1965 The Artistry Of Helen Merrill - 08. The River NEW 1965 The Artistry Of Helen Merrill - 10. Forbidden Games

1967 Autumn Love - 08 'Round Midnight (Takeshi Inomata & Westliners) 1967 Bossa Nova In Tokyo 03 - Fly Me To The Moon 1967 Bossa Nova In Tokyo 07 - The Boy From Ipanema 1967 Bossa Nova In Tokyo 14 - La Chanson D'orphee

1968 A Shade Of Difference 08 - My Funny Valentine 1968 A Shade Of Difference 10 - Where Do You Go ¿ 1968 Sings Screen Favorites 09 - Romance (Forbidden Games)

1969 Autumn Leaves 10 - Plaisir D'amour 1969 Autumn Leaves 15 - Charade

1970 Helen Merrill Sings The Beatles - 08. And I Love Him

1981 Casa Forte - Natural Sounds

NEW 1984 No Tears, No Goodbyes - 01 - When I Look In Your Eyes

1984 No Tears, No Goodbyes - 02 - I Love Paris NEW 1984 No Tears, No Goodbyes - 08 - The Thrill Is Gone

1986 Cole Porter Album - 05 - My heart belongs to daddy NEW 1986 Music Makers - 01 - Round Midnight 1986 Music Makers - 02 - Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child NEW 1986 Music Makers - 03 - A Tout Choisir 1986 Music Makers - 04 - When Lights Are Low 1986 Music Makers - 05 - And Still She Is With Me (instru) 1986 Music Makers - 06 - Music Makers NEW 1986 Music Makers - 12 - Nuages

1987 Helen Merill & Gil Evans Collaboration - Summertime (intro est coupée) 1987 Helen Merill & Gil Evans Collaboration 04 - I'm a fool to want you NEW 1987 Duets (w Ron Carter) 06 - Autumn Leaves 1987 Duets (w Ron Carter) 09 - The Summer Knows 1987 Duets (w Ron Carter) 12 - My Funny Valentine NEW 1987 Irving Berlin Album 01 - How Deep is the Ocean 1987 Irving Berlin Album 10 - Blue Skies 1987 Irving Berlin Album 12 - Music Makers

1988 Just Friends 01 - Cavatina (with Stan Getz) 1988 Just Friends 07 - If You Go Away (with Stan Getz) 1988 Just Friends 09 - Music Maker (with Stan Getz)

1992 Clear Out Of This World - 06 - Maybe

NEW 2000 Jelena Ana Milcetic Aka Helen Merrill - Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless child NEW 2000 Jelena Ana Milcetic Aka Helen Merrill - Wayfarin' Stranger

2002 LILAC WINE - 02 - wild is the wind 2002 LILAC WINE - 08 - portrait of helen merrill (instru)

Je me souviens du 31 Mai 1991...20h40. Maisons Alfort, Théâtre Claude Debussy... Avec l'ami Aldar Laxness, on était arrivé en retard à cause d'une panne de voiture. Je me souviens qu’Helen Merrill laissait de grandes plages musicales à ses musiciens et qu'elle se barrait de scène… et qu'au bout de la troisième pause, ça devenait un peu long. Mais c'était bien quand même.

Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child :

youtube

Post original de 2016 -->> https://bit.ly/3fWXJBL

#helen merill #i love vinyle

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softieloulou · 4 years

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Larry comparisons

aka louis is babie & harry is daddy

harry: loud honks & snorts / louis: giggles behind tiny hand

harry: sexy finger run through hair / louis: cute lil sweep and pat pat

harry: tall, muscular 6 foot man. biceps the size of louis’ head. rock hard six pack / louis: 5’6 curvy hourglass figure, tiny & compact. birdie arms. soft tummy

harry: deep sexy rich melted chocolate voice / louis: high pitched soft girlie voice

harry: suits / louis: oversized sweaters w sweater paws

harry: lifts 500 lbs with his upper body / louis: struggles with carrying a box

harry: rides motorcycles, loves his cars. drives with one hand / louis: hates driving. feet on dash. kid’s scooter...

harry: playful silly protective dad. (got his godchildren’s names tattooed in big letters, now imagine when he has kids. that’s dad energy) / louis: soft, compassionate, gentle and warm. mommy energy. he cuddles his babies while listening to their nightmares and warms them some milk

harry: brands his shirts with ‘styles’. proud of his last name / louis: styles

harry: always shirtless. loves being nude / louis: modest and shy. turtlenecks. gets cold easily. complains when car window is open. dressing gowns

harry: extrovert / louis: introvert

harry: cocky smirks when receiving compliments (not in a narcissistic way) / louis: blushes

canon harry: gym shorts & muscle man sweatshirts. painted nails / canon louis: cute fashionista outfits. it girl bomber and vintage jackets. leggings around his house. plucks eyebrows. gold shimmery eye-shadow

harry: “yes, daddy, I will” (mocking fan) / louis: “alright, alright, daddy” *giggles* (instinctive reaction to being told by a man to behave)

harry: liked Matt’s “happy Father’s Day to harry styles only” tweet / louis: original creator of liam being referred to as “daddy”

harry: arrives with two large duffel bags from airport and louis’ hat / louis: skateboard

harry: calm, kind, dominate giant: can keep their partner grounded / louis: chaotic small bundle of energy

Harry’s preference: beard, mustache & hat/beanie / louis’ preference: clean shaven & soft fringe

harry: FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT (also was in a war movie and boxes) / louis: nooooo (bruises easily) (one small push knocks him over)

jealous harry: death glare, ready to kill. wants to show you who you belong to / jealous louis: sad puppy face

harry: BDE / louis: is babie

harry: gets treated like the boss / louis: gets treated like the boss’ baby

harry: black coffee / louis: tea

Italy harry: sugar daddy / Italy louis: sugar baby

harry greek god features: hard rock six pack, sharp nose and jawline, six foot muscular man. luscious curls / louis greek goddess features: soft tummy, tiny feminine face, thin lips, tiny button nose, long thick eyelashes, cheekbones, prettiest blue eyes, lil ears, golden complexion, tiny waist, curvy hourglass figure, soft silky caramel wispy hair, small dainty princess hands and cute feet

cute louis things:

smells like clothes softener, baby powder, vanilla and cocoa butter

knows what colors and shades bring out his eyes more

louis eyelashes: *flutter flutter*

is a insta baddie & tumblr boy (pic of water bottle in his tiny hand, feet pics, pretty boy selfies with the best light, dandelion pic, clifford cuddle pics)

he and the boys have all said in every interview that he’s the crier. cries during romantic comedies

decorated all his walls with fairy lights, big soft fluffy bean bags, candles, flower arrangements, toys & his game room

loves chocolate milk, cereal & apple juice

pouts when he doesn’t get cuddles

sunbathes like a cat

most of his album is about continuing to fight, not letting your heart break, reassurance. wants again, big mommy energy

shakes his ass to single ladies, listens to Abba, watches love island, his first concert was Britney Spears

remember when he would wear cool fun socks with his suits for award shows.

speckle boy with speckled socks, shoes, hoodie and suit jacket

he couldn’t sit down during xfactor... wore a turtleneck the day after harry left london... if you know you know.. **worthy mention** some guy met louis at a store back in 2017 and when he asked him about his noticeable limp, louis replied with “no comment” before running away.

louis: LOUD, LOUD & LOUD

louis’ tweets: “hope everyone is having a great day. stay safe and thank you!! :)” “blahhh” “share?” “I’m pregnant” “I have a bit of a sun burnt nose :( #bitembarrassing” and lots of emojis

important harry lyrics: i want your belly, dream of how you ride it, spreading you open is the only way of knowing you

Louis has a mangina.

#louis #harry #larry stylinson #louis tomlinson #harry styles #larry #onedirection

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swedna · 4 years

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While it wasn’t an official visit, the first occupant of the WhiteHouse to land on the shores of India was Ulysses S Grant, and likely not the last with, let’s say a dodgy sense of aesthetics. The 18th President of the United States, Grant served two consecutive terms in office between 1869 and 1877 and was also the Commanding General of the US Army when the Civil War was won. Soon after his term ended, Grant and his wife Julia set forth on a two-and-a-half-year world tour that aimed to project the US as an outward looking power ready to engage with the world. Grant arrived in Mumbai in February 1879 aboard USS Richmond and undertook the customary trip, on elephant back, to the Taj Mahal in Agra, whereupon the Grants thought it beautiful but not more than the Capitol Hill building. Grant met the then Viceroy Robert Lytton in Kolkata and professed admiration for his father Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novels. In 1982, the San Jose State University instituted the annual, tongue-in-cheek Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest to award the worst possible opening lines of a novel as a tribute to Bulwer-Lytton’s “It was a dark stormy night” in his 1830 work Paul Clifford.

It remains to be seen what reluctant traveler Donald J Trump, the 45th President of the US on his two-day visit between February 24-26 makes of the spartan Sabarmati Ashram, the Taj Mahal, or the ‘Namaste, Trump’ rally in Ahmedabad where PM Narendra Modi assures there would be “millions and millions” in attendance.

ALSO READ: Namaste, Trump: A timeline of US Presidents' India visits since Eisenhower

Beyond the bearhugs and protestations of great personal bond between the two leaders, this visit carries a more transactional flavour than other recent presidential trips to India. Unlike in the past, a trade deal between the two occupies centerstage, given the context of Trump’s domestic policy priorities. Trump, the self-professed master of deal making has in recent months dubbed India “tariff king” in a tweet pointing towards India’s propensity to heavily tax US exports such as the high-end Harley Davidson motorcycles. India, instinctively wary of trade deals now has more reason to worry considering the deteriorating health of export sector after sector from gems and jewelry to textiles. India’s inability to take any meaningful advantage in return for greater American access to its domestic markets perhaps explains its lack of enthusiasm on this front. But hey, we’re at least talking business. It wasn’t like this always.

President EisenhowerPrime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru receiving US President Dwight D Eisenhower at Parliament House in 1959, before the President addressed a joint session of Parliament: US Embassy in India The first-ever visit of a serving US President took 12 years in the making since India’s independence. Dwight D Eisenhower, a decorated war hero was welcomed in India as a “Prince of Peace”. The week-long visit was a big success with Eisenhower travelling in an open car with thousands lining the streets. Despite India fronting the distinctly anti-West Non-Aligned Movement, Nehru, the romantic statesman and Eisenhower, the soldier, seemed to have hit it off. Just as Modi might personally show Trump around the Sabarmati Ashram, Nehru in 1959 offered the Eisenhowers a guided tour of the Taj. Eisenhower was lavish in his praise for India from the get-go. “In fulfilling a desire of many years, I pay in person America’s tribute to Indian people, to their culture, to their progress and to their strength among independent nations,” he declared on arrival, adding that it was a personal pilgrimage of sorts. Not only that, in his address to a special joint session of parliament, Eisenhower spoke about American support to India in the face of any external acts of aggression.

It could be that the two had cultivated more than an acquaintance when Nehru was conferred an honorary doctorate by Columbia University in 1949 when Eisenhower was its president. But matters of commerce hardly figured. Perhaps knowing Nehru’s not-so-charitable views on American wealth, there was no business delegation that accompanied Eisenhower—something that’s an essential part of bilateral head of state visits in the twenty first century.

In rising heat of the Cold War the bonhomie quickly evaporated. Nehru’s reciprocal visit to the US in 1961 during John F Kennedy’s presidency was a testy affair given India’s embrace of Soviet Union.

Richard Nixon’s visit a decade after Eisenhower could charitably be described a disaster. It was more a 22-hour stopover than a full-fledged state visit. You only need to scan the New York Times’ pages on the eve of Nixon’s visit to get a sense of its lack of purpose. So wide was the gulf of distrust between the two nations, and India’s inconsequence in the larger scheme of things that none of the issues you’d normally expect—South Asian regional stability, the Indo-Pakistan arms race, unrest in East Pakistan or the Chinese threat—made the headlines. The touring party was more worried about droppings from Delhi’s trees.

Richard NixonUS President Richard Nixon with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi, July 31, 1969. Photo: White House “If Mr Nixon rides under clear skies with the top of his bubblecar down, he will have to beware the fallout from Delhi’s ubiquitous Jamun trees. Their purplish bounty, a semi-sour cherry like fruit with a big, hard pit, splatters indiscriminately on heads of passers by these days,” noted NYT. Not many were surprised when declassified US papers showed the contempt Nixon had for Prime Minster Indira Gandhi. The sentiment was certainly mutual. A year later, she returned the favour by not attending Nixon’s banquet for heads of state on the sidelines on the UN’s 25th anniversary celebrations. Jimmy Carter’s visit in 1978 too wasn’t any more memorable than Nixon’s. Carter said he loved reading the Bhagwat Gita presented to him by Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Carter in return offered Desai the two-volume Journal of American writer Henry Thoreau.

Bill ClintonBill Clinton visited India in 2000 in the backdrop of the Kargil war From 1947 to 2000, there had only been three US presidential visits to India. Since 2000, counting Trump’s, there would be five. It was perhaps an acknowledgement of India’s growing economic and strategic importance for the US. While Bill Clinton charmed Indians in 2000 in the backdrop of the Kargil war and signalled the end to post-Pokhran nuclear test sanctions, substantive gains were made during George W Bush’s visit in 2006 with signing of the landmark civilian nuclear deal.

Barack Obama is the only US president to make two state visits to India in 2010 and 2015. The second, a hastily arranged special invitation as chief guest on Republic Day. In 2010, with Manmohan Singh as PM, who Obama had referred to as a “Global Guru” at a G20 Summit for his leadership in diffusing the global financial crisis, the expectations were understandably high. Both had a reputation of being cerebral. While Obama’s celebrity quotient having become the first Black President of the US with a landslide win was at its peak, Singh too had won a second term in office with a bigger mandate for the Congress Party. The gush of warmth seemed unstoppable. If Clinton de-hyphenated India and Pakistan, Bush invested plenty of personal political capital on getting the nuclear deal through, Obama followed the path of the predecessors with greater vigour. At least that’s what it looked back in 2010. Moreover, in his address to the joint session of parliament, Obama publicly endorsed India’s candidacy for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council—the first US President to do so.

Barack ObamaPresident Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chat during the State Dinner at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential palace, in New Dehli, India, Nov. 8, 2010. Photo: White House By 2015, the Modi bearhug had well and truly arrived on the international diplomatic arena and Obama was one its early recipients. There was to be no parliamentary address during this short visit, but enough time for the man derided as chaiwala to personally make a cup of tea over a televised tete-a-tete in the lawns of the PM’s residence. The infamous monogrammed Modi suit too made an appearance during that visit. Pomp, pageantry and symbolism trumped over substance.

With a decelerating economy that weakens India’s hands on geopolitical issues, would Trump’s visit too go down that route? Maybe, just maybe, unlike the Grants, Ivanka and Donald Trump might think Taj more beautiful than Trump Towers. One wouldn’t bet on it, though.

#White

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eddiegirls · 7 years

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1am thought: what small things do you think make louis happy

i think his family makes him happy (his siblings, harry, his 1d boys...), and i think listening to music makes him happy because he’s such a musically inclined person. i think he loves to rewatch his fave movies and i think he reads books (like when we saw him reading the psychopath test--i think he reads a lot. i have a bookworm!louis headcanon...where’s my librarian au). and i think writing songs makes him happy, like he’s got hundreds of songs and little bits of lyrics written down on sticky notes all over his house and in the notes on his phone. i think meeting gay fans who tell him how much he’s helped them makes him IMMENSELY happy (not really a small thing but i needed to mention it). i think coming home and putting on sweats (after a day of murdering everyone on the red carpet in a suit) makes him happy. i think spending a quiet day w/ clifford makes him happy and i think his tea first thing in the morning makes him happy. i think going to concerts and blending in w/ the crowd and just enjoying the music makes him happy. i think being able to spend time at home in england makes him happy. and i think i am done now bc this is ridiculous. god i love him so fucking much.

#ask #Anonymous

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cutsliceddiced · 5 years

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New top story from Time: The Price of Insulin Has Soared. These Biohackers Have a Plan to Fix It

In a hip Oakland, Calif., neighborhood, just blocks from cocktail bars and swanky Mexican restaurants, is an enormous warehouse, home to Counter Culture Labs, ground zero for an audacious challenge to the high cost of prescription drugs. In the entryway stands a 1½-story cardboard T. Rex, and inside it’s a bit as if Dr. Frankenstein shared his lab with a hoarder: cluttered shelves hold piles of drying mushrooms, Clorox wipes, wires, kitchen pots, motor oil, two books about Darwin, ropes, a broken alarm clock, a telescoping magnifying glass, a heat gun, a 3-D printer and several jars of clear liquid with tubes running between them. One shelf holds plastic bins labeled Lab Coats, Paint & Brushes and Ebola Suits.

A group of professional scientists and amateur tinkerers founded Counter Culture Labs in 2013 with the goal of bringing biotechnology to the masses. At any time, it hosts dozens of projects; when I visit in July, there’s one whose objective is to make “vegan cheese” using yeast.

The Open Insulin Project has bigger plans. The group wants to reverse engineer how the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies produce insulin and then turn over the instructions to the public. In theory, anyone with a bit of cash could then build a DIY lab in their garage and make open-source insulin.

Photo-composite, photographs by Greg Kahn for TIME

Currently three companies—Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi—control most of the world’s $27 billion insulin market, using a complicated web of regulations and patents to keep a hold on it. Open Insulin wants to rebuild it with no megacorporations and no profit. The project is probably months, if not years, away from actually making medical-grade insulin, but its objective is as much political as it is production-oriented: bringing a sharp focus to the stratospheric price of insulin and, more broadly, the predatory pricing of prescription drugs in the U.S.

Over the past 60 years, the list price of a vial of insulin has gone from about 75¢ to $250—an increase nearly 43 times the rate of the U.S. Consumer Price Index inflation. “High drug costs exist throughout the system, but insulin is the poster child of this broken marketplace,” says Representative Tom Reed (R., N.Y.), one of the chairs of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus. Some, in fact, think that the project is already working as a kind of provocation: a way to force the issue on what is really a policy problem. “If the price of insulin gets regulated, the project will just go away,” says Jean Peccoud, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Colorado State University.

For now, the project seems to be in a regulatory safe space, but that may change as it gets closer to making actual medicine. In an email, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) spokesperson acknowledged that the agency is aware of the Open Insulin Project, but noted, “We cannot comment on hypothetical situations or potential future states of regulation.”

Predatory pricing in the U.S. isn’t unique to insulin. A study of the world’s top 20 medications found that Americans pay an average of three times as much as patients in the U.K. do for a given drug. The science behind making insulin is old, which makes it a good first target for the disruption of the pharmaceutical industry.

Cayce Clifford for TIMEDi Franco, founder of the Open Insulin Project, works with yeast at Counter Culture Labs in Oakland, Calif.

Anthony Di Franco, one of the Open Insulin Project’s co-founders, has diabetes himself, and has watched as the price of managing his disease has gone up and up. He has a dual undergraduate degree in physics and math/computer science from Yale University and is currently on leave from pursuing his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, Davis. He lives on contracting jobs, doing data science and researching machine learning and programming languages. Like many freelancers, he doesn’t have employer-sponsored insurance. But unlike most with the disease, he knew enough about science to start thinking there might be a better way—and so, in 2015, he launched the Open Insulin Project.

“The current system was built to exploit people with diseases,” Di Franco says. “Historians will look back and say, ‘How could they have done such a terrible job?’”

Diabetes is caused when the pancreas can no longer make enough or any insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar, or when a person’s body builds up a resistance to the hormone. Insulin, which helps the body use sugar for energy and lowers its levels in the blood, was first used to treat diabetes in the early 1920s. Physician Frederick Banting and medical student Charles Best were working with dogs, inducing diabetes by removing their pancreases and then trying to figure out a cure. The two eventually extracted a substance from cow pancreases; purified it with the help of biochemist James Collip; and proved it worked by injecting it themselves and noting that they got dizzy, a sign of low blood sugar. By 1922, doctors were using insulin from cow pancreases to treat diabetes patients.

People with severe diabetes need insulin injections to stay alive. Without it, your blood turns acidic, your body dehydrates, your vision blurs, you get weaker and start to vomit. Over days, you slowly—and painfully—die.

This fact, coupled with the inefficiencies of the American health system, as well as a manipulable patent framework, has enabled pharmaceutical companies to steadily increase the price of the lifesaving drug, even as it’s become easier and less costly to produce. Generally speaking, drugs are cheap to make. The costs are mostly to pay for the research and development required to discover them. For example, one 2016 study that looked at 106 recently approved drugs from 10 different companies found that the average R&D cost for each was $2.78 billion, compared with only about $19 million per drug in costs of actual clinical trials.

Much of the industrialized world has some form of single-payer health insurance and strict price controls on drugs, usually determined by a board of doctors and experts. In the U.S., the pull of the free market was supposed to keep prices down, but instead has led to a complex system of profit-driven corporations, from manufacturers to insurance companies, who add cost at every juncture.

It wasn’t meant to be this way, especially not with insulin. Banting, who shared a 1923 Nobel Prize for his work on insulin, demanded his name not be put on the patent, believing profiteering off a medicine was unethical. His co-discoverers agreed, transferring their patents to the University of Toronto for $1 each.

The pharmaceutical corporation Eli Lilly and Company of Indianapolis offered to help the university develop the medication, and the school eventually agreed to license the technology. Eli Lilly contracted with slaughterhouses to receive pig pancreases by railroad car in order to squeeze out the insulin. It was crude, but effective—and cheap. Ads from the 1960s show vials of insulin available for 84¢ in the U.S., just $7.36 in today’s dollars. And then came a real breakthrough.

In 1982, Eli Lilly introduced insulin made by genetically modified E. coli bacteria. The new insulin was less likely to cause allergies than the animal version, and it could be grown in vats. Novo Nordisk started making its own bioengineered insulin in 1991, and it looked like the drug was about to get really affordable, thanks to the competitive marketplace. Instead, prices went up. A congressional report written in 2018 found the list price of competing insulin formulations “appeared to rise in tandem,” doubling from 2012 to 2018. According to the report, that was most likely due to limited market competition, and to the fact that “each part of the insulin delivery chain is controlled by a small number of entities.” The marketplace never became competitive.

In theory, the U.S. patent system, which gives manufacturers sole rights to a drug formulation for 20 years, should eventually enable other drug producers to bring cheaper versions of the same medication to the market. But as Reed and the co-chair of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus, Diana DeGette (D., Colo.), note, companies skirt this by “evergreening” their drugs—tweaking drug formulas slightly, often making incremental improvements, to renew the patent and prevent generics from ever entering the market. Lantus, a long-acting insulin patented by Sanofi in 1994, was due to enter the public domain in 2015, but instead the company filed 74 patents for newer versions of the drug, which delayed that until 2031. Novo Nordisk has done something similar with one type of insulin by upgrading the mechanics of its injection pen. These insulins are touted as improvements, although there is evidence these are typically minimal.

“People with diabetes experience different issues and complexities that can’t be covered by one solution, which is why we continue to bring forth programs that will directly benefit even more patients and work toward much needed longer-term systemic reform,” said a Novo Nordisk spokesperson in an email.

An Eli Lilly spokesperson told TIME in an email that the company does not evergreen. “None of our insulins is patent-protected and our most commonly used insulin, Humalog 100, lost patent protection in 2014,” the spokesperson said. While the patent for Humalog 100 has expired, because of the complexities of entering the market, only one manufacturer jumped in to make a version of the drug: Sanofi, which already makes its own formulation. Sanofi’s “generic” version of Humalog sells for just 15% less than its original price. Eli Lilly is also manufacturing an “authorized generic” version, currently selling for 50% of the price.

A Sanofi spokesperson, meanwhile, writes that the company’s original patent on Lantus has expired and subsequent patents “are related to new and unique inventions.” They also point out that despite increases in the listed price for Lantus, the actual price customers pay is lower than it was in 2006, a result of other inefficiencies in the market. The spokesperson added that “we also support a robust and competitive marketplace, including efforts by other organizations to develop new technologies and medicines—including Open Insulin Project.”

For insured diabetics, the high costs of insulin are borne primarily by their insurers, and so remain more or less hidden. But for those without insurance or for people on high-deductible plans that require them to pay for their own care until they hit a predetermined amount, these prices take lives. Alec Smith, a 26-year-old restaurant manager, couldn’t afford the $1,300 a month it took to manage his diabetes. In 2018, Smith was three days from a paycheck when he died alone in his apartment; investigators later found an empty insulin-injection pen in Smith’s home. The case made headlines, but the human price of the high cost of insulin isn’t hard to find. Some 13.2% of the 2.9 million people who take insulin in the U.S. do not take it as prescribed, and 24.4% asked their doctor for a lower-cost medication, according to the CDC.

It’s not going to take a Nobel Prize to make DIY insulin, just persistence. The good news for the Open Insulin Project is that it has the accomplished 33-year-old French biochemist Yann Huon de Kermadec as its lead scientist. He’s in the U.S. right now because his wife Louise Lassalle is studying for a Ph.D. at Berkeley. Huon de Kermadec donates his time, showing up at the lab five to six times a week to work long hours designing a new form of life: a yeast cell genetically engineered to produce a form of insulin people could use.

Cayce Clifford for TIMEHuon de Kermadec, lead scientist of the Open Insulin Project, at Counter Culture Labs

On his side is the fact that biotech is getting cheap. The same pressures that brought down the cost of total gene sequencing from a taxpayer-funded $2.7 billion project to a $200 drugstore test in under two decades mean you don’t need millions of dollars to start a biotech project anymore. The Open Insulin Project is able to do what it does because equipment has become so cheap—especially in the Bay Area, where high turnover in the biotech industry leads to a glut of second-hand, lab-quality gear—and, like your home computer, more powerful. There are now several companies that market vast databases of genes, searchable by utility, all of which are economical. Huon de Kermadec picked two sequences of genes: one that produces a protein that can be cut to make insulin, and one that makes the yeast resistant to a specific antibiotic.

Using these genes, he and the team created a formula for a plasmid, a tiny circular piece of DNA. Then he hired a company to manufacture a small quantity of these plasmids, which they sent to Counter Culture Labs in a tiny plastic vial. Dozens of companies offer this sort of service in the U.S., at prices as low as a few hundred dollars. Next, the team jammed the plasmids into yeast cells, and added an antibiotic solution to the cell cultures. That’s where the antibiotic-resistance gene comes in handy—the ones that successfully adopt the plasmid into their own DNA will survive, and those that don’t will die out. The next step would be to grow the surviving cells, which should contain the genes to produce both antibiotic resistance and the precursor protein for insulin.

The team thinks they’ve gotten this far. They know the yeast produces a molecule the size of insulin—which is a pretty good sign it is, in fact, insulin. But they’re scientists, so they’re not popping the champagne yet. They want to confirm that the molecule is indeed insulin by using mass spectrometry, a precise technique that allows scientists to identify specific proteins, before they say for sure.

Then they will have to prove their insulin is pure enough to inject into a person. They’ll also have to demonstrate they can make medical-grade insulin every time with their process. Then, to get it to the people, they’ll need to standardize the equipment so other people can manufacture or buy it.

When asked if he thought his team would eventually create a yeast that could produce insulin, Huon de Kermadec responded confidently. “Yes, of course,” he says, “it isn’t rocket science.” But then there are the regulatory hurdles.

Di Franco has been reading up on the history of democracy in ancient Athens and is trying to craft his organization’s bylaws in the spirit of the world’s first democracy. He also wants its product to be democratically affordable: Di Franco thinks roughly $10,000 should be enough to get a group started with the equipment needed to produce enough insulin for 10,000 people. Each of these $10,000 setups would be somewhere between a middle-school science experiment and an industrial laboratory, requiring rooms of equipment; think something closer to a medical-grade brewery than to a countertop bread machine. The resulting product, he says, would cost someone with diabetes dozens of dollars a month instead of hundreds.

That’s noble, in theory, but there’s a reason why the FDA puts a lot of effort into certifying the labs that make our medicines: mistakes can be fatal. The U.S. drug-development system may be expensive, but it does guarantee quality.

The Open Insulin Project falls into a black hole outside of FDA regulation, according to Peccoud, the Colorado State professor. For one thing, the project may skirt some regulations by being a nonprofit. Also, the FDA allows individuals to largely do whatever they want to themselves. “If you want to inject yourself with home-brew beer, there’s no law to stop that,” says Peccoud.

If it does reach a production phase, Open Insulin would have to conform to Good Manufacturing Practice, the FDA rules for factories that make medicine, food, cosmetics and medical devices. And because the group plans to share its insulin-production framework online, crossing state lines, there may be other legal issues on the horizon. One solution might be to partner with other players in the health care system, like hospitals and pharmacies, which create custom versions of everything from acetaminophen to opioids in a process called compounding and navigate the demands of the U.S. system already. However, that’s likely to make the final product more expensive.

Ultimately, it’s not clear that the Open Insulin Project’s real goal is to facilitate insulin minilabs across the U.S. The group intends to put the plan for their designer insulin-producing yeast online as soon as it’s done, but only for “research purposes,” says Di Franco. And without brewing facilities or the ability to check and purify the hormone, the plans themselves are a long way—scientifically and legally—from the point where anyone will be injecting homegrown insulin. Di Franco has offered up his own body as a proving ground once the lawyers sign off: “I’d be thrilled to be the first person to take the insulin,” he says.

There’s ample evidence that insulin doesn’t need to be as expensive as it is in the U.S., even without DIY labs. For one thing, just across the border with Canada, a vial of insulin costs $30. In January 2020, Colorado will become the first U.S. state to put a $100 cap on the co-pays insured patients pay for insulin. Minnesota is considering a similar law.

“It’s an old drug,” says Peccoud. “It’s not hard to produce. It should not be more expensive than Tylenol. Insulin is just pure greed. And a failure of government.”

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

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annehstevens · 7 years

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ENG 703 Survey of Literary Criticism & Theory syllabus

Tuesdays 4:00-6:45 pm

Professor Anne H. Stevens, Department of English

This course is designed to introduce graduate students to some of the major texts within the long and complex tradition of literary theory and criticism. In a semester, the task is nearly impossible. The best I can hope to do is to introduce you to a wide range of approaches so that you can explore further on your own. The course is divided into four units of unequal length: 1) Foundations 2) Formalism, structuralism, poststructuralism 3) Race, class, gender, sexuality, and 4) Books, readers, history. Within these units we will be reading a mixture of entire books, journal articles, and extracts from books. Some of these readings you have almost certainly encountered before while others will likely be new to you. I have also ordered from the bookstore but am not requiring my companion book, for students who want a broad historical overview (from antiquity to the present). We will cover some historical context in class but our main focus will be on reading and understanding the primary texts.

Required Texts: (available at the bookstore or elsewhere)

G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History

Karl Marx, The Portable Karl Marx

Roland Barthes, S/Z

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Part 1

Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique

Other readings available through Web Campus or via email for auditors.

Optional Text: Anne H. Stevens, Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction

Course requirements for enrolled students: At least three 100-200 word blog posts, three initial responses to another student’s post, and a 2000-4000 word final reflection paper. Active participation in class discussion both in class and online.

Course requirements for auditors and passers-by: All are welcome to sit in on the class; you can choose your own level of engagement. Any auditors or others who wish to are encouraged to post and comment on the course blog and to participate in class discussion. I will make the Web Campus readings available via email for those who are interested.

The course blog: I have set up a WordPress blog for this course at eng703.wordpress.com. I will enable all registered students and auditors access as blog “authors.” This means you will be able to create posts, upload files, and moderate comments on your own posts. You will not be able to delete other people’s posts or the site itself. Each registered student must commit to writing three 100-200 word posts over the course of the semester and three initial responses to someone else’s post (I will pass around a sign-up sheet on the first day). Auditors are encouraged but not required to post and to respond to others’ posts.

Your posts should relate to the week’s reading and should be posted by 5:00pm on the Sunday before class, thus allowing enough time for the respondent to post and for others to comment prior to class. These posts will serve to begin our course discussion each week, and the discussion can continue online after class is over. Your posts can take a range of forms but should not be mere summary of the reading. Instead, they should focus on a particular passage, term, or question; connect the reading to something else either within or outside the class; use examples to clarify a theoretical point; etc. The designated first respondent should engage with the post and continue the conversation while remaining civil. Keep the genre of the blog post in mind as you write: images and links are encouraged, as are pithy provocations; detailed textual analysis is better reserved for classroom discussion.

Reflection paper: At the end of the semester, all registered students must write a 2000-4000 word essay that reflects upon the readings for the course and your own identity as a literary theorist. We’ll talk more as the semester goes on about the kinds of things you should and shouldn’t include in this paper. Your first task is to try to understand the sometimes quite difficult texts we’ll be reading. Your next task is to synthesize the readings, to find points of agreement and disagreement, to understand the range of approaches to a single topic. The first two tasks will constitute our main focus in the class discussion and course blog. Your third task, and the one that will form the substance of this final piece of writing, is to begin to internalize the theoretical approaches you have read, adopting and transforming concepts and methodologies that best suit your identity as a critic.

Schedule:

January 16: first day of class. Introduction, sign up for blog postings.

1 Foundations

January 23: G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History

January 30: Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and from The German Ideology, pp. 155-83; from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte pp. 287-323; from Capital pp. 432-503.

February 6: Sigmund Freud, “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”; “Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through”; “The ‘Uncanny’”; “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad”

2 Formalism, structuralism, poststructuralism

February 13: Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics; Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”; Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth”; Tzvetan Todorov, “Some Approaches to Russian Formalism”

February 20: W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy”’; W. K. Wimsatt, “The Chicago Critics”; R. S. Crane, introduction to Critics and Criticism; Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”

February 27: Roland Barthes, S/Z

3 Race, class, gender, sexuality

March 6: Simone de Beauvoir, from The Second Sex; Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”; Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”; Raymond Williams, “Dominant, Emergent, and Residual”

March 13: Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

March 20: Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality

April 3: Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”; Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”; Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection”

April 10: Gloria Anzaldúa, from Borderlands/La Frontera; Judith Butler, from Gender Trouble; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, from Epistemology of the Closet; bell hooks, from Ain’t I a Woman

4 Books, readers, history

April 17: Stanley Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum”; Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory”; Pierre Bourdieu, from Rules of Art; Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?”

April 24: Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” and “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”; Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact’; Stephen Greenblatt, from Shakespearean Negotiations; Howard Becker, from Art Worlds

May 1: Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique

Finals week: wrap-up and celebration.

May 11: Final reflection due

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