#ill probably change it back eventually i just like this url

[gamesbro]

changed my url from rivalcore to gamesbro

#ill probably change it back eventually i just like this url #oak.txt

[astrcldust]

how would you guys feel if i distanced myself from pjo?

#like ill still reblog some pjo stuff and make femslash content for y'all but i don't want to feel like i have to maintain that pjo reputatio #like id change my url once i have one and my icon eventually #and broaden the stuff on this blog #id probably bring musicals back here too since my sideblog is failing so how would you feel about that too?? #idk i just know most of my followers are from pjo and i don't wanna lose too many

[artofdying1970]

tag game !!

thanks for tagging me @mothernatures-sons and @catinsatintrousers <33

1. Why did you choose your url?

i loooove all songs from revolver but she said she said is probably my favorite. it's so good + the story behind it is really interesting !!

2. Any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them?

@flowersintherubble ! pretty much an aesthetic blog? i rb posts about poetry, writing, web weaving n shit. one day ill post something original there but idk when lol??

3. How long have you been on tumblr?

so i first made a blog on like ?? 2018 ?? then i came back on another blog around 2019 for like two days lmao. and now im here !!

4. Do you have a queue tag?

no </3 i dont use the queue feature because i get excited about people seeing my posts so i just post them immediately 🥺

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

i had a really popular beatles acc on twitter on like 2019 but eventually i deactivated and got into another fandom (mcyt😐) when i got back into the fandom i wanted to go back to twitter but i couldn't find mutuals quick enough and so i joined tumblr lol

6. Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

george's heart shaped glasses were iconic like i *had* to immortalize them

7. Why did you choose your header?

idk it matched my color scheme :) plus it's a pretty cool picture imo !!

8. What's your post with the most notes?

i think the one where i made a joke abt how the bugs's music changed throughout the years and shit ? it wasn't v funny tbh

9. How many mutuals do you have?

idk but i love them all !!! <3 (i may have favorites but shh)

10. How many followers do you have?

214 !

11. How many people do you follow?

128 😗 i guess im still stuck with the whole skinny ratio mentality from twitter lol

12. Have you ever made a shitpost?

that's like. my entire brand it's a little pathetic honestly

13. How often do you use tumblr each day?

like three hours 😐 obsessed much ?? lol

14. Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once? Who won?

i mean not really?? i made a post where i stated an opinion and someone rb'ed telling their opinion and i was like ??? i literally did not ask lmao but it wasn't really a fight so

15. How do you feel about "you need to reblog this" posts?

they're shit !! idc how good your cause is if you have to harass or make people feel bad about not reblogging your post you suck lmao !!

16. Do you like tag games?

yes !!!! please tag me in any !

17. Do you like ask games?

again yes !! i love talking about anything :)

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

quite a few actually. i love them but they make my silly little blog feel even more silly

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

omg i literally made like 3 posts talking about this at the beginning of the month i think??? the answer is yes but idk how to get close to them :(

20. tags !!

@bobamania @belldog @fempaul @mithranqueer @sgt-revolver @notn0wjohn @bluebeatlesgirls @seashantyskye @indipepki @pyritesuns no pressure ofc :)

#moots:) #ahh this was so much fun ! <33

[hopefullyababe]

been tagged by @crit20lesbian!

1. Why did you choose your URL?

when i was 14 and made this blog i had started using the phase "[so-and-so] is a BABE" (which had eventually evolved into calling everything that i liked a babe (this coffeemaker is a babe)). i didnt think very highly of myself at the time- i did not know i was a stone cold Hottie. so when i was coming up with a new blog name i put 'Hopefullyababe' cuz im like. Hopefully a babe. but i dont know!

ive thought abt changing it a couple times but i dont have anything cool lined up. if i come up with a good username i like better i might change it.

2. Any side blogs?

oh quite a few. if you can manage to find my aesthetics blog, my unused homestuck blog, my two url holder blogs, my Very Bad Posts blog, and my unlinked art blog that i rarely use, ill

well. ill be. really embarrased. but you can have like. 4 dollars.

3. How long have you been on Tumblr?

ohhh uhh. on This account its been. ppprobably 3 years?

but i had a sherlock blog back in 2016-17 called For-the-love-of-kittens which i deleted :( i wish eternally that id kept it up so i could see all the shit i reblogged :(

4. Do you have a queue tag?

i do actually! though i dont queue things often :/ its #u r a queue t.

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?

i wanted to post about sanders sides. and id had a blog before but i never used it as a. like. Actual Blog. i just kinda reblogged without any tags and never interacted with anyone. and i wanted to do more of that. so i made this one for a fresh start.

6. Why did you choose your pfp/icon?

it all started with a breakdown and a picture of a horse i drew during it. i fell in love with his Frightened eyes and his shitty hair. i decided no one could stop me from being a horse. i made him my profile picture. his name is humphrey. hes getting a degree in biochemistry. he practices meditation to deal with the stress of a stem degree. he looks a Leafs. i do a new humphrey whenever i get tired of the old humphrey pfp

7. Why did you choose your header?

i wanted to change it up and do a fall theme! so i made these blobby leafs that fade into the blog color. i like having my headers fade into the blog cuz i think it looks Cool.

8. What’s your post with the most notes?

[this post] about middle aged gay couples in podcasts, and a. close second being [this one] for some reason????? i cant imagine why.

;)

9. How many mutuals do you have?

ohhh let me count

thirteen! very lucky number. love yall alot <3

10. How many followers do you have?

238 followers! love yall a whole lot also <3

11. How many people do you follow?

i follow 97 blogs. i honestly perfer the calmer more empty dash it gets me. makes sure i can see most all the posts.

12. Have you ever made a shit post?

god have i ever

13. How often do you use Tumblr each day?

id say an average of about 4-5 hours off and on? i probably visit it about 4 times a day maybe more

14. Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

i had an argument with a troll once when i was having a bad day. im not very proud of it.

15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

i. dont really like them. they make me feel bad and deter me from reblogging the post. cuz i dont want my followers to be guilted into reblogging it too. i mean sometimes ill reblog it if i feel like its important but. it always makes me feel bad and weird no matter if its a good message that needs to be spread. that just my Weird tho.

16. Do you like tag games?

yes! i love being tagged in them and answering questions or doing picrews- theyre very fun!

17. Do you like ask games?

yes!! i do like ask games. i like talking a whole lot and theyre perfect for that.

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

ummm. somehow i ended up with@ mcwebby of tma fame as my tumblr mutual (they are Very Cool) and id consider them pretty tumblr famous. they might disagree tho o-O

OH WAIT NO LEX IS TUMBLR FAMOUS TOO.

19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?

uh. ha. um. ehehe. uh. well. um. ehhe. uh

no

tags! @solareidolon @cherry-pie-bi @trashpremium @milomeepit @purplexiasphinx (no presh yall ;))

#who summons me??? #daphnes talking again #long post #uhh the crush question is kinda complicated. like i used to but its kinda evolved into like. whats it called when you wanna be someones qpp #like. is it Squash?

[notbigondoors]

{out of equations} I am a little afraid that I’m being misunderstood because of how it appears I am running my blogs. The truth is, I am a shy, derpy potato, and I suspect I’m just coming across in a much different way than I wish to. Below is my attempt to clear some of that up, so that hopefully anyone whom I’ve inadvertently made to feel like I am ignoring them or don’t want to write with them can feel better. Thank you for reading, if you do, and otherwise I hope everyone is having a lovely day. =)

I don’t know if this is actually a thing or not, but it occurs to me that I may be giving people the wrong idea about my blogs. It’s been so for a while that I keep getting compliments on my writing/portrayals, but then so many of my mutuals never interact with me and eventually unfollow, or start threads and drop them after a few replies. Now, people are entitled to lurk, change their minds, become disinterested, lose muse for a thread, and/or decide they don’t like writing with me or feel that my writing doesn’t measure up to theirs once they start. That’s perfectly okay! I’m not mad, I’m not calling anybody out, that’s absolutely okay! Right now, I’m talking to any of my mutuals who feel intimidated by me, feel I don’t want to write with them because I haven’t reached out to them first, or feel like I’m basically telling them they’re not good enough to write with me because I haven’t started something with them. I want to take the time to say how wrong all of that is and to give you an idea of how I really run my blogs.

First of all, real life has not been easy for me lately, as I’m sure it hasn’t been for everyone, given various things going on in the world. Between what’s in the news lately, the pandemic, and a chronic illness of mine coming out of remission after 20-ish years, I am definitely not at my best. I am on many medications for my chronic illness that come with a shopping list of side effects that make me feel physically horrible on a daily basis, but also they cause brain fog. I’m legitimately having trouble remembering things, which means that starter I told you I’d write you and then never did? Yeah, I don’t hate you, and it’s not that I don’t want to write with you, I just have honestly forgotten I even said I would do it. Combine that with my Tumblr notifications not working properly and a large influx of new writers and interactions lately due to WandaVision, and I am really honestly forgetting what I’ve said to whom on here. Side effects of my meds also include insomnia (which I already had, so it’s gotten worse... yay?) which means I’m not getting enough sleep and that’s compounding everything else that’s already making it hard for me to keep everything straight.

In addition to that, I have very bad anxiety, of the kind that interferes with my ability to do everyday things. Social anxiety is a huge facet of my generalized anxiety disorder. Simply put, I am introverted, shy, and terrified of talking to new people, even online. Even messaging with people I know can sometimes drain me mentally. It is not that I dislike you, or that I don’t want to talk to you, or that you are bothering me. None of those are true. I just am not good socially. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do, and I feel so intimidated, especially with so much amazing talent on here. I would like to think that I am a nice and approachable person, but I rarely ever reach out to people. Liking a starter call almost gives me a panic attack. Sometimes I sit and stare at one for an hour, really wanting to do it, but then I think... well I’d have to put my url since all my active rp blogs right now are sides. Would they get mad that I’m not just hitting like? Is that already too complicated and they’d just ignore me? Yeah, they probably wouldn’t want to write with me anyway. Aaaaand I close Tumblr and never like the post, heh.

I see talented writers on here all the time, I read their really great, funny, interesting, harrowing, or exciting threads and think... I wish I could write threads like those. But I just lack the social skills to get involved. My anxiety tells me things that aren’t true all the time, like that I’m extraneous, people have their groups and I should leave them to have fun in peace because I’d only be bothering them. It is not my intention to always make others do all of the work by waiting for them to reach out, or hoping they write that first starter instead of me, or waiting for that indisputable starter call that finally makes me feel comfortable enough that yes, they want to rp with someone like me... it’s just unfortunately where I’m at mentally right now.

Time is also an issue. I work full-time online as a teacher for a university, I have about 160 students, and I have students all around the world in all different time zones, so my job is pretty much 24/7. I am constantly answering student emails, grading assignments, dealing with technical site issues, etc. Sometimes I really want to interact with new writers on here, but I don’t bother because I am afraid that my activity level won’t be what they want or expect. That’s a big reason why I haven’t been expanding my roleplaying to Discord or joining large rpg groups. I can’t guarantee activity. Sometimes I will be very active, sometimes I won’t be active at all... and I won’t always know ahead of time. 

Anyway, this is a lot of rambling and I’m sorry for that, but I wanted to clear up any notion that I am aloof, that I am super selective and that’s why I’m not rping with you, or that if I seem to be ignoring you, I am. SO. NOT. TRUE. It’s a combination of my being too afraid to reach out, having health issues that make me very forgetful at times, and feeling like I have to hold back because of scheduling issues or a lack of free time. So... yeah. That’s that. If you’ve gotten this far in reading this post, you are sweet and precious and a wonderful human being. Thank you for taking the time to do so. If I said I would write you a starter and never did, please remind me. I am 99.9% sure the reason is that I just plum forgot. If I appear to have dropped a thread you really loved, please remind me about it. I may not have even seen your reply with Tumblr’s crappy notifications not showing up for me. And if you want to rp with me, I don’t bite, I’m not intimidating, yes I want you to reply to that open starter, yes I want you to randomly tag me in a starter or drop something into my ask box, I am honestly just a scared potato who really cannot Social™ well.

Wanda, Vision, and Pietro are most active right now. Please bother them. I have a leafling OC who is very adorable and versatile, I promise you. Please bother him. I also rp Gizmo. Please bother him.

Bother whoever you like, ask me questions about them, answer open starters (literally any of my blogs you can just search for “open starter” and they’ll all come up), and send in memes.

~ Silence, a.k.a. Si, a.k.a. Shy Derpy Potato, out. (^-^)/

#{ out of equations } ᵒᵒᶜ #{because things aren't adding up} #{and it's just occurred to me that i'm creating the wrong look here} #{with how i run things} #{my apologies... i hope we can start over}

[neo-shitty]

toffee!

hehe glad i could make you laugh, oooh that sounds awesome! yeah id love to be tagged it sounds great :)

YES the differences are so fucking weird. like, they do know they're the same age right? i feel like its just an exagguration of how much the persons role in the group matters, like we see chan being held up as such a mature, old leader while jungkook who is literally the same age, is still babied etc. like enha hyung line is basically the same age (if a bit younger) as chenle and jisung but somehow the rules are different?? as you point out, still legal but still bizarre. hehe yeah, i mean where else are we going to rant? quora lol. mmm, hopefully more people can just write less smut abt people who are barely adults

ah, no prob it didnt take long. yeah i think thats right (i keep forgetting you know my url lol) mmhmm :( i think if that happened irl there would be some major trauma going on. knock wood it never happens to you or me lol (/hj)

hehe same! oooh glad Redemption For Cheese was realised! yess we cant rllycomplain that theyve written/produced too much good music lol. yeah, ive dragged him into being a stay so *dusts hands off* mission accomplished. mmm yeah, they tend to have a certain vibe but tbh it couldve worked if they were any other group but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ahh ur one step ahead of me on the stages of listening to ssick i think, still not convinced but thats okay! hehe, it had to be said. yesss the itch in the back of my brain is very satisfied by sorry i love you, felixs vocals deserve to be appreciated! (side note i feel like hes trying to sing more like his speaking voice, sorta husky, but tbh i wouldnt be mad if he sang like in glow, his sweet honey vocals made my life lol. but i think ive heard him say he doesnt like singing like that cos it makes his normal voice less husky, so what can you do)

> YES SOMEONE SAID IT. seungmin rap KING, he sped thru that rap like it was nothing, he deserves more rap lines. i do like how they gave minho some melodic rap lines this comeback, my guy deserved to show off those skills that made him not be eliminated (flashbacks to stay collectively wanting to murder jyp) and we already know changbin can sing, my man murdered masked singer. hyunjin can obviously sing as can jisung and felix, and i want to hear chan rap more! i feel like he started as part of 3racha (as a rap unit not producing) and then just became a vocalist (which im fine with, but it could be nice to hear him flex his rapping skills) and was partially replaced by hyunjin. anywayyy

back to album talk. lmaooo sad music to twerk to PERFECTLY describes silent cry. yes secret secret is and will always be, a masterpiece. hehe glad i could make you laugh :) i just felt like they have similar vibes. putting off skz stuff bc of not having time to cry IS the kpop stan life summarised. oh my beloved track, red lights. ahh thats okay, we can have different opinions, but by god the lyrics are *chefs kiss*. *banging on table* TWISTED AU TWISTED AU TWISTED AU. yess id love to see ur take on it! sdfghjkl it would have been glorious

no no! not stupid, just able to predict my brainwaves. ooooh thats so cool! makes me want to go there (wherever there is lol) yeah the waves are pretty good here, but none of my familys a surfer, so we dont rlly enjoy the full potential lol. YES moving on to gone away, it is indeed a heartwrenching track, but the vocals and the bloody key change? makes me want to brave being sad just to listen to it. mmm yeah, good point :( i feel like ive just gotten used to overthinking so much so that it doesnt matter what mood im in, ill do it anyway, so might as well just do what i feel like doing anyway.

yeah i think ur right! it is quite comforting knowing that all the tracks will get the love they deserve. i feel like also people assume kpop is just one genre which is utter bs. there are so many different vibes and feels and songs, i couldnt get into kpop (of which i thought only the bright cheerful present day bts stuff existed smh) until i heard gods menu so... idk where i was going with this but yeah. :)

YES FUCK YG, theyre literally on the brink of being kicked out of the big three and they are holding their salvation hostage without letting them do ANYTHING. idek what thought process goes thru their minds but arghhh its so infuriating. yess lisa's cb will be awesome but ot4 is the gold standard here.

hehe, glad u could get to this point. no no! u dont sound like a cult member at all lol yeah, i loooove some of their songs but the whole 23 members thing is getting to me. thats prob a common problem with nctzens but what can i say? im a simple girl with a limit to how many korean boys i can give my money to. atm im just trying to get into ateez and finish memorising enhypen's faces. also kard is kinda sucking me into their fandom atm, as well as eric name lol. ah what can you do? ooh thats good!

hehe i love it too! its exactly like online penpals, that was rlly well put. aww ty! hmm im okay, recovering from a bad case of rsv so thats fun. im doing okay mentally, starting therapy soon (after having to convince my mother that its not just smth i can brush off). physically i wont go into, basically i should be doing stretches to help but they dont completely fix it so my lazy ass doesnt do them, plus i got told recently im going to be stuck with this condition for the rest of my life so thats fun! ah, before you type smth dw abt me ill be fine. the weather atm is cloudy but warm, its been raining on and off today which is good for the garden. uhh i just finished reading sunburnt veils and im in the middle of prom theory which is rlly good. ummm ive got a concert tonight? that i may or may not be able to sing in (bc of the whole rsv thingo) and uhhhh idk. my dog is cute? im drinking tea rn? ive got a school dance coming up?

wbu? hows ur day going, how are you? whats the weather like on ur end? done anything interesting lately? found smth that makes you rlly happy? just any random thing youve been dying to tell someone?

no no! dont apologise, i love these exchanges. i think im happy to continue them for a long time :) on the other hand, if you get tired of them, feel free to just not answer at any time. goodness gracious this was a long ask haha hope it isnt too annoying

<3 w.a. 🐺

sorry it took me a bit to reply, i was fixing my theme ;n;

yeah, i figured it was because of the roles too. my friends and i still get taken aback when 3rd gen idols are the same age as 4th gen ones. in my head it doesn't add up sometimes. PLS THE RANT AT QUORA SKJDK tbh tho it's just going to be normalized as the years pass? esp that the boys are growing older and the amount of explicit fics will just increase. i might have to start blocking tags.

i had to look up the previous ask to remember what we were talking about xd i hope the events in champagne problems never happens to anyone. realistically, it probably happens a lot. damn i really won't wish that pain on anyone. dragging your brother into being a stay i whEEZED JFKSA additional noeasy music enthusiast o.o and ALL I CAN SAY WITH YOU GUSHING ABT FELIX IS AHA WHIPPEEEED OML can't blame you tho, i also want to hear felix sing more in other shades (if that makes sense HAHA) i really hope they'll do the role exchange in the next comeback :( or like in the near future bc i know they can do it :( the day i hear seungmin rapping it i will respectfully pass away. minho was given more lines this comeback thank fUCK i could rmb my irl being vocal abt her frustration. i don't get why minho barely has center time/lines in title tracks??? like the line distribution in the past eras just made me ???? if seventeen can balance lines with 13 members why cant a group of 8 do the same? moving on. i haven't watched the stray kids show simply bc i don't want to cry HAJS but i've seen clips. imagine if skz debuted without minho and felix?!?!? i rmb another irl catching bias feels towards changbin bc of the masked singer only to find out that the man's a rapper. i love how skz's vocals were highlighted this comeback :c there were a lot of mellow tracks! i find it cute when chan sings/raps bc it gets kinda obvious that he's a foreigner? the accent (im not even sure if it's the accent) it just shows. "putting off skz stuff bc of not having time to cry IS the kpop stan life summarised." CORRECT.

abt the twisted au o.O i'll inquire my irl if she wants to write it or not. if she doesn't want to, i'll do it. i miss writing twisted aus <3___<3 and i also miss going to the beach with my friends :' ) but it's starting to get cold here and i don't think i'll be able to enjoy the beach as much as i would if i went beaching in the summer. so maybe next summer? gone away really has an sm-ballad vibe. the thing about skz being a self-producing group, their songs don't sound like typical jype songs? and i just appreciate that bc in all honesty im not a fan of jyp groups at all. PLS the overthinking. i wish i could mute overthinking.

anyone who assumes kpop is just one genre obv hasn't listened to a single track. if kpop was just one genre why do i like some tracks more than the others??? oh you've only recently become a kpop stan? tbh im not a fan of the bright songs of bts either. i liked their older ones *chefs kiss* really matched high school vibes. yg has good artists and they're just wasting the talent ~.~ that strategy they have will get tiring eventually. people will stop waiting on blackpink and move on to newer more active groups ://

HAHAHAH yeah the 23 members is pretty overwhelming! it was the reason i didn't bother stanning before quarantine started. i don't regret stanning tho, met my ult bias in that group <3___<3 i don't really purchase albums unless i like the tracks xd ohhh getting into ateez just in time for the comeback! let me know what you think about them! i was fond of them at some point but grew out of it. good luck with memorizing enhypen! it took me a while to distinguish to people there XD i haven't checked out kard yet but chan plays their songs during lives and they're sexc hype music me likey *u*

i had to look up rsv im sorry. i'm glad you're recovering! please rest more and don't stress yourself out. bro i wish i could go to therapy too bc i have weird issues i can't justify and i need a professional to tell me what's the reason behind it. stuck with what condition btw? what happened? i'm sorry in case i just forgot. yesterday was a bit rainy for me too :(( it's not the type of rainy that makes me anxious so B) oh concert! good luck and i hope you'll be able to sing but i also don't think it's best for you rn :c what's your dog's breed? and yes i just finished drinking tea too. AAAAA i miss school dances :(( the last one i was supposed to have was cancelled bc of covid.

i was less productive today and i'm teetering between being mentally stable and becoming a hermit again. i'm anxious with a lot of things atm so like : D not the best state. today it was a bit sunny but not hot hot which was nice. i changed my theme today bc i couldn't wait for sept. 1st. and no i haven't found anything that makes me happy HAHAHA shit like that's hard to identify. don't have anything to say too, i'm just thinking about why i'm procrastinating too much atm T_T and i'm listening to this rap song atm and one of the rappers sounded like han.

it isn't annoying! i enjoy the long exchanges but i do admit it takes me awhile to type down a reply. so if i get more busy, it'll prolly take a bit longer for me to reply.

#toff.asks #wild anon 🐺

[dweemeister]

The Little Colonel (1935)

Whenever I watch older films with black actors in subservient roles, I have a habit of pausing the film, and scrolling through their filmography. For the African-American actors and actresses that worked at Hollywood’s major studios before the emergence of Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Dorothy Dandridge in the 1950s, they toiled in stereotypical roles that read repetitively – servant, maid, busboy, slave, villager, savage, African chief. Like many black moviegoers in the early twentieth century, I am glad these mostly-unknown actors found work, but am sick to see the buffoonish, stereotype-adhering characters they play on screen (this raises questions about whether no representation or bad representation is better, but that is for another day).

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was the highest-paid black entertainer of the 1930s: a masterful tap dancer (tap dancing is an innovation from the minstrel show, where Robinson’s career began) idolized by Fred Astaire, the Nicholas Brothers, and Gene Kelly. His birthday, May 25, is National Tap Dance Day. Robinson’s vaudeville and Broadway career had long made him a national celebrity, and Hollywood studios looked to procure his services for bit and supporting roles. While in Hollywood, he quickly learned that he could not escape the restrictions Hollywood executives had set for non-white actors – casting directors, whether by a lack of imagination or naked racism or somewhere in between, could not envision black actors beyond certain roles.

Another American cultural fixture in the 1930s was an adorable, curly-haired girl named Shirley Temple. Months before its merger with Twentieth Century Pictures, Fox Film Corporation cast Robinson in a Shirley Temple picture, The Little Colonel. Shirley Temple movies often relegated A-list actors to supporting roles – disgruntling those actors to some extent, but mollifying their frustration with the dependable profits made at the box office. Seen today, The Little Colonel is problematic in its depiction of race relations and portrayal of its black characters. And yet, it is also groundbreaking. The film features the first interracial dance couple in American film history, and spawned a close intergenerational friendship between Temple and Robinson that lasted until the latter’s death.

It is the early 1870s in Kentucky, and life has changed little since the American Civil War ended. White landowners retain their plantations and black subordinates. Those subordinates are no longer slaves, but racially-coded relations remain. Though Kentucky remained in the Union, there are numerous veterans and supporters of the defeated Confederacy within its borders, including Colonel Lloyd (Lionel Barrymore). The colonel has learned that his daughter, Elizabeth Lloyd (Evelyn Venable), has married a Yankee, Jack Sherman (John Lodge). Furious, the Colonel disowns Elizabeth – forcing her and Jack, an American soldier, to accept a posting in the West. There, they raise a girl, Lloyd Sherman (Temple), before moving back to Kentucky six years later. Before leaving the fort with her parents, Lloyd, the outfit’s darling, is made an honorary colonel of the United States Army. Elizabeth, Jack, little Lloyd, and housekeeper Becky “Mom Beck” Porter (Hattie McDaniel) settle in a household near Colonel Lloyd’s plantation without his knowledge. Colonel Lloyd eventually learns that the happy-go-lucky rapscallion bothering him and his head servant Walker (Robinson) is his granddaughter, and continues to exile Elizabeth and Jack from his life.

The Little Colonel, shown in black-and-white, ends with a brief two-strip Technicolor scene (Walt Disney’s monopoly on three-strip Technicolor would end later that year) – a “pink party” that marked the only time Shirley Temple wore makeup in a Fox film.

Adapted from Annie Fellows Johnston’s novel of the same name by screenwriter William M. Conselman (several Shirley Temple films, including 1934’s Bright Eyes and 1936’s Stowaway) and journeyman director David Butler (another Shirley Temple regular, 1942’s Road to Morocco), The Little Colonel sees Temple play a hallmark of her characters: a precocious troublemaker whose very charm melts hearts and inspires others to do what is just, despite their personal prejudices and historical biases. Only if the real world could be like that, audiences must have thought – packing movie theaters to see escapist fare like this, to forget momentarily the Great Depression. Like any Shirley Temple picture, the film is at its best when it concentrates on its young star. Most of the G-rated humor on display is gentle, ribbing others’ sense of self-importance and their absurd, absolutist behavior (especially Barrymore’s Colonel Lloyd, who looks as if he is about to sell me fast food served in a red-and-white tub). Not even little Lloyd is spared:

LLOYD SHERMAN: Aren’t papas supposed to love their little girls? MOM BECK: Yes, honey, they should. LLOYD SHERMAN: It seems might funny to me. MOM BECK: It’s ‘cause all the Lloyds are stubborn. The old colonel is, your mama is, and you is. LLOYD SHERMAN: I’m not stubborn! Don’t you call me that! MOM BECK: Don’t you stomp your foot at me. That don’t change it, that just proves it!

Elsewhere, too much of The Little Colonel’s humor is premised in racial stereotyping. That Lloyd Sherman befriends two black children in May Lily (Avonne Jackson) and Henry Clay (Nyanza Potts) might be enough to spark outrage among millions of American moviegoers in the 1930s. As much as this decision should be commended, that commendation is tempered by their appearance – inspired by minstrel shows – and by the fact they are eating watermelon in several scenes. Barrymore’s Colonel Lloyd is not only a misanthrope, but a racist misanthrope. Where little Lloyd sees an old man who needs to be taken down many notches, few others who see this film would probably be as disarming towards him. Colonel Lloyd refers to May Lily and Henry Clay as “pickaninnies”, threatens physical punishment towards Walker and Mom Beck at the slightest mistake, and indulges in Lost Cause rhetoric that glorifies the Confederacy as righteous. He is the sort of person that many Americans on tumblr would rather not speak to over Thanksgiving dinner. For Mom Beck and Walker, the two black servants in this film are understandably undereducated. But though the film paints them as self-aware and quick-witted, it mocks their lack of education during a scene where their poor spelling and grammar is apparent.

The Little Colonel is less of a musical than other Shirley Temple films, but it is obviously not devoid of musical moments. Its one notable musical scene is without lyrics and is best known for its fancy footwork. The staircase dance between Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple is transcendent cinema. This sequence is set to an original rhyme before transitioning into “My Old Kentucky Home” (Robinson mimics a trumpet to provide the melody) and follows a late-night confrontation between little Lloyd and Colonel Lloyd. Lloyd Sherman, who has been sent away from home because her father must be quarantined due to illness, wants to see her parents – ironically, this is for the good of the film, as Lodge and Venable’s performances are indifferent. She has never been away from her parents this long, and finds herself unsettled by living with her cantankerous grandfather. But there is Bill Robinson, as Walker, to provide comfort and solace.

In this complicated, potentially dangerous dancing scene, they showcase their agility and technical ability together. Robinson was Temple’s sole tap dancing teacher; she was a quick study, soon learning how to feel the beat rather vocalize or visualize it. Without hyperbole, Robinson would later claim Temple to be one of the best dancing partners he ever had. Depression-era audiences of all races witnessed their mastery on-screen. The scene celebrates and implies that blacks and whites can address and overcome hardship together. Robinson holding Temple’s hand proved incendiary to many Southern theater owners, as many requested prints that edited out the hand-holding.

During the years after The Little Colonel’s release, Robinson – fifty years Temple’s senior – became her most frequent co-star and a dear friend (best described as a close uncle-niece relationship). Nevertheless, unlike his white co-stars, he could never embrace or kiss Temple on-screen. Robinson also stayed in and used different facilities – giving the young Shirley Temple an early, though, understanding of the racism blacks faced in America. She recalled how, on the set of The Little Colonel, Robinson was the only person in the cast or crew to treat her as an equal, never patronizing her. The two sent telegrams when apart, encouraging and motivating the other to do and be their best. This meeting of two cultural giants, their careers constrained in their respective ways, continues to provide the inspiration and joy that audiences in the Depression sorely needed – even if the films themselves reflect the most unsavory aspects of American attitudes towards race.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#The Little Colonel #David Butler #Shirley Temple #Bill Robinson #Lionel Barrymore #Evelyn Venable #John Lodge #Hattie McDaniel #William M. Conselman #Cyril J. Mockridge #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

[spearxwind]

i just randomly remembered this one mutual i used to have in like, 2014 or something back when fnaf came out and everyone was doing ask blogs

they initially (when i first saw em) went by '@/goldfreddy' and had a fnaf au ask blog which i really actually liked. we became mutuals after they followed me and just had a couple good casual interactions

but then for some reason they started to get really into all that and really weird overall? they changed @'s a lot, including one time they got a custom domain that was '@ god' or something, sent me really passive aggressive asks telling me to tag homestuck cause "not everyone wants to see that" before eventually unfollowing and soft blocking me

i lost track of them after that, but every so often i remember that they existed and ill go and try to find them but all their "moved to X url" posts and accounts go to dead ends and it makes me sad bc i really want to know what became of them and i wanna know if they're doing alright but now ill probably never find them again

#i wonder if they're still making art and stuff. id hope so #idk when they disappeared tho maybe around 2016? probably a lost cause to find them #their art is probably wayy different #so i can't find them that way :( #windwords

[bma-2020]

Okiedok here’s the delio. I have a list of all the blogs from the last six months who’s actively either responded to a meme i sent, responded to a message ive sent, replied to something regarding mally herself, has actually written with me, written a starter for me from my liking a starter call, has at least liked a starter i wrote for them to awknowedge it exists, all that jazz, i have a lot of open field so it’s not just a possible tumblr didnt let them no option anymore, because i send memes to everyone who posts them that i see. I reply to most peoples ooc posts. I like most starter calls I pass by. I try my darndest to actually interact bc i know how it feels to be ignored and its… i’ve been called one before so i’m using the word, thats fluffing cunty behavior, and honestly if you complain about not being interacted with but never even try when i try with you, ya being cunty, end of. I gotta list. That list only entails Mally because she’s who I care about the most. I’m probably gonna start instilling a new rule in all my blogs that if you ignore Mally and/or Darcy( @tasedandconfused ), since I would say they’re my two main blogs tho darcy gets ignored even more than mally does, probably bc i denied canon and left it entirely we know fandom hates that, if either of them is ignored then… Ya out of luck, I’m gonna unfollow you. I’m debating soft blocking everyone who ignored me on both of them but I don’t want to like be mean and deny the chance to eventually try again but at the same time i shouldnt feel bad for taking a stand and saying this is bullsheet, idk my anxiety says im awful for giving a fluff about myself but also i should give a fluff about myself probably, ive nearly died in the last three months, my brain almost exploded, i just had three root canals on one corner of my face, i have to potentially get surgery on my inner ear which i cant even afford, i dont got time to deal with only being used for like smut memes or like as a resource blog or utter bs like that, i dont got time for it. So new rules here. 1: If Mally or Darcy are not acknowledged, written with, responded to, viewed as more than just their fluffing bodies? ya dropped, im unfollowing, potentially soft blocking, which means blocking and unblocking for those not in the know, on all accounts I follow you on. Every single one. I know most of my muses are on sideblogs but despite not being able to send memes from sideblogs you can block people from sideblogs fun fact, i will do that if i have to. 2: I’m gonna be posting SCs, PCs, memes, etc. I like and respond to plotting calls, starter calls, i send memes, all of that. If I don’t get any response within.. I’m giving one week for people who don’t run on a queue and a month and a half to people on a queue based system, if i dont get anything within that time like at least an im being like ‘its posted’ or ‘its queued i wanted to let you know in case tumblrs a fluffbutt’ (i do this sometimes if i dont get even just a like on the starters i post so i at least know people saw it since i know tumblrs bs, i wait until the day they’re active to do so in case theyre busy yknow) basically i need acknowledgment at all. No you can’t claim this is abt follower count bc when you unfollow someone they inevitably unfollow you too, thats gonna drop my following, not as quickly as soft blocking would but i wanna be fair i guess, which leads to: 3: I’m basing this on your activity too, like if i like a think and you’re gone for a month after that its fine, im not gonna unfollow you unless you never come back or youre online and posting others just not mine because that tells me youre specifically ignoring me and im gonna drop you for that end of. I’m done with the bullsheet im done w the dillish behavior, i love friendship but if im giving and never receiving thats extremely one way and not gonna work. I check through my follow list weekly and i go back about five-10 pages on someones feed before i unfollow them to see their actual activity and see if theyre here or if its a q so. I’m thorough basically. 4: You dont have to be active with me on all your blogs, i mean i’d prefer it but thats hard as fluff so essentially if you have like five blogs and are just like trying w me on two or three thats fine. Ten blogs, four or five with at least a plot formed is cool. Multis just one muse is all I’d need. I’m not gonna unfollow the blogs youre not writing w me on if you at least write w me on some. Again, specifically Mally and/or Darcy. If you ignore both of them, we’re done. I havent been active on darcy because of being ignored and its a huge butt mess and im just tired i wanna use my babies, you don’t get to have my ‘better’ muses like i know a lot of ppl only follow me for my boys or my villains, you don’t get them if you ignore my baby. But, there is a limit there too. 5: If you never respond to a meme or thread even once with Mally or Darcy, or post a starter, i reply, its never replied to again after a month, I’m unfollowing and/or soft blocking for that too. Bc that means youre just raising my hopes to fluff with me or get someone else and honestly, youre even more cunty than than the people just flat out ignoring me if you do that. And this isnt a specific person, this is five of the people actually on my list. Yes, my list is also annotated with specifics again I was very thorough on this yesterday, I hyperfixated I’ll admit it, I’m in a fluffing depressionary bubble and being told to get over it because people want something they dont deserve to have to. I am a believer that people deserve good things but if youre purposefully being cunty… no you dont. 6: No I’m not releasing my list, maybe I will and I’ll omit the urls because I don’t want people being buttholes to each other too but otherwise, yall not seeing it im not giving a callout because… really thats just unnecessary here. I don’t think yall are toxic people or something i just think yall are unintentionally being cunty. And no I don’t mean everyone that follows me i mean the ppl that add up to what i’ve documented so far and fit the bill of butthat that i’ve shown, its behaviors yall gotta check before ya wreck. Yes there will be some people who have priority, everyone has those people, I write w kathryn on other platforms since she doesnt go on here as often but when Kathryn returns from war here (if she does cause she also agrees most ppl on this platform are cunty, i feel really bad saying that word so often but im gonna keep doing it i recently deleted an ask saying I was a huge cunt for not sending someone smut memes when I didn’t even follow them or know they existed so, again the travesty of this place is nutballers) same with owly, alex is here too, my most active partners are always going to be priority because theyre the ones who show the most interest and the most care. I understand that with others as well which is why I have the timeframe set up, because I want to be as open and shizz as possible while atill being firm i guess. I don’t want to have extreme double standards like its impossible for double standards not to exist at least a little bit but I want to avoid a golden chest full of them I guess. 7: I don’t have a seven rn, this was an even number and it bothered me. Seven is nust my warning that I’m bittery writing this on mobile so formatting is not real but i tried my dandest to make this look like something people might actually mind. I dont want to be butty, i dont want to be awful, i dont want to start drama or have drama but that shizz comes around anyways so i might as well make my space as okay for me as i can cause im supposed to avoid stress so my brain doesnt almost explode again, like again i almost fluffing died i dont need ppl fake being my friend or anything, i want stuff to be real and clear. I want to be happy to be on here again and have fun like i used to since my health is plummetting and I’m not allowed to go outside near plants by myself anymore because i welt up. I have plants outside my work place and im surrounded by chemicals all day long I’m welted from here to new york constantly and never comfortable in my own skin because of it and constantly see people online acting like these actual real problems are pretentious because ‘its an excuse’ when, im a fluffing sagittarius, do you know how much i want to magically be a millionaire so i can pay for friends and my own medical stuff and go on traveling and adventures, be outside probably not camping bc as a pagan i know thats a death sentence but like be outside, lay on grass, go back to swimming because i used to swim competitively and due to health reasons i can barely even go in a pool anymore because theres too much sunlight which, bit plot twist i know, im fluffing allergic to vitamin D and the rays of the sun, so go figure, attempts to be healthy kill me more, i also cant eat most plants and am constantly dying from just eating food, they dont know whats wrong with me. i cant fix it by going ve/gan for a month inf act i tried and it almost made my heart stop thanks society. These arent excuses these are the lives of disabled and diseased and to a lesser but still very real point, ethnic lives every fluffing day. This is real shit and its murder and online and gaming? It may be all I have soon since I can’t just go out and make new friends cause, again, I’d fluffing die. I get sick going to the mall or the movie theater, I miss theme parks so much but have to minimize it to weeks i dont have work so i dont get fired for having a welt while working in the beauty industry. I may have to get a degree online and change my field entirely because of my illness that nobody understands. People even make fun of it constantly online and I wish I could just drop online entirely because of how unbelievably ableist the entirety of the world is, i wish i could drop humans in general for their ableism, but i cant. I don’t have choices in most cases, but throwing away people who maybe purposefully maybe unintentionally thats why i’m giving you this warning and will be repeating this warning for awhile, this is where i have choice. I have to use what little choice I have in life while I can since everytime i go to movies or a concert or a theme park i almost die because of not having an immune system that functions or being in certain air qualities pr being near plants or unclean people, I may not have much time and I gotta do whats best for what little mental health I have, and if that means dropping people i care about and really want to write with and do things with but who ignore me then, i guess so be it.

#out. #illness cw #health cw #food mention #ive been writing this since noon and its now two pm so this is great #i’s usually put this under a read more but... maybe most people dont deserve a read more rn lol #their behavior will keep being awful if its not pointed out to them so #im done im gonna go welt up from hugging my cat and cry for a bit because i feel mean

[drummingncise]

ryker do you EVER think before you speak

alright.... so. back in 2014ish when i was still sort of active on my timelord bbc moriarty blog i decided to make a blog for the master, because why not, right? i was already playing one evil mastermind, another couldn't hurt.

so back then, when my url was masterofyourrace, alan cumming was the fc i picked out for a post-simm master. i think i was just coming off of a month-long grounding where all i had to occupy myself with was watching the last of the timelords eps on on-demand and felt pretty okay with the master's characterization. (i'd previously watched the utopia arc, dw) (though this could be wrong and might actually have been why i decided to make jim a fobwatched timelord named the spider)

and then uhhhhh. idk what happened. i lost muse, i guess? and i decided to delete the blog to use the email for another chara, probs an oc. i'd also put jim on hiatus bc i kind of lost muse for him too.

and that was the end of alan cumming master.

and then came august of last year. (wow, realised that this blog is a year old already, holy shit) i was two weeks shy of starting my second year of college (which didnt go well, thanks to depression and unchecked add), vaguely active on my sirius black blog and thinking "hey, i miss playing the master" because of an incredible fanfic i read, which is linked on my verses page under "v: you are not alone".

so what do i do? i rewatch all of simms episodes to regain muse, remember that i used alan c as a regeneration, and shit devolves from there.

i decide to move alan's place around on the master's timeline, make him an alt jacobi/pre-simm master (bc there are not that many resources for jacobi) and start watching the good wife, because i love alan c.

then, i find out that alan c is scottish, and i fall in love all over again. so i flesh him out a bit more.

alan c master is scottish. he starred in cabaret three times, and won a tony for the 98 production, just like alan c actually did. this is where the similarities stop.

for one, alan c is human and was in the spy kids movies and probably does not pine for his childhood best friend.

alan c master, however. he is helplessly in love with the doctor, is quickly heading into a war he does not want to be a part of, and hates everything about his home planet.

so he runs, so much like the doctor did. he steals a tardis, plays the emcee three times in cabaret, rouges his nips, and pines.

and then, i find out: alan c is going to be in an episode of doctor who with jodie as 13. i add that episode (s11 e8, the witchfinders) to his timeline.

the last time the master had seen the doctor, he was attempting to throw him into the eye of harmony after killing the two humans that got involved. (aka the 1996 movie.)

after regaining a body (through being a weird slime snake thing and hijacking another timelord's body. the previous inhabitant of the body's mind was completely gone, idk why.), he visits his daughter on gallifrey, picks up this awful 4:4 beat in his head, becomes a diplomatic emissary between the time lords and the daleks, because he's the worst of the time lords and he'd make an impressive dalek, and sustains several bumps and scrapes and maybe a few laser gun wounds.

now, he's only a little bit war-weary, suffering from the drums where he hadn't before (thanks to timey wimey shit ill never be able to explain coherently. basically it boils down to "the classic masters didnt mention the drums so they must not have had them, and also since it was heavily implied that the gallifreyan council put them in his head (during the war, after giving him a new set of regens) to use as a signal, he shouldn't have them until he goes through the war, so he doesnt.") and sees the doctor, full of hope, and sadness, and blonde and a woman and he realises once again just how madly in love with them he is. (the blonde reminds him too much of a young boy he used to run through fields with, a boy whose mother's photo album he stole and now keeps on his tardis, locked tightly and far away from any prying eyes)

(tangent: 13 is the only doctor that is shorter than any of the masters.)

so maybe he flirts with ryan sinclair to piss the doctor off, even though she doesn't realise who he is, and plays the part of king james 1 very, very well.

(another tangent: is 13 blonde and a woman because of rose? more at 11.)

and he decides "fuck the war" and picks up a human companion, parker james (my oc over @pjsuper), to travel with.

he hasn't yet watched his daughter die, hasn't yet lost his capacity for love and forgiveness, and just wants to see his friend again.

so getting to see 13 again in 17th century lancashire really helps his mood.

however, the war catches up to him. he manipulates it in his favor, before eventually getting killed and gifted a new set of regenerations in exchange for helping gallifrey win the war.

he doesn't hold up his end of the bargain, too pissed off at finally having the chance to die and stay dead forcefully ripped from him, at having this 4:4 beat constantly pounding and threatening to crack his skull open, at having to watch the life fade from his daughter's eyes as she lays in his arms, unable to regenerate.

the war scars him. he's lost so much he can't even fathom it.

so he fobwatches himself into a human, runs to the end of the universe, hopes that this will be it, that he'll never have to face the horrors of war again. only to be found by the doctor and his companion, one miss martha jones, and he's given a new life. one born out of anger and hurt and betrayal and loss, and he blames everything on gallifrey, and the doctor, and nothing will change his mind about it.

until "get out of the way," which fills him with hope once more. he gets sucked back into the war, trapped and tortured until he can escape, and regenerates into missy. (that trapped and tortured hc comes straight from ty over on the dw rp discord server, because i adore it and ty's master.)

with missy comes the kiss they've waited thousands of years to give, and "two hearts. and both of them yours" and a fractured friendship starting to finally heal, until it's brutally cut short by a knife in the back and a regeneration back into a man, who's fc is alan van sprang.

alan van sprang master i haven't gotten the chance to flesh out as well yet, but i want to.

#i know you dont think ever but im asking anyway #its 3:30 am and i really shouldnt be using my data but fuck my dad actually #because i couldnt stop thinking abt this ask even tho ryker is a hot mess who loves to torture me #i wrote all of this on my phone so its not in any way formatted the way i usually like to #but ill fix it when i have a stable wifi connection on monday #v: pre-war

[did-somebody-say-exorcism]

Headcanons: The Children of E Class

I wanted to keep all of my online presences as separate as possible, but the cat’s out of the bag now. I’m Professional Magical Girl on Fanfiction dot net, author of Great Teacher Nagisa, Fake Smiles, and some other miscellaneous AssClass fics. If you are here because of those fics, don’t ask about the url, it’s an inside joke between me and some old high school friends that just stuck. You can follow me if you want, but be warned that my posts are sporadic and generally about Evangelion.

Ah-hem. Anyway, I’m writing a long fic that involves my headcanons about the children of, you guessed it, E Class characters. So here is a master post of all of them. This is subject to be edited at any given time (I will inform my readers in an AN if any major changes have been made). If I don’t list a character here, I probably don’t headcanon them as having children. Or maybe I couldn’t come up with names for the kids yet. But ask away if you have questions about that. I’d prefer to be PM’d on FFN because I get emails for those, but using the ask/message feature on tumblr works too. You can call me Samantha, Professional Magical Girl, did-somebody-say-exorcism, or any variation of any of those.

And yes, I did get this idea from what TheRoseShadow21/Aki-chan2014 did with her headcanons for Ending the End Class. Yes, I did ask for her permission to do the same. Professional Magical Girl is many things, but disingenuous is not one of them.

The premise for Teenage Wasteland (read here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12856407/1/Teenage-Wasteland ) is: Some of the children of former E Class end up in the assassination classroom as a result of time travel. In some cases they will replace their parents, in others they coexist beside them. Not all of these characters will time travel, I’m still debating where to cut the fat. The characters whose names are bolded will definitely be major characters.

Nagisa and Kayano

Backstory: All of Kayano/Akari’s pregnancies were unintentional and back-to-back, leaving her and Nagisa rather unprepared. In spite of their jobs, they were also the first of E Class to have children. Akari managed to hide the children’s existences for many years, often by portraying pregnant characters or by hiding behind countertops. Kayano/Akari, after retiring from show business, now only leaves the house in disguises. All three of the girls are very short and tiny.

Aguri Shiota- Nagisa and Kayano/Akari’s first child, and the viewpoint character and protagonist of Teenage Wasteland. She is very quiet and observant, and as such others seem to see her as dependable, even Kaito (see below) notes her admiringly. While normally an even-tempered person, she is prone to episodes of moodiness, especially after the time travel event. It was rumored that she was born in her mother’s dressing room between shooting scenes for a movie that would later win an Academy Award, but she herself doubts this. She is named after her late aunt (obviously). Very, very much a daddy’s girl. Birthday: June 26, 2024

Hotaru Shiota- Nagisa and Kayano’s middle daughter. She is sweet and bubbly and often plays the comic relief. Her sister describes her as ‘getting calmer the angrier she gets.’ This mood of hers is invoked in the event that she is lied too, which she cannot stand above all else. She also has the ability to hear what people are saying from a distance away, a talent that is made useful many times. Birthday: July 12, 2025

Fujiko Shiota- The youngest of the three girls. She has a severe illness that I will not yet identify (this is a plot point). All of her family is very protective of her. She has a room full of stuffed animals and aggressively sings showtunes at karaoke. She doesn’t feature prominently until the end of the fic. Birthday: June 16, 2026

 Karma and Okuda

Madoka Tachibana (Akabane)- Okuda’s daughter from her first marriage, though Karma adopted her when they married and she calls him ‘Dad’. She has very little contact with her biological father and sees him twice a year at most.  She is easily flustered and is usually the last one to get the joke. She is very close to her half-brother. Birthday: September 16, 2031

Hikaru Akabane- Prankster and musical theatre geek. He is usually the one to hatch some hairbrained scheme to get E Class to their goals at the moment, however mundane those goals may be. Birthday: March 1, 2034

 Isogai

Koyo and Chiyo Isogai- Twins. They both have very jovial attitudes and are excellent students. Koyo is rumored to be the most attractive guy in the whole school. They have no enemies… That we know of. Birthday: February 14, 2031

 Maehara

Backstory: Maehara, predictably, continued to be… himself throughout his young adult life. He was married to the mother of his oldest child, but after they divorced he went back to dating lots of different people, and was on again and off again with the mother of his two younger kids for years. He seems to still want to impress Okano, but suspects that she wants nothing to do with him.

Fumihiko Maehara- Athletic, popular, funny, but is seriously clueless when it comes to girls. Birthday: October 5, 2028

Hatsune Nakano- She gets on well with her older half-brother, not so much her younger full brother. She doesn’t seem to have the best opinion of her father either. Birthday: May 30, 2031

Shiori Nakano- Does not feature as a prominent character. I’m only listing him for posterity’s sake. Birthday: January 7, 2034

 Kataoka

Takahiro Aruta- He is usually the one to take charge in any leadership role, and the rest of the class seems to trust him and feel at peace around him. Aguri describes him as ‘the protective type’. It is a running gag that cats love him and always flock towards him. Birthday: September 3, 2029

Kinoko Aruta- She is very sneaky and loves to eavesdrop and spy in places where she isn’t allowed to be. Aguri speculates that she “Has dirt on all of them”. She knows all the ins and outs of the main campus, some of which she claims she only knows because she bribed one of the five virtuosos (though this may be a joke). Birthday: October 12, 2031

 Sugino

Kintaro Sugino- He and Nobuhiko’s mother left them, in the middle of the night to run away to Fukuoka. It was later uncovered that she was running from the law. Kintaro was five, just old enough to know he was abandoned, and according to Aguri, ‘never really got over that hurt’. They have not seen their mother since, and were raised by their father and stepmother. He is shown to be rather sensitive and gets saddened very easily, he will deadass steal the remote out of someone else’s hands to change the channel if that sad abused pet commercial comes on the tv. He has a crush on Fujiko. Birthday: September 28, 2028

Nobuhiko Sugino- Aguri describes him as being ‘very pure’, he seems to always have an optimistic outlook and doesn’t even remember his biological mother or feel any resentment towards her. He is a terrible judge of character, and is easily influenced by those around him. He seems to look up to Satoru (see below). Birthday: November 2, 2030

Minoru Sugino- Sugino’s son with his second wife. Freaking adorable, but probably will not time travel. Birthday: March 21, 2037

 Kanzaki

Satsuki Kanou- The ‘straightforward’ one, usually playing the straight man to the shenanigans of the others. It is a running gag that she is very stingy with money and will attempt to cut corners wherever possible (for example, she suggests that the giant pudding be made with soymilk instead of regular milk, because soymilk was on sale). Birthday: May 15, 2029

Sayaka Kanou- Kanzaki’s younger daughter. Her sister fusses over her endlessly. Birthday: July 7, 2031

Chiba and Hayami

Satoru Chiba- Along with Satsuki, he is seen as the most level headed of the children, thought he is much less straightlaced than her. Kaguya (see below) has said of him that ‘he could be multiplied by 10 and I wouldn’t mind or notice’. By nature, he is very helpful and is especially kind to children and animals. Unfortunately for him, this is excessive to the point that he acts like a doormat and allows people to take advantage of him. Birthday: June 6, 2027

Midori Chiba- She's the sassy and sarcastic one, and gets in trouble frequently for dressing out of code. She always wears the same pink scarf, no matter what time of year it is. She cannot get along with Satsuki, who calls her ’difficult and argumentative’, while she accuses Satsuki of being ‘stuck-up’. Also a massive Daddy's girl. Birthday: August 2, 2029

 Nakamura

Backstory here: Nakamura moved to Los Angeles after studying abroad in London, and just wound up never leaving. She married a well-to-do golf course manager, who is 100% behind her prank war on the local Home Owner’s Association. After 19 years of marriage and two kids, he left her for the girl across the street. She eventually marries Gakushuu Asano. When Karma heard of this, he literally almost died laughing because he thought it was a joke. (That does not happen yet during Teenage Wasteland, it’s just sort of an aside.)

Her kids were dropped into this timeline and location, with little skills in Japanese. This is a plot point on several occasions.

Liam Carmichael- Athlete. He is shown to be somewhat reserved and keeps the secrets of others well. He also has a good relationship with his mother, taking her advice to heart. He has a bromance with Satoru. Birthday: December 19, 2027

Jeffery Carmichael- Think of the Weasely twins, but one person. Aguri refers to him as having ‘corrupted’ Nobuhiko by teaching him dirty jokes. He has a crush on Midori. Birthday: October 26, 2029

 Hazama

Minami Minnaoka- Her mother is stuck in a loveless marriage to a benefactor of the library she worked at. Minami observes this, and openly wishes that they would divorce. She mostly sticks to herself, but is shown to be friends with Kaguya. Kaito (see below) has described her as a ‘complicated wreck’. Birthday: November 1, 2030

 Yoshida

Kaguya Yoshida- She is considerably droll and witty, which makes her admired by some and feared by others. Midori has affectionately dubbed her ‘The Queen’. Birthday: July 5, 2030

 Hara

Tadaharu Konoda- Has severe chuunibyou. His current dream is to move to America and become an NFL star. Birthday: April 9, 2028

Fumiya Konoda- For reasons unknown, he has earned the nickname “barrel of monkeys”. Birthday: February 26, 2030

 Okano

Kaito Suzuki- He frequently bickers with others (namely Minami), and is generally a bit of an asshole. Aguri speculates that this is because of his parents’ bitter divorce. Whatever the reason, he immediately drops his act around Aguri, as if he respects her. Is shockingly good at math, but not many other subjects. Birthday: November 28, 2029

 Kurahashi

Chitose Mizushima- Her father is the mailman, and describes himself as ‘the best damn mailman in history’ (he also moonlights as an amateur musician). She is described as being breathtakingly beautiful, and has several admirers, including Satoru, Masahiro, and Nobuhiko. She is also tone-deaf (this is played for comedy). Birthday: August 6, 2028

Tarou Mizushima- Her beloved younger brother. It is a running gag that he will always try to help with something, but will usually end up unintentionally ruining it or screwing it up even more. A bit bumbling, but well meaning. Birthday: July 27, 2030

 Kimura

I don’t have any headcanons for these two yet, just names and birthdays. It’s a work in progress.

Masahiro Kimura- Birthday: April 25, 2028

Haruki Kimura- Birthday: April 30, 2032

 Fuwa

Kaworu Miyazawa- He was born through IVF, as his parents had been trying unsuccessfully for a child of many years. As such, he is treated as if he were very fragile, ‘as if he might break’ (according to Aguri’s description), which could not be further from the truth. Birthday: January 3, 2035

#assassination classroom #assclass #fanfiction #my fanfiction #assclass fanfiction #it's so late #i should be in bed but here I am doing this #headcanon #assclass headcanons

[badrpstories]

Words alone seem insufficient to express the importance of good communication between muns. Nevertheless, I shall make an attempt in sharing this little story. Disclaimer: there’s nothing lurid or inflammatory here. No fictional sex and violence, no controversy bait. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing triggering…just a mention of mental illness and I think there’s a metaphor that involves drowning but, that’s about it. It’s not even remarkably bad. Just sad. So, if you’re hoping for something scandalous, you’ve been forewarned.

Several months ago, I lost an rp partner that I considered a friend. It’s been long enough for me to be capable of writing this but not long enough for me to be truly over it. I’m writing this because the reason I am still not over it is that I don’t know how much of that loss was my own fault and my behavior in response to that loss has probably ensured that I will never know.

Prior to starting threads we spent a couple months chatting, as often as every other day to once or twice a week. Skimming over the chat log to confirm that frequency reopens and rubs salt into old wounds. 

Then, after we started threading, just a few replies in, they went MIA. No heads up, no indication of any problems, they just vanished. This wasn’t their first disappearing act. Roughly a year before this they had done something similar, albeit under different circumstances. 

With the exception of this ghostly behavior, they were everything I could hope for in an RP partner and, from all I knew of them, I very much liked them as a person and would have liked to count them as a friend. Their other partners seemed like a good group of people that I’d be happy to interact with as well. Since I have very limited free time for RP I’m understanding of others in that situation; I’m also very particular (probably a little peculiar), and perhaps more selective than I’ve a right to be, or have admitted to being in the past. I’m a choosy beggar. So, when they resurfaced and reached out to see if I wanted to write with them again I was elated. I was also very concerned that I might have caused or contributed to their previous disappearance. They assured me I had not, that I’d done nothing wrong. They explained what had happened before and insisted that they’d be sticking around this time.

Had they seemed less available, or less enthused, during those two months before we started writing, had they not been initiating chats and responding so quickly, it would have been different. There should have been a better discussion about future activity expectations. At one point they remarked ‘even if we can only do one reply a week each’ (something to that effect) and that sounded perfectly reasonable to me.

The last time I heard from them all seemed well. I messaged them a little over a week later, after I’d posted replies, just to inform them of some technical issues I was having. When another week had gone by without hearing from them I was starting to get worried. I expressed my concerns and said I would appreciate hearing from them, even if they were unable to reply on threads, just to know everything was okay. Early on, when we were chatting, they had offered their cell number. I didn’t take them up on it. I’m careful with my personal info, it felt too soon and, while I certainly don’t like to be left hanging, I didn’t want them to feel like I needed to keep tabs on them. I was fine with tumblr being our only point of contact.

Six weeks went by with no sign of them. Logically, I knew it was possible that something had come up, that real life might have overwhelmed them. It wasn’t as if they were actively RPing with others but, then again, they could have been on other blogs I didn’t know of, so I couldn’t really take anything from that. I also know that for most in rp, six weeks of zero contact would be considered a sure sign that the other mun is not interested. I know there are those who will simply ghost others they no longer wish to interact with, some openly admit to it.

I was starting to dissect our OOC exchanges and second guessing everything, looking for anything I might have done wrong, anything that might have been misinterpreted and taken wrong. I would never claim to be perfect in any way but I couldn’t come up with anything that, when weighed against all of our OOC talks, would seem to warrant them having a serious issue with me. Before their disappearance they’d had me feeling confident that they were comfortable discussing any problems, but after all that time without so much as a quick im or psa post it seemed increasingly unlikely. I was now too nervous and shy to even consider reaching out to their other partners.

Mental illness should never be used as an excuse. I’m not including this next part to garner sympathy, only to state facts. I did go through a period of wanting sympathy and commiseration but that’s not the purpose here, this is for explanation. By the end of that sixth week my anxiety had taken over and I was drowning in a whirlpool of mixed emotions, swinging between worry over their well-being, remorseful self-flagellation and bitter, resentful resignation. Yes, I know: It is only a hobby. It is ONLY fucking RP. But I could not simply shut the feelings off and repeating that mantra to myself, reminding myself how irrational and insignificant this all was only added new layers of misery. I tried to distract myself. I wanted to do the intelligent thing and move on, find some sort of victory in happiness with other partners but, I couldn’t think about RP at all without circling back around to this: Where had I gone so wrong? 

What if I unwittingly make the same mistakes again?

What if I approach another potential partner or group and accidentally come across them on a different account? Will they think I’m stalking them? Should I just stay away from anything remotely similar?

What if I totally misjudged them from the very beginning?

At the risk of sounding really melodramatic, the worst of it was the feeling of being unable to accurately gauge another’s attitude and intentions, the fear that there is something fundamentally flawed in my perception of other people. But that is something I’ve struggled with a long time, in real life, due to experiences.

Desperate for answers, I went trawling the cesspool of salt and confessions, sifting through and inspecting every possible explanation, from the petty and absurd to the grave and severe. There I came upon things that seemed, to my stress addled brain, sure signs confirming my fears and suspicions. Maybe I was right. I’ll never know, and that just might be due to what I chose to do next.

There are more details. There always are, right? There’s more to the story that might give a little more insight but, those might be too revealing, for both of us involved. This is no call-out and those details aren’t critical to the purpose. However, given those details, my state of mind, the history, the timing, all of our previous discussions and traded reassurances, their actions felt almost punitive and mocking, as if they had done this to ensure I’d never even want to interact with them again. So, I sent a curt im and soft-blocked them.

I can still remember the feeling of my fingertip hovering over that block button as it wavered, through tear-blurred vision, in time with my pulse. The guilt was instantaneous. But I didn’t stop there, oh no! I did the same with a mutual-mutual because they were partners first so of course that person wouldn’t want anything to do with me either. I had intended that to be the end of it. I didn’t even stick to my own resolution. I later sent a lengthy rant expressing my hurt and frustration, chiding them for not having the courage to give me a simple, honest, clear rejection. Over the following months I became increasingly convinced of mistakes I had made early on. In random moments of weakness I would message again, attempting to apologize for these errors, although I was still hurt by the fact that they’d never mentioned any problem (assuming there was one to begin with). Eventually, I deleted our threads, changed my url, essentially shut down. Ultimately, I came to terms with the fact that my own behavior had turned toxic. I should have just quietly walked away after a month of no contact. Instead, all I’d done had achieved nothing but piling wrong upon wrong. I messaged again, trying to apologize for that.

I’ve never seen a trace of them since the last time we spoke so many months ago. I have been told they are alive and more or less well, I’m not sure whether or not I should believe everything I’ve heard. Now and then, I worry that there was some wild misunderstanding, or maybe some bizarre glitch. More worrying is the possibility that their real life circumstances actually have been difficult enough to keep them from ever logging on at all for all this time. But I don’t really think any of that is plausible, more like some sort of twisted wishful thinking that only makes me feel worse. It wouldn’t make me feel worse if I hadn’t reacted like I did and now it’s the only reason I haven’t completely gotten over this, because I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, I never intended to hurt them. As hurtful as what I did do may have been, I was only able to because I believed they did not care at all. But I know that does not make it right, or healthy, regardless of whatever the facts about their disappearance may be. 

So, if you ever find yourself in a similar place, as difficult as it may be, try to avoid making the same mistakes I did. Do not block. Don’t even soft-block. Just drop it and try to forget. Vent anonymously if you must. Try not to say anything you might ever, ever regret. Don’t screw yourself out of the chance to walk away with a clean conscience.

#mental illness tw #submission

[propvestintl]

Dubai Premium Malls & Virtual Offices Presents Real Meditation

It is out of a sense of utter frustration and disgust at so much misleading information on the topic of Meditation that has forced me to finally write down my own view on the subject, which I feel will benefit those who wish to at least know what Meditation is all about.

The origin of the concept of meditation is from the Ancient East Indian Yoga System, as depicted in their ancient Vedanta Scriptures, which is claimed to be over 5000 years old.

Meditation is not an act of sitting with closed eyes and using one of multiple taught methods that claim it is meditation. Meditation is part of an 8 step process, where the last step results in actual success in achieving meditation.

Following the various steps and methods to achieve meditation can lead to serious harm to both your health and your mental health. Period! I am so sad to see so called great and respected leaders misleading people into giving short cuts to meditation, claiming they want to benefit people. Some obviously want to make money off the ignorant and others want to gain fame and followers. Most, in my opinion, don’t know what they are talking about.

Some Background

I have studied and had the privilege of practicing the system that incorporates the subtle art of mediation now for over 40 years. Although the time period spent is no indication of authenticity, as is apparent in the world since this concept was investigated by seekers. However I like to give my opinion, which I feel will clarify and open the minds of seekers of knowledge of this subtle art.

Meditation is a culmination of a major project to develop oneself to attain the higher capacities inherent in all of us, which is not an easy task but can also be simplified if the steps are clearly explained. So that one knows exactly what to expect along the progression of this lifelong endeavor.

The lifetime of a human is insufficient to reasonably achieve the highest levels of progress in this endeavor. Yet regularity of practice can bring about amazing benefits to the practitioner within a short space of time, probably some significant results within a 5 to 10 year period. These results will start to show itself in subtle ways from within a few weeks of commencement of the right practices.

I would never have written this article if I felt that people in general will not massively benefit from attempting to take on this endeavor. It can complete reverse almost any illness, physical or mental, curable or incurable. It can drastically improve the intellectual capacity far beyond what is logical. It will greatly increase a sense of peace and assist you greatly in succeeding in the achievement of your most insurmountable challenges in life. It is the true law of attraction, tailor made to you individually, from within you, from your very own higher intelligence sitting dormant within yourself.

I never started this course of study and practice for any of the above benefits as I did not believe any of that was possible but was very attracted to this system as it seemed a fascinating subject with so many subtle secrets that it simply forced me to investigate and unravel the mysteries.

I only began to understand parts of what this is about after many years of practice, over 25 years I would estimate before I took the matter seriously when I experienced some of the mind blowing results. Yet I still needed more time and only after I had encountered some serious health problems that I decided to see if the practice could help me at all, as it was fabled to.

I had been diagnosed with Diabetes for a second time, but this time was far more serious than the previous time, which I overcame without my understanding how. I was Insulin Dependent diabetic for 10 years when I eventually started practicing the yoga and meditation system more seriously. I completely recovered and thought I just experienced an odd miracle in my life. I remained well for about 13 years without any need for doctors. I greatly improved in my health and took great care of my habits in respect to food, supplements and exercise.

However the second time I was diagnosed was recently and I also had serious nerve damage and serious blood circulation problems. I lost peripheral sensitivity and I tried many herbal and medical solutions with a little success for a while but then the situation started to get worse very fast and I lost major sensitivity in my hands and legs. It was actually quite alarming and I tried to find a solution without much success. I continued trying for several months and eventually exhausted nearly every known alternative, which was also a very costly exercise. Fortunately I was able to afford the experiments.

It is by chance that I suddenly remembered about meditation, which practice I abandoned for about 13 years seeing that I felt I no longer craved sensational psychedelic experiences, which is all what I thought meditation was about.

I certainly was able to meditate very easily as I had years of dedicated practice under my belt. I sat and meditated the first evening just to see of I can perhaps get any benefit at all. I sat only for about 30 minutes and to my amazement, over 50% of my sensations returned.

I was totally blown, as you can imagine. I started to practice it regularly for just a little while daily and to my amazement, I recovered from diabetes symptoms within a few days and my sensations returned to me about 80% within the first week.

Of course the reason for the rapid improvement was I had knowledge, experience and proficiency in meditation and was able to tap into being receptive to the curative energy that awakens whilst one enters into proper meditation.

Then all the theories started to make sense. I was able to sift through the truth and fantasy with the years of changes in my life that now started to make sense.

I now understood my drastic increase in intellectual capacity during my childhood and teens. The different periods of massive financial success and failures which corresponded proportionally to my adopting and abandoning the practice over the years.

So what is meditation?

The featured image of this article gives the outline of what meditation is. It is the 8th step in a system known as Raja Yoga. The practice requires proficiency in the preceding steps before progress can safely be made.

Let me explain the steps briefly in my opinion:

Step 1: Yama – “Self Control…..”

This requires one to adopt a sound character. To have an exemplary character with reasonable levels of patience, forgiveness, helpful attitude, kindness, abandon bad habits that are harmful, etc. If this is not sound, once you awaken your higher levels of consciousness, your very thoughts that will now have power will reign havoc in the world resulting in harm to others as well as yourself of course. Every action has an equal but opposite reaction.

Step 2:  Niyama – “Discipline…”

This requires you to be able to put an action plan together and maintain consistency in it. To carry it through to the successful completion and overcome all challenges along the way. Without this ability, you cannot succeed long term in anything in life. You need to adopt a healthy active lifestyle, good career habits that will give you the financial stability to sustain your livelihood and help you make time for your higher aspirations, etc.

Step 3: Asana – ” Physical Exercise…”

This step is referring specifically to the yoga exercises which is very different from fitness exercises. Fitness exercises takes energy out of you, depleting your energy reserves as you workout. Yoga done correctly will increase your energy levels leaving you clearly more energized after the session. It actually works on the flexibility of your body and activates the spiritual centers that are closely linked to your body. If you fail to activate these centers, then you will have an imbalance in the way the spiritual energy will affect you once it is awakened. This can lead to actual physical problems that are more serious than normal physical problems. You will most likely live a life of extreme pain and suffering, completely opposite to what you intended in the first place.

The second amazing benefit is that the awakening of the spiritual centers linked closely to your body will greatly increase your health and intellectual capacity as well. You will notice the differences after a few years of regular practice.

Please note that once you start the journey to awakening your spiritual centers in your body, you will stir the inner spiritual higher self which will take control of your life and make you undergo extreme difficulties if you abandon the practice. It will literally make you lose your health, wealth and all friends and family if you leave the practice and it will not stop until you recommence the practice.

I think I said sufficient to make you understand a little what meditation really is. If you do immoral acts you will get severe punishment from mysterious circumstances. There is actually no mystery. Your own inner self is sabotaging you. It is extremely judgemental and will not hesitate to use any means what so ever to bring you back into the right path which is continue to complete what you started.

Ignorance is bliss…… I strongly recommend you not to start this journey unless you have no other choice or you are ready to drastically lose control of the life as you know it.

If you still want to pursue this further, contact me and I will be glad to introduce you to a few simple daily practices that you can adopt practically and hopefully achieve the inexplicable dimensions…..

Dubai Premium Malls & Virtual Offices

(Also available: Dubai Residence Visa, Business Set up and Premium Property Service)

https://propvestintl.wordpress.com

          Dubai Premium Malls & Virtual Offices Presents Real Meditation published first on your-t1-blog-url

[traunnatized]

This is still a trauma/mental illness centric blog but as of 2/2/19 I've decided to try to be more recovery focused. i'm sure there will still be plenty of times that i'll still just need to vent and days i'll feel more negative. Getting better can be really scary but it's scarier for me to think it will be like this forever. And tbh it's definitely not healthy for me to just focus on the negative. I rarely look back at old posts or even reblogs because it puts me in a really bad place with mental health. It feels wrong now to have a blog I can't even look through.

I won't be deleting old content, but the new stuff will be slightly different. Having somewhere to vent about everything really helps, but also I need to start taking steps to get better so I probably won't post as many memes about wanting to die or about how things will never get better, etc. And i'm going to make a conscious effort not to phrase things in ways that reinforce my negative beliefs about myself/what's happened to me/my future (like maybe i'll post "I feel hopeless right now but I know this will pass eventually" or even make a second post after that or a list in the tags about times that I've been happy/hopeful lately instead of just posting "i'll feel this way forever i should just kms I hate myself [etc etc]").

If you don't wanna keep following I understand, and thank you to everyone who has given me a space to process things that have happened to me and my feelings about them. I think being able to do that is a big part of why I've reached this point aside from the main reason (my gf, she's amazing). No pressure to any of you to do the same, I know everyone is at different points in their lives and everyone is on their own timeline, and you have to want to get better for yourself at the right time for you or it won't work. Anyway that's what's up so expect some changes to this blog soon esp re avatar/cover photo/eventually url (I do like the dark theme tho I think i'll keep that).

#i'm gonna add an abridged version of this in my bio too but i know most of you won't check that #i don't want to feel like this forever and i've realized the only way ti #to* get better is to consciously work toward recovery #nothing's gonna change if i just sit here joking about wanting to die and confirming the negative thought processes i've developed over tim #text #i still have a weird opposition to being called a survivor though cause it took so much away from me #idk maybe it feels like it ignores the pain i've felt over the abuse etc or how hard i've had to work and fight to stay alive through it #probably it doesn't i just don't like it #but i'm not gonna keep saying i didn't survive either cause i'm still here #idk #i'll find a better label soon

[denisalvney]

RHR: How Sauna Therapy Can Prevent & Reverse Chronic Disease, with Brian Richards

In this episode, we discuss:

The history of saunas

Using sauna therapy to prevent and reverse chronic disease

The benefits of saunas

How heat therapy works

What makes near infrared sauna therapy different

Why light is a nutrient

Tips on how to use sauna therapy effectively

How electromagnetic stress is damaging our health

Show notes:

SaunaSpace

Sauna Therapy for Detoxification and Healing, by Dr. Lawrence Wilson

Light Therapeutics, by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg

“The Health Benefits of Saunas,” by Chris Kresser

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Chris Kresser:  Hey, everyone, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. This week we’re going to be speaking with Brian Richards, who’s the founder and lead product developer at SaunaSpace. Brian fully healed his toxin-related acne, brain fog, adrenal fatigue, and more with the power of the near infrared sauna, near infrared light for mitochondrial simulation and deeply detoxifying heat therapy. His personal journey to optimal health inspired him to create SaunaSpace’s incandescent light therapy sauna product in order to help others to the pathway to natural healing through infrared detoxification and light therapy.

So I met Brian at Paleo f(x) last year and have long been a proponent of sauna therapy. I have used many different saunas myself, have had saunas in my home for several years, and have done a ton of research on the benefits of sauna for a wide variety of conditions and just optimizing our health and extending our lifespan. I recently became interested, particularly in near infrared saunas, after learning more about the differences between the far and near infrared and then getting a chance to experience Brian’s SaunaSpace sauna on the Paleo f(x) exhibition floor and then getting one for my home.

I’ve become a huge believer, and I wanted to invite Brian on to talk about the benefits of sauna use overall, the differences between the different kinds of sauna, how to use saunas effectively in terms of frequency and duration, what to do before and after, EMFs and how they relate to sauna use, and several other topics. So I think you’ll really enjoy the show if you’re interested in saunas, and maybe even if you aren’t. And let’s dive in.

Brian, such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Brian Richards:  Thank you for having me, Chris.

Chris Kresser:  All right, well, let's start little, with a little bit about your own story and background. I'm always curious about that. Learn how people came to the work that they're doing, and I know a little bit about your story. So I’d love for you to share, how did you end up in the world of saunas and phototherapy, photobiomodulation?

Brian Richards:  Well, I definitely stumbled into it. I do come from bit of a science background. I do have a chemistry degree. But at the point I was having some of my health problems, I was doing a remodeling of houses. So this is about six or seven years ago, and I was just having issues with nine or 10 with things that are hard to diagnose. And I didn't ever get a diagnosis from a physician, but I was dealing with brain fog, insomnia, mind racing, and I had this really odd acne only around my torso. So if you met me in the street, I kind of looked fine, and people would say, “Well, what's your problem, man?” But I didn't feel good inside, and I had low energy levels too. I had what I know now is adrenal fatigue. I didn’t know it as such, but I'm a curious man and I did my research online, like people do nowadays, to discover what's going on.

Artificial light, environmental toxins, and unmitigated stress can all wreak havoc on your health. What’s the antidote? Spending time in a sauna. Learn more about the benefits of sauna therapy and get tips on how to fit this step into your wellness routine. 

And through my research I just came across this concept or just this phenomenon, this epidemic of illness that we’re dealing with. It’s what Klinghardt calls an “avalanche of chronic illness.” So many people have so many diseases of civilization now. Autoimmune disease is one of the top five, and cancer as well, are one of the top five killers of Americans. We’re dealing with this incredible toxic burden that we carry around all day long. And so that’s what my research led me to. We all have all these weird diseases now, we all have this incredible toxic burden from all the plastics, petrochemicals and solvents we’re exposed to, as well as our modern lifestyle. It's so high stress. Combine that with our nutrient, what we get from our diet is so nutrient depleted now, and we all eat things out of bags and plastic. It's just, it's a tidal wave of illness and of toxic burden and even electrosmog too, which I'm sure we'll talk about EMF later. And so I realized that I'm just one of thousands, if not millions, of people around that are dealing with things that are hard to diagnose, and conventional medicine doesn't have any good treatment for. They pretty much are doing pain management, prescriptions, and talk toxic pharmacological drugs, which are their own chemicals. And so it didn't seem to be sensible to me. I wanted to address the root cause of my problems, and my research led me to sauna.

The History of Saunas

So every human culture on earth has some kind of sauna tradition, from the Korean hot baths and the sweat lodges of America to the sauna. And I love this idea, and I coincidentally at the end of my research when I was about to kind of get my own sauna, or perhaps make my own sauna, I stumbled upon this incredible concept. It's called the electric incandescent bath. Now there's a modern book called Sauna Therapy for Detoxification and Healing written by Dr. Lawrence Wilson that kind of modernizes this concept or brings it back into the forefront. But the incandescent sauna that I eventually made, and I eventually started making, and that is what SaunaSpace is, dates back to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Dr. Kellogg’s sanitariums. And some people are familiar with Kellogg's Corn Flakes. He's an incredible man. Some of the things he had, he didn’t understand everything, and some of the things he was wrong about.

Chris Kresser:  Like corn flakes. Right.

Brian Richards:  Like corn flakes, yeah. It’s pretty funny they thought that male libido was a problem back in the day, so they came up with corn flakes to supposedly lower male libido. Now we have …

Chris Kresser:  It’s the opposite, yeah.

Brian Richards:  Yeah. Anyway, he invented what's called the electric incandescent bath, 1891, just a couple years after electricity and the light bulb were invented. This Dr. Kellogg looked at it and said, “Oh, my goodness. We can take these lamps and shine them on people and make them sweat like a sauna. And we’ll heal their maladies.” And he wrote a book in 1910 called Light Therapeutics and I found this, and also Dr. Wilson's book, and I said, “Hey, this is the sauna that I want to do.” And so that’s kind of my story. I built my own. I’m a tinkerer, I’m a builder, and it was pretty ugly, pretty bricolage, but my insomnia was cured in probably two sessions.

So I did 40 minutes before bed, had what’s called parasympathetic relaxation, got my body out of stress state, had wonderful sleep, and then subsequently, so two sessions and that was gone, and then over probably six months all of my other stuff that is collectively adrenal fatigue all went away, and I also looked back and noticed, “Hey, there’s some things that got fixed here that I didn’t even know were a problem.” I have improved cognitive functioning, which causes more clarity, more energy, more ability and patience to deal with things. And I work long days running the business here, and I just take everything with gusto. So it was really just, changed my life and it set me on this path. I said, “Well, why is this not available?” And so that put me on the journey to make the world’s most perfect sauna.

Using Sauna Therapy to Prevent and Reverse Chronic Disease

Chris Kresser:  Awesome. It's really interesting hearing that story, and I mean, there are a lot of parts of it I can relate to from my own history. And now as a clinician, I completely agree with your assessment of where we are in terms of chronic disease and also just the multiple challenges we face. In a way, that can be, that's a pretty depressing conversation. And one way to look at it is that it's amazing anybody's healthy. With the number of challenges we face from nutrient-depleted diet to toxic burden to reduction in physical activity to primarily living in isolating, alienating social arrangements rather than in the tribal way that we lived for so many generations, the modern lifestyle is antithetical to health in so many different ways. Which for me leads me to what are some of the simple, relatively simple changes that we can make that will have effects across all of those different domains, or at least many of them. Because as a Functional Medicine practitioner, this stuff can get really complex.

It can be really difficult to find the root cause or causes in a situation where someone is dealing with multiple different conditions, multiple exposures, they’ve got infections, they've got toxins, they've got autoimmunity, they’ve got injuries, brain injury in the past. Like it's not always easy or even possible to find a single root cause or several root causes that you can address and then the patient will just get better. And so the more things we can find, interventions like healthy diet or appropriate physical activity, sleep, and I would include sauna, phototherapy, photobiomodulation in this group, that it's so powerful because it has so many different impacts and you don't need to know what's going on in order to benefit from it. And I think that's one of the most useful aspects of it. Your story really illustrates that because you never really found out per se what the triggers were, even the mechanisms. But you had still managed to address all of them.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, I didn’t want to take Accutane and other drugs, but you're right. I didn't know what it was. But if we look back, we are, we’re all exposed to, we all get a lot of mercury, aluminum, toxicity.

Chris Kresser:  Thallium and lead now and arsenic are even more prevalent.

Brian Richards:  All these things, and we’re also so far gone from our ancestral lifestyle. The modern lifestyle is so far from that. The ancestral human was naked under the sun on the equator getting the appropriate ratio of blue to red, to near infrared light in the morning, the evening, resting in the day, completely in parasympathetic, in a rest-and-heal state when they went to bed. So they had perfect sleep.

And of course, not to mention their diet was also just much more nutrified, much more natural and again, none of the toxic exposure we have. So yeah, it’s no coincidence why everybody is so sick. But like you said, what do we do to address that? There’s so many, there’s so much gadgetry out there now and there's a focus on one thing. What's the one thing that I can fix? People love a diagnosis, and they love having all these blood tests. And I’m sure you’ve experienced that in your practice. But then information becomes the enemy almost. Like it’s too much data and diagnostics.

Chris Kresser:  Overwhelmed.

Brian Richards:  And they’re overwhelmed and yet there’s not a simple solution. So the question is, what are simple multifactorial solutions that hit many, we get many birds with one stone?

Chris Kresser:  Yeah.

Brian Richards:  And to do so in something that’s enjoyable and that’s kind of, what I think I’ve stumbled on here is it’s really, it’s enjoyable to sweat under near infrared light in a quiet space that's protected from the sensory overload that we’re just inundated with in blue light and flickering light and just the stress. Nobody's carved out that space in their life anymore for a parasympathetic experience for meditation, for healing. It's just something that we want to do, that with everything else. We want something that we can do while we’re working, while we’re doing other things. And it just, the human body doesn’t work that way.

The Benefits of Saunas

Chris Kresser:  Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about briefly about the, some of the benefits of sauna use in terms of the research and the mechanisms. This has been covered quite a bit on other shows and I've written about this myself, so we’ll provide links in the show notes. And I want to spend more time with you talking about different sauna types and EMF and some considerations for sauna therapy, like frequency and duration, etc. But for those who are listening who aren’t really that familiar with the very well-documented benefits of saunas in terms of cardiovascular, lifespan expansion, blood pressure, etc., let's maybe go through a few of these.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, for those who are not familiar, you can sum it up really simply. Doing sauna frequently reduces your probability of dying from all causes. It reduces all-cause mortality. There's no other moderate healing practice that impacts every cell of the body in this way, and so if you want to give a few examples, we see so many Finnish population studies now where frequent sauna use results in reduced risk of stroke, of heart attack, of Parkinson's, of Alzheimer's, of all these things. Essentially, if you use sauna frequently, you will live longer with less chronic disease and be happier and healthier.

Chris Kresser:  And these are big reductions too. We’re not talking about like 2, 3 percent. Some of the studies I've seen, we’re talking, 20, 30, 40 percent on a relative basis.

Brian Richards:  Yeah. And some of the studies, like the Laukkanen study was a 20-year study on a large Finnish male population, so these are very large population, very impressive studies. It's just been studied so much. So that's kind of in a nutshell, and the more the study of particular disease types, we see improvement in those as they’re studied. It also has some other benefits, like when you heat up the body, you heat up the body routinely and you keep coming back and doing that day after day and week after week, you improve cognitive functioning.

So your brain works better, your nervous system works better. Sure, some stuff going on at the cell level, it's called BDNF production, is improved in the nerve cells. But there’s also a study I saw where they improved overall nervous system, motor system functioning in spinal cord injury victims just with heat therapy, just with the sauna therapy.

Chris Kresser:  Amazing.

Brian Richards:  So really a wide array of studies that if there ever was a modern healing practice you could do to heal from everything and take care of, do a preventative practice, a healing maintenance practice for all things in all cells, it's definitely sauna.

Chris Kresser:  Imagine if there was a drug that had cardiovascular benefits, blood pressure, lipid profiles, fitness, detoxification, I've seen studies with sauna reducing pain in fibromyalgia patients, fatigue and anxiety and chronic fatigue, lower risk of Alzheimer's and dementia, lower risk of depression, improved insulin sensitivity, respiratory symptoms. Can you imagine if there was a drug that did all this? Like how much airplay that would get. How it would be, like, hailed as a sort of miracle treatment. And yet, this is actually what sauna does, and certainly the word is getting out there. I think more people are becoming aware of it.

But still on, it kind of, and in other areas of the world, like in Finland, as you pointed out, everybody knows that. And most houses have saunas in them. But in our culture, I think saunas are still largely seen as something you might go in when you go to the gym to work out for a couple minutes after your workout or something, just for relaxation, and the health benefits are not widely known.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, that’s true. It’s unfortunate, but people are, we are changing minds every day here at SaunaSpace. I’ve got about 7,000 customers now. They use a near infrared sauna, so we’ll talk about that in a minute. But it’s growing, and the more, and I think it’s also an increased awareness that toxicity and toxic burden is one of the core disease factors that we have here in modern life, and it's something that needs to be addressed. You can't just exercise and eat your way out of disease. There is a need to reduce the toxic burden somehow and sauna’s clearly the most effective way to detoxify the cells and the body as well. And that's what I wanted to talk about, actually, before we go into different sauna types.

How Heat Therapy Works

Some people are unclear as to the difference between sauna and hot tub or sauna and a hot pad, or heat pack, or maybe a far infrared heating mat, different ways you can heat the body up. People see them as different things, and in a way they’re kind of the same in how they heat the body up. So just briefly, the mechanism of heat therapy, of detox therapy, of the heat benefiting the body and the cells is very simple. You just heat up the cells by three degrees for a period of minutes and you get a detoxification response in the cell. You get these, heat shock proteins are produced, and you probably covered that in your, some of your articles and your other podcasts and stuff.

But basically you get the cell detox going on in the cell, more blood supply, more tissue oxygenation, and then the toxins come out of the cells into the bloodstream. And if we’re sweating, which is what we do in a sauna as opposed to a heat pad, or just a heat therapy where we’re not sweating, the sweat eliminates the toxins in the most effective, least energetic fashion possible.

So that's the big difference and that's why you need to sweat. That's why just a light therapy device or just a heat pad is not doing this deep, effective, least stressful way to do full-body toxin elimination, as is passive sweating. And that's also a big difference between passive sweating, which is parasympathetic, healing sweating, and exercise sweating. And then it has to do with being in a stress state, your autonomic nervous system when you're in a parasympathetic state, your sweat has a very high concentration percentage versus when you're on the treadmill running. You’re in what’s called fight-or-flight, you’re in sympathetic dominance, you're responding to the stress of the environment. All of your cellular energy is going towards locomotion and responding to the environment. Your cells are saying, “I don't have any energy left over to heal and to eliminate and to repair. I need to survive here.”

Chris Kresser:  Right.

Brian Richards:  And so we see that in the studies too. There's a cool study, or a very interesting study, on the 9/11 rescue workers where they got all this toxic petrochemical exposure from the 9/11 rescue efforts, and they did the Hubbard sauna protocol twice a day, wet sauna with a high-dose niacin, and their toluene, like their petrochemical concentrations in their blood, were reduced incredibly. Like in some cases up to 90 percent over a couple months of sauna use. And that's very different from if you measure the sweat concentration of someone running on the treadmill, there's just not much toxin concentration in the sweat. So very different sweating in the sauna is definitely detoxing you. Running on the treadmill is not, even though you’re sweating.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah. Totally different set of benefits for different reasons, which I think you explained well. So I'm going to put a link to an article I wrote about health benefits of sauna, which links to the studies we’ve been talking about and many others. And those who want more information about how incredibly diverse and powerful sauna use can be, you can check that out.

We’re going to move on now to talk a little bit more about the different types of saunas and some of the other questions that, I see a lot of confusion about from people in the space, and I get a lot of questions about from my patients. So let's start, Brian, with the different types of sauna and then why you ended up choosing near infrared for SaunaSpace.

What Makes Near Infrared Sauna Therapy Different

Brian Richards:  Yeah. All saunas deliver heat therapy and all saunas, or almost all saunas, you sweat in. So in that sense, they have similarities. But then there are many differences. The classic sauna is the Finnish sauna, the wood-fired is the original sauna, and then they came up with the electric hot rock sauna. So you pour water on the electrical coil-heated hot rocks, but it’s still a wood cabinet.

And then in the 60s or the 70s, I think 50 or 60 years ago, they came out with a far infrared emitter. So it’s a long, skinny ceramic emitter that emits far infrared wavelengths, those are the low-energy infrared wavelengths, 3,000 nanometers and greater. And that was an advancement because it was much lower energy consumption and it was dry. So it was much more tolerable to do 150-degree far infrared sauna than a 200-degree wet sauna and also more energy efficient. And it also fit into, it’s a thin element, so it fits into the wall of the sauna and it allowed them to keep the same wood box sauna aesthetic that the market understood, “this is a sauna.” It’s this big wood cabinet or this big, this wood hut.

But interestingly enough, like I said in the beginning, the first electrically powered sauna was actually the incandescent lamp sauna. So that's what we do here. We use an incandescent-based near infrared sauna. So it's a different light technology. It's 200 … we use four 250-watt red-filtered incandescent lamps to heat the body up, and this is definitely quite a bit different from any other sauna. Number one because it’s a light therapy sauna. And that’s kind of where the confusion comes in. People think that all infrared is the same. It's not. The near infrared wavelengths exclusively stimulate the light therapy systems in our cells, what’s called photobiomodulation, or mitochondrial, stimulation. And I’ll mention that in a second. Or I can explain that a little more here in a minute. But before that, first of all, near infrared, why near infrared for detox or heating the body? Near infrared wavelengths penetrate up to 9 inches into the body.

It Provides a Deeper Detox

So when you sit in a SaunaSpace sauna, in a near infrared sauna, and your shirt’s off,

of course because your clothing blocks the light, the core cells of your body are being heated up immediately. So it's a more effective, deeper detox and deeper heating effect, and it occurs at a lower ambient air temperature. In a near infrared sauna, it's only, like, 110 degrees inside because we are using these deep-penetrating, radiant heating methodology. That's in contrast to a far infrared sauna. Due to water absorption, far infrared wavelengths are 100 percent absorbed by water. And you can see this concept more in detail on my science page on SaunaSpace.com. So you can see the graphs and the spectrum and the water absorption. But basically our bodies are all water, and there's a lot of water in the atmosphere, and if you look at sunlight, 40 percent of sunlight that reaches the earth is near infrared. Because near infrared is not well absorbed by water. In compare and contrast, only 5 percent of far infrared reaches the earth. Almost all of it is absorbed by the water in the atmosphere, and it’s the same thing in our body. And since our body is, there’s so much water in our body, far infrared wavelengths are stopped once they hit water. Whereas near infrared can get in really deep.

This is why I think it's no coincidence that the light receptor cells in our body, the mitochondrial ones, are uniquely activated by near infrared. We don't have any light receptors for far infrared. So that's a big difference between near and far infrared. The near infrared sauna is a deeper, safer, more effective detox that also brings these light therapy benefits. Whereas a far infrared sauna, or a wet, a Finnish sauna is just a heat therapy. And that’s good, but it’s only like a piece, that’s a part of the pie here. There’s another part of, there’s a bigger pie here that SaunaSpace is dealing with the infrared, and that’s this light therapy stuff.

Chris Kresser:  Let me just interject before we go there. Because it's a really, it's a noticeable difference. I had a far infrared sauna for, as you know, Brian, for a few years and enjoyed using it. And then I tried the SaunaSpace when I was at Paleo f(x) on the exhibition floor, and that's where I met Brian. I talked to Brian and did some of my own research and learned a little bit more. But the real practical proof of it was just my first session in the near infrared sauna. So with the far infrared sauna, I used to have to heat it up for two hours.

That was one of the biggest bummers on a practical level. Because if I wanted to use the sauna and I had forgotten to turn it on and heat it up, I couldn’t do it. So it would take a couple hours for me to get it up to, like, 145, which is where it needed to be for me in order to get a good sweat. And it would take me quite a bit longer to start sweating in the far infrared unit. And then when I tried the near infrared at SaunaSpace, first of all, I turn it on five minutes ahead of time instead of two hours, which is a huge benefit for me just from a practical perspective. And then I started to sweat within five to seven minutes rather than maybe 20 minutes in the infrared sauna, which meant I was sweating for much longer throughout the course of being there. And I felt that deep penetration. I could just sense that it was penetrating much more deeply. And that’s why perhaps I was sweating so much more easily. So it’s a really, it was a palpable difference, for me at least.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, and it typically is for folks like yourself who have already, who know sauna, have had a far infrared sauna. The near infrared sauna, like you say, it just heats you up so much better, so you sweat faster and you do it at a lower ambient air temperature. Which means it's not just quicker to preheat, which is more convenient for you, it's also safer. And that’s a big, for me, that's a huge advantage of near infrared. This is safer, it's more effective and deeper heating, but it's also safer.

It’s Safer for People with Heat Sensitivities

So for folks with heat sensitivities, with chronic illness, with neuropathies, of many thousands of customers that we have, a huge portion of them are dealing with severe chronic illness. So they have neuropathies, heat sensitivity, tachycardia-like symptoms where they just can’t handle anything intense. They can't use a regular sauna at all at 200 degrees. They can’t even handle far infrared, many of them, at 150 degrees. Not to mention the electromagnetically sensitive crowd. They also have issues with some of these other saunas. This is a sauna that even the most neuropathic, heat-sensitive, weak folks can use. And we've also put some design elements in there, like the ability to reduce the number of lamps used and the ability to keep the curtain open so that people can do a reduced protocol, and it just really widens access to sauna.

Here's a sauna for the first time that folks with, we were just at the Wahls Protocol conference, an MS-focused conference, and it was just so exciting to see people there who were, they don't have access to sauna otherwise. But they do with SaunaSpace because it's a more gentle thing to do it with the infrared. It's just, and everybody needs this, but they need to detox, but unfortunately, in other saunas they can’t handle it.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah.

Brian Richards:  I think that’s a huge benefit.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, I met an MS patient when I was skiing in Park City last year and he moved to Park City and spends the winter there because he is so heat sensitive that he just feels better. He kind of goes or moves around to cold places basically and is super heat intolerant. And I've seen that in a lot of MS patients as well.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, I even have another quick story I can tell. Her name is V Capaldi, she's an MS warrior, she's an MS advocate, she's been dealing with progressive MS for many years, I think seven or eight years at least, maybe more. She travels around the country promoting MS awareness. It's called the BAM Van. She’s also called Paleo Boss Lady on social media. Anyway, I met her last year and she travels around in a van, and she can’t fit our whole pocket sauna in her van, of course, so she actually uses our targeted therapy product, called our single light.

And one of her major symptoms of MS is that she has body temperature regulation problems. It’ll get too hot and too cold, kind of like the example you mentioned where if they just can’t handle heat, they can’t handle cold, and then their body heats up and they can’t cool down and vice versa. So just using the targeted therapy of the single lamp on her feet, on her gut, on her head, a couple times throughout the day every day, she’s had a major reduction in her body temperature regulation symptoms. And when she stops using it, they come back. So she’s had kind of a full-body response to even a targeted therapy, which I think is really, it just speaks to how our bodies really crave this light and this heat, this particular form of it. This natural form with lots of near infrared that you don't get from other light sources other than sunlight.

It's a Pleasurable Experience

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, yeah, it’s a really … Yeah, I mean, I think that like we were saying before, that thinking about therapies like this that have worked via multiple mechanisms but are also well tolerated by a wide number of people and are, I think you mentioned something that’s very important, are pleasurable. So many health practices involve restriction or taking something out, people going on specialized diets. I enjoy exercise and many people do, but not everyone does. And so having to exercise regularly can be a drag for some people. And even things like sleep is very pleasurable when you're sleeping well, but a lot of people feel like they don't have enough time to do other things that they want to do in the evening. And so it can be sometimes a drag to go to sleep. But it's pretty cool when we stumble on something that’s actually really pleasurable and enjoyable, and also is really good for you.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, that's what people reported. Certainly I feel that too. It's that same kind of feeling you get in sunlight were the sun heats you from within. It feels groovy. Also, if you're in front of a fireplace or in front of a campfire, these are also incandescent light sources. So you get that same kind of “ah, this just feels good.” The indescribable feel-good feeling. And that really is what we call mitochondrial stimulation. That's what this light therapy stuff is. So that's what's also so exciting about near infrared saunas. We’re doing all the things we just described. Deeper, better, more effective detox. We’re also doing light therapy.

Why Light Is a Nutrient

Light therapy is a fascinating concept. I mentioned it before a little bit with Dr. Kellogg’s Light Therapeutics book. There’s so much that's going on here that it's hard to address all of it in just a few minutes, but certainly we have a lot in our research archive if you want to dive into a lot of the low-level light therapy studies. We have a nice sampling of them in our research archive on SaunaSpace.com. There's over 8,000 light therapy studies now or more in the literature. So this is very well documented. But basically it's, light is a nutrient. Natural light is a nutrient and there are definitely benefits of UV light with vitamin D production and blue light in terms of regulating our circadian rhythm and telling us when to be awake, when it’s time to go to bed. But if we look at sunlight and humans’ experience with sunlight, 40 percent of it, so a plurality of the sunlight that we get is near infrared. And it's only near infrared, also a little bit of red light, that stimulates our mitochondrial healing systems, what's called photobiomodulation of the light receptor protein in the mitochondria.

And so we have all these amazing healing benefits, just an array of healing pathways that are activated when the light, just by a function of the near infrared light hitting the mitochondria. And so for those of you who aren’t familiar, the mitochondria are a little battery, little batteries in the cells of our body. We have them in every cell of the body except red blood cells. So it’s everywhere and they all are activated by infrared light. And when we shine infrared light on them, we get some amazing effects. First of all, cell metabolism is boosted, vasodilation occurs through nitric oxide release, and the reactive oxygen species is formed. And for those of you who are familiar with that, unlike with blue light, in this case the reactive oxygen species is a good thing. These three entities—the ATP being produced, the NO, the nitric oxide, and the ROS—interact together and promote all these different effects called the mitochondrial functions:

Inflammatory mediation

Cell regeneration

Epigenetic repair

Genetic, or a gene expression, repair

So we’re antiaging the cell and the DNA itself, we’re also fixing how the cell works, we’re also promoting beneficial healing effects outside of the cells, and it's something we can do in every cell of the body. So there’s a cellular effect, if we look at the tissue studies and the organism studies, animals and humans, we see some incredible stuff. We see, just to give you a few examples, Chris, we see:

Amelioration from neuropathies

Improved recovery from TBI, from heart attack, from stroke

Reduced inflammation in the tissues

And then if you look at some of the other studies, I mean, you name the study and you look at it on the PubMed, whether it’s psoriasis or like I said, TBI, or even MS studies now, and others, this light has a healing effect on the whole body, on the whole organism. And it’s also a nutrient. So it’s, it actually satisfies a caloric requirement in part. It’s literally energizing the cell without sugar and at the same time doing all these healing benefits. And so imagine you do all of these healing benefits while you're doing the sauna. So it's making the detox less stressful, more effective, just more cellular energy means the cell has more energy to detox with.

So again, a safer way to do detox, a more accessible way, and then all these benefits that are conveyed by the light therapy itself are tremendous. And they were a core part of our ancestral experience that we got every day and that we don’t get now anymore with what we have. Not just being indoors and being closed, but we now use LED and fluorescent light to light our homes, and that’s all blue light, which is, it’s just high-energy damaging light. It damages our cells and it stresses us out and makes us unhappy.

Chris Kresser:  So I think the mitochondrial benefit is really interesting to me and I think can go a long way toward explaining how a single therapy like this could affect so many different conditions. Because as you explained, mitochondria are the fundamental battery of the cells. And if the mitochondria are not functioning well, then nothing's gonna work right. Conversely, if the mitochondria are functioning optimally, then everything else is going to get better. And I think that together with the reduction of inflammation and the release of stored toxins, toxic burden and the improvement of circulation, since blood carries everything that we need to heal, nutrients, oxygen, anti-inflammatory substances, etc., when you understand the various mechanisms, it becomes a lot more clear how it could have an impact on such a diverse range of conditions.

Tips on How to Use Sauna Therapy Effectively

Let's switch gears and talk a little bit about some considerations for sauna therapy. Okay, saunas are great, near infrared sauna has some unique benefits. But I rarely hear much discussion about how do you use it.

How often should you use it?

How long should you stay in?

What should you do before and after to optimize the experience?

Are there any special considerations, contraindications, cautions, etc.?

I'd love to chat about that for a little bit. Maybe just starting with kind of, we can look at it kind of temporally. What are the best things to do before you go in the sauna? Let's start there.

Drink Plenty of Water Beforehand and Pay Attention to Your Diet

Brian Richards:  Yeah, it's definitely a few things to consider. You definitely want to drink clean water, either spring water or clean water before and after the sauna. You do lose a lot of water. Other lifestyle considerations definitely include having a nutritious natural food diet, whatever is good for your body. And because you're detoxing all these chemicals and toxins and heavy metals out of your body, the heavy metals, the body’s using heavy metals because you didn't have enough good metals in the first place. And so you need to replace all those protein sites and cofactor sites, and just areas in the body with good nutrients, minerals, and vitamins. And of course a few other considerations too. You don't want to go into a sauna after you ate a heavy meal because your body's energy is going towards digesting that meal. But otherwise you can.

Chris Kresser:  What about exercise prior to sauna?

Brian Richards:  Great question. So some people will say don’t do sauna immediately after exercise because you’re too sympathetic dominant. But if you’re a person who exercises in the evening after work, then in some ways sauna is, the best time to do sauna is after you exercise because your body is so stressed out. Let’s get it back into a parasympathetic healing state. Not just for the healing benefits and the detox of the sauna, but also to prepare you for sleep. So we have a big portion of our customers who are big exercise folks and they do their workout after work. And they get in their SaunaSpace when they get home, or they do their sauna right before bed, and that’s fine. So it’s fine right after the exercise, and I also recommend that in some ways for the lactic acid detoxification is accelerated, there’s associations of near infrared light therapy with accelerated wound and muscle healing. So the tearing of the muscle fibers and just recovery overall after the workout.

Chris Kresser:  One thing I’ve noticed is if I exercise at some point, let's say I exercise in the afternoon and then I go in the sauna a couple hours later before dinner or something, I will  sweat a little more quickly than I will if I go in the sauna first thing in the morning, like right after I wake up and I haven't really moved my body at all. So I don't know that that really matters much, but if I wanted to sweat more quickly and more throughout the sauna use, that’s something I’ve noticed on a personal level.

Choose a Time That's Convenient for You

Brian Richards:  And that’s echoed by others as well. I think it's, what's going on there is your body is already a little bit heated up. So it just takes less time to get to that point and you will sweat a little more. It just depends on the flow of your day and what's most convenient. I'm all about convenience being king, and that's one of the primary focus points of SaunaSpace design and my company, everything I do. Do it when you can do it and when it's convenient for you. If it’s the morning or the evening or right before bed or after your workout, do it where you can increase your frequency as much as possible. So if we’re talking about frequency and duration and how do we use this thing, all the studies show that the more frequency per week leads to increased benefits, proportionally better benefits, it's better.

So at least once a day, at least three times a week. But ideally five times a week. I personally use it before work on the work day. So that's about five days a week, and I don't actually use it as long as I used to. When I was doing my serious healing recovery, I would do 45 minutes religiously right before bed. Now I am so well acclimated, and I sweat so quickly, and in general I’m just more or less in general good health and feeling great, so I do 20 minutes, 20, 25 minutes before work. But the maximum use is a one-hour session up to twice a day. So there are cancer protocols out there like the McDougall cancer protocol and others where they’re doing an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.

Chris Kresser:  Right, it’s kind of like a form of hyperthermia.

Wait Until You're Sweating Vigorously

Brian Richards:  Yeah, this is absolutely hyperthermia therapy. And again, a very safe way to do so. But for those of you who, again I don't, we don't want this to be a burden for you. We don't want it to be just another thing you have to do that is its own stress to have to get to and do to it. So every time you want to get in the sauna, you want to sweat through your torso, strong sweating for five or 10 minutes. And that's at least 10 minutes.

Chris Kresser:  And it depends how long it takes you to start sweating. I mean, that's what you just mentioned in terms of, like, if you've done it a little bit more, you might start sweating a little sooner or maybe your sessions can be a bit shorter. I've noticed, as I mentioned, that when I exercise at some point, maybe a couple hours prior, I sweat more quickly and therefore my sessions can be a little bit shorter. So it seems to depend on a few different circumstances. But it sounds like you want to be sweating, you want to be in there for at least what, 10, 15 minutes after you start sweating?

Brian Richards:  Yeah, 10 minutes, at least 10 minutes. So when you get in there, it takes between five and 20 minutes to start sweating vigorously. Very much is dependent on your toxic profile, where you're coming from, and so forth. But when you start sweating vigorously, that's when you’ve relaxed the nervous system into that parasympathetic heal state, and you're getting the maximum detox and the maximum kind of light therapy benefits. And it really behooves you to just stay in a little bit longer. So you want to sweat, beading up sweat on your torso at least, for about 10 minutes. And that's good enough definitely to start out. That would be the minimum. Each time you get in, you get that sweat going on. But it's important to understand that you don't need to get that the first time.

And folks who are heat sensitive have low resting body temperature. And I've met many of these, many new customers have been dealing with this, you might not sweat at all the first time or the first couple times. And that doesn't mean it’s not working. That means that you’re in a toxic homeostasis and you need to shift your body's profile over to healing. And it's kind of counter, it's fighting against that a little bit. But eventually you stay in, you keep trying it, you keep sitting and doing the session, and you will eventually provoke a sweat. And then eventually you'll provoke a sweat more quickly and you’ll sweat more easily as your body acclimates to the therapy. And it's the same for folks who are very neuropathic and very heat sensitive. They may only start out with five minutes. They may only use only two lamps, but eventually the mitochondria get reactivated, the body shifts, it starts to detox, and it's an intelligent way of detoxing, unlike chelation, which is nonselective and kind of takes everything out. This, you’re stimulating the body to do detox and healing in the way it wants to, in the order it wants to.

So all the, everybody who's ever tried it eventually comes around. Even I've had customers who it took them three months to be able to sit in the sauna for 20 minutes, and the whole time they had to keep the curtain open or were using less lamps. Some people are very, start out very sensitive. But everybody comes around, and then you get to a regular standard sort of use of at least 20 minutes or so. And just the more the merrier in terms of frequency. But also if you take a break for a month or two, no big deal. It’s no reason to be blameful of yourself or anything like that. You just come back to it and put it back into your life.

Shower after You're Done

Chris Kresser:  Cool. So how about after. So you finished sauna, you sweat, some of that sweat has toxins, so what do you suggest in terms of cleaning after a sauna use?

Brian Richards:  So I highly recommend you have a natural bristle or a boar bristle brush, a shower brush, and you get in the shower, either hot or cold water, whatever you prefer, and you scrub every single inch of your body. Your scalp, all of your skin, even your nether regions. And what that does is it exfoliates and makes your skin look amazing, but it also pulls the dead skin cells off your body that the toxins are kind of clinging to. And it's an important step to just kind of end the whole session. Get in, rinse off the sweat that has all these toxins in it and scrub. So it’s not so important to use soap as it is to just scrub your body. And so either a loofah or a bristle brush, it feels amazing, even though it's kind of rough the first time. Maybe you do it and it really, that's a really key step. And that also gives you a chance to ease out of your sauna. So you rinse off in the shower, do your scrubbing, and you take another 15 or 20 minutes before you jump back into the stress of modern life and back into all the sympathetic activity.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, that’s helpful. I have the brush myself and do that. I really love it. It’s its own therapy as you pointed out, like the exfoliation and just how that kind of seems to wake up the skin and open the pores. It feels really good. It’s a great way to end the therapy.

Use a Light Panel for Localized Relief

We’ve only got a few minutes left. I want to talk a little bit about EMF just in general, but more specifically in relation to infrared sauna therapy before we finish up. And I also, before we even go there, I wanted to mention you have a pretty unique product that can be used to extend the benefits of sauna use and give yourself exposure to near infrared light even when you’re not in the sauna, which is your single light panel.

And I know from talking to you and also reading some of the reviews that people are using it in really interesting ways. Some people are using it to deal with neuropathic foot pain or lack of circulation in the lower parts of their legs, and they’re applying just the single light maybe when they’re seated at their desk or something like that. It has in some cases regrown capillaries and nerves in those lower parts of the legs for EMF patients or diabetics with neuropathy. And people are using it, shining it on their gut if they have GI issues, or on their face if they have acne. And tell us a little more about that because I think it’s pretty interesting as a complement or way to extend the benefits of sauna therapy, or maybe for someone who doesn’t have the space for the full unit or can’t afford it yet.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, that’s SaunaSpace’s single light panel. I mentioned that story about V Capaldi earlier. You kind of hit all of the major points of what people are using this for. It does not replace the sauna. The sauna, you’re also sweating. It’s a full-body experience. You’re having deep detox with sweating, which makes the detox the least stressful and most effective way to do it. But nonetheless, you can use the single light for localized relief. So it’s a targeted therapy product. People are using it for relief of localized, or at the local tissue level. So you just shine it on the exposed body part one to two feet away for 10 minutes or more, and maybe even up to an hour, depending on the body part, except the head, and you can do that many times a day up to 10 times a day.

Chris Kresser:  That’s what I was going to ask you. So just to clarify, up to an hour but you can do it multiple times a day.

Brian Richards:  Yeah. Up to an hour, up to even 10 times a day. So maybe once an hour. If you’re doing it on the head or the throat, the protocol is to limit to 10 minutes. But you could still do that many times a day. So people are using it for, if they have TBI or fog issue, the brain fog issues, or me personally, it makes me feel better and happier if I don't get enough sleep or if I’m traveling, I always bring my single light. Because travel is stressful. And there are other things too, though. You mentioned gut, for gut health, for neuropathies in the extremities, for cramping, for headaches. A few other, it’s basically, it’s helping heal and it’s bringing light and heat therapy to that local body part. And so whatever your problem is, it may very well help what’s going on there just shining this light on it.

And our products are EMF shielded so there’s no electric or magnetic field stress to the user when we use it. So you can use this very close to the body, one to two feet away. And another application is what I personally use, you can see that on our Facebook or also on our website on SaunaSpace.com. I use it at the office. So I have it mounted to a computer monitor arm on QuickConnect, and I shine it on my body and on my head throughout the day periodically to counteract the blue light stress from the computer screen and also from, unfortunately, we have fluorescent lighting in the office still, and so it’s really interesting. Infrared light is the antidote to blue. So blue is damaging, and infrared counteracts that, and it also counteracts the flicker stress of LED and of fluorescent light, so from our monitor screens and also from the lighting above us. It’s a great way to get this healing light into your life, especially if you’re like me, many hours at the computer running my business. It’s a key thing that I can’t even work at a computer without it honestly. So it’s really cool the way to use it.

But you can also use it at the home, on the couch, when you’re reading a book, when you’re watching TV. It’s so small and portable you can bring it anywhere. And it’s just an adjunct to the full-body therapy of the full sauna. But it definitely, people are getting some amazing relief with it.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, I’m really looking forward to trying that because I’m someone who’s pretty sensitive to blue light and also work a lot at a computer, and I use some software applications to kind of change the light that’s emitted. That helps a little bit and I have pretty good light in my office. But still, I just feel totally zonked after many hours in front of the computer and I’m trying to reduce that in other ways. But I’m looking forward to having the benefit of the near infrared. Because I certainly know how I feel when I get out of the sauna.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, and so it's very helpful. But there's another aspect, and you’ll really love it once you try it out, Chris. But there’s another aspect that is really stressing us out in the office and also in our lives. It’s what you asked me to mention here.

Chris Kresser:  Right.

How Electromagnetic Stress Is Damaging Our Health

Brian Richards:  It’s EMF issues. We are surrounded by what's called this electrosmog. Electromagnetic stress is definitely damaging to our health. And for those of you who are not familiar with this, you can look up Dr. Pall's work, the voltage-gated calcium channel effect, where basically we have these little voltage-gated calcium channels in every cell of the body, and most densely in the nervous system and in the brain. And those are seven million times more sensitive to electromagnetism than a water molecule is.

So the telecom industry says, “Well, here’s water, and here’s what a microwave signal from a cell phone tower does to water. It doesn't do a whole lot. And so EMFs are not bad for us. So they’re okay. They’re safe.” But the fact of the matter is, the voltage-gated calcium channels in all the cells are way more sensitive to this. And when we actually understand that and look at this and study this, we see that, and Dr. Pall has, again, done some of the best work in this, we see so many problems that these cause. And we’re talking about non-ionizing, non-thermal radiation. So even the microwave thing on the cell phone towers, even the electricity, the dirty electricity leaking out of our walls, increases our body voltage. We absorb it and it causes all these different bad health effects in the cells. And some of the basic ones are like anxiety and depression and nervous system issues. But also, it's been associated with other things like cancerous issues, there’s also heart issues because the heart is controlled by electricity, the beating of the heart.

And really, if you look at it and you step back and say, “Well, what’s going on here?” Every single system in the body is electromagnetic much more than biological. We are, we’re a quantum mechanical electromagnetic organism. Everything is all about voltage gates, and the blood–brain barrier is a voltage gate. And the mitochondria we talked about is an electric, it’s an electrical potential drop that the electrons are passing through. So all of these systems are disrupted by EMF stress. It’s man-made EMF stress. So it's a bad nervous system stressor, it's in all of our lives, and it's a subtle thing. So it’s slowly wearing us down. And it’s worse in the office, in places with a lot of electronics and a lot of Wi-Fi and cell phone signals, those are the most damaging spaces. And so we need protection from this. And that is one of the core things that SaunaSpace has addressed. Our product doesn't, our product is the only sauna on earth and the only light therapy device on earth that delivers zero electric and magnetic field stress on the user. So that’s pretty cool. It's pretty unique. I’ve worked a long time to get that to be that way.

And then what we’ve done in our journey now in product development is we’ve taken it to the next level. We have an electric field-shielding liner system we’ve developed for our pocket sauna for our sauna. And so it’s an optional upgrade that prevents all Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and dirty electricity, all of these electric fields from getting inside the sauna. So now for the first time ever, it’s not just a light therapy sauna and a better detox, it’s now a therapy that’s protected from all this EMF stress that’s around us 24 hours a day. So we don’t have any research, of course, on the degree to which this is better, but certainly one could speculate that the parasympathetic relaxation, the mitochondrial stimulation, the detox, all of the cellular systems we’re trying to activate and trigger in this multifactorial near infrared sauna therapy, they’re all better. They’re all working more optimally.

Chris Kresser:  Right, and that’s going to be, as you argued, arguably important for everybody. But there are some people who have really severe electrical hypersensitivity, and probably many listeners to this show. And the ability to have a space where they can not only be exposed to more because the lamps themselves are protected, but also kind of have a respite from additional exposure from the ambient environment is a pretty amazing thing to offer.

So, Brian, thanks so much for joining us. It’s been a really fascinating conversation. I know folks are going to get a lot out of this. And so they can learn more about SaunaSpace at SaunaSpace.com. You’ve got a lot of articles there too and videos, I think, which are really helpful. Tell us a little more about what’s there, what they can find.

Brian Richards:  So in our science section on SaunaSpace.com you can find some of my in-depth articles where I review the literature. And for those who like the citations and like the research, we also have a research archive as well, where we house not everything, but a lot of these PubMed articles are linked to there. But we do have a lot, some growing number of videos to kind of explain some of these things. It is complicated. So for those of you who want dive into the science of light therapy, of heat therapy, of EMF protection we have a lot on SaunaSpace.com. And I'd like to just say one more thing before we go.

We talked so much about how we want to heal and the therapy and what's going on scientifically. I think it's important to understand too, doing this, what we do here at SaunaSpace is not just the healing therapies. It's about the escape, as you mentioned, the respite from the sensory overload. We’re inundated with all of this over-stimulus and stress all day long, and we don't have a space that we can do healing in, a core rejuvenative practice to make us more successful in life and feel better and happier. And that's what we've designed here is it’s a very clean space from a sensory perspective. The beauty is in the simplicity of it. And so it doesn't have glass doors and Bluetooth-enabled stereo speakers. It's just, it's quiet. It's quiet to the senses and you can just sit there and do all this healing, do all these amazing things and just be. And not to mention, it's pretty cool.

The design is very convenient and portable, not like your cabinet sauna that you used to have, Chris. It’s a pop-up, it’s very, it’s modern, it’s lightweight, it’s more portable. I think it has a convenience to the design that helps people maintain the discipline and how to be fun and pleasurable. So they can get all these benefits and have it not be just another gadget, another burden in their life that it’s another thing they have to do. It’s something that they will want to do.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. I definitely appreciate the design. It’s elegant all the way down to the stool and the wood and the finishing. It’s a pleasure to see and use. The fact that it’s relatively portable, it’s not something you’re going to take on a plane when you go on a weekend trip, but if you move, you can easily bring it with you, which is absolutely not the case for my big cabinet cell sauna. In fact, when we sold it, we had to completely take it apart in order for the people to take it away. It was kind of a hassle. But this is, I actually, one of our staff members, Jon, who you met, Brian, I think because he has more limited space, he actually collapses the sauna after use. He takes out the front bar and just collapses it and tucks it away in a corner. So if you do have limited space, I like that about it too. I’m lucky to have a space for it where I just keep it set up, but even then, it doesn’t take a lot of space, which is great.

Brian Richards:  Yeah, yeah. It's definitely, it's just a better approach to it. It’s a more thoughtful design. It’s more private, too, for people. If you’re going to get better, it’s got to be in your home. It’s got to be convenient. It’s got to be fun to use. And so that’s what we’ve really emphasized for about six years now. SaunaSpace is all that.

Chris Kresser:  Great. Well again, thanks so much for coming on the show. It’s been a wealth of knowledge, and I’m just grateful for what you guys are doing, the product you’re putting out there. It’s something I recommend to my patients and anyone who asks me about what sauna that I suggest and prefer. And this has come out of my own experience, having used lots of different kinds of saunas over the years. I’ve been a big proponent of saunas for many years and then ultimately ending up with this near infrared unit that I'm very happy with. And I feel like I've finally found my, the one that makes the most sense for me, both from a research, evidence-based perspective and also just from an experiential perspective. So thanks for making this and continuing to do the work that you do.

Brian Richards:  Thanks, Chris. Yeah, we’re just getting started here at SaunaSpace, but we definitely have something completely different here. It’s like no sauna anyone has ever seen before.

Chris Kresser:  Awesome. All right, thanks everyone for listening. Continue to send in your questions, ChrisKresser.com/podcastquestion, and we’ll talk to you next time.

Brian Richards:  Thanks, Chris.

The post RHR: How Sauna Therapy Can Prevent & Reverse Chronic Disease, with Brian Richards appeared first on Chris Kresser.

RHR: How Sauna Therapy Can Prevent & Reverse Chronic Disease, with Brian Richards published first on https://chriskresser.com

[dine-on-nervine]

lactated Ringer’s solution

1) Sexuality? Straight but not narrow.

2) If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? Elon Musk.

3) Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17. Since no electricity or batteres are used, it is shockproof, harmless to the smallest child. (Advertisement for a $7.99 pocket radio that supposedly does not require batteries, Feb 1954 Science and Mechanics magazine)

4) What do you think about most? Titties.

5) What does your latest text message from someone else say? ”which”

6) Do you sleep with or without clothes on? Without.

7) What's your strangest talent? Music trivia.

8) Girls.... (finish the sentence); Boys.... (finish the sentence) Girls are considered amazing perfect creatures but trust me, they poop and fart and pee themselves and smell sweaty and have stale breath just like you. Boys are less straight than they want you to think.

9) Ever had a poem or song written about you? Yes! T² wrote “A Fragile Wounded Hawk” and Chad wrote ”I’m Very Breathless.”

10) When is the last time you played the air guitar? Probably last night at work. Cuz that’s what we do.

11) Do you have any strange phobias? I have reasonable phobias.

12) Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose? Every one of them.

13) What's your religion? I say United Methodist but I practice something more animistic.

14) If you are outside, what are you most likely doing? Walking at the park, getting my head on straight.

15) Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? Behind, because I am not photogenic.

16) Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band? Simple because it requires no explanation: Depeche Mode.

17) What was the last lie you told? Probably “Glad to see you!” to all but one of my customers.

18) Do you believe in karma? Absolutely. Do not cross it.

19) What does your URL mean? Nervine was a sedative created in 1889 by Dr Miles of Miles Laboratories, one of the original “Mother’s Little Helper” OTC chill-outs, which was produced until 1999 -- but reformulated to remove one ingredient and then was called a sleep aid in the 1950s due to the FDA. “Dine on Nervine” rhymes so...

20) What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength? My greatest strength is that I believe in others. My greatest weakness is that I don’t do enough to make myself more awesome.

21) Who is your celebrity crush? I won’t claim to have one but I’d really enjoy some private time with spokesmodel Jan Brehm from the local car dealership ads. Before she moved to BMW Northwest, she was the Korum Whorum.

22) Have you ever gone skinny dipping? Many times. That was the thing when I worked at the local fair, after they closed for the day I’d hop in the hot tubs with whomever was available.

23) How do you vent your anger? Used to be driving backroads with loud music.

24) Do you have a collection of anything? I have a collection of everything, and not enough storage space for it.

25) Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? I don’t video chat, so it’d have to be talking on the phone.

26) Are you happy with the person you've become? This is a work in progress but.. yeah, I’m doing better, thank you.

27) What's a sound you hate; sound you love? Sound I hate is Trump supporters echoing lies; sound I love is when my awesometastic girlfriend tells me I have nice eyes (or anything else).

28) What's your biggest "what if"? I’ve made allusions to it in the past but that blog is gone, so a very swift version: When I was 15 at camp I was in the arms of the girl I wanted to get something going with, and then her rival shoved a note in my back pocket that swayed my attention. What I’d do to go back and ignore the distraction.

29) Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens? Both exist but not in the ways that we like to think of them.

30) Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm. Right... Epson scanner.  Left... my cereal bowl.

31) Smell the air. What do you smell? A fresh fart competing with a sweet sandalwood incense.

32) What's the worst place you have ever been to? The KeyBank call center in Auburn, WA. Management bitches will cut you.

33) Choose East Coast or West Coast? No question. Left siiide!

34) Most attractive singer of your opposite gender? Cia Berg of Whale or Annette Strean of Venus Hum.

35) To you, what is the meaning of life? To make others happy.

36) Define Art. That which makes you feel something when it enters your brain.

37) Do you believe in luck? I believe that statistics are no match for random good.

38) What's the weather like right now? Raining on and off.

39) What time is it? Nine minutes after eight post-meridian.

40) Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed? I drive and I have had an accident or two.

41) What was the last book you read? How To Be A Badass by Jen Sincero.

42) Do you like the smell of gasoline?| A little.

43) Do you have any nicknames? I might. Other people call me whatever they call me. Like my high school computer teacher called me Inski, and my ex called me Piss-Ant.

44) What was the last movie you saw? In the theatre, Deadpool. At home as a torrent, Star Wars VII.

45) What's the worst injury you've ever had? Not really sure. Some pratfalls but nothing severe.

46) Have you ever caught a butterfly? Yes.

47) Do you have any obsessions right now? Apple box labels?

48) What's your sexual orientation? You asked this question as the very first item.

49) Ever had a rumor spread about you? Constantly. A few might even be true.

50) Do you believe in magic? Stage magic, yes. White magick, in limited amounts.

51) Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong? Ask my parents, they’ll say yes. Anyone else, I try not to most of the time.

52) What is your astrological sign? Libra.

53) Do you save money or spend it? My goal is to save. But my present budget does not allow this.

54) What's the last thing you purchased? Hotdog at Costco. Before that, two ranuncula.

55) Love or lust? You’re going to have to give me more direction. What are you asking?

56) In a relationship? Yes. :-D <3

57) How many relationships have you had? There have been several.

58) Can you touch your nose with your tongue? Better, what else can I touch with my tongue?

59) Where were you yesterday? Wednesday: stayed in bed until like 9am, did some stuff around the house, went to work, got home before 9pm, eventually went to bed.

60) Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you? The pricetag on a 12x12 frame behind me.

61) Are you wearing socks right now? Not just socks, they’re SmartWool.

62) What's your favorite animal? Kitties!

63) What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you? Mad oral skills.

64) Where is your best friend? I assume that since it’s a Thursday night and his car is in the shop, he’s at home watching movies while ripping vinyl to CD.

65) Spit or swallow? (; “the difference between like and love”... It’s rude to spit.

66) What is your heritage? I don’t claim to have one.

67) What were you doing last night at 12 AM? I think I was still on the computer at the time, but if I wasn’t I was nestled in my bed.

68) What do you think is Satan's last name? Drumpf. But he changed it when he got into the States.

69) Be honest. Ever gotten yourself off? Damn straight, erry day sometimes. And you can be next.

70) Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend? I definitely try to be. I am kind and generous and knowledgeable and fun.

71) You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do? Wonder why the hell I was in Sunnyside, since if I’m on the opposite side on the Cascades will I be making it across the pass and to work on time?

72) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid? I would tell no one because I like the element of surprise. I’d be liquidating my cool stuff to good homes because I never want to be a victim of Storage Wars, plus I would be throwing all caution to the wind and act hedonistic... “live like you were dying”, literally. Afraid? Petrified. But if I gotta go, sitting at home bawling about it ain’t gonna fix shit, I gots stuff to do.

73) You can only have one of these things; trust or love. Not sure how you get love without trust. Just love me.

74) What's a song that always makes you happy when you hear it? Latest one was “Just Can’t Get Enough” by Depeche Mode. That came on the radio and I was all over it.

75) What are the last four digits in your cell phone number? WROQ! \m/   (In high school my phone number was BIT-0-FaRM.)

76) In your opinion, what makes a great relationship? Trust, understanding, fidelity, humor, fun, honesty, mutual interests, compassion, and a mutual desire to be happy together in all ways.

77) How can I win your heart? Well, take off that shirt, for starts, and show me your heart.

78) Can insanity bring on more creativity? It definitely drops some artificial barriers. However, periodic mental illness such as bipolar rather than insanity is what brings a lot of creativity.

79) What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far? To let go of the past and invite in the present. (Thanks, Cara.)

80) What size shoes do you wear? Eleven and a half, roughly, depending upon manufacturer.

81) What would you want to be written on your tombstone? Remember this as you pass by As you are now, so once was I As I am now, so you will be Prepare for death and follow me Variants of this were popular for two centuries, with few examples seen before 1750 or after 1950. If I had a headstone, I’d keep people awake.

82) What is your favorite word? Oaf.

83) Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart. Myocardial infarction.

84) What is a saying you say a lot? Plumbing, you have a call holding on 1804. Plumbing, 1804.

85) What's the last song you listened to? Eisenfunk - Pong But on the way to finding that song, this one happened too: Suicide Commando - God Is In The Rain 86) Basic question; what's your favorite color/colors? Purple.

87) What is your current desktop picture? The trestle over the Little Naches River at Lake Bergstrom, Yakima WA.

88) If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be? The guy who is trying to get us blown up by North Korea. You know the one.

89) What would be a question you'd be afraid to tell the truth on? Who the hell are you?

90) One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren't really doing anything, they're just standing around your bed. What do you do? Well, after assessing that they’re just standing around, I’d be polite since that matters as I get my clothes on, and then bid them farewell after requesting that they move along because I’m not sticking around to chat.

91) You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what's even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power? Invisibility.

92) You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again? One comes to mind from when I was 13 that I would do differently, but the other I could speak more freely about is from the moment that hug at camp was requested to twenty minutes later when I was still standing there with her... as said in #28, I’d fix one of my biggest regrets.

93) You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? I won’t go into detail, I will just say that there was an experience in 1990 that could have been avoided and should have been learned from... but wasn’t.

94) You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be? Let’s go with the folks listed in #34.

95) You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go? To Craigslist to sell it.

96) Do you have any relatives in jail? Not that I am aware.

97) Have you ever thrown up in the car? Not that I am aware. My three sibs were subject to carsickness but not me.

98) Ever been on a plane? Yes, twice; have flown to Tucson and to Las Vegas.

99) If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say? Take your country back and impeach.

#100 ?'s