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beazt · 11 months

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ive seen you mention some stuff about your thesis, so id like to ask what kinds of research were you doing before? and what was your favorite bird to work with?

still working on the thesis!! I was just about to post an update on it. :) heads up you’re getting more than you bargained for with this ask. lmao

but my thesis research is really my first (not only, see end of this post) foray into research, tbh. Technically didn’t start with a thesis, but everything I did worked towards giving me the data I needed for my eventual thesis. so I just refer to it all as my thesis research. so I’ll just give the rundown on my thesis since I have an excuse lmao

my thesis research only involved working with two species, but I’m only focusing on one for the thesis itself. we work with tree swallows and eastern bluebirds! this is because they’re both highly competitive obligate secondary cavity nesters. I’ll break that down. basically it’s fancy speak for “these birds will only nest in holes that were already made before they came along and they will not nest anywhere else.” researching birds is really hard, ask any ornithologist. they’re small, they’re fast, they fly, they’re smart enough to avoid most traps, they don’t really let you get close to them. you can do behavioral monitoring if you have a good enough population, population monitoring if you’re willing to use citizen science and some mist nets. maybe skein some data from point counts. but anything physiological or reproductive is really hard. unless you do a secondary cavity nester, which nests in boxes that you can open and monitor and trap birds in and even do behavioral trials!

(of course there’s also aviary kept birds, but not all species are well suited for that, it’s expensive, it takes a lot of space, and it’s hard to get approved.)

my research specifically focuses on eastern bluebirds. I did quite a bit of field work before ever coming up with a research question, and quite a bit of bench work. most of my bench work at that point was dissecting nests and quantifying parasites. the general reaction I get to this is “ew, I could never” but I loved it! I love insects and especially parasites. a clean nest with no parasites would only take maybe 2 minutes but a mossy, wet, muddy nest full of parasites could take 2 hours. and we get 300+ nests per year, most are parasitized. so I spent a lot of time doing this!

I was having a parasite quantifying party with the other guy in my lab who works with the parasites and our professor/research mentor, when I was just asking questions about the parasites and stuff. and I ended up asking “do the parasites affect the baby bluebirds color?” and boom, my thesis question was born. you see, no one has studied this question before, because not that many people in the US study bird color, my professor is one of few. but it’s also an interesting question because juvenile bluebirds will retain their flight plumage into their first breeding season. and my prof has shown that differences in colored ornamentation affect mate choice and sexual selection in the past. so essentially, an effect on color could affect their first breeding season as well as potentially affect parental care (not as much research is done on that, because fledglings are hard as fuck to study.)

so I went through as much literature as I could find, there’s very little on the effects of any parasites on bird color, but I went through other things that could affect coloration, especially structural coloration. quick tangent on structural coloration: essentially, blue and green birds do not have blue (or green, except in the case of the turacos) pigment. the blue is caused by some wacky keratin structures that reflect blue light. this is a very different mechanism than repurposing or producing pigments!

I also kept on trucking through those nests. I would arrive at uni (45-60 min drive) every morning by 6 am to dissect nests until my 9 am class.

And then I started doing another bit of bench work where I took the feather samples we collected (2 cm of the tip of the 5th primary wing feather on each side) from the nestlings and taping them to non-reflective black paper for color analysis. and then I measured them! we use a fancy machine called a spectrophotometer to objectively measure the reflectance of every wavelength of light between 300 and 630nm, so through the UV into near infrared. birds are tetrachromatic, which means they have 4 visual pigments in their eyes, so they can see UV! so it’s important we measure it objectively, since we can’t even see it.

not to mention that we have a ton of data we collect on each bird and I had to do a TON of database management to make sure the data was even useable. I won’t even go into that much cause it’s boring, but it’s a lot of reorganizing, hunting down missing data, and scanning for typos, in literal thousands of rows by over a hundred columns of data.

it’s worth noting that I’ve been working on this project for two years. I did all of this for the first year myself, and also caught up a lot of lagging work from previous years and collaborators projects (perks of being an undergraduate research assistant: I got paid to do this). I also measured adult bird feather samples and the tree swallow samples. and then the second year came around. I trained people to do the nest dissecting, feather taping, and adult feather spec work, and some parts of the database management (and wrote/developed detailed protocols for all of these.) I kept some of the work for myself because it’s difficult to do correctly and takes experience, like the advanced database management and spec’ing the baby bluebird feathers. I just recently finished all of the database management for my thesis the years 2019-2022, there’s still a bit more to be done but not super relevant to my thesis. This alone took over 50 hours, total.

and in 2022, in my preliminary data, we noticed a correlation between parasites and baby color, but only for the female babies. (I ended up presenting this preliminary data at a conference.) this is significant because most rearing environment conditions affect the males more than the females. so since I still had a year, we decided to do some more analysis. the other guy working with the parasites was doing molecular work to quantify immune response to the parasites in the nestlings and brooding adult females. so I hopped on that bandwagon and did a ton of work in collaboration with him, and I mean 12 hour days of molecular work, to quantify the immune response of a male and female nestling from each nest and their mother. we did this through enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) which here’s the very basic premise (excluding a lot of detail, forgive me). you extract the proteins of the parasites. then you add the blood of the birds. the immune cells in the blood of the birds react to the parasite proteins. then you add another immune type enzyme that attaches to the active bird immune cells. then you add chemicals which make those enzymes change color. then you use a microspectrophotometer to measure the optical density (basically the inability of light to pass through the solution) of each sample, and it tells you how strong the bird immune response was. you of course run a bunch of controls and then calculations based on those controls too.

then I ran a bunch of fancy statistics and color analysis and visual modeling. :P the visual modeling essentially takes the photoreceptor qualities and quantities across the avian eye to determine what the birds can see, and then the differences between two colors in avian vision. I used it to determine if a bird could tell the difference between a parasitized and unparasitized bird by their color, allowing their plumage to act as a signal of parasitism.

and now I’m writing about all of it. I’ve just finished my methods and results sections today, im probably not going to post about final results until I’ve been peer reviewed and published. but yeah, that’s essentially my thesis.

I suppose you could say bluebirds were my favorite bird to work with. It was really fun weighing and measuring their babies and watching them grow. And measuring the adults too. And taking their blood and feather samples. All of it was so fun. The particularly aggressive parents will dive at you when you’re messing with their babies lol. Ever seen a bluebird aiming for your face? I have.

overall I’ve spent well over 400 hours on this project, and I’m a fast worker. More hours to come with writing and preparing for publication. :p

in the middle of this project (summer 2022) I also completed an REU (research experience for undergraduates) program in Cincinnati where I was studying jumper spiders. That’s where I learned the visual modeling, actually. I spent a little over 400 hours on that project as well, except over the course of 10 weeks. the major difference is that was a full time job just doing research. with my thesis research I’ve been a full time student (15-17 credit hour semesters) the entire time and had a part time job 18 hours per week with a 2 hour commute each day all at the same time. that’s why it’s taken me 2 years to get the same amount of hours dedicated. lol

#lous clues #thesis :V #ornithotag #long post #anon

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islandgreys · 2 years

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 3 years

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Godzilla vs. Kong

From the first rumble in the seats in the Dolby theater, I was so glad I chose to see this movie on the big screen. At times it felt like I was on one of those “4-D” roller coasters where the seats rumble and they spray water on your or pipe smells into the audience. That’s how close I was to the action! As at least a casual fan of the previous entries in the Monsterverse, I was looking forward to Godzilla vs Kong and my goodness, those medium expectations sure were met. How medium was it? Well...

I would like the science in this movie to win Best Comedy or Musical in next year’s Golden Globes. This is probably the hardest I’ve laughed in a theater in over a year (obviously there are other reasons for that, but the sentiment still stands). This movie was nonsensical, loud, shiny, dumb fun and I had a great fucking time watching it. Oh, you probably want a plot summary - I’m just gonna refer you to the title of the film. That about covers all you need to know.

Some thoughts:

“Somewhere on Skull Island” - whaaaaat is with this title card? It’s a tiny island. How many possible locations could there possibly be for a giant fuck-off ape to be taking his nap?

I know we’re not here for any semblance of plot but boy, they really sprained something trying to lift these clunky paragraphs of exposition into anything resembling what actual humans would say.

These opening credits are one of the funniest sequences I’ve seen in ages.

My main man Brian Tyree Henry! I had no idea he was in this (frankly I knew virtually nothing about this movie because what do you even need to know about a movie with the title Godzilla vs. Kong). He’s playing a completely different vibe than I’ve ever seen him play - the comedic relief and a mile-a-minute vaguely conspiracy theorist podcast host who is obsessed with Sir Zilla and the other Titans. I really enjoyed seeing this other side of him!

Absolutely terrible waste of Kyle Chandler, who was probably paid more than my yearly salary for 60 seconds of Protective and Frazzled Dad perfection.

One of the highlights of the film is the performance of young actress Kaylee Hottle as Jia. Jia is Deaf, and so is Kaylee in real life, and I’m always here for more Deaf representation onscreen! And her friendship with Kong is one of the few things in the movie that elicits any genuine emotion of any kind. When he booped her I literally said “Aw!” out loud.

The visuals of the hollow Earth are very cool and remind me of those space age desktop backgrounds that most of the guys I know who built their own PCs and spent a lot of time on Tor.com would have had.

Even the most ridiculous films like this one will sometimes include little bits of worldbuilding that are thoughtful and have fascinating implications. For example, the “Titan Shelters” in Hong Kong - who pays for those? The government? Do rich people have reinforced private Titan Shelters while poor folks have to rely on the public ones, which are likely overcrowded and possibly don’t have enough resources? (I think we all know the answer to that).

I am very much enjoying all the neon in the Hong Kong fight, and how much more visually interesting it makes two giant blobs slamming their blob bodies against each other while causing a staggering amount of property damage.

Finally a realistic “I can crack the password!” scene!

Did I Cry? Ok, a teeny tiny bit, about Kong and Jia’s friendship.

Times I laughed LOUDLY in the theater: when Mr. Zilla, who can literally shoot lightning out of his damn mouth just straight up punches Kong in the face. When Kong gets attacked by all those lizard things in the hollow Earth and just uses one motherfucker to slap another motherfucker. When they use an anti-gravity machine (whatever that actually means) as a defibrillator for an ape that is sometimes as big as a skyscraper and other times as big as a mountain.

And now a series of questions:

Why is this high school class just watching the news in the middle of the day? The G-Z has attacked cities at least 3 other times in this universe that we know of. Like, this isn’t their 9/11, this is a thing that just regularly happens.

You decided it was a good idea to transport Kong over the ocean...where Big Daddy G hangs out all the time? Like...that’s where he lives, you guys. You’re basically trying to sneak Kong over the roof of Godzilla’s house and hoping he doesn’t notice.

OH and you had a Kong-sized net and a team of Kong transport helicopters ready the WHOLE TIME? But you still chose “sneaking over Godzilla’s house” as your first plan of action????

How long can Kong hold his breath? He goes underwater for some long ass periods.

In fact, what are the details of Kong’s physiology in general? How tall is he? Because at one point in his fight with The GZA, he’s standing on the floor of the Tasman Sea, no big deal - except the Tasman Sea has a depth of roughly 18,000 feet. And Kong’s just chilling out in the water at waist level? But he’s also shorter than the skyscrapers in Hong Kong? I choose to believe he can grow and shrink at will because that makes more sense than the sloppy joe approach to his biology the screenwriters are using.

I like Millie Bobby Brown as much as the next guy, but does it bother anyone else that she always sounds congested? Is that a consequence of her doing her American accent? It’s incredibly distracting.

Oh, this entire scene is set in Antarctica but no one is wearing hats or gloves? Sure sure sure.

And no one is having any problems breathing the air in the middle of the fucking earth? No one thought to check that the atmosphere was breathable before everyone takes off their helmets? No noxious fumes to worry about in the center of a planet that produces magma and shit?

You’re taking your child to the literal center of the earth? Is this not the ONE TIME you think you might need a babysitter?

The ship that can *checks notes* withstand the forces present during an entire reversal of gravity is crushed by Kong’s fist like it’s a tube of toothpaste?

Even though the Earth is hollow, I’m assuming the distance to reach the core is still about the same, so Godzilla’s lighting can 1) act as a drill to - I cannot reiterate this strongly enough - the CENTER OF THE FUCKING EARTH and 2) Godzilla and Kong can yell at each other for 3,958 miles (give or take) and still hear each other? Do they have superhearing? Is this something we’re studying or are we content to just have them Hulk smash all of that incredibly important evolutionary biology to bits while everyone stands around?

Because this is a “vs” movie, of course there is no clear-cut “winner” at the end. Instead the two parties leave each other with a grudging respect formed, an uneasy truce in place. But I’m obsessed with the way this final scene plays out, as though Godzilla is a bitter ex walking away from Kong after their doomed relationship has run its course. The lighting, the soft music, the absolute melodrama of this giant lizard slinking slowly back into the sea. Godzilla is giving the gays everything they want in 2k21 and I am here for it. Here’s hoping the next entry in the franchise has Kong hooking up with Rodan to make G jealous and they all have a messy public fight over brunch, Real Housewives style.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 3 years

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28th February >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Mark 9:2-10 for the Second Sunday of Lent, Cycle B: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him’.

Second Sunday of Lent, Cycle B

Gospel (Except USA)

Mark 9:2-10

This is my Son, the Beloved

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain where they could be alone by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured: his clothes became dazzlingly white, whiter than any earthly bleacher could make them. Elijah appeared to them with Moses; and they were talking with Jesus. Then Peter spoke to Jesus: ‘Rabbi,’ he said ‘it is wonderful for us to be here; so let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say; they were so frightened. And a cloud came, covering them in shadow; and there came a voice from the cloud, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’ Then suddenly, when they looked round, they saw no one with them any more but only Jesus. As they came down from the mountain he warned them to tell no one what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. They observed the warning faithfully, though among themselves they discussed what ‘rising from the dead’ could mean.

Gospel (USA)

Mark 9:2–10

This is my beloved Son.

Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them. Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them. As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.

Reflections (5)

(i) Second Sunday of Lent

Life has been very difficult for people in the last twelve months or so. It has been particularly difficult for people working in our hospitals, for our older people living alone, or in nursing homes. These months have been a real way of the cross for many. Many of you may have experienced a kind of darkness coming over you. At such times, we appreciate all the more some gift that unexpectedly comes our way to lift our spirits. I have heard people say to me how good it was just to get out for a walk. When times are dark, we appreciate all the more the small pleasures of life. We begin to realize that they are not so small after all. There is something truly special about these little pleasures, something of God even. In dark times we can find ourselves giving thanks to God for gifts that we might have taken for granted when times were better.

Today’s gospel reading is the story of a special gift that unexpectedly came to Peter, James and John,. It was an experience of light they badly needed. Just before this scene in Mark’s gospel, Jesus had begun to talk to his disciples about how he would have to undergo great suffering, experience rejection by the religious leaders, and be put to death by the political leaders. This information horrified the disciples, and Peter rebuked Jesus for expressing such dark thoughts about the future. For this, Peter earned the strongest rebuke of anyone in all of the gospels, ‘Get behind me Satan!’ Far from stepping back from his dark announcement, Jesus went on to declare to his disciploes that faithfully following him would entail the way of the cross for them too. The disciples found themselves in a much darker place at this moment than they ever would have anticipated when they left their fishing nets to follow Jesus. According to Mark’s gospel, it was six days later that Jesus took Peter, James and John up a high mountain by themselves. He needed to show them that beyond the coming darkness there was a great light, beyond the trauma of suffering and death there would be a new and glorious life, for him and for all who believed in him. Suffering and death would not have the last word.

The disciples’ experience of Jesus transfigured did not only points to a light beyond the darkness, it was itself a light within their darkness. The disciples saw the light of God’s presence shining through Jesus’ humanity in a way they had never seen it before, and would never see again until Jesus appeared to them as risen Lord. The unexpected gift of this heavenly light would sustain them during the difficult times ahead. We believe that we are all on a journey towards the eternal light of God’s loving presence. We are on a pilgrimage towards an eternal Easter where suffering and death are no more. We can also be assured that in the course of this pilgrimage we will be given glimpses of our eternal destiny, just as the disciples were given such a glimpse on the mount of transfiguration. Like the first disciples, we need God’s reassuring light here and now to strengthen and guide us as we make our pilgrim journey. The Lord will grace us with our own little transfiguration moments. According to Saint Paul, our ultimate destiny is to be transfigured. He says in his letter to the Romans that we are destined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son. In our course of our earthly lives, the Lord will give us fleeting glimpses of our final transfiguration. These are moments when we are touched in a special way by the Lord’s loving and life-giving presence. We come away from such moments renewed or transfigured, if only in some small way. At such moments, we can find ourselves asking the hopeful question Paul asks at the beginning of our second reading, ‘With God on our side, who can be against us?’ The settings for such transfiguration moments can be anywhere and anytime. We just need to be open to them, ready to respond when the Lord leads us up some mount of transfiguration, as he led Peter, James and John.

Such experiences will always be passing moments in this earthly life. We will have to let them go and come back to earth. In the gospel reading, Peter was reluctant to let go of this transfiguration moment, ‘It is wonderful for us to be here’, he said, ‘let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah’. He wanted to freeze the moment, to hold on to the glory. He soon had to come down the mountain and face towards Jerusalem with Jesus. Yet, he was given a message on the mountain for the journey ahead, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him’. It is a message that is addressed to us all. We may not have transfiguration moments every day, but we can listen to the Lord every day. He alone is the beloved Son of God; his is the only word to which we must listen. If we really listen to his word, allowing it to shape our lives, then we will experience the light of the Lord’s presence, and the light of his word will bring us to our own final transfiguration.

And/Or

(ii) Second Sunday of Lent

When I was a child growing up in Cabra, my father bought a little car, a Mini, as it was known at the time. This was in the early 60s when cars were just beginning to be bought in numbers. It was a great thrill to have a car, even if a very small one. On a Sunday, certainly in the summer, my father would take my mother, myself and my two brothers out for a drive. When we were in the car, before we headed out, he would turn towards us in the back seat and say, ‘Will it be the sea or the mountains?’ The sea was anywhere from Dollymount to Rush. The mountains were really the Dublin hills, but we used to call them the mountains. At the time I always had a preference for the mountains, and I was always glad when we headed south, rather than east or north. There was something about being on a height which I found exhilarating and exciting. It felt different up there. You were somehow above it all. You had a different perspective. The city looked better from a height, more beautiful, spreading inland from that natural horseshoe that is Dublin Bay.

Peter, James and John made their living from the sea. They were fishermen. They must have spent long hours on the sea of Galilee or by its shores. In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus takes them away from the sea, up a high mountain. There, on that mountain, they were given a new perspective on Jesus. They saw him as they had never seen him before, transfigured, his clothes dazzling white. In an earlier chapter of his gospel, Mark had described Jesus and his disciples in a storm at sea, the boat battling against the wind and waves. Now on the mountain, the storm must have seemed a distant memory as they were absorbed by an experience of Jesus that made Peter cry out, ‘it is wonderful for us to be here’. The hell of the storm had given way to this heavenly experience on the mountain. Yet, an even more hellish storm lay ahead for the disciples. They would soon come down the mountain and continue the journey towards Jerusalem, the city where they would experience suffering and loss and failure.

In our own lives we will probably have experienced both the storm at sea and the peace of the mountain top. When we look back on our lives, the darker and more painful experiences can stand out for us. Hopefully, we can also remember times when, like Peter, we said, ‘it is wonderful to be here’. These were times when we felt deeply happy and at peace, when we felt alive. The gospel reading this morning invites us to remember those moments, to relive them, and to continue to draw life from them.

I am struck by that little word ‘here’ in Peter’s statement. So often we can find ourselves wishing that we were somewhere else, not ‘here’, but ‘there’. We image that we would be happier if we were in a different place, or with different people, or doing different things. In some instances that can be the case. It can be important at times for people to move, because where they are is anything but wonderful. But at other times, our wishing to be somewhere else can come from our failure to appreciate what we have, where we are, the people around us now. Maybe if we saw more deeply, we would appreciate more fully the here and the now, and we might find ourselves saying more often, ‘it is good to be here, here in this place, with these people’. On the mountain top, Peter, James and John were helped to see Jesus more deeply than they had ever seen him before. They were captivated by the mystery of his identity, ‘This is my Son, the beloved’. They saw that there was more to him than they had realized. So often, there is more to the place we are in, and to the people we are with, than we realize. Our way of seeing where we are and who we are with can be very restricted. We can miss something important about the ‘here’ and the ‘now’. In one of our acclamations at Mass, we say or sing, ‘Heaven and earth are full of your glory’. We acknowledge in that acclamation how the created world is charged with God’s presence. That is even truer of the human person who is made in the image of God. God could say of each person we meet, ‘This is my beloved’. As God invited the disciples on the mountain to see Jesus more deeply, he invites us to see each other more deeply, to relate to each other in a way that acknowledges the wonder of our being.

We can fail to appreciate what is all around us; we can devalue what is really worthwhile. We can even be tempted to destroy what is deserving of our love and appreciation. Abraham in the first reading climbed a mountain to destroy his son, believing this was what God was asking of him. Sacrificing children to the gods was part of the pagan religious culture in which Abraham lived. Abraham had to learn that this was not what God was asking of him. God’s words, ‘Do not harm him’, stopped Abraham in his tracks. On the mountain, God was calling Abraham to cherish life not to destroy it. In a similar way, God calls us to cherish life, to celebrate the wonder of life in all its forms, as the disciples celebrated the wonder of Jesus on the mountain. Then we might find ourselves saying more often, ‘it is wonderful to be here’.

And/Or

(iii) Second Sunday of Lent

Most of us would be aware of times in our lives when we did not really do ourselves justice. The way we spoke or acted, the way we related to someone, did not really express our better self. We can look back at such moments and recognize that we fell short of the person we are called to be. We can show different faces to others, not all of them faces we would be proud of. Yet, even when we fall short of our better self, we know that we always have the capacity to make amends. We can set out again and make a new effort to let our best self shine through, the self that is made in the image and likeness of God.

We would all like people to judge us not on the basis of our off days but on the basis of our good days, the days that do us justice. You may have had the experience of forming a judgement of someone on the basis of some negative experience you had of them. Subsequently, you had a very different experience of them, you saw a different face of them, and you found that you had to revise your opinion of them for the better. You came to realize that the negative experience you had of them was not a fair reflection of them; there was much more to them that you had initially realized. We need to be open to seeing people with new eyes.

Unlike ourselves, Jesus did not show different faces to people. He always showed the same face, the face of God, because he was God in human form. He had no bad days, in that sense. Yet, many people perceived Jesus in ways that did not do him justice. Some of his opponents saw him in such a negative light that they considered him to be in league with Satan, ‘By the ruler of the demons, he casts out demons’, they said. They were blind to his true identity and completely distorted it, because they experienced what he said and did as threatening to their own position. Even Jesus’ own followers had difficulty in seeing Jesus as he really was. At times they wanted him to be someone different to the person he really was. At Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus declared himself to be the Son of Man who would suffer and die, Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. One of the faces of God that Jesus showed was the face of a suffering God. This was a face that Peter and the other disciples were very uncomfortable with.

According to Mark’s gospel, it was immediately after this clash between Jesus and his disciples at Caesarea Philippi that Jesus took them up the mount of the transfiguration. There, Jesus revealed another face of God, the glorious face of God, and Jesus himself was declared to be the Son of God. His disciples saw Jesus in a way they had never seen him before. They saw him with new eyes. The glorious face of God was a face that Peter was very much at home with. Indeed, Peter wanted to prolong this moment as much as possible. ‘It is wonderful for us to be here’, he exclaimed, ‘let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah’. However, Peter had to learn that the glorious Son of God who so enthralled him was also the suffering Son of Man who so repelled him. That is the significance of the word from the mountain addressed to Peter and the other disciples, ‘Listen to him’, listen to Jesus when he speaks of himself as the Son of Man who has to suffer and die. The two faces of God that Jesus displays, the suffering face and the glorious face have to be held together.

Fundamentally, Jesus only reveals one face of God, the face of love. God’s love for us, God’s loyalty to us, was such that God was prepared to allow his Son to die for our sakes. Paul declares in today’s second reading, ‘God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up to benefit us all’. In today’s first reading, Abraham’s loyalty to God was so great that he was prepared to sacrifice his son to God. Even though God did not ask this of Abraham in the end, the incident reveals human loyalty to God at its most complete. Abraham’s loyalty to God is a sign of God’s loyalty to us. God is so loyal, so faithful, to us that God is prepared to give us his Son, even though that entailed his cruel and untimely death. Jesus declared that no one has greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jesus’ death on the cross revealed the face of God to be the face of a greater love. As Paul reminds us in that second reading, God revealed his greater love for us also in raising his Son from the dead, in giving his Son back to us, the Son who now stands at the right hand of God pleading for us. Here indeed is a love that is beyond any human love, a love that prompts Paul to ask his triumphant question at the beginning of today’s second reading: ‘With God on our side, who can be against us?’

Our calling as people who have been so loved by God in this way is to show the face of Christ to others. It is that face alone that will do us justice as people who have been baptized into the body of Christ and who have received the Spirit of Christ. Our ultimate destiny in heaven is to be conformed to the image of God’s Son. Our calling is to show forth something of that image here and now.

And/Or

(iv) Second Sunday of Lent

I came across a sentence in a book I was reading recently which struck me very forcibly: ‘all love relationships flourish only when there is freedom to let go of what is precious, so as to receive it back as a gift’. It is not easy to let go of what is precious. The more precious someone is to us, the harder it is to let go of that person. The more attractive someone is to us, the more we feel inclined to possess that person. Yet, in the effort to possess someone we can easily lose them. At the heart of all loving relationships is the freedom to let go of the other, and in letting go to receive the other back as a gift. Parents know that there comes a time when they have to let go of their sons or daughters, even though they are more precious to them than anything else. They may have to let them go to another country or to the person whom they have chosen as their future spouse. Yet, in letting go of their children, parents invariably discover that they receive them back as a gift. Single people too have to learn the freedom of letting go what is precious so as to receive it back as a gift. In any good and healthy friendship, people need to give each other plenty of space.

In this morning’s first reading Abraham is portrayed as being willing to let go of what was most precious to him, the only son of his old age. In being willing to let his son go to God, he went on to receive him back as a gift. Many people find it a very disturbing story, because it portrays God as asking Abraham to sacrifice his only beloved son as a burnt offering to God. We are rightly shocked by the image of God asking a father to sacrifice his son in this way. Abraham lived about a thousand years before Christ. In the religious culture of that time it was not uncommon for people to sacrifice their children to various gods. The point of the story seems to be that the God of Israel is not like the pagan gods. If Abraham thought that God was asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac like the people who worshipped other gods, he was wrong. God was not asking this of Abraham. Yet, the willingness of Abraham to let go of what was most precious to him if that was what God was asking remained an inspiration to the people of Israel. He had already shown a willingness to let go of his family and his homeland as he set out towards an unknown land in response to God’s call.

The early church came to understand the relationship between Abraham and Isaac as pointing ahead to the relationship between God the Father and Jesus. Like Abraham, God was prepared to let go of what was most precious to him, his one and only Son, out of love for humanity. God was prepared to let his Son go to humanity, with all the dangers that entailed for his Son. Saint Paul was very struck by this extraordinary generosity of God on our behalf, as he says in this morning’s second reading, ‘God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up to benefit us all’. God let his precious Son go to humanity even though the consequences of that were the rejection of his Son and, ultimately, his crucifixion. Even after Jesus was crucified, God continued to give him to us as risen Lord. When Paul contemplates this self-emptying love of God for us, he asks aloud, in the opening line of that second reading, ‘With God on our side who can be against us?’ Paul is declaring that if God’s love for us is this complete, then we have nothing to fear from anyone. Here is a love that has no trace of possessiveness, a love that makes us lovable.

In this morning’s gospel reading, Peter, James and John are taken up a high mountain by Jesus, and there they have an experience of Jesus which took their breath away. It was an experience that was so precious that Peter could not let it go. He wanted to prolong it indefinitely and so he says to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is wonderful for us to be here, so let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah’. He and the other two disciples had a fleeting glimpse of the heavenly beauty of Christ, and did not want to let go of it. Beauty always attracts; it calls out to us. Yet, Peter and the others had to let go of this precious experience; it was only ever intended to be momentary. They would receive it back in the next life as a gift. For now, their task was to listen to Jesus, ‘This is my beloved Son. Listen to him’. That is our task too. We spend our lives listening to the Lord as he speaks to us in his word and in the circumstances of our lives; we listen to him as a preparation for that wonderful moment when we see him face to face in eternity and we can finally say, ‘it is wonderful to be here’, without the need to let go.

And/Or

(v) Second Sunday of Lent

When I was a child, my father bought a little car, a Mini, as it was known at the time. This was in the early 60s when cars were just beginning to be bought in numbers. It was a great thrill to have a car, even if a very small one. On a Sunday, certainly in the summer, my father would take my mother, myself and my two brothers out for a drive. When we were in the car, before we headed out, he would turn towards us in the back seat and say, ‘Will it be the sea or the mountains?’ At the time I always had a preference for the mountains, and I was always glad when we headed south to the hills, rather than east to the sea. There was something about being on a height which I found exhilarating and exciting. It felt different up there. You were somehow above it all. You had a different perspective. Everything looked better from a height.

I am struck by that little word ‘here’ in Peter’s statement: ‘It is wonderful to be here’. So often we can find ourselves wishing that we were somewhere else, not ‘here’, but ‘there’. We image that we would be happier if we were in a different place, or with different people, or doing different things. In some instances that can be the case. It can be important at times for people to move, because where they are is anything but wonderful. But at other times, our wishing to be somewhere else can come from our failure to appreciate what we have, where we are, the people around us now. Maybe if we saw more deeply, we would appreciate more fully the ‘here’ and the ‘now’, and we might find ourselves saying more often, ‘it is good to be here, here in this place, with these people’.

On the mountain top, Peter, James and John were helped to see Jesus more deeply than they had ever seen him before. They were captivated by the mystery of his identity, ‘This is my Son, the beloved’. They saw that there was more to him than they had realized. So often, there is more to the place we are in, and to the people we are with, than we realize. Our way of seeing where we are and who we are with can be very restricted. We can miss something important about the ‘here’ and the ‘now’. In one of our acclamations at Mass, we say or sing, ‘Heaven and earth are full of your glory’. We acknowledge in that acclamation how the created world is charged with God’s presence. That is even truer of the human person who is made in the image of God. God could say of each person we meet, ‘This is my beloved’. As God invited the disciples on the mountain to see Jesus more deeply, he invites us to see each other more deeply, to relate to each other in a way that acknowledges the wonder of our being.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

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sexygames118 · 3 years

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What to buy to build a gaming pc

Why You Need to Start Your Gaming Weblog On GameSkinny (Alternatively Of WordPress)

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Learn To (Do) GAMING Like A Professional

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yellowmagicalgirl · 4 years

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Fic Writer Tag Game

tagged by @im-the-king-of-the-ocean

...it feels like I just did something very similar to this very recently but I’ll do it again I guess. This time I’m gonna include Fanfiction.Net, though, just so I can give different answers. That being said, I’m only going to link to the AO3 version of the fic

Fandoms:

These days, it’s almost all Tales of Arcadia, but my AO3 also has some Miraculous Ladybug, SPOP, and RWBY as well as a crossover with The Hunger Games. In addition to the above, my FFN also has some PMMM, Tai Chi Chasers, Sailor Moon, iZombie, Harry Potter and Voltron Legendary Defender in there.

Number of Fics: 98 on FFN, but only 60 of them ever got transferred to AO3.

Fic I Spent the Most Time on: I know I said I was torn between two fics last time, but honestly? I spent hours looking up the effects of PTSD, solitary confinement, and various forms of torture for the Juliet Dies; Life Continues fics. There’s a reason why when I finally publish Juliet Survives in This I’m gonna contain two disclaimers: one for the Dead Dove Do Not Eat and another for the fact that I’m using magic and the fact that Claire’s not entirely human anymore just so I can find a way to make it so that Claire has a good reason for not being any worse off. The other fic I was writing I only did some research before going, “nah I’m bastardizing Arthurian legend”

Fic I Spent the Least Time on: *looks at old writing and cringes* Raked over Crimson Waves, probably...

Longest Fic: Every Ghost in Me is the longest fic I’ve ever written at a proud 10,188 words... and somehow it’s a oneshot.

Shortest Fic: For actual fics, it’s A Shop Infested on AO3 and Arme Harry on FFN. Though, A Shop Infested is also the shortest English actual fic on FFN for me as well (yes, I have one (1) fic written in German.) However, this doesn’t count my poetry. On AO3 it’s Isn't It Ironic? On FFN it’s In My Arms.

Most Hits: On AO3, it’s I Bet You Kiss Your Knuckles (Right Before They Touch My Cheek) with its 1741 hits. On FFN, it’s Dare, which has 15,174 hits. Though, for comparison, Dare was written in 2015; I Bet You Kiss Your Knuckles (Right Before They Touch My Cheek) only has 348 hits on FFN.

Most Kudos: I Bet You Kiss Your Knuckles (Right Before They Touch My Cheek)

Most Comments: On AO3 my collab with Tuna, Birds, Bees, and Blood Magic, has the most comments, but Juliet Dies in This has the most threads. On FFN, it’s still Dare.

Most Bookmarks: Birds, Bees, and Blood Magic holds this title on AO3. The closest similar thing we have on FFN is favorites, so that title goes to Picked the Wrong Girl.

Total Word Count: On AO3, my net word count is 82,299. On FFN, I had to break out excel, and my net word count would be approximately 136,615 words. Approximately because I can’t separate the fic from the author’s note.

Favorite Fic I Wrote: You can’t make me choose... but it’s probably one of those jlaire hurt/comfort fics I’ve written. Or for that matter, the LadyNoir hurt/comfort fics I used to write when it comes to FFN even though I decided not to move them off of AO3... wait a second. I have a type. Oh no I have a type when writing and shipping and that type is the person who’s associated with light and goodness comforts the person who’s associated with darkness. I mean I’ve written outside of this type many a time but let’s face it so many of my shippy hurt comfort fics more or less boil down to this description.... how did I not realize this before.

Fic you Want to Rewrite or Expand on: I will never actually finish it but every so often I still want to go and give With the Distance Amplified a proper ending. Other than that, I kind of want to go and expand upon I Bet You Kiss Your Knuckles (Right Before They Touch My Cheek) despite the fact that I don’t want to have to watch ML canon to do so properly... oh, and also? I really need to finish the 3Below interlude to Juliet Dies; Life Continues.

Share a bit of a WIP or Story Idea you’re Planning on: so earlier today I posted a Krexie ficlet... I need to do some more editing so that the fic makes me nearly cry as much as the ficlet did and write all the other scenes because the fic is much more than just the kiss but here is the kiss from Krel’s POV:

There is a very full bowl of cat food, and multiple bowls of water. Krel follows Archie, and he finds Douxie, sitting on the floor, curled in a blanket, back to the door. Archie meows and runs away. Douxie doesn’t look up, and so Krel walks around him. Douxie’s head is bowed, and he is typing frantically at his phone, and then erasing what he wrote. There are tear tracks on his face, though they are hard to see, when most of the tears probably crawled into the cracks. Krel kneels in front of him, trying to see what Douxie is typing. The movement catches Douxie’s attention, and he startles. The blanket falls away from Douxie as he scrambles to his feet.

Normally, his reflexes are better. Not so clumsy. Not almost falling over his own long, cracked limbs. Krel reaches out to help Douxie stabilize himself, but Douxie uses a wall instead.

Douxie rips his earbuds from his ears, and for a second Krel can hear a woman singing from the earbuds before Douxie silences the music he was listening to. Douxie takes a breath. It is wet and shaking.

“Krel, why are you here?” Douxie wraps his arms around himself, and Krel isn’t sure if Douxie is cold from wearing a sleeveless shirt or just uncomfortable.

“I saw your text; I worried.”

“I’m sorry.”

Krel takes a large step towards Douxie; Douxie takes a small step back.

“Douxie, you, we’re gonna break the curse, you’re going to –“

“I’m going to die today,” Douxie whispers, looking at his own feet. Krel looks past the soft shorts Douxie is wearing to Douxie’s ankles. They have been taken over by cracks, and they’re advancing.

They are out of time. Douxie is out of time. Krel feels his lower lip start to tremble, and he tries to make it stop.

“You, you should probably go,” Douxie says like he doesn’t mean it. “I don’t… I’m not going to make you watch me die.”

“I’m not going to make you…” Krel can’t bring himself to say the word “die”, like saying it aloud will make it true. And that’s silly, that’s superstition, that’s not scientific, but every scientific way Krel has tried to save Douxie hasn’t worked. “I’m not leaving you alone; I don’t think you want to be alone right now.”

“Then can you-“ Douxie breaks off into a coughing fit. “Can you hold me? If that’s okay?”

Embrace your mistakes, like Mother would have said if she were not dead.

Krel takes another step towards Douxie, and Douxie does not step away, rather, he leans into Krel, unwrapping his arms from his own torso. They take one, two, three steps backward, to where the blanket lays abandoned on the floor. They sink to the ground, arms around each other. Krel cannot save Douxie, but he can make sure that Douxie is comfortable. Douxie clings to Krel with a surprising amount of strength. Krel ignores the urge to wrap his fingers around Douxie’s neck, just so he can keep track of Douxie’s pulse. Krel cards his fingers through Douxie’s hair instead. His other arm wraps around Douxie’s torso and his hand rests on Douxie’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Krel says, hating how his voice sounds when he’s about to cry.

“It’s not your fault, all of you did your best,” Douxie says, voice choked and so very scared. Krel feels his shirt starting to grow damp. “I don’t want to die; I wish we had more time.”

“Me too,” Krel says. A tear slips down his cheek, and he tightens his grip around Douxie’s torso, like he can keep Douxie from slipping away.

Douxie jerks, and Krel fears Douxie might be convulsing, but he’s just pushing himself up so he can look Krel in the eye. “Krel, I…” Douxie coughs, turning away, and when he turns back his glowing eyes are so much dimmer. “I love you.”

Douxie goes slack in Krel’s arms, closing his eyes. Krel presses his lips against Douxie’s and hopes.

A couple tears escape Krel’s eyes as he tries not to think of how he still doesn’t know for sure if he loves Douxie the way the curse wants him too, if he’s too late and he should have kissed or at least told Douxie sooner instead of waiting.

Krel closes his eyes. Douxie’s lips are chapped or cracked or maybe both, but they are still. Passive. Krel exhales through his nose; Douxie’s lips feel dead.

Krel is about to pull away, but then Douxie starts kissing him back. And it isn’t much, just a firm press that wasn’t there before, but it is enough to convince Krel that maybe it isn’t too late.

Tagging (for the record your participation is optional): @clairekatswritingcorner, @fieryartemispublications, @mambo-no-5, @dork-empress, @brothebro, and @akozuheiwa

#my writing #krexie

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cardandpixel · 4 years

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9 Board Game YouTubers I Follow & Why (plus a few others)

In the literal dim and distant past when I started boardgaming (honestly, the biggest threat was tallow wax on your board), the internet was still accessed by whatever IP address you could remember off the top of your head (there’s no place like 127.0.0.1 as they sayI) - and the only TikTok was the clock ticking, waiting for half of Louise Nurding’s left leg to download only to realise it was Anne Widdecombe and you’d hit the wrong link on a BB. Boardgames had some quiet and shady corners of the internet, in those same Bulletin Boards, there was one for HeroQuest and Space Crusade when they came out. But sadly, if you wanted to see a boardgame being played or learn the rules, you either had to go round to your friend Tim’s house where he had a new chits-for-days wargame going, or sit down and actually read the rulebook yourself. As a result, I bought some interesting games in my time, including a game called Operation Overlord - a mighty chit-tastic WW2 N African campaign monster that I bought in desperation from the Games Workshop in Manchester on the first morning that it opened in 1979 (?) as we were so far back in the queue that there wasn’t a space marine to be had for miles. But now, we have a plethora of kindly folk available on our blistering shiny Windows NT 486sx machines to inform and delight us in full 8-bit glory. Everything from reviews, buying guides, rules tutorials and even painting & crafting guides, we can be bathing in just about whatever aspect of board or wargaming we so desire in an effort to stave off the clattering realisation that it’s been over 3 months since we spent any quality time with another breathing soul outside our houses. The question gets frequently asked on boardgame FaceAche forums “What YouTube channels are worth my time and why?” so in an effort to throw my own towel into that controversial ring, here’s my pick of probably 9ish, maybe more by the end, but let’s start with 9 in no particular order..... 1) 3 MINUTE BOARDGAMES

One of the first board games ‘er across the table (TM) and I bought together was a copy of Gloom from a little games and comic shop halfway round the world in Hamilton NZ, Mark 1 Comics. As we were achingly close to moving to NZ a few years ago, we’ve kept up with many aspects of what might have been our life over there, so it was a delight to discover Jarrod (and now Stephanie) on YouTube, a friendly and familiar accent reviewing board games. But it’s not just the NZ vibe that I love, Jarrod does a great job of cutting thru the hyperbole and bloat often associated with trying to keep YouTube vids ‘long for the algorithm’ (ugh) and just gives very pragmatic reasons for a game either joining or leaving his collection. He has a great approach, and it’s nice to see him finally on camera instead of the disembodied voice. Great reviewer, and Stephanie is utterly hilarious. 2) THE BROTHERS MURPH

Mike & Nick are two of the most engaging brothers on YouTube let alone just in the boardgaming community. Their series on thrift shop finds has dredged up some hilarious and often tragic specimens from the grand days of Palitoy, MB and Parker Games. They are also masters at ‘speed reviewing’ often piling reviews of 50 or 60 games into the same number of minutes. I think I favour the ‘don’t outstay your welcome’ approach to YouTube in general, and the Brothers Murph are at great ease with this philosophy and yet they take on simple party games thru to the heaviest euros with the same distillation equipment, and yet their reviews are never trivial or throw away. We had the chance to chat to Nick at Airecon this year and he was a lovely guy, slightly blown away by the fact that people liked his channel. He’s also an awesome artist too.

3) ACTUALOL

There are many reviewers on the web who have cost me a fair amount of money, the worst being Zee Garcia, however, a close second is Jon Purkiss aka Actualol. Jon has a terrifying gift for finding games, and especially ridiculously affordable games, that I buy on spec and then end up absolutely loving. Jon has a light and breezy style which is instantly engaging - I also really want his comfy chair (surely in exchange for a nice review on here Jon???). His videos are tidy and concise and yet still convey a deep enthusiasm and joy for games. His reviews very clearly portray what the setting of the game is and what you’ll be doing, without getting embroilled in the rules. He always has great footage of the game on the table (please reviewers - look at the ratio of your face to the game you’re talking about - less than 10% game and i’m walkin’) and often favours the less pricey end of the market which suits me fine. Brilliant games I love thanks to Jon include: Second Chance, Magic Maze and Ninja Academy

4) OUR FAMILY PLAYS GAMES

There’s not much to be said about Mik & Starla Fitch that cannot be gained from watching a mere 3-4 minutes of their channel. For sheer exuberance aimed squarely at a love for bringing families together via our glorious hobby, you cannot top these guys. If you are ever - EVER - feeling slightly lacklustre about gaming or losing your mojo for whatever reason - heck if you are just feeling slightly down, treat yourself to 10 minutes in the company of these two excellent human beings. Their reviews and playthru’s have all the humanity you need in a game and after five minutes you are thinking “Is the US too far to go just for a gaming evening?” We’d both utterly love to sit across the table from these lovely people and just play, and I can’t say that about every reviewer, I’ll be honest. Their reviews are often centred around unloved classics (watch their vid dedicated to why they love Catan as an example - you’ll be clicking Buy Now before your know it) and also some great quirky unknowns that I’m trying to hunt down even now. They’ve just had a brilliant couple of boosts from both a spot of Good Morning America recently, and becoming reviewers for the mighty Dice Tower. I’m immensely grateful for a tweet by Rodney Smith for pointing me in their direction, my social media is a much brighter place with the Fitch family in it.

5) RAHDO RUNS THROUGH

“Heeeeey Everybody”. One of the first board game reviewers I ever caught on YouTube was the inimitable Richard Ham aka Rahdo. And I’m so glad I did. I would genuinely never sit down and try and learn a game from one of Rahdo’s playthrus, they are what I imagine being in a wind tunnel full of 50 tonnes of feathers is like. BUT and this is crucial - if I want an idea of what a game is going to feel like to play, there is no finer deliverer of the remote game experience than Mr Richard Ham. His unique ability to explain how a game is going to work, turn by turn; the decisions you will make; the things you’ll have to consider; the short and long term goals; are all brilliantly covered in one of Rahdo’s videos. His ability to make different choices for his ‘ghost partner’ Jen (who does exist in real life, we have bought jewelry off her, she’s lovely) also adds a real dynamism to the games, showcasing the flexibility in a design for different play strategies. Rahdo tends towards 2 player games and usually at the heavier end of the scale, but if there’s a game you are thinking of buying, check Mr Ham out first!

6) WATCH IT PLAYED

It’s often been said that Canadians are some of the politest folk on the planet, but when it comes to ranking Canadians, well, I’m sure they’d be too humble to rank each other so I’ll have to. Rodney Smith is the loveliest man in the world. There, end of article. But it’s true. We’ve been watching Rodney since we first got confused about the rules for Mice & Mystics (which we still got wrong but that wasn’t Rodney’s fault) and his ever chirpy, ever positive approach to his rules rundowns is utterly remarkable and frankly, enviable. And it’s his attention to detail and clarity for explaining rules that have rightly made Rodney one of the most important resources in the gaming hobby. If you have ever struggled over a rulebook and haven’t raced to Watch It Played, I will guarantee you will have spent far longer on that rulebook and lost way more hair than you ever needed to. We had the great honour of playing Rajas of the Ganges with Rodney at Airecon in 2019, and I mugged up on the rules sooo much. Regular imbibers of this rag will know my sloth for reading rulebooks is legendary but fortunately ‘er across the table (TM) loves them. But, for the 3 days running up to our trip to Harrogate, I did nothing but read that rulebook - this was THE Rodney Smith, you can’t get a rule wrong with Rodney. But of course, nerves kicked in and I could barely remember the rules of Snap, but the nicest man in the world could not have been nicer. Really, quantum mechanics has proved it. He was just the same man off the computer telly. Funny, engaging, warm and happy to chat as well as play (which I was also really nervous about doing!), if you don’t watch Rodney, are you really internetting?

7) TABLETOP MINIONS

“Pachow” From boardgames to wargames. As well as my slight addiction to cardboard, my other opiate overlord is 28mm plastic miniatures. Specifically those involved in tabletop skirmish games like Malifaux, 7TV, Fallout Wasteland Warfare, GuildBall and a smattering of others. Though recently more focused on the frankly insane amount of content being released by Games Workshop, Tabletop Minions is presented by the splendid Uncle Atom. (In fact, I identify his content so much as Uncle Atom’s stuff that I honestly had to double check the name of the channel for this article!). My plastic habit uncle (sounds so wrong, but so true) has possibly the gentlest delivery of anyone on the internet. It’s not so much content, as therapy. I know the net is awash with AMSR channels at the mo, but if you don’t want to listen to some overmonetized southern californian with some bubble wrap and a large capsule condenser mic, just hop over to TTM and listen to the Uncle for 5 minutes. He’s like a soothing bubble bath of content about painting figures, philosophy of the hobby, general art & design principles, and great life advice. He also wears a fez.

8) GIRL PAINTING

“Hello Tchoobies!” I painted my first 28mm figure when i was about 12ish - it was, ironically, a space marine of some sort - the old clunky Ral Partha ones. It looked terrible, but each model got a bit better till I stopped for some reason a few years later. When I got into Malifaux a few years ago (ie decades, several of them, later), I knew I was going to have to get back into painting; heaps of grey plastic does not a skirmish game make. (Little did I know I would have to revisit my microscopy days either when assembling damn Bayou Gremlins!) Two channels were recommended to me, the Esoteric Order of Gamers (more later) and Girl Painting. EOG put me on the path to believing I could paint again, but Alexandra at Girl Painting actually made me believe I could learn to do it well. GP’s approach to painting figures, terrain and vehicles is based on solid art theory. Her explanation of colour relationships and the colour wheel is something I can quote to this day. All of the techniques that I lean on so heavily in day to day painting both for table and display I learnt from Girl Painting. Correct use of washes, wet blending, non-metallic metals, shading, drybrushing, highlighting, model reading, all of it from studying intently, often with a brush actually in my hand while watching the channel. I cannot recommend GP enough if you want to put paint to plastic. Whatever your ability, you will learn something from this hidden gem of a channel.

9) ESOTERIC ORDER OF GAMERS

Another dang fine antipodean and another slightly unusual channel. I have a terrible, terrible memory when it comes to rules. In our early days, we also had a a lot of games with seemingly very over-bloated rulebooks - FFG games basically. I suddenly realised what I wanted was to lift the lid of a box and find in the lid, a summary of the important stuff i needed to remember about the game. Apparently I was not the only one. In 2013 a chap known as Universal Head started publishing an amazing series of rules summaries which condensed down some of the bloatiest rulesbooks down to often one or 2 pages of A4. It was a (pardon the pun) gamechanger for me. I can’t count the number of games in our collection that have a friendly sheet of A4 now as the first thing you see when you open the box. They are brilliant. And he’s still doing it to this day. I would argue that the more useful leg to his activities is the website rather than YouTube channel, but his channel does have the aforementioned brilliant figure painting tutorials, unboxing videos and some crafting stuff. The website is definitely the place for the rules summaries and also a fantastic resource for build-it-yourself foamcore box inserts. Though Folded Space have now made box inserts pretty affordable, there’s still no feeling like the satisfaction of building your own, and I would argue that some of EoG’s designs actually make more sense than some of the Folded Space ones anyway. AND THE OTHER ONES (Who probably don’t really need the exposure, but hey, only 11 people probably read this so......) Why aren’t these on the list above? Just because I wanted to highlight some of the more marginal channels above or more specialist rather than the pure reviewers. SHUT UP & SIT DOWN Possibly my favourite channel on YouTube, whose name sounds more like a menacing Yorkshire greeting than a boardgame channel. SU&SD seem to be a real Marmite issue on the board game communities. And I genuinely don’t understand it. Yes, their reviews are often really funny but honestly, if that’s all you take away then you are missing some amazingly detailed and thought provoking work. Quinns and crew’s reviews are some of the most measured and balanced reviews in the gameyverse. Their reasoning for the conclusions they come to are incredibly well thought through and often very surprising based on the tone of the rest of the review. They have steered me to some games I would never have looked twice at and steered me away from some very shiny games that I might have blown a lot of money on otherwise. Flagposting great alternatives is also a signature of their reviews, and that again has often lead me to some fantastic games. We don’t always agree (their recent review of 10 Oink Games was savage imho) but we always disagree for the right reasons. Again, I would argue their website is actually a better overall resource, especially their podcasts which are superb, but all their content is fantastic.

in a highly similar vein I would add NO PUN INCLUDED. Efka & Elaine produce some of the most thoughtful and intelligent boardgame review content today, and often for some of the deepest and most complex games. The joy of boardgaming is that it is highly subjective and there are lots of times when NPI like/dislike a game that I do/don’t, but they are engaging and warm enough as presenters to hit you with a gentle subtext that says “It’s ok - I know we like this game, we get that you don’t, it doesn’t make any of us bad people, just people y’know, have a sandwich with us” Efka criticising a game reminds me of when Dennis Healey once described an argument with Geoffrey Howe as being ‘savaged by a dead sheep’, though not in the cynical manner of the original. The criticism is loaded with that crucial dose of ‘hear me out’ that is sadly lacking in 90% of all other reviewers out there. Efka & Elaine are no GoggleBox reviewers, they are the real deal - they genuinely understand how games work and why. The sheer moral turmoil that Efka expressed over the cultural issues in Rising Sun was some of the most thoughtful YouTube content I have ever seen. I just wanted to do a little shout out to Johannes & Sunniva at BOARD GAMING RAMBLINGS - I don’t have as much to say as they are relatively new on my radar, but I have really enjoyed their content so far and find them to be like one of those adorable gaming couples that you might see every once in a while at your gaming group and have a blast with, and then not see for months and go “Awh - I really miss Johannes & Sunniva - where’d they go?” that feeling, you know the one. Adorable, with a hint of the esoteric. Also, a quick but important mention to the other titan of boardgame rules explanation that is Paul Grogan of GAMING RULES!. Like Rodney Smith, Paul is meticulous about rules explanation and is really clear and simple to follow, even for very heavy games, which Paul tends to do more of than Rodney, which is probably why I end up watching Paul slightly less, but certainly not for any less quality. Paul has such a reputation in the industry that he now works closely with many designers and publishers to help craft the best rulebooks around as a consultant. So that’s it - congrats for making it through folks. Didn’t think it was going to run this long, but turns out.... I quite like a lot of the YouTubers I watch - who knew? Until next time... happy gaming y’all.

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quakerjoe · 4 years

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In the end, not even the Progressive Bernie Base showing up for Hillary in larger numbers than her own supporters did for Obama in 2008, could prevent the inevitable. A massively flawed candidate who failed to electrify the Democratic base and make the case to Rust Belt voters- why she is the better option than the Populist candidate spraying out anti-trade rhetoric.

Blame whatever you want. The blame rests squarely on all of us. But there is so many lessons to learn from the 2016 Primary and General Election. Populism and Progressive policy became the central topic. Healthcare is a right. The ultra-rich are KING in America, and they must be reigned in. Primary process should be more fair. Flowery platitudes aren’t enough to generate excitement for the poor to turn out, etc.

Literally ZERO of these lessons were learned. Even in the face of an ACTUAL Corona-virus pandemic, with over 30 million unemployed, more and more uninsured at the time of writing this- the Democratic party has done nearly nothing to fix the problems from 2016. Actually, in all my shock- they’ve made them worse. The Democratic party pulled every string it could. Bent over backwards to not only stop Bernie Sanders, but stifle Progressives and our policy agenda. All in an orchestration to crown their nominee just years after a 2016 lawsuit said the DNC can meddle how ever they like in their own “Democratic process”. All to push a man who did next to no campaigning in any states past South Carolina. A man who didn’t actually work for your vote, but instead- coasted on “Hope and Change” establishment nostalgia, for when times weren’t so chaotic.

So for pragmatism sake, let’s push all that aside for just one moment. We can debate all day about how “fair” Joe Biden’s path to the Democratic Nomination has been. But let’s view Biden on his own merits for his candidacy’s sake. What’s the incentive for Progressives to vote for Joe? Well- unless you’re sticking to the concept of the very first paragraph of this article, the answer is: There isn’t one.

If Hillary Clinton were a flawed candidate, Biden may just be the worst nominee in history. A long history of terrible behavior including coddling racists, racist behavior, repeated threats at slashing the safety net, warmongering for a devastating Iraq war that’s helped kill endless innocent civilians all based on a lie, the nomination of Justice Thomas and controversial treatment of Anita hill, the Obama administration’s failure to even pass a Public Option with a Super Majority government, while pushing a healthcare plan that was little more than barely a small step in the right direction.

Now- Biden stands as the presumptive Democratic Nominee, and with a sizable Progressive Bernie Base up for grabs, what has Joe Biden done to earn our vote?

Answer: Nothing. Well, at least nothing significant.

Three items come immediately to mind on what Joe Biden is doing to “reach left”.

1: Joe wants to lower the Medicare age to 60. By comparison, Hillary Clinton wanted to lower it to as low as 50.

2: Joe Biden wants to eliminate student debt for those making under $125K. By comparison, Bernie Sanders wanted to eliminate it universally.

3: Nebulously- Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have created “working groups” on various policy issues focusing on education, criminal justice, climate change, immigration, the economy, and health care policy. As of yet, nothing has come of these “groups” on policy.

As the Primary was coming to a close, I as a Progressive- was completely open to Joe moving (not reaching) left on policy positions.

Overwhelmingly, if you ask Sanders supporters what they care about most, it’s Policy.

What will you do for the underprivileged working class people of America?

What will you do for my children and grand children facing a Climate Change future?

What will you do for your Mass Incarceration mess, ending the drug war, legalizing Marijuana, and freeing non-violent drug offenders?

What will you do for the upwards of 45K people who die each year because health care is not affordable?

The 67% of American bankruptcies being due to health care costs?

BUT. Sanders supporters also believe in principle. Consistency. History. Fighting for change. Decency. Human rights. We’re also majority young people (a group Joe Biden did not do well with). Perhaps these things could be talked out. But now there’s a bigger elephant in the room. One that establishment Democrats and Joe’s supporters are ignoring.

Joe Biden was credibly accused of rape.

Democrats spent months yelling about “Believing Women” during the Kavanaugh Confirmation hearings. Rightfully fighting for Christine Blasey Ford’s story to be heard- knowing it would be a fruitless task at the hands of a twisted Senate Republican majority. Now, establishment Democrats are making the media rounds with Biden campaign talking points with denials and every attempt to downplay Tara Reade as not a credible accuser, even as several corroborations of her story have surfaced, 1 of which was an archive video of who Tara Reade alleges is her mother discussing the issue with Larry King on CNN in 1993. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s campaign has it’s surrogates and supporters on news networks shielding Biden. Nancy Pelosi downplays the accusations, Kirsten Gillibrand (who helped cancel Al Franken) is downplaying the accusations. Alyssa Milano, prominent #MeToo voice, who made a performative appearance at the Brett Kavanagh hearings, now wants to “change the rules” on the movement in favor of a sort of ‘Due Process’- a process that many perpetrators cancelled by #MeToo never got, in favor of protecting Joe Biden.

What this means to me is that Democrats think it’s perfectly fine to be selective on who and who doesn’t deserve to be heard and taken seriously, based on who’s on your team. As if it should be that easy to just shed your principles like Snake skin, hypocritically protecting one predator, while gunning for another that doesn’t fit with you politically.

In 2016, I was perfectly fine voting for the “lesser evil”. Now that the party has loudly stated that not only does my values, principles, and policy demands for the poor and sick of America, not matter- I should fall in line with a candidate that has helped endless innocent people die overseas with America’s imperial military reach, helped endless people die at home because they cant afford a doctor, said that he has “no empathy” for young people- the same young people that have to live and suffer under the conditions of Climate Change while he’s dead and gone, sexually assaulted and violated multiple women, said that nothing will fundamentally change for the same rich people who are now gaining BILLIONS under pandemic conditions while their workers get sicker, if they’re even employed at all.

Moderate establishment Democrats and voters tell me that Trump is the number one threat. That we need to “vote blue no matter who”. Just how “blue” is Joe biden? Just how dissimilar is Joe Biden and his supporters from Trump and his following? For all of the cries of the “angry Bernie Bros” online, I see countless accosting and abusive discourse examples from Biden supporters calling any dissenters “Russian Bots”, or “MAGA Hats”. Being told that I’m somehow a Trump voter by default, for not immediately supporting Biden. All this when all I’ve ever seen from “the Bernie Bros” is aggressively holding smear artists to facts and truth in a thick environment of misrepresentation of Bernie Sanders and his platform.

So- Why shouldn’t Progressives vote for Joe Biden?

This Democratic party doesn’t give a damn about you. Nor does it care about Progressive policy. The party and its supporters spend all this time, smearing Sanders and his base as “Not democrats”, angry “socialists who want free stuff”, “How are you gonna PAY for it?!” etc etc, all while claiming to support SOME form of our policy, and then dropping it the second it doesn’t feel politically advantageous. This party threw everything it could into stopping YOU. With tactics like voter suppression, using a silly app suspiciously funded and supported by shady actors in Iowa, taking WEEKS to give final results, running Super PACs against Bernie and our movement, fear-mongering about Bernie when he did win states, gas lighting the public on “elect-ability”, using a literal pandemic against Bernie to guilt him into dropping out while attempting to blame him for continued spread of COVID-19, while they sent voters to the polls and we didn’t.

And after zero policy concessions, zero good will, repeated demands we fall in line after more than a year of being slammed and disrespected, showing up for Hillary Clinton and then being blamed for her loss anyway, which is inevitable again if Joe loses? Are we just going to keep allowing that? Just how long do we have to hold our noses, voting for Moderate do-nothing lite Republicans who would sooner see you die, than provide you affordable and universal healthcare, because a Billionaire would stand to lose money. Even NOW, during a Pandemic this party has done next to NOTHING to secure the livelihoods of American citizens, as more and more die, get furloughed, and cant pay their bills. All while Trump and Republicans take credit for pitching more common sense plans (even though they want to send us all back to work/school to feed the machine).

This- is the “resistance” party? THIS is the best we can do? Performative rage against a fascist clown while propping up an accused rapist warmongering corporatist with cognitive decline and previous racist tendencies? THIS is what the party keeps telling us we better support or be shamed as somehow supporting the “bad guy”?

Listen, #NotMeUs- this will never stop. This party will NEVER stop using us as a prop for our ideas and passion, then throwing us under the bus when they think they no longer need us. They cannot continue to be allowed to drag us further to the right with guilt trips and shaming. They will NEVER take you seriously unto you take serious action. We’ve been preaching about “action” this whole campaign. Why should that “action” stop in the ballot box? Have some foresight for just a moment and envision how this plays out in future elections, unless you stand up and make them WORK for your vote.

I, for one will not vote for Joe Biden. But I wont shame you for your vote, no matter who it’s for. Why? Because the party did a terrible job at earning -your- vote. I’d maybe only criticize you if you don’t show up at all. There’s so many down-ballot candidate who need support. Even if you leave the President box unchecked, at least show up for the other races.

But consider: There are other options that have been stifled for way too long. Perhaps its time we give them a shot, no? Green Party is running Howie Hawkins and a platform that is much closer to our principles that Biden would ever try for. Justin Amash just jumped into the race if you’re a little more on the Libertarian side. Jesse Ventura is also discovering running on the Green ticket as well. Just imagine Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura on the debate stage with Donald Trump? Popcorn for DAYS.

In order for us to be taken seriously, we must prove that we’re capable of holding the party accountable. Not voting for them is the ultimate accountability, and you get to keep your principles intact.

Now- to the ultimate argument you’d inevitably get: “You would be helping Donald Trump secure 4 more years”.

My response? You don’t have to bare the blame for that. You wont be at fault for Joe Biden losing any more than those who chose not to vote at all. It’s on the party to earn these votes. That’s how elections work. If you hate the candidate and don’t feel good about them as a person, why is it your responsibility to put them in office? To me- one of the most personal things a person has, is their vote. Not their dollars, or their Tweets. It’s checking a box for the person YOU chose to represent you. If that person doesn’t believe in hardly anything you personally believe in- why is it that they deserve your vote, again? How is it that they’re are somehow entitled to that vote? They don’t, and they aren’t. I’m looking at you too, Republicans.

In closing…

Progressives, I’m sorry to break it to you but- Medicare For All is not on the ballot. Taxing the rich is not on the ballot. Ending corruption and crooked politicians is not on the ballot.

But- ending a terrible two-party system IS on the ballot. Taking your personal vote back, IS on the ballot. In my opinion- the only wasted vote, is the one you were demanded in giving up to what you don’t believe in.

-LZ

https://medium.com/@legacyzero/why-sanders-supporters-should-not-vote-for-joe-biden-a9146bee189b

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dorky-arsene · 5 years

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Day 6 - Demon

@shuakeweek

Much like my Day 3 entry, this one’s going to be a fic as well, using the “Demon” half of the prompt. This one’s also gonna have an art attached to it, since I kinda went all out. -shrugs-

Like the last fic, this one’s probably best suited for a teen-rating. It also has slightly more cursing and like the last fic has some mild spoils for Persona 5.

(as for the art, do NOT repost it)

Goro frowned at his notes as he set up the cheap candles he’d picked up half an hour ago, trying his damnedest to make sure none of the candles ended up dumping wax on his cheap carpet. After all, it’d be a bitch to clean off the wax, and the company I’m renting this apartment from will probably want to take my damn soul if I so much as spilled a single drop of wax..

The stressed high-schooler sighed, brushed hair out of his face for the 20th time, and looked over his notes again. So.. here it says I need a sprig of mistletoe.. How inconvenient, I’ve got none, he thought to himself, mentally slapping himself. Goddamn it. Why did I forget to get that.. ugh... It’s literally key to his mythological lore, and yet my tired ass forgot it!

Guess I’ll have to use something else as a replacement, Goro thought to himself, having to brush yet more of his too-long hair out of his face again as he shook his head in self-disapproval. The best thing Goro could think of on a whim was, oddly, coffee beans, which were sitting innocently in his kitchen on the counter.

“...Can’t believe I’m using fucking coffee to commune with a supposed trickster god,” Goro groaned aloud, narrowing his eyes at the cheap bag of coffee beans before shaking his head again and getting off his knees to go get it. “This had better work properly or I swear I’m going to chew Mifune-san out for even suggesting this.. Uuuugh... I spent real money for this..”

He swiped the coffee beans off the counter, then a culinary torch he normally only used for attempting crepes, turning off the lights in his tiny kitchen after that. It left only the light coming out of the glass doors leading to the tiny, crappy balcony of his apartment, which wasn’t a lot of light to go off of considering it was April and sundown had already passed. Somehow, though, by a miracle Goro could see just well enough to tell where the candles were.

He had a mat to deposit the chalk dust and coffee beans safely without fucking up the carpet, and now all he had to do was light the 6 crappy candles and deposit everything. The candles went first, bathing the little cleared-out living room area in orange-golden light as more and more of them got lit up. Then he deposited the chalk dust, in a little plastic bag with a corner cut off, forming a circle with vaguely wing-like marks.

In it, he wrote down the characters he thought was supposed to spell out Loki’s name, also in the chalk dust. It seemed a little longer than it was supposed to, but.. Goro was admittedly too tired to try and look up the damn proper words at the moment. He wanted it over with.

The last part was, of course, putting down the coffee beans and injuring himself just enough to deposit blood. That, and according to his notes, he had to make some stupid vow-thing..

“Here we fucking go,” Goro said to himself, scooping up some of the smelly beans and dropping them in the middle, carefully so he didn’t undo the circle and mess up the spell. After brushing more light brown hair out of his face, Goro grabbed a sewing needle off the ground he’d placed earlier, jamming it into his palm with an angry hiss and holding it above the coffee bean offering. He didn’t want to watch this part, so he squeezed his eyes shut, reciting the lines he’d practiced at least what had to be a hundred times over the past week and a half.

God, did Goro’s stomach feel pretty stormy right now..

“I.. I am thou, thou a-art I..” Goro stuttered, feeling his blood dripping off his hand uncomfortably. “F-from the sea of my soul.. I summon you.. I.. I bear the strength of my soul..”

...Crap, what was the rest..?! Damn it, Goro, you’re flubbing it..! he thought briefly, before the rest clicked into place. The needle in his palm got loose, and he hesitantly let go of it, practically hearing it drop against the likely soaked coffee beans.

“U-uh..” he tried again, eventually getting the courage again to speak. “I bear the strength of my soul.. to ascertain all on my own. N-now come to me, Loki!”

Still with his eyes closed, Goro felt the atmosphere of the room change somehow, and what little light he saw seemed to change to a blue-ish color. Goro sensed a foreign warmth a bit where he’d set up his mat, and so he backed away, feeling himself shake as he fumbled for the black towel he’d gotten specifically for the communication attempt. Besides that, he’d used his main hand, his left hand, to do this, so it stung like a bitch the whole time as he awaited whatever result.

...Still, curiosity and a hint of fear struck the tired highschooler’s heart, so he opened one eye to take a peek. The coffee beans and blood had entirely disappeared, and the circle’s color was no longer boring cheap stone white, rather becoming a strangely attractive shade of red and glowing. The candles’ flames actually turned a stark blue, burning in both light and dark shades of it, and most noise had disappeared from the environment, save for Goro’s frightened breathing and the flare of the candles.

...Then, a rush of wind knocked Goro to his bottom, and just like that, a quasi-humanoid being appeared above him. Black feathers fluttered around Goro and on him and his floor, their source being half-feathered wings attached to the humanoid. He found himself gazing into the face of the being, with his eyes seeming to have golden-colored outsides and red irises, and the demon had a sharp, cunning smirk to go with the already distracting eyes.

Besides that, the demon appeared to have black, red-tipped hair that half-hid nubby horns, a dual set of two, one set gold and the other silver, and as for clothes, he seemed to have an armored vest of sorts with a bright red ribbon hung loosely over. He also wore semi-armored gloves, and thin pants with leg armor, with no shoes to speak of. It was a contrast, certainly, to Goro’s simple thrift store nightgown and pants, both of which were more of a mild stormy but light grey and nothing else, save for whatever chalk, wax and blood he’d gotten on himself in the past 10 minutes.

The dark-haired demon chuckled softly, his voice apparently no older than someone Goro’s age.. which felt really weird. Perhaps weirdly attractive, if Goro were being honest to his closeted heart.

“Oh my.. I seem to be a little off-course,” the teenaged demon spoke, floating in midair as if he’d done so his whole life. “It’s not a whole loss, I suppose.. What a cute summoner~.”

Goro felt his cheeks flush at the compliment (or flirt), and he tried to glare at the demon. “Uh, off-course? I’m pretty sure this was intentional on my end. Does the name “Loki” sound a bell?”

Quizzically, the demon’s thick eyebrows furrowed and he tilted his head, his smirk fading into a thin line.

“Loki..? What’re you on about? I’m called Satanael, and I’m as far from a Norse god as can be. A trickster, when I feel like it, but I’m more of a rebel than anything,” the demon introduced, stretching out his arms and smiling. “I can see you wrote my name instead of the intended one.. That’s probably contributing to me being off-course and all.”

Goro looked where Satanael had pointed out, and upon re-reading the kanji the summoning circle currently produced.. It struck Goro that it was, indeed, the wrong goddamn name.

“Fuck my life,” the brunette responded, facepalming. “Now I’m stuck with you, I guess.. First I forget the damned mistletoe and now it turns out I wrote the most incorrect thing of INCORRECT THINGS--”

Satanael seemed to be sweating nervously upon hearing Goro berate himself, and he gently placed a hand on the tired teen’s shoulder.

“Hey, hey, don’t get all worked up. I can already feel your soul wearing itself out faster. Panic only nets you passing out, human. I mean, I’m sure you’d be as cute as a sleeping cat when passed out, but--”

“Off!” Goro yelped, swatting at the demon with his towel. “Get off me, will you?! Can’t I panic in peace around here..?”

“..The circle’s still in effect, so not for a while,” Satanael pointed out, in the most awkward way in the world by using two of his six massive wings that kept poking the curtains of Goro’s sliding glass door. “You wanted assistance, right? You got the rest of the incantation down properly, so you must want help in something, right..?”

“...” Goro sat up properly for once, and he wrapped his hand around his towel, trying to ignore the pound of feathers Satanael shed all over his stupid living room like some cat with too much fur. He needed a second, and it seemed the demon got the memo, magically scooping up his shed feathers and dumping them as the brown-haired novice of a summoner tried to cobble his internal brain back together from the panic disaster mess it was.

Ugh.. Dammit, this is what I get for trying to summon demons by myself, Goro complained internally, nursing his aching hand and watching Satanael trying to clean up his feathers successfully. He’d gotten most of them by the time the stressed teen got back to breathing as if he wasn’t biking at 60 miles an hour, and another self-deprecating thought passed his mind before he’d next opened his mouth. Maybe I should have asked Kitagawa-san to help me out.. He studies stuff like this on his off time for his artwork, so I probably could have gotten the right fucking god instead of a random-ass demon..

“..Hey, Satanael-san? Where were you supposed to be going, anyway?”

With a bundle of feathers in his arms, Satanael turned his head. “Oh, you mean being off-course. Uh, kick the circle, will you? I don’t mind being in the human realm for a bit while we reorganize, yeah? And thanks for the coffee beans. I appreciate the gift, human.”

Goro kicked the circle with his bare foot despite his lingering confusion, and the candles promptly turned back to their usual color, the chalk having gone back to normal. Well, now the coffee beans, blood and needle were gone, but everything else was still right where it was, save for the streak of chalk from Goro’s bare foot.

“Anyways,” the demon continued, “I was off to confront some asshole human who just so happens to be a reincarnation of one of the main “Sin” groups your sort likes to put my kind into. Ah, he doesn’t go by Samael anymore, but that’s the name I knew him by before he decided to up and betray me.”

“..Betray?” Goro questioned. “So why come all the way up here for one measly human anyway?”

“Hrm. Correct yourself to say “falsely powerful” human, friend. That nasty son of a bitch decided to try and give himself a foothold in Japanese politics with so many violations of the point of my movement that I want to punch him back home,” Satanael hissed, the cores of his eyes flashing gold as he dumped the feathers onto Goro’s kitchen counter. “..Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think you summoning me was a mere accident. You feel a bit like he does.. Only a little.”

“...Huh??” It didn’t quite click to Goro, what Satanael meant, despite something telling Goro a certain bald-headed bastard might’ve been involved.

Satanael gestured to the circle, which still had his name’s characters in it. “I’m not so sure it was coincidence you wrote the name of a particularly rebellious demon, now, is it? I am the very representation of rebelling against authority, at least for some.

I’ve got a few names under my belt, because of it. Some call me “Satan”, since I’ve already rebelled once and gotten kicked out. Others like to call me “Lucifer” or “Helel”, too. But Satanael’s the preferred one. Get my drift?”

“..Wait, go back,” Goro said, standing up off the ground, while still holding onto his towel in his left hand. “A.. A rebel demon? ..W-well, I.. I wanted to rebel against my biological father.. He keeps trying to make me do his dirty work and I have a hell of a time trying to get him off my damn back.”

The teen huffed, and Satanael folded his wings, blowing out Goro’s candles and essentially helping pick up the mess all over the living room floor as the mortal of the pair turned on the kitchen lights again.

Goro opened his fridge to check for food, but was only met with a supply of apples and water bottles, and old leftovers he didn’t feel like trusting to the half-broken microwave he had to get off some sketchy online shop.

“..Uh, just out of curiosity, Satanael, do you eat?”

Kneeling in the middle of the floor with the mat, the demon lord just shrugged. “If coffee comes with it, I have no problem with what you have. I’d prefer you eat something, though. It’d be unbecoming of you to faint in the midst of teenage rebellion-ing your father.”

“Touche,” Goro responded blandly, pulling out the leftovers and a few apples. He also took out a water bottle and his coffee machine, the one other machine besides his alarm clock and his P.A.D. that worked without being too shitty, and he filled up the coffee machine’s water tank. “Oh, also.. I feel like I was rude earlier to you, so I apologize for that. My name is Goro Akechi, by the way. I’d forgotten, almost, to tell you that.”

“..Goro.. I like it,” Satanael chuckled, closing his eyes and smiling cheerfully as he placed Goro’s sewing needle back on the kitchen counter, bloodless. “I.. I suppose a more personable name I normally use while hiding among your kind is Akira. Akira Kurusu.”

“If I may.. have you been in Japan for a long time, before?” Goro asked, quietly, while he looked in the demon lord’s direction. The newly-dubbed Akira simply nodded, but in a wistful way, as his smile shrunk slightly to match.

“I’ve been here once before. Not, well, in your current capital.. but in the country. A little place called Inaba. I once happened to meet Izanami there, right when this other nasty human decided to invoke her power and try to cover the damn place in poisonous Yomi fog, all while I’d been in my human disguise. Let’s just say some humans close to your age a few years back had to put her in her place by summoning her very, very angry former husband.. I didn’t get involved much beyond observation for obvious reasons, really.”

“...” The much too tired teenager didn’t grace the little story with a response, finding it too tiring to follow beyond a basic repeat of legends he’d known since middle school. Well, besides the “Yomi fog” and the familiarity of what Akira may have been talking about.

...Oh, right.. Maybe Akira-san’s speaking about the Inaba fog murders. God, that was a disaster for their police force.. I ended up studying that for my current crappy job..

Reluctantly, Goro tossed the leftover food from the previous night onto a pair of plates, just a split-up beef bowl with noodles, and one plate went into the sketchy microwave, leaving the prep of the coffee. Another quick check of the kitchen yielded sugar and little creamer cups he’d snuck out of the office at work, and Goro turned around again to the demon lord, who had surprisingly ditched the demon form in favor of a mild, unassuming human look, complete with removed shoes already put near the apartment entrance and glasses.

“..A-ah.. Is that what it looks like?” the highschooler asked, instead of what he’d intended to ask. “It’s.. it’s a bit different, to say the least..”

Not to mention, Goro thought privately to himself, the unassuming-ness of this look feels.. cute, almost? The glasses are so nerdy, though.. The hair, though.. it helps balance that nerdiness out.. And he’s pretty tall, even as a normal human..

Akira just smiled slightly at Goro from his spot on the couch, twirling a bit of his now horn-free hair. “Well.. Sometimes, my kind has to regenerate a little at times. Sort of like those “Time Masters” from “Doctor Whom”, or whatever that human show is.

Except I just have roughly the same face, hair and voice every time. I’m halfway through at the moment, so in human terms, I am currently, in both mind and body, 16 years old... again. Does it make you feel more comfortable for me to look like this? You don’t seem too unhappy about it-”

Goro felt his cheeks heat up, and he just tried to not think about how alluring Akira’s new grey eyes looked, instead interrupting Akira in his tracks and turning his tomato-red face away again. “J-just tell me your coffee preference, please.”

“Just a touch of sugar and no creamer,” Akira reported, and the other teen could practically feel the disguised demon lord’s wink being sent in his direction as he grounded up the coffee beans in a bowl with the butt of a nearby hammer.

Dammit.. This’ll be a long however-long-he’ll-be-here, won’t it.. he thought with a frown, silently regretting ever going through with his little demon-summoning plan to ruin Shido’s day. Jeez, and on top of me getting the wrong otherworldly being, I end up with one that’s attractive!! I wish so badly to scream, Goro further thought, feeling his cheeks go on fire as he dumped the ground coffee into its filter, practically slamming the door on the filter hole shut just to snap himself out of it.

Evidently, he now had the craving to just go sit and talk with Akira for awhile instead. Goro was grateful for the stinging pain of his left hand when he grabbed the sugar bowl, grateful for a distraction from his mind’s silly, likely insomnia-caused thoughts.

Goro shook his head at himself again, sighing as the microwave beeped to indicate the leftovers somehow didn’t get burnt.

I guess I really am wanting to date a demon lord.. Practically inevitable since he’s taken up flirting with me.. I guess this’ll just. Happen. Why not.

---

END

#ShuAkeWeek2K19 #akeshu #let us start the game #second advent of the detective prince #frizzy hair #save point #this gives me inspiration #that's right folks! this one's a double whammy #the fic bit i actually thought up WHILE i was doing the art bit so it took a lil longer ahaaaah #also uhh idk if i'll rlly elaborate on this particular idea but i'll post more if i do

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3packsfrom21 · 4 years

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Taste of Asia

I’m writing this with just under a week left in our trip, wondering where the time went. Cambodia has been visited and crossed off our list, leaving us with only one more country to go. We arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, on November 22 (Janae’s birthday) and got a bit of a shock. I think Janae and I had forgot what Asia is truly like, and after already spending 2 weeks in Indonesia, I thought the culture shock had passed. To our surprise, it was just beginning. We took a tuk-tuk from the airport (cheapest way we’d found that wasn’t extremely complicated) and were assailed by a sensory overload. The streets were a mash of vehicles of various shapes and sizes, all trying to usurp authority on the road in the absence of any order. Along the streets were people selling anything from a shoeshine to fish squewers, and I’ll let you imagine how the two of those would smell mixed together along with the constant smell of urine and car fumes. We planned on staying only long enough to do laundry and find a way of getting out to the Islands. So, we only had two nights booked at a cheap hostel in the city center. This was probably the worst place we’d stayed so far. A fellow traveler compared it to a meth lab. He wasn’t far off. The place was dirty overall and the walls were covered in writing and graffiti. Our room was on the fifth floor and there was no elevator. This is not usually a problem, but with heavy packs and stairs that had no consistent depth or spacing, it was a bit of a climb. Watching Lynece try and scale them with her lack of depth perception was slightly amusing.

When we went out to explore, we found produce markets selling fresh fruit beside fresh fish (some were still squirming in their buckets); we ate anything from (what I can only imagine was) blood pudding, to ice cream in a young coconut, to oversized cheerios swimming in dry ice (only in Asia); we sat along the rivers edge, observing the life of locals around us - a young boy playing ecstatically in the mud and diving for fish in the filthy water, baby bath time with Dad, and a local family living on a small long-tail boat. On the second evening, we found a night market that Janae and Lynece spent an abnormally (though not uncharacteristically) long amount of time admiring. For the first time on this trip, I felt very far from home.

As it turns out, getting to the less touristy island of Koh Ta Kiev was a bit more complicated that we anticipated. Therefore, we ended up spending 3 nights in the Phnom Penh. During that time we came to really enjoy all that it had to offer and yet weren’t able to shake the feeling that a lot was happening behind closed doors. So, it was with mixed feeling that we left Phnom Penh (November 25th) on a 5h shuttle bus to the city of Sihanoukville (I use the word city loosely, I would more accurately use words like big heap of rubble under construction, armpit of the world, sewer, tragic devastation, post-apocalyptic landfill etc…). We spent the night in a dorm room on Otras beach. The next day, we caught a longboat to Koh Ta Kiev. We had read that the island had little electricity and no cell service (or wifi), which was true, making it all the more special. I’ve never been to a place that embodies the word “paradise” more. We spent the week waking up early (to get the most out of the sunlight), taking a morning swim before a delicious breakfast, relaxing in hammocks and reading the many books that Janae had convinced us to bring (that we hadn’t had the chance to read), dipping and sipping in the afternoon, before indulging in delicious dinner - curry or marvelous wood-oven pizza. We spent many of the nights star-gazing and having those night-time deep conversations, amazed that there were still many topics left to explore. Then, back at our bungalow, we were greeted each night by beetles (sizes ranging anywhere from a small bumblebee to a large cockroach), that found our bags to be their perfect new home. We were glad to escape into our net-covered beds and go to sleep to the (roaring) sound of the jungle.

One night we went on an excursion to elephant rock, located on the other side of the island. Janae and Lynece both got to try cliff jumping, crossing it off of their list of things they wanted to do. The rock (which really did look like an elephant) was between 6-8 meters high, depending on the tide; Janae and Lynece were the only girls who jumped and did so with only mild discomfort to their bottoms. I decided to just swim and hold their life jackets (I think I had more fun). We then went and watched the sun set from the boat, before returning to our hostel.

Before coming to the island we’d read that there were glowing plankton that would show up in the water after dark. I was skeptical after not seeing them the first few nights, but turns our you actually have to go in. We made our way down the beach in the dark, praying to not come into contact with anything harmful in the black water. The unsettled feeling left as we entered the water, finding it to be full of sparkling lights which twinkled with the slightest movement of your body. This will be something I will remember for the rest of my life; it reminded me of something you might see in the land of Avatar, something out of this world. Swimming after dark became part of our nightly routine and was just as magical each time. It’s so fun discovering the mysteries that God has placed throughout his creation. They have to be experienced, the imagination just doesn’t cut it.

With much sadness, we left our paradise (Dec. 3) and took an overnight bus to Siem Reap. We booked a sleeper bus that was supposed to have double beds, but in Cambodia a double bed just means a single with two pillows on it. We’d met a couple on the island that gave us tons of advice on how to go about seeing the Angkor Wat and so our first day in Siem Reap was spent preparing for the next two days - renting bikes and buying our tickets for the temple.

We spent the next two days biking under massive trees and wandering around the temples in the massive Angkor area, trying to see as many things as possible while still enjoying ourselves. We covered around 60-70km, spending 22hours over 2 days. We ate breakfast (PB&J on bread) on temple steps while watching the sunrise over the Angkor Wat, had our lunch among ruined pillars in Prasat Preah Khan, and drank young coconut while sitting on massive tree roots overlooking Prasat Ta Keo. In order to make the most out of our mountain bikes, we spent a bit of time both days bombing around on jungle paths, doing our best to get lost. Between the three of us, it would take a couple days to go through all our pictures. Even with all that, we agreed that it would take another 3-7 day pass in order to feel like we’d actually seen it.

The temples are covered in intricate carvings and many have large portions of crumbled rubble. Still, there are very few areas that are actually closed off to visitors. Not many safety barricades, much to our adventuring delight. Out of the 8 temples we got to, our favorite was Prasat Preah Khan. We saw it during the second day, and, as usual, it wasn’t even part of our plan. Just something we happened across. When walking up to it, it looks rather small, but as soon as you step inside you are met with a corridor of open doorways as far as you can see. From the center, there are hallways shooting off into four different directions. Each hallway seems to be unending. We learned later that the complex was once a university, which explained its short, sprawling layout. It also contained a small two-story library with round pillars. According to the security guard we talked to, the library was the only building in Cambodia with these Roman-style round pillars. We spent a fair amount of time wandering and admiring the details, before we had to move on. We probably only saw 1/3 of the complex.

In the end, we were all very bottom-sore and exhausted, though thoroughly thrilled and amazed. We ended our second day with an overnight bus to Bangkok, ending our time in Cambodia. Thailand marks the end of our trip and the last of our posts. Till next time…

Akun ~ Kiana

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acampinglife · 4 years

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RV Camping at Disney’s Fort Wilderness

If you’re like me, you hear the word “Disney” and you automatically get filled with a sense of excitement and magic! I mean they pay attention to every tiny detail and always manage to create a sense of adventure and wonderment. So, of course, Disney’s Fort Wilderness is no exception. After having spent some time there myself, I can say that it is definitely worth the trip.

Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground opened in November 1971. The resort has campsites and air-conditioned Wilderness Cabins situated on 750 acres of lush forest of pine and cypress trees. You will most likely see plenty of wildlife such as rabbits, deer, armadillos, ducks, geese, and peacocks roaming the grounds.

The campground has private sites and features all the amenities of other campgrounds, with quite a few Disney extras. It includes two heated pools that are open 24 hours a day, rental cabins, several restaurants and stores, a marina, playgrounds, tennis courts, horse and pony rides, a petting zoo, fishing, bike rentals, private carriage rides, and so much more.

To get you started, here are some tips to make sure you have a memorable stay at Fort Wilderness.

Be ready for the changing weather in Florida:

Since the campground is in Florida, it’s something the whole family can enjoy year-round. That being said, Florida’s weather can go from hot and humid to stormy—all in one day. Be ready for any type of weather by bringing shelter with bug netting (if you plan to eat outside), awning, and tarps for sudden downpours, and plenty of sunscreen.

Have a pet? Bring them along!:

Fort Wilderness is very pet-friendly and has a leash-free dog park. If you need to board your pet, the Best Friends Pet Care facility will take care of them while you visit the theme parks. For more information on pet policy, check it out here.

Rates and Sites:

First of all, to enjoy this fabulous adventure...you need an RV! We can help you with that part. We have many different RVs for you to choose from to fit your needs. All of them offer a luxurious camping experience; www.camperfunpass.com is where you start. Fort Wilderness has campsites for all sizes of RVs. Keep in mind, even with all those campsites, there are no pull-thru spots. So if you have a larger camper or trailer, you will need to back in.

The campground’s premium campsites are currently around $121 per night, versus a tent or pop-up camper site for around $78 per night. If you’re an annual passholder, you are eligible for significant discounts throughout the year. Availability varies and many times rates aren’t announced until three or four months in advance so keep an eye out.

Most sites are fairly secluded from one another by bushes and trees between sites. The campsites range in length from 25 to 60 feet. Each site is about 25 feet wide and comes with a picnic table and charcoal grill.

All sites have electricity (20/30/50 amps) and city water. There are certain full hookup sites that also provide sewer. There are also partial hookup sites, primarily used by tent campers and those with tent trailers. When

booking be sure to specify the RV’s length, if it has slide outs or awnings, and any other details about its size when making a reservation so the right sized campsite is assigned to you.

Things to bring:

Flashlight or lantern

Insect repellent

Charcoal and matches

Extension cord, rope or clothesline cord

Toolbox

Fire extinguisher

Hatchet/ax

Broom and dustpan

Trash bags

Outdoor rug

Water pressure regulator

Drinking water hose, gray water hose and holding container

Wheel chocks, leveling blocks

Roll of quarters for laundry, laundry detergent

And, of course, the keys!

Comfort Stations and Laundry Facilities:

There are a number of comfort stations located through the campground. The comfort stations are all air-conditioned and include private showers, restrooms, laundry rooms, phones, and ice machines. They are open 24 hours a day, with the exception of the laundry. The washers and dryers each cost $3. Vending machines for single-load laundry detergent, fabric softener and bleach cost about $1.

Getting around Fort Wilderness:

Unless you plan on walking endlessly all day to get to where you want to go in the campground, I highly recommend a golf cart, which we also rent out for your convenience. In case you forgot it’s...www.camperfunpass.com. Just a reminder, the campground is about 750 acres!

There are internal buses running within the campground to get you to the marina, the Trading Posts, pools, etc., but bus waits can be up to 20 minutes.

You gotta eat!:

Dining includes restaurants, dinner shows, and snack bars – all serving American food. Restaurant meals range from under $15 to $60 per person, based on the average Guest check, not including alcohol, tax and tip.

Crockett’s Tavern offers beverages and snacks such as pizza, quesadillas, etc.

Trail’s End Restaurant provides an all you can eat buffet for breakfast and dinner, a menu for lunch.

P and J’s Southern Take Out – carry-out items all day.

Chuck Wagon offers burgers, sandwiches, and salads to go.

Meadow Snack Bar offers salads, sandwiches, light snacks, and frozen treats to go.

Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue an all-you-can-eat dinner show.

You won’t be bored with many more activities:

Tennis: Two lighted tennis courts with complimentary equipment available for resort guests at the Bike Barn, if you don’t want to bring your own.

Archery Experience: Whether newbie or expert, an archery guide at the Bike Barn offers training and tips on how to hit the bulls-eye!

Specialty Cruises: cruise around Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon with the option of ending with a view of the Magic Kingdom Fireworks.

Tri-Circle-D Ranch – offers guided trail rides on horseback. There’s also pony rides for children at least 2 years old, weighing no more than 80 pounds and no taller than 48 inches. They must be able to hold on by themselves.

Playgrounds -- Let the kiddos burn off some steam at outdoor activity areas located at Pioneer Hall, the Meadow Recreation area, Creekside Meadow and the Marina/Beach area.

Nightly Wagon Rides at Pioneer Hall. You can also book private carriage rides.

Bicycle, kayak, and canoe rentals.

Fishing in canals (free) or chartered largemouth bass fishing excursions on Bay Lake, which include a professional guide, refreshments (soft drinks, coffee, hot chocolate & water), fishing gear and bait.

Horseshoes and shuffleboard, basketball and tetherball courts

Arcades – Davy Crockett Arcade at Pioneer Hall (near Settlement Depot) and Daniel Boone Arcade (near Meadow Trading Post).

Two heated outdoor swimming pools.

Water skiing, wakeboarding, parasailing.

Swamp Trail – 3/4 mile loop along the shore of Bay Lake

Fort Wilderness Exercise Trail – 2.3 mile paved and sand path

For more information on all these activities, click here. The address for Fort Wilderness is at 4510 N. Ft. Wilderness Trail, Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-1000. Phone is: 407-824-2900; Fax is: 407-824-3508.

I hope this helps you plan a magical Disney trip to Fort Wilderness! We know camping and RVs. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us...we’re friendly! www.camperfunpass.com or call us at 407-413-6854. Let’s plan your amazing adventure!

#rv rental #disney #fortwilderness #camp #camping #camperfunpass #traveltrailer #orlando #florida #campground #rv #camper

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deannasbeautyshop · 5 years

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Money Gifting Legit? Discover If This Company Design Is Good or Poor. Full Reality Found Here

The Reality Regarding Cash Money Gifting ... Part 1

We've all heard about the next BIG home based organisation opportunity. You understand, the one that will make you an immediate millionaire and also you will not need to do any type of work to arrive. All you have to do is send out in your cash as well as the following point you recognize in 30 to 60 days you will never ever have to go to the 9 to 5 ever before once more. Yes, as well as I have a parcel of land ...

We likewise all know that advertising on the net can be a risky business at finest if we understand nothing about the firm or even better several of individuals that promote the business. A growing number of we all need to have our scam radar burning the midnight oil to decode the real operate at residence opportunity from the Get Rich Quick scheme.

Among the most effective revenue possibilities ever before supplied is a "genuine" Cash Gifting program. Currently with that claimed it must be brought to light that there is a distinction in this sort of program. Some cash programs in the past were just "pyramid schemes" dressed up for an evening out on the town. So allow's look at what it requires to make an actual Money Gifting program work for anybody that obtains included.

Money Gifting can be specified as: The act of privately or publicly providing an additional individual or entity a declared sum of cash money, (as a gift) and giving it easily without coerce or factor to consider. Cash money Gifting remains in no way a loan or any kind of type of payment for items or services received. Now think why it's called a money present ... because that's specifically what it is.

Let's lay out a few of the reasons a few of the Cash money Gifting programs in the past have actually stopped working in a really short time:

1) The creators of some of these programs had no concept of exactly how to establish a correct

Cash Gifting program to assist the participants with a working "business version". Any type of online business or operate at house possibility needs an appropriate plan of procedure to be a success, also a Cash Gifting program.

2) No tracking system was developed to keep all of the participants abreast of what loan were coming their way or when to expect them.

3) There were no legal documents developed neither provided to outline the transfers of cash money presents from a single person to an additional.

4) In some circumstances there was no proven or examined marketing system attended to the members. Along with not giving checked advertising principles, the members were established to fail prior to they ever before got started, unless they were skilled experts.

5) Without a way to track the participants advertising and marketing efforts no person understood what, when, why or exactly how their tough earned dollars were being spent and what as a matter of fact was their ROI. (Return On Investment).

So what did this all lead up to? In the past lots of Cash money Gifting programs swiftly obtained classified as unethical and some were called pyramid plans or perhaps rip-offs. Currently, in a lot of instances this was not real, but without a proper "organisation model", fate prevailed. I make certain a a great deal people have actually obtained the "Send $5 to 5 individuals and also you can make a kazillion bucks in the following thirty days" letter. That type of Money Gifting letter is the excellent instance of the old adage "one bad apple can ruin the entire number".

Remain tuned for sequel of this series and also more pertinent information on Cash Gifting and also other home organisation chances.

God Bless and Always Keep In Mind To Make It A Great Day!!

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abdifarah · 6 years

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Hotel Pennsylvania

Central Pennsylvania is weird. Homeowners string confederates flags as nonchalantly as Christmas lights. My mom, who moved to Central Pennsylvania against my protests, lives about ten miles from Spring Grove, PA, which we have to drive through whenever we visit my Aunt Darlene and Uncle Kenny right below the Pennsylvania–Maryland line. Spring Grove is a cruel joke of a name as the town perpetually smells of rancid cabbage. The smell emanates from the Glatfelter Paper Mill at the heart of the town. All the shops and services in the town either bear the Glatfelter name or use some corny paper pun in their signage. The old brick row homes that line Main Street have porches but no one sits on them. If you do see someone on the street they have an exhausted expression well beyond their years, perhaps from too many cigarettes, or possibly from years of hopelessly working at the paper mill. A cloud – both literal and spiritual – hangs over Spring Grove.

But there is another kind of small town in Central Pennsylvania. All the companies in this town are higher tech with little pollution to diffuse the sun. Power washed brick houses with immaculately manicured lawns line the small streets of Lititz, Pennsylvania. Voted the Best Small Town in America by AARP, every block has either an ice cream stand, or a guitar shop, or a quaint bed and breakfast. On any summer afternoon the sidewalks and streets are filled with happy people. Kids in their bathing suits weave through older pedestrians on Razor scooters. Fit and fresh faced adults in Tevas and Birkenstocks walk dogs, and still active older couples in Brooks Brothers hold hands while taking an evening stroll. It's the kind of town that takes the Fourth of July very seriously. Year round every house has the same 4 x 6 foot American flag fixed at the same 45 degree angle from a post of the white painted porches that wrap each facade, so as to clear up any confusion with one’s neighbor. “Oh, you’re American? I’m American too! What are the chances?” But around the Fourth somehow more American flags appear. They break out those pleated half-circle numbers with the concentric red, white, and blue ring with the star in the middle, and drape them over their porch railings. Little old ladies plant entire fields of miniature flags in public green spaces, in memory of fallen soldiers. (When exactly did the 4th of July merge with Memorial Day? Let there be no question, Lititz, Pennsylvania loves the troops. In Lititz the 4th alone cannot contain the fireworks, but anytime for about a week before and after you can expect to hear a random boom and see a starburst of red white or blue sparks in the sky.

Unlike Spring Grove, Lititz is thriving, bolstered by a constellation of steady companies offering both good paying blue collar work as well as more tech driven white collar jobs. There is a Rolex factory here. Lititz is what I assume Trump supporters envision when they pray Make America Great Again. Surprisingly, despite the overt patriotism and trappings of Americana, Lititz is not Trump Country. The cute coffee shops and overpriced bistros are populated by salt and pepper haired businessmen pissed that Trump’s steel tariffs are cutting into the bottom line, as well as woke college kids home for summer break shedding genuine tears over the separation of immigrant families at the border. Turns out a lot of white folks despise Trump as much if not more than us various minorities.

Despite the friendly faces and preponderance of liberal allies, my skin still crawls in this still uber-white small town. I am usually the only brown person in sight and while the eyes are kind I do feel all eyes on me wherever I go. I imagine walking into a dark divey bar in depressed Spring Grove and the proverbial record screeches and some grisled bartender asks acerbically, “What are you doing here!?” In Lititz the look on peoples’ faces asks the same “What are you doing here?” without the coldness, but rather with concern or surprise, as if to ask “Are you lost?” “How did you stumble upon our white oasis?” I come to Lititz regularly for work as a subcontractor for one of the big companies fueling the prosperity of Lititz, a company called Tait Towers. Most people will never hear about Tait Towers but they are ubiquitous. If you have gone to a big arena concert in the last 30 years you have seen their work, as they are the foremost supplier of decking and stage equipment for rock and pop concert tours. Anything sleek and shiny and automated that adorned the stage of that last concert you attended was probably Tait. I get called in when they are working on something a little weirder, handmade, idiosyncratic. Over the years assisting Tait’s in-house Scenic Department, we have built a gold vinyl wrapped tiger and lion for Katy Perry, sculpted a 30 foot jungle Tree for Britney Spears, and created an ice crystal themed stage for Lady Gaga. Turns out the ladies of pop like hand made props to counteract their synthesized sound, for which me and my bank account are grateful. It's not the most avantgarde work, but the pay is decent. They put me up in hotel while I am there. For a while I had Hilton Diamond Status after a particularly long five month stay designing and building an inflatable tree for Cirque du Soleil’s Avatar themed show, Toruk. Strangely, I get asked to make a lot of trees.

This past Saturday I was leaving the local laundromat. My hotel has a washer and dryer but I still jump at any opportunity show my black face in town and mix it up with the townspeople. However awkward, I am a glutton for punishment. As I was turning the corner out of the laundromat parking lot I almost shocked myself into an accident as I witnessed a Chinese family on their porch within a row of houses. Where had these people been during those homogeneous 4th of July celebrations or during those awkward evenings I spent at the bar of the Bull’s Head, a local tavern? I suspected that there was a whole unseen community of minorities in Lititz. I remembered the handful of other black and brown people that worked at Tait. Why had I not seen this more diverse crowd during my daily coffee runs to the local bakery, Dosie Dough, or out walking their dogs or playing with their children in the evening? It seemed that the other people of color went to work, did their job, and immediately jetted home as soon as the day was done. Also, a lot of them probably chose to forego small town living in favor of the more urban Lancaster, Pennsylvania about seven miles south of Lititz.

After a few weeks in Lititz, I too found myself retreating to my hotel room after the work day. Should I go out for dinner for a little more ambiance or grab a drink at the bar with its potential for conversation. The pessimistic belief that I would be the only black person and the sole vessel to absorb the awkward stares proved exhausting. I would instead microwave an Amy’s Mexican casserole bowl for dinner and catch up on the last season of The Americans. At some point myself and the other people of color of Lititz made an unspoken pact with the white people of this sleepy town that we would do our jobs and go home immediately in order to perpetuate the belief that this was one of those ideal small towns, the kind that could be voted Best Small Town in America. When I imagine the best small town in America sadly I do not see a Chinese family, black welders, or even myself.

After years of coming to work with Tait I can confidently say that I hate classic rock. Tait is all about classic rock. The founder, Michael Tait, an Australian expat, got his start building stages for the band Yes in the 60’s. As an independent artist, my short stints with Tait represent my only times working in a real workplace with set hours. For years the shop was haunted by an omnipresent Muzak system that played classic rock incessantly. Everyday at around 4pm the Eagles’ “Hotel California”, a song written by Satan himself, would torment us. Working 10 to 12 to 14 hour days to meet a deadline, 4 o’ clock was our witching hour; too late in the day to bring any new energy or insights to the project, much too early to begin cleaning up for the day. The lyrics, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” taunted me, less because of their spot on description of my current predicament but more because they’re just stupid. Hearing the same “classic” songs day after day I realized the utter mediocrity of classic rock as whole. Just competently melodic enough to be easy to listen to, unlike say punk or metal (both far superior). Lyrically the stories ranged from completely meaningless, to embarrassingly infantile, to undeniably problematic. Somehow we decided that this was the American music, over jazz, blues, funk, and r&b. Classic rock will be playing on the space shuttle we board after we successfully destroy earth and it will be playing on whatever outpost we establish on the faraway planet we colonize.

Currently, I am working on a set of nine sculptures of Elton John that will array the proscenium arch above the stage for his upcoming tour. Overall, I enjoy this work. At least it is not another tree. And as far as pop music goes I dig Elton John’s music more than some of the other pop stars for whom I have made art. However, at the end of a long day sculpting his strange bulbous nose and thin lips for the seventh, eighth or ninth time I begin to sour a bit on Sir Elton. Elton John is 73 years old (probably older since, like most performers, I assume he gave a younger age when he started out) and we are building a stage for him for a projected three year tour that will net him millions of dollars. How many black artists or other musicians of color are still relevant and can sell out arenas into their 60’s and 70’s? Maybe Stevie Wonder? I can easily name 20 white (male) musicians. We already mentioned Elton John; how about Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Aerosmith, Sting, Ozzy Osbourne, Jimmy Buffett? I can keep going. Were these giants of rock undeniably better than their female contemporaries or artists of color working at the same time so as to secure an undying career into infinity?

I read in an article years ago detailing some of the financial troubles of T-Boz and Chilli of TLC, that they did not have much money coming in outside of the $1200 royalty check they received monthly. TLC was a group notoriously mistreated and shortchanged by their management and record labels yet they still had $1200 a month in royalties arriving like clockwork. I can barely begin to fathom what a group like the Rolling Stones receives in regular royalties. At any moment a Rolling Stones song plays somewhere on this blue planet. I hypothesize that the proliferation of classic rock around the world may be the biggest form of white welfare. According to the website, Inside Philanthropy, Jimmy Buffett is worth $550 million. He has one terrible song that he has somehow parlayed into a fortune! He is then free to spread that money among various causes or toward organizations like the NRA. Or take rock and roll’s running joke that the Rolling Stones, despite their hard living are somehow, immortal. While humorous and perplexing we all know the reason for these artist’s longevity. Being wanted, having work to do, being asked to perform, and the monetary and emotional support they afford sustains one’s life. I cannot help but feel that the melancholy that we collectively share when a giant of black music dies – Prince a few years back and Aretha Franklin most recently – stems from the understanding that despite their great fame and success their talent deserved more. They deserved Rolling Stones level treatment. Is there a better rock and roll song that Franklin’s “Respect” or “Chain of Fools?” I should have been in Lititz making nine life-size sculptures of Aretha Franklin and not Elton John.

The last time I arrived at Tait to work on a project I noticed the absence of the Muzak system. Every department now controlled their own music. Sometimes someone plays from their Spotify or Apple Music or we just put on the radio. Much to my chagrin and confusion, somehow the Freddy Kruger of classic rock continues to haunt me even with my mostly young coworkers choosing the music. Someone will mindlessly put on the “Beatles Radio” on Pandora, or WXPN, a Philly radio station, will have a “Throwback Thursday” traversing the entire discography of the Rolling Stones. One day during WXPN’s regular offerings (usually a mix of new rock with a few eclectic curve balls thrown every now and then) Childish Gambino AKA Donald Glover’s “This is America” came on (I too am surprised by the ubiquity of this song as I viewed it less as something to casually listen to and more as the multi-level artwork that I was initially presented with through its graphic video. But alas, the song bumps). Almost instinctively, without prompt, fanfare, or commotion one of my coworkers changed the channel. After hours of absorbing banal rock something mysterious sparked a station change. I tried to put this incident out of my mind. Soon after someone put on an Itunes 80’s playlist. Somehow 80’s music has come to mean “White 80’s”; Culture Club, Billy Idol, and all that other Breakfast Club, Top Gun, Say Anything music, completely omitting black acts, save titans like Michael Jackson and Prince. Surprisingly, a Janet Jackson song slipped onto this mostly vanilla playlist, but almost as soon as I started bouncing my shoulders and popping my neck along with Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle” someone calmly put down their tools, walked to the computer and skipped to the next song!

I work with genuinely good people. The same liberal minded white people that I would overhear furiously denouncing Trump in the coffee shop. But there was something unconsciously disturbing about a black voice coming out of the office speakers, and conversely something calming and reassuring about A-Ha’s “Take On Me,” which restored the stasis after Janet’s interruption. Was the promulgation of classic rock and other culturally white genres part of some conspiracy to entrench whiteness as the default and everything else an aberration? The truth was probably less insidious and more banal, but no less effective. Sometimes I’ll muster the courage to take over DJ duties and I will attempt to put on a more colorful station or playlist, but even I find myself squirming with embarrassment if a particular black song plays. I am conscious that, unlike those classic rock songs that we all know to the point of no longer hearing them, every word of an unfamiliar song from an unfamiliar voice conspicuously grabs the attention and appears in bold text before ones eyes, complete with a bouncing ball keeping place. This can become awkward when, say, Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” comes on during a 90’s Jams Playlist. I want a freak in the morning/ A freak in the evening, just like me/ I need a roughneck nigga/ That can satisfy me. Why should a song that boldly expresses black female sexuality be awkward for me? I listen to plenty of songs all day that foreground white male sexuality: AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” or Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.” Or why should a rap song with explicit lyrics put the room in a frenzy? Eric Clapton literally has a song called, “Cocaine.”

White supremacy resides not only within the purview of avowed white supremacists; that resident of Spring Grove or Dover with truck nuts hanging off his gun metal grey Ford Raptor with the giant confederate flag waving. We are all complicit. The MAGA white supremacist is not the only one lying to themselves about America’s past. The liberal resident of Lititz is as well. So am I. Somewhere we all believed the wonderfully illustrative mid-century American propaganda that America was a white family behind a white picket fence and that everyone else is just borrowing space, when in reality people from all ethnic backgrounds have shared this country since day one. And to be more factual there was a time on this land mass before white people; before genocide, theft, and slavery. Us people of color need to combat this as well. We may be mathematical minorities, but we are not new here. We are not the cousin crashing on the couch, lying awake and hungry, afraid to go to the kitchen and make food, so as not to disturb the owners of the house. We need to not be ashamed of our music, our existence. We need to show up and be seen; at those corny 4th of July celebrations and especially at the voting booth, reminding all onlookers that we are just as American. Only then might we all imagine a more diverse picture when we think of the Best Small Town in America, and only then might I be freed from the hell of “Hotel California” playing on my radio into eternity.

#music #aretha franklin #elton john #pennsylvania #america #rocknroll

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rachelisnotatwork · 6 years

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Week 2: in which it is very windy and we nearly drown (spoiler alert) but we do find a giant prawn

On Monday we left our rather gorgeous B&B in Kalbarri and headed further up North. The drive was a bit...monotonous. There was literally nothing to stop at or see for three hours, nor even any corners. Just a straight road, one lane in either direction, and some dead kangaroos by the side of the road.

After three hours, we reached the start of the peninsula we were going to stay on. Our first stop off was stromatolites. In case you don’t know what this is (I didn’t) it is a microbial mat that gradually builds up and turns into a rock. This is just as scenic as you imagine it to be. I was...underwhelmed. Apparently they were very important in oxygenating the earth and early life, so I guess thanks? The best bit was it was near the only shop for several hundred kilometres and they sold magnums, so ice cream and toilet stop win (no wilderness wees for me here since everything is toxic and I’m bad at spotting wildlife).

Our next stop was a place called shell bay, which is a super saline bay (evapouration, lack of currents etc) that only has one type of cockle living and dying there in epic proportions. It was quite pretty so I guess that wins over microbial mats. We also got asked by some tourists where the nearest petrol station was because their reserve light was on and had been for ages. The news there were none for at least 50km was not received well.

Our final stop off was Eagle Bluff, which is an overlook with a boardwalk. We saw a turtle from above, and I learnt about nervous sharks, which are frankly the only sharks I feel I might be on board with since I like timidity in my biting predators.

I also learnt about the existence of stone fish, which it suggests you take precautions to avoid. I was already concerned about going in the sea due to sharks, jellyfish, saltwater crocodiles and sea snakes (which I wasn’t even aware were actual creatures, not mythological beasts until this trip). I googled stone fish and added them to the “For Fuck’s Sake” list. Apparently they hang out looking like a stone (or bury themselves in the sand) but unlike a stone their backs are covered in spikes that can penetrate a boot sole and these are covered in agonising toxins that can both kill you and if doesn’t kill you, forever wither your limb due to the nerve damage. Fabulous.

We finally drove into Denham in the late afternoon. It is a town of 600 people in the middle of nowhere but it has a surprisingly decent supermarket. After a late afternoon snack of vintage cheddar and pumpernickel, we set out for a walk.

We tried somewhere called the Little Lagoon first. On the way we saw an echidna crossing the road and were very glad, since some tourists had stopped on the opposite side of the road to photograph it, that we hadn’t swung around the corner 20 seconds earlier and flattened it in front of the crowd. The lagoon itself was very dull, but we did follow the creek of it to the beach to enjoy sunset.

Directly after sunset the wind really picked up, which was a bit alarming as we are staying in a mobile home (accommodation is both sparse and expensive) and it started to creak somewhat ominously with the wind. We did however survive until morning which is always a plus.

Tuesday morning we drove across to Monkey Mia (deeply confusing name as there are definitely no monkeys in Australia but it is something to do with aboriginal names for dolphins and a pearling ship) to go on a nature spotting boat trip.

Monkey Mia is some sort of national park reserve but in a deeply un-national park fashion, they feed the dolphins in the morning (whilst putting up lots of signs telling you how feeding wildlife is awful and you mustn’t do it). This is mainly at 7.45am, which might as well be never on my schedule, so we thought we wouldn’t bother as they only sometimes feed them later. But luckily for us, we embarked on our boat tour just as they started feeding some so we got some great views of greedy dolphins indulging in unnatural behaviour (which is obviously exactly what you want on a nature cruise).

At first I was a little dispirited as our boat featured a crowd of elderly pensioners from a coach tour, so thought the whole trip would be full of elderly fallers and people bawling to hear each other over their hearing aids. But actually the first pensioner who struck up a conversation with us had emigrated to Australia 60 years ago because her husband was a doctor and he was horrified about the NHS coming into being. So they headed off down under and he became a rural doctor in the middle of nowhere, providing all the medical services a hospital probably does now and she used to assist him when he did operations on the kitchen table. Now she seemed to be off having a great time not being old- after explaining how the last time she hung out in the net they drag off the back of the boat so you get repeatedly dunked (it’s for kids and she said she thought “Am I too old for this? And then thought NO”), she headed off to climb onto the roof of the boat. She later did a Titanic impression and gave us pilfered cheese and crackers. My new life goal is to be her when I’m old. The next one told us about how he grew up in Perth but his sweetheart was in Tasmania, so he used to load up his car with days worth of petrol, water and food and head out across the untarmacked enormous Nullarbor desert hoping for the best. Made us feel a bit wussy with our aircon and cooler bag full of snacks in the car.

In addition to fun pensioner spotting, we also saw a lot of dolphins and turtles. One of the dolphins even decided to hang out at the front of our boat, surfing the bow wave and doing twirls in it. We then spent a long time cruising to look for dugongs, and getting irritated because we kept spotting turtles instead. Eventually we did see a mother and calf, although given how they swim you couldn’t really see the faces which are the most distinguishing part.

We cruised back and laughed at some pelicans on the beach.

Then we ate lunch at a restaurant overlooking the shore. From the terrace you could see the water. In which two children frolicked. We watched as a dolphin slowly swam closer and closer until he surfaced right behind one of the kids, who was a boy of about ten. Said child turned, saw the dolphin, shot about ten foot up into the air and ran out of the ocean in flailing all of his limbs. Pretty sure the dolphin was laughing.

After lunch we decided since there were so many dolphins just merrily splashing about in the water, we’d go kayaking. We rented a kayak. We headed out into the water. All of the wildlife immediately disappeared and the wind picked up so we spent about an hour trying not to get blown out to sea.

After we got back to shore some children were encircling a goanna. With the touching faith children have in adults, they asked me if it was dangerous. I said yes, because I think you have to assume everything here could probably liquefy your organs with a scratch. So apologies to those parents, as I assume their kids are probably having nightmares about lizards now.

When we had booked our original boat tour, we also got a free sunset cruise with the same company. So at 16.45 we headed back to the jetty to see that all the dolphins who had spent the last hour hiding were currently participating in a right by the shore war with the pelicans, who were giving as good as they got. Apparently pelicans piss dolphins off by following them around. When the dolphin has diligently found a fish and herded it to the surface, before it can move in for the kill the pelican that has been tailing it swoops in and nabs the fish. Knew pelicans had the look of right bastards about them.

That was about the best animal spotting we had on the sunset cruise. The dolphins aren’t supposed to be fed after midday but I concluded from the fact they kept hanging around all day by the feeding part of the shore, that they are like cats. Eternal optimists and poor time-keepers, always hoping someone might give them some fish.

The cruise was beautiful but the wind really picked up. To 31 knots, to be precise, which is 35mph, which is a lot more wind then you want when it is getting cold, you are in summery clothes and you are very, very exposed on the roof of a catamaran. They had to lower the sail because they were concerned the wind was going to damage it.

When we got back to shore there was another dolphin being scenic and hanging out right by the beach, which made our rather windy trip and cold trip seem rather pointless. But on the way home, driving carefully to avoid a kangaroo massacre, we did see a gorgeous blood red moon rising.

Wednesday we set off to drive to our next spot, the town of Carnarvon. We got there sufficiently early to waste most of the afternoon buying a hat for Marcel (indecisive is too weak a term. There needs to be new vocabulary for the experience of shopping with Marcel), but there was a brief amount of time left to visit a local attraction, the blowholes. They are a bit out of town past some huge salt plains and at a turn off marked with a huge sign saying “King Waves Kill”. This is not hugely reassuring when you are off to stand on a cliff edge drenched by them. It was incredibly windy up there. So windy that the lifebelt on a pole had been flattened to the ground. As a consequence it was not the most relaxing or enjoyable stop. We tried to walk on the beach near it, but again felt like the wind was going to scour the flesh off our bones. Western Australia is...breezy.

Instead we decided to have a wander in town and walked across the old tram lines to Whitlock Island. We didn’t get as far across as the other side of it though, where they have a (sadly shut at the moment) one mile jetty out to sea. Apparently boats used to offload there and then their cargo was carried on trams that used SAILS to help them travel back down the jetty and across the island and into town.

This isn’t the only slightly strange thing about Carnarvon. The reason we had stopped there was to visit the space museum, as during the space race years there was an active station there for communicating with space craft. I had always assumed they just chatted with Houston, but at various different points across the globe they had stations manned by scientists and astronauts to communicate with the space crafts at different points in their orbits. The museum was rather sweet and featured a huge cat called Buzz who liked to sit on the counter and ignore visitors.

Carnarvon was also, strangely, the site of the first live broadcast to and from the UK, because of some satellite they put into the wrong level of orbit, which afforded them 12 minutes to time to broadcast live TV. The BBC decided to use this to provide an early version of video chat and they had an old TV playing the broadcast from the 1960s of very awkward people in Carnarvon talking to similarly awkward parents and siblings sitting in a studio in the UK. Oddly fascinating.

Carnarvon is a huge fruit growing town, so on the way out of town I made Marcel stop so we could buy two of the hugest papayas I’ve seen in my life that I lovingly wrapped in his jumper on the back seat. We then drove on up to Exmouth.

Exmouth is a surprisingly charming town located up on a peninsula by the Ningaloo reef. It is surprisingly lively for it’s size and we stayed in a lovely place (the Ningaloo B&B should you ever find yourself in that part of the word) where our hostess took the local tourist magazine and showed us all the best places to snorkel, shop and eat. We had a great dinner that night at a craft beer and pizza place called the Whalebone Brewing Company. Marcel was in seventh heaven.

The next day we headed into the national park. We had decided to go for a couple of the walks and then snorkel to cool down. The walks were fine, although we failed to see any of the parks famed rock wallabies.

We then decided to head to the beach to snorkel. Our first stop was Oyster Stacks, which they advised could only be snorkelled at mid-high tide. It was alas low tide. So we got out and headed to the next bay.

The next beach along was called Turquoise Bay. The tourist magazine produced by the town recommended the “drift loop” where you walk up the beach, get in and swim out and then drift along the shore over the coral “before getting out near the sandbar”. We drove to the car park where there was a warning that because of currents only moderate to strong swimmers should go in the water. I felt we both hit the category of moderate, so we headed out.

The next ten minutes were an interesting lesson of how good times can go bad exceptionally quickly. The water was pretty cold but the current was managable- it was down the beach but I checked at the entry point that I could swim out and back without drifting at all. So we set out over the reef. The water was cold but we saw some beautiful fish and a 5ft reef shark swam right by us, which was pretty cool (they are generally known to be massive wusses so we weren’t concerned). We were reaching the sandbar so we decided to get out. Only to find that the current here was pretty much a riptide out and around the sandbar. We couldn’t really swim through it to the shore. We got to a point where we should have just about been able to stand and Marcel could, but I was just skidded along the seabed and further towards the sandbar. I kept fighting, getting a face and mouth full of seawater to get in a bit shallower and the tide pulled my flippers off my feet, which I think is the definition of a tide that NO swimmer, regardless of strength, should be in. Eventually I was shallow enough to bury my feet in, and then shallow enough to bury my hands and feet in because the current was so strong I still couldn’t stand in it. So eventually I crawled out the water, farily traumatised with cuts on my toes from where the flippers were ripped off and a fairly large bruise on my hand from it hitting something. A later read of tripadvisor had lots of helpful information from locals about the fact that you shouldn’t swim there at low tide nor go anywhere near the sandbar as the combination of low tide and a hole in the reef near the sandbar creates a riptide out through the reef into the bay. Which would be undesirable in many, many ways as no one would have noticed we were gone, the waves outside the reef are fairly huge and smash down on the reef and it was already late afternoon, so doubt anyone would have spotted our distress. So thanks a bunch National Parks Service and the local tourist information literature for forgetting to mention those fairly important facts for people who don’t want to drown.

At this point I was fairly keen to go home and never see the ocean again. We headed back and celebrated our survival by eating a kilo (and I’m not joking there) of papaya; these papayas were the size of a calf’s head. Bloated, we headed out to an astronomy evening I had booked, which was delightful. The sky around there is very clear and very dark and in winter and spring, you can see Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars in the night sky, all of which we saw with the telescopes. The views were so good you could see the ice cap on Mars.

The next morning we woke up to find an emu with his 4 chicks hanging out in the front garden. Emu fathers raise the chicks for 18 months and are pretty defensive of them, so we stayed safely inside the porch.

We had had more snorkelling planned for the next day but I flat out refused to go into the sea despite Marcel’s claim I shouldn’t let one bad experience put me off (I feel like near-drowning is a very good reason not to ever go in the sea anywhere in Australia ever again, or possibly any sea anywhere ever again) so I left him to it and told him I’d be on the look out for if he got swept out beyond the reef. We had a picnic afterwards on sandy bay, which is beautiful, albeit it windy.

Saw a few huge sea turtles pootling about on our walk there but this wasn’t enough to tempt me back into the sea. On our way back we stopped at the lighthouse. In WW2 it was an important defence site and it is mostly interesting as no one ever removed the sandbags and over the last 70 years they’ve pretty much turned into rocks. They also had some information about the early Qantas flights to Europe, which used seaplanes and were very, very slow. They were up in the air without landing for over 24 hours at a time, so long you’d see the sunrise twice and this was celebrated on landing with a card certifying your membership of the “rare and secret order of the double sunrise”. Times really were more exciting then.

We had to head back earlier than the previous day though because on the advice of our host we’d booked into a whale-watching tour. I have never really bothered signing up for a whale watching tour before as I felt it was unlikely we’d see much of them and Marcel gets really sea sick, so the thought of paying a small fortune to watch Marcel hyperventilate and vomit (whilst not seeing any sea creatures) was not appealing. But this was inside the other side of the penisula (the bit without the coral, badly signed beaches and riptides) which is super calm and this area is where the whales stop on their migration down from the Kimberley area (where they give birth) back to Antarctica, to teach the babies social skills somewhere safe.

I was hoping our boat would be empty as their was some super important Aussie Rules football match on (I didn’t think it was possible to care less about football, but then I discovered they have this weird subtype of it down here that I care even less about) but alas there were other tourists. We headed out and within about 5 minutes were treated to a baby humpback whale repeatedly breaching and playing by the side of the boat. It was super cute. I was ecstatic. And then to continue the theme of bad luck with cameras and sea life, my camera which had claimed it was fine for battery power that morning packed up and died of low battery.

Thankfully I had my iPhone as over the next few hours we were repeatedly treated to the sights and sounds of whales breaching, fin slapping, tail slapping and blowing. Since most of them were mothers and calves, each action by the mother would be copied a few seconds later by the calf. It was pretty amazing. There were so many whales in the bay that looking across the ocean, the plumes of water from whales blowing looked like molehills scattered over a lawn. We also saw a couple of “heat runs”, which is a collection of randy males swimming after a female, hoping to impress her. Even the boat staff said they didn’t normally see this much activity. I felt a bit sorry for them because they were trying to serve canapes but everyone was ignoring them for the whales. It was incredible. I almost forgave Exmouth for the near-drowning. But I didn’t because, epic grudge.

The next morning we set off for Tom Price. On the way out of town I found this giant prawn, and was very happy. Australia is famous for big things by the road (presumably to break up the monoty) and this was the first one we’d spotted.

Tom Price is a mining town, best described as “in the middle of nowhere”, whose only redeeming feature is its proximity to a national park. The option was staying there or glamping. There is no glamour possible in camping, and I do not camp, so the mining town it was.

The drive was about 7 hours. We passed ONE petrol station in 6 hours and two feral cows. That was it for signs of human habitation and animal life. Just a straight road, one lane in either direction, occasional cars passing in the other direction.

We listened to a lot of Bill Bryson’s “Down Under”, which has done nothing to soothe my fears of death by animal life. There are two roads into Tom Price, a more direct one that is used by the mining traffic but is unpaved, and a much longer paved road to the only other town in the area. We took that one, so did get to see some civilisation, and at about that point some hills, which I tell you after pretty much entirely flat desert from Perth is pretty exciting.

The accommodation options in Tom Price are...limited. We were staying in a cabin in a caravan park. Except by cabin, it was more really a converted shipping container into a tiny very basic studio. The interior décor was… a single fridge magnet for the local rural suicide hotline.

I decided to do some laundry before dinner. The laundry room was rather 1970s, and probably to prevent you getting decent value for money, all the knobs to select the cycle on the washing machines had been removed so I put my laundry in under the suspicion what I was actually getting was a cold wash.

I headed back out to get my wash with Marcel. On the way we noticed dozens of tiny frogs. How cute I thought. I removed my washing from the machine to find...one in the bottom of the drum. I was horrified to think I’d killed a frog, but then I realised it was staggering around, head tipped askance and clearly very dizzy (later a friend directed me towards an article about how Nasa used frogs to investigate how the human vestibular system would function in space as apparently frogs have very similar ones to ours and get motion sick from the same activities, so I felt very guilty). Having no idea whether the frog was toxic (as everything else here bloody well is), we spent ages with an elderly magazine we’d found trying to scoop it out of the machine.

It eventually climbed aboard and staggered off into the night to live another day. I then spent a frantic amount of time googling frogs to see if I had washed some toxic frog venom off said frog and onto my clothes. Looks like it was a harmless desert tree frog though. Probably one of only two creatures that can’t kill you here. And so ended week 2, with a slightly higher drama laundry load than I’d anticipated.

Ways I’ve thought I might die in Australia this week:

Death by stone fish, collapsing mobile home and/or ending up in Oz after we disappeared in a tornado, swept out to sea by a king wave whilst admiring a blowhole, capsized on a windy sunset cruise, death by riptide (actually not paranoid about that one but entirely reasonable), eviscerated by an overly defensive emu dad, squashed by a large whale breaching onto our boat, killed by frog toxin from envenomed underpants.

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