#who let national geographic start covering other planets

[70sscifiart]

"Mars' Great Rift," by Ludek Pesek for National Geographic’s Feb 1973 issue

#National Geographic #mars #who let national geographic start covering other planets #space art #Ludek Pesek

[thiswasinevitableid]

17 chosen and 20 lunar for Indruck, nsfw, please!

Here you go!

Lieutenants Log, stardate 10015, Joseph Stern recording

We’ve finally arrived at an agreement with the Aquariads, the species who control this moon. They will allow our research team unfettered access to the planet, but at an odd price. They requested one of our crew agree to be married off to a high ranking member of their governing council. 

I suspect, but cannot prove, that this is not a desirable being to be married to. He’s a revered seer, and yet they’re willing to couple him to a human and not one of their own? Suspicious.

Myself and the other single members of the crew were all given extensive questionnaires on everything from our sexual preferences to our daily habits. It took me a good hour and a half to finish it. 

After a full earth day of waiting, we received word that chief astrobotanist Duck Newton was the chosen human. I have no idea how this happened, as Duck has little tolerance for what he views as “woo-woo” things like precognition. But he was chosen all the same. 

Because this is Duck, he grumbled a bit, but cheered up when he learned he would only be required to stay with his new husband for three weeks before joining us on our field word, and that we can send him specimens for identification and research. If we decide Aquaria is the planet we’ve been looking for and establish more permanent research stations here, Duck will be expected to spend at least a few days a month with the seer. Mama made it clear that if the idea was truly not something he could agree to, she would call the deal off and we could try another approach. Duck said that wouldn’t be necessary, and that he could think of far worse things they could have asked of us. 

We deposit him at the seers home tomorrow. After that, we begin our exploration of Aquaria, fourth moon of the plant Oceana and (hopefully) the home of the antidote we’ve been searching for. 

Joseph Stern, Lieutenant on the spaceship Amnesty, signing off.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Duck waves to the skiff as it pulls away, his planetside bag slung over his shoulder. There’s only one way to go; down the single stone levee, decorated with beautiful tiles, to the massive mansion at the end. 

It reminds him of the photos of Venice he’s seen in old National Geographics, beautiful buildings floating atop a planet of water. He knows Aquaria has islands, but the majority of it’s cities are on or near the water because most of its residents live beneath the waves. They remind Duck of mermaids, with scaled tails and fins giving way to humanoid upper bodies and faces. As far as creatures to get politically married off to, he could be staring down worse. 

There’s still the problem of not knowing why this mer is off by himself and without a partner. Or, as becomes obvious once Duck is inside, any company at all. The other high-ranking aquariads they’ve met come with miles of attendants; here there’s only the high, curved ceilings and rippling water. Maybe the guy is shy? Or maybe he’s a dick? Or just real fucking scary to look at?

As he walks further into the house, he notices the tiled walls are covered in striking murals that, when coupled with the odd half-light allowed in by the green glass windows, makes him feel as though he’s wandering through a dream. The pools and canals criss-cross the floor, and really the ground is more water than concrete, the fact he’s able to walk at all is a concession to the fact some aquariads evolved to be land dwelling. 

A splash makes him turn, and in the pool to his right a black fin cuts the water. He steels himself to not insult the alien he’s now legally attached to. The figure rises from the water, setting his arms on the edge of the stony floor and Duck steps back as a wide, toothy smile appears in an angular face. 

“Hello, Duck Newton.” His tail is the same black as his fin, and his silver hair is tucked behind ears of the same color, which Duck has learned can fan out as a way of communicating. 

“Uh, hi. You must be-”

“Indrid Cold, yes. Apologies, a peril of my profession is that I will always be a little bit ahead.”

“Right. So, uh, guess we’re gonna be seein a lot of each other the next couple of weeks.” He aims for a joking, nonchalant tone. 

“Yes, as we’re married.” He cocks his head, confused, then grins brighter, “Oh, oh I see, you are attempting levity because this is all very awkward. I, ah, I appreciate that. Here, let me show you where you’ll be staying” Indrid pushes off the wall, swimming gracefully on his back as Duck follows him down the hall. The center of the house has more skylights, allowing him to see that his host’s fins aren’t pure black; small silver and white dots are scattered across it. He wonders if he could find constellations in them.

“Here we are.” Indrid gestures to a room, one where the only water is in the form of two deep blue half-circles on the left and right walls. The center of the room is a large bed, linens gleaming whites and pale greens, and the skylight nestles against a chandelier of finely detailed rosey glass. 

“Holy shit.” Duck sets his bag down on a trunk near the door.

“Do you like it?” A flash of yellow up Indrid’s fin, echoed in the dots on his tail.

“I mean, anythin looks ritzy after months on a spaceship but” he turns, smiles, “yeah, I do. Thanks for giving me such nice digs.”

“You are most welcome. Now, this room is designed to give guests privacy. See that red panel on the wall? If you press it, it opens the pool on that side up to the rest of the house, allowing myself or servants to come in and help you.”

“So you do have staff.”

“They’re, ah, more like errand folk. None live here.” Indrid clears his throat, “I can show you the rest of the house, although if you need to sleep I can let you be. I am, ah, not entirely clear on where your internal clock sits now.”

“Aquaria’s days are about four days longer than earth’s, so I ain’t too thrown off. Happy to see more of the place.”

Indrid nods, and Duck follows him out of the bedroom. Most of the other rooms they pass are sparse squares of walkways and still water, under which lies the parts of the house Indrid uses. When they reach Indrid’s quarters, he spots what looks to be an artists’ studio under the clear blue water. 

“You paint?” He kneels and peers down for a better look, Indrid bobbing nearby. 

“Indeed. Art helps me make sense of my visions, and I enjoy it besides. In fact, all the murals you see in this house are my doing. There are even more under water.”

“Damn, that’s fuckin incredible. If I get my SCUBA gear rigged up, maybe I can get a tour?”

“Scu--oh, yes, an underwater breathing apparatus. We have a much smaller device that can help you breathe and sea down here” he dips his head at the pool, “unfortunately, the one I commissioned for you will not arrive until close to the end of your stay. They, ah, did not give me much time to prepare. Hence the lack of many comforts I might otherwise give, as well as places for you to and I to talk, eat or do, ah, other activities together.” The yellow intermittently flashing up his fin gives way to a burst of pink. 

Oh, right. Duck pulls up his infopad (given a generous waterproofing treatment prior to his leaving Amnesty) and opens the contract he signed. 

“Yeah. About that. Says here they expect us to, uh, ‘consummate’ the marriage.”

“I’m aware” Indrid’s voice creeps up.

“Do you...wanna do that now?” He spins a finger in the water.

“I, ah, I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, seems like we could just get it outta the way, rather than have the fact we gotta fuck someone we didn’t pick hangin over our heads?” 

“This...this is not at all how I wanted this to go.” 

Duck looks up and immediately wishes he could reverse time; Indrid looks genuinely hurt, ears flicked back like a scolded dog. 

“Duck I, ah, well, you did not choose me, that is true. But I chose you.”

“Well, fuck.” He sits down with a heavy sigh, “figured some big wigs used those surveys to pick me out. Guess what they say about assumin things is true.”

“.....”

“It makes an ass outta you and me?”

Indrid blinks, then snickers, “Your humor is part of why I chose you. It is very bad, but also extremely good.”

“Glad you think so. Pretty sure Mama was ready to blow me out the airlock for some of the ones I made on the way here.” He knows he’s dodging the conversation they should be having, but how the fuck is he supposed to respond when an alien mermaid tells him he picked him to be his husband?

Indrid swims over so he can rest his arms and chin on the stone, glancing shyly up at Duck as he says, “I suppose I also made an ass of myself, as you would say, by assuming you would not see this as an obligation.”

“I mean, even if you chose me, don’t this feel like an obligation to you?”

“No. For me, it is a reminder that most of my kind are too afraid of me to even give me a chance to court them. And that the council thinks I will get into too much trouble without someone to distract me now and then, and decides the company I am worthy of is an alien explorer with no interest in me.”

“I mean, the only reason we agreed to this is because there might be a plant on Aquaria that can treat the illness runnin rampant back home. So at least it’s for a good cause?”

Indrid flicks his ears, red running up his fin, “What you are doing is noble. What I am doing is being used as a way to keep your exploration team in line.”

Duck winces, “Fuck, I’m, uh, I’m just gonna stop talkin now.”

For an agonizing five minutes they sit there in silence, contemplating their situation and stealing glances at each other. Duck always tried to do the right thing, tried to live an honest life and treat the people in it with respect. He’s been kind and polite to beings up and down the galaxy. He can extend some of that to his own husband, can’t he?

“Indrid?”

The alien raises his head.

“Can we start over?”

“Yes. But I do not see how-”

Duck holds out his hand, “Name’s Duck. Thanks for invitin me in and lookin after me the few weeks.”

Indrid’s smile widens as he understands the game, and he takes the human’s hand, “A pleasure to meet you. I am Indrid, seer to the court of Aquaria, and your anxious husband in spite of the now-changing, much more pleasant futures.”

They finish their tour, the humid air less stifling in the wake of their confessions. Indrid shows him the kitchen, the sitting room, and the gardens which, to Duck’s delight, are as much above the water as below. 

After that, Indrid excuses himself to attend to seer duties and Duck goes back to his room to unpack. As he’s putting away his toothbrush and razor near a large, elaborate tub carved from golden stone, one of Indrid’s admissions from earlier floats through his mind, bobbing there like a buoy until he gets a chance to ask it.

When they’re in the gardens, Duck taking notes as Indrid dives and surfaces with new things to show him, the human slips his feet into the water and says, “Indrid? You said my offerin to fuck you wasn’t what you wanted. What, uh, what did you want?” 

The alien blinks, slowly, pink and teal flashing in his tail, “It is a bit silly in retrospect, but since I knew we would not have time for a proper human marriage courtship, I thought I could mimic the process leading to a one night stand; that way you would be romanced in a manner that made you both comfortable with me and the concept of sex with a relative stranger.” 

Duck chuckles, “Always wild to find out how human stuff gets interpreted by the rest of the galaxy. How’d you even come up with what you were gonna do?”

Indrid crosses his arms, mock affronted, “I will have you know I have seen a great deal of human media, courtesy of our minister of defense.”

“Oh yeah?” Duck shifts onto his stomach, sends a small splash Indrid’s way, “what was this night gonna involve, then?”

“Food, dim and therefore, apparently, romantic lighting, dancing to sensual music, and then hopefully some kissing.” The pink in his tail intensifies, “and then working out exactly how to have sex human.”

The mixture of enthusiasm and being utterly out of his element charms Duck to no end; not to mention it’s the most thought someone’s put into a hook-up with him in the last three years. 

“Seems to me you got the gist of it. Though I really wanna know what you picked out for ‘sensual music.’”

A playful glint enters Indrid’s glowing eyes, “I will show you, but we must go through the whole evening, otherwise it will seem like a disjointed choice. With, ah, with the understanding that you are not obligated to kiss me at the end.

“You got a deal.”

“Wonderful” Indrid claps his hands together, “wait right here.”

Indrid disappears in a whoosh of black and silver. When he returns, he hoists six opaque domes onto the floor in front of Duck, “I initially planned to eat in the sitting room, but you like this room much better, so we can have dinner here.” With that, he double-taps the top of each dome, revealing a confusing buffet. 

“Uh, are those french fries?”

“Yes. You are from the United States of America, and so I chose foods that would make you feel at home.” Indrid points to each plate in turn, “french fries, steak, a turkey with cranberries, lobster, macaroni with cheese, and an apple pie.”

The pie is covered with an odd, yellow meringue, the turkey is the size of a quail, and the black shell suggests this is not a kind of lobster he’s eaten before, but Duck can’t stop smiling.

“Also I took care to be sure none of the necessary substitutions were poisonous to you.”

“Thanks, Indrid.” He means it; in their travels they’ve learned it’s not only humans who think everyone lives and eats exactly the way they do.

Everything except the french fries tastes strange but he finds the meal, like it’s orchestrator, intriguing in it’s oddity. Indrid brings two cool, white bottles from below, offers Duck tastes of each. One is like the celery soda he drank on a dare, the other like root beer if it wasn’t gross. He keeps the second one next to him as the meal progresses, Indrid asking him all kinds of questions about botany and himself. When dinner is over, Indrid guides him two rooms over, grinning excitedly. 

“I will start the music; one moment.” 

A few seconds after he dives, a chrome cylinder descends from the ceiling and music fills the air.

Ninety-nine red balloons

Floating in the summer sky

Panic bells, it's red alert!

There's something here from somewhere else!

He giggles, sits down so it’s easier to call, “Indrid? Not sure you got the right song bud.”

A silver-haired head pops up, “Not romantic?”

“Nope.”

“Hmmmm” He lifts a small, white rectangle and the song changes. 

He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way

He had a boogie style that no one else could play

He was the top man at his craft

But then his number came up and he was gone with the draft

He's in the army now, a blowin' reveille

He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B

“N-not quite” The laugh is stronger now.

“Drat. How about….”

I threw a wish in the well, don't ask me, I'll never tell

I looked to you as it fell and now you're in my way 

Indrid looks hopefully at him.

“Ain’t what I’d call sensual, but you’d hear it at the kind of place you’d pick up a date.”

The alien beams, starts shifting back and forth to the beat, “shall we dance?”

Duck blushes, pretends he doesn’t know why, “Uh, probably should have said this earlier, but I ain’t much of a dancer.”

Indrid swims to him, stopping close enough that Duck can see the lines on his face that reveal they’re close in age, “That’s alright. Sometimes conversing while having a drink is acceptable behavior, correct?”

“Yeah.” Duck doesn’t bother to hide how intently he’s watching as Indrid dives, his form elegant and ethereal beneath the water. 

They sit sipping a hard cider that tastes of papaya and flowers instead of apples until the three other moons glow bright in the skylight. Duck yawns, and excuses himself for the night. 

“Thanks for a great evenin, Indrid.”

“You are most welcome. A pity I could not make the music work.”

He’s here for another three weeks at least. And Indrid is floating through the darkening water like a dream he’s tempted to chase.

“Guess you’ll just have to try again.” Duck winks. 

Indrid’s ears frill slightly and he flashes bright purple, “Yes, my dear husband, I suppose I will.” 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Duck’s routine is not the one he usually has while docked on a planet. Every day for the last week, he wakes up, joins Indrid for a leisurely swim, works on his research, and then spends his evening with a weirdly cute alien trying to accurately recreate the earth dating experience for him. 

The second night, he asked if Indrid would bring him some of his favorites for their next meal. The steamed coconut crab was a hit. The mantis-squid served still swimming, less so. From then on, when Indrid put in his food orders to the cooks at the main court, it was for a mixture of earth and Aquariad dishes, each one leading him or Indrid to share an anecdote from their time on their home planet. 

For the last two nights, he’s lifted the partitions on the pools in his room so Indrid can talk with him until neither of them can keep their eyes open. He wonders if it would be rude to ask him to stay, to sleep in such a small space just so he could be the first thing Duck sees when he wakes up.

There must be floating beds he could put in Indrid’s room, or maybe a hammock he could hang in the garden. 

Duck now understands that Indrid’s powers make him politically valuable, but also mean his fellow residents of the lunar city see him as dangerous, as knowing things they’d rather keep secret. Duck understands, especially if their only time encountering the seer is when he glides his formidable, dark body from the depths of his inner sanctum. But all he can see is his Indrid, awkward and well-meaning, whose fear of Duck disliking him has given way to genuine affection. His Indrid, who now pulls himself up onto the stones so they can sit shoulder to shoulder after breakfast or before dinner, whose tail Duck’s fingers beg to caress. 

His Indrid who is, at this moment, continuing his losing battle with earth music. 

“How about this?”

Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen

Thank you for all the joy and pain

“Oh fuck no” Duck guffaws, “anything but him, ‘Drid, he’s a boner killer if there ever was one.”

“I don’t think he’s that bad,  but I will be speaking to Vincent about his human music suggestions.”

“For the love of god, turn it off.” Duck flails for the remote.

Indrid sticks out his tongue, “Very well, but I am this close to pulling you down here and seeing if you can do any better.”

“You wouldn’t dare” Duck is still laughing, eyes closing as he does, which means he gets only a splash of warning before he’s yanked into the pool. He comes up giggling and spluttering, “now, is that any way to treat your husband?”

Indrid’s laugh is a siren song, “No, I suppose not.” The music clicks off as Indrid steadies him by curving his tail behind his legs, “how should I treat you instead?”

Duck drapes his arms over Indrid’s shoulders, “You been treatin me pretty damn well, dunkin me aside.”

A flicker of pink and yellow as Indrid rubs their cheeks together, “And if I wanted to be even better?”

“I, uh, I mean if you wanted to we could tryYYYYohfuck” he hunches forward as Indrid’s tail drags across his dick. The clothing on Aquaria is thin, so he can feel the cool scales tease his skin. 

“Oh, oh dear, apologies, I was only trying to embrace you further, I forgot yours do not stay concealed until they’re needed.”

“You, you keep doin that and it’s gonna be needed real quick.”

“Oh?” red eyes narrow wickedly, “does my sweet husband need attending to?” Another drag of his tail, much more deliberate, and Duck grinds his hips in reply. 

“Only if you want to.”

“I do, so very badly.” Indrid nuzzles his nose, “may I take a little while to acquaint myself with your wonderful body?”

“Uh huh.” Duck tugs his shirt off, throwing it onto the land and then giving his shorts the same treatment. 

“Ohhhhhhyes.” Indrid purrs, fins and tails shimmering purple and gold. Then he sinks down, swimming in a slow, tight circle around the human. Pleased chirps and trills bubble up to Duck’s ears. Cool fingers play along his legs and belly, eventually finding his dick and offering an experimental stroke.

“Fuck” he groans, and Indrid does it again, kissing his navel as both hands rub and tease his dick and folds. Indrid is clearly experimenting, maybe even using his visions to guide him, and Duck eagerness to get off succumbs to just how fucking hot it is to have a partner this enrapt by his body, to have them explore it like some awe-inspiring landscape. 

He spreads his hands out and runs them along Indrid’s torso and tail; the scales are just as wonderful under his fingers as he hoped, and he can feel Indrid sigh happily as he pets him. 

Then lips close around his dick and he makes a series of undignified noises, digging one hand into Indrid’s hair to encourage him. 

“Ohmyfuckinchrist, Indrid, yes, fuck please keep suckin like that.”

Indrid wiggles his whole body in response, happy trill underscored by a firmer suck. Duck can’t get enough of his body beneath his hands, of his mouth on Duck’s skin, and he wonders if someone can black out from how good a blowjob feels. 

Indrid’s fin breaks the water and Duck runs an appreciative thumb along the top. Funny, there’s a little depression between it and the membrane of the fin. Curious, he drags his pinky along it. 

The alien bursts upwards with a loud chirp of joy, “Ohgoodness, yes, oh that feels nice please do it again.”

“Yeah? My cute, needy husband need me to play with his fins to get off.”

“Not, not technically by my gods does he want you to.”

“Don’t worry darlin, I will--uh, ‘Drid? Is, is that your dick?”

Indrid follows his gaze to the thick, bumpy shaft emerging from his tail, it’s tip crowned with short, searching tendrils.

“Yes. Also an ovipositor, hence those lumps.”

“Holyfuck. Uh, I, I ain’t sure I’m ready for that yet.” 

“That’s perfectly alright. Though it does mean my cock is not going into you tonight; I’m not sure I can control my bodily responses enough to avoid ovipositing accidentally.”

“Lots of others things we can do.” Duck bites the tip of one ear, making the other flare out.

“Indeed. I say we start with this.” Indrid’s tail encircles his waist just as Indrid shoves his cock between his thighs.

“Like, like the way you think sugar. Fuuuck, fuck that’s good.” The bumps from the eggs have just the right amount of give as he humps them, Indrid matching his tempo with his thrusts. He keeps his arms around his husbands neck, kissing him furiously. Indrid kisses back with a chirp, gold flashing in his scales, and Duck knows he won’t want to kiss anyone else for a long, long time. 

The tip of Indrid’s cock bumps his ass and he groans at what that suggests about it’s size. 

“I’m, I’m takin this fuckin perfect thing all the way before I go.” He bucks his hips harder to make his point, “gonna let you fuck me open on it, fill me up, wanna know what it’s like to cum with you inside me.”

“Oh gods” Indrid whimpers, hiding his face in Ducks neck as he squeezes his thighs together. 

“And, and you’re gonna be a dutiful fuckin husband and fill me however I say, ain’t you?”

“Yes, yesofcourse, goodness Duck I, I’m-”

“Heh, you like that, mr high and mighty seer likes bein bossed around. Well, lucky you, because now that I know just how fuckin good you are at fuckin me, gonna have you doin it ever, fuckin, day.” He jerks his hips hard, three times, and Indric cums with a cry, cock pulsing as he sinks his teeth into Ducks shoulder. Duck doesn’t let up, chases his orgasm over the bumps and ridges until he nearly whites out with pleasure, clinging to Indrid tighter as his body gives up on supporting him. 

After his cock retracts Indrid, still holding Duck up with ease, swims to the button that orders a cleaning cycle on the pool and deposits the human back on the stone. 

“I dearly hope your team finds what you need on this planet so that I may see you beyond these few weeks.”

“Sex was that good?” Duck teases, petting Indrid’s hair as he lays his head in his lap.

“No. Or, well, yes, but more than that you are so, so very wonderful. I wish to get to know you more, to show you even more of my world and my skill in bed.”

Duck kisses the top of his head, “I hope so too.”

-----------------------------------------

Communication log between leader of Amnesty Mission at Astrobotanist Duck Newton. 

Mama: Got some promising leads. Will be back to pick you up in three days. 

Duck: Glad to hear it. But take your time, no need to rush only my account. 

#Indruck #indrid cold/duck newton #mermay fills #alien au #terato

[themurphyzone]

PatB Nova Ch 6

Ch 6: Eccentricity

AN: Loved some of the PatB shorts more than others (You know my eternal hatred for THAT one). But that’s a story for another day. I’m sticking to the 90s versions of these characters though. For now. I might have a gander at the reboot versions someday. You never know!

Ch 6 FFN Link

April 22, 2015! Narf! You’ll never guess what happened, Mickey Mouse. I met the Brain! Well, I’ve only known him for about four months, or less than two days, depending on how you wanna look at it, but if anything happened to him, I would make myself watch Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender!

Tomorrow, I’m going to the mall and buying a hat. Can’t root for Farfignetown (I have to ask her how she spells her name!) at the Derby without a super fancy hat!

Love,

Pinky.

PS: Tell Minnie I said hi!  

o-o-o-o-o

Pinky stepped back to admire his handiwork, the tip of his blue glitter gel pen pressing under his chin as he leaned against it. He did his best to copy Brain’s messages, but he was probably gonna have to write only the first letters only in the future. He didn’t want to take up the entire calendar page again.

His ears twitched at a scraping sound behind him. The sparkly gel smeared against his fur as he turned around, leaving a blue streak across his chest. Egad, if he continued to cover himself in the stuff, he’d look just like one of the Blue Men!

Brain pushed a heavy textbook across the counter, finally stopping underneath a light panel on the ceiling. Then he flipped it open, climbed up, and began to read.

It wasn’t the same book he’d started reading after they’d shaken hands to seal their new friendship either.

“Whatcha reading, Brain?” Pinky asked, slinging the gel pen over his shoulder. “I thought you were reading about jeans! So, find anything good? I think I like the flare type best. Skinny jeans make me chafe.”

“I have no idea what you’re blathering about, Pinky,” Brain said, not looking up from the page he was on. His head shifted from side to side as he read on, and Pinky imagined a giant, fluffy marshmallow making the same movements.

His stomach growled, and a marshmallow dinner sounded heavenly. With cheese fondue and rainbow sprinkles and a light dollop of whipped cream on top…

Wait, no, no. The kitchen didn’t have Gruyere cheese! Processed American cheese wouldn’t provide that proper creamy texture at all.

What kind of host was he? Unable to serve proper cheese fondue to his alien guest?

Then Brain hopped off the book, growling to himself as he pushed up on the hard cover and the few pages he turned. The pages slid into place, but he wasn’t tall enough to get the cover to close the entire way.  

“Do you need help, Brain?” Pinky asked. He dropped the gel pen and grasped the cover’s edge, but Brain smacked him sharply on the wrist, forcing Pinky to let go. Pinky flicked his wrist, and the sting quickly disappeared.

“Don’t patronize me! I can get it myself!” Brain snarled. He pushed on the cover again, and it rose a couple inches in the air, only to land against his fingertips. He growled and spread his feet, jumping as he pushed on the cover once more. This time, the cover slammed into the pages with a heavy thud. “Your sources of information are woefully lacking with your livable yet rudimentary conditions. Penumbra had a much better database, and it’s been dilapidated for a long time.”

Pinky had no idea what dilapidated was. Probably something to do with laps though.

“Oh, well if you need more reading material, I’ve got just the thing!” Pinky said, motioning for Brain to follow him over to a tiny side table where all the magazines were stacked. “Let’s see, we’ve got Vogue, National Geographic, Reader’s Digest…ah, here we are! This one’s my favorite out of all the Zoobooks! Lots of pretty horses to look at. Zort!”

Pinky thumbed through the magazine until he found his favorite page, which had gorgeous art of a white horse running on grassy hills. “This one’s my favorite,” he said as he pressed the magazine into Brain’s hands. Brain nearly went cross-eyed just trying to look at it, but he held out his hands and pushed the pages back until they weren’t so close to his face. “I named her Pharfignewton after Pharfignewton! Isn’t her mane just the flowiest thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Including or excluding your mind in that comparison?” Brain asked. He closed the magazine and set it on top of the stack. “Your choice of reading material is peculiar, but I suppose brushing up on this planet’s ecology wouldn’t hurt.”

Pinky grinned. “If you think those are good, remind me to show you David Attenborough’s work sometime! His documentaries are amazing!”

Brain tilted his head, his antennae bobbing with the motion. “You’ve mentioned someone named Pharfignewton multiple times. An acquaintance of yours?”

“She’s not a quail, Brain. She’s a horse, of course!” Pinky laughed at his little rhyme. “Oh right, I’ve never showed you pictures of her, have I? Where are my manners? Anyway, I left them in the cage. It’s right this way! Or left this way. I can never tell which.”

Pinky ran back to the cage and squeezed through the bars, Brain trailing behind at a much slower pace. As Pinky slid his right leg through the bars, he realized just how dirty the cage was. There was a small puddle by the water bottle, and straw was scattered all over the place. Crumbs littered the floor around the food bowl, and his wheel had a stain shaped like a pomegranate.

It just wouldn’t do at all!

“Sorry for the mess!” Pinky called to Brain, who was watching him curiously from outside the cage. “I didn’t know I’d be having a visitor today!”

But Brain didn’t seem to care about the mess. Instead, he prodded the locked cage door.  

“Nicholas and Mr. Button, you’ve gotta wake up and help me clean!” Pinky said, shaking them frantically from where they were tucked into the straw. “Narf, you two were up talking late again, weren’t you?”

They were too asleep to respond though.

“Okay, well, I’ll let you sleep for now, but tomorrow I’ll be going over proper cagesitting behavior with both of you,” Pinky sighed. He carefully rolled up the photo of Pharfignewton he kept near the straw bed, hugging it close to his body as he slipped through the bars again.

“Pinky, those are inanimate objects,” Brain said, bending a paper clip until it was completely straight. He poked one of the sharp ends and winced.  “They won’t respond to you.”

“They’re real life objects, Brain. They’re not animated,” Pinky said. “Whatcha doing with that paper clip?”

Brain pressed his ear against the cage door, carefully maneuvering the paper clip into the lock. It slipped a quarter of the way in before Brain yanked it out again, his eyes darting around the room as if something would swoop down on them.

When nothing happened, he went back to inserting the paper clip. “Nothing to disable here. There’s no alarm system on the door,” Brain said, turning to Pinky. “I thought you were squeezing through the bars to avoid triggering it.”

“I’ve never had an alarm before. Do you think I should get one?” Pinky asked. “Just so nobody tries to burger my wheel or water bottle? Hmm, what would a burger with those ingredients even taste like? Not very appetizing, probably.”

Brain only stared at him, the paper clip almost slipping from his hand in surprise. “Don’t tell me the only reason you haven’t used the door is because you can’t unlock it.”

Pinky nodded. “Okay. I won’t tell you the only reason I haven’t used the door is because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to unlock it.”

Shaking his head in dismay, Brain reinserted the bent paper clip until it was halfway in, then turned it clockwise (or was it counterclockwise? Pinky always got them mixed up).

“There,” he said, letting the door swing open. “Now you can enter and exit as you please like a civilized mos.”

“Egad, that’s brilliant!” Pinky stepped inside the cage, then back out. In and out again, and again, and he almost started dancing the Hokey Pokey, which would’ve been a whole lot of fun, but Brain still hadn’t seen Pharfignewton’s photo!

Now that was a real tongue twister there!

“This is Pharfignewton, Brain! Isn’t she pretty?” Pinky asked, pressing the photo into Brain’s hands.

The photo had been taken two weeks ago, when her owner had hired a professional to photograph Pharfignewton as she sprinted around the field. Pharfignewton had given Pinky her personal favorite, one that showed her hooves flying through the air and her gorgeous mane streaming in the sunlight. She was having the time of her life, and she couldn’t have picked a better photo to give him.

“There’s certainly an uncanny resemblance,” Brain admitted. “And the size discrepancy between you and her is incredibly blatant. Not to mention the species difference.”

Pinky crossed his arms. “Oh, don’t be so intolerant, Brain. She’s big cause she’s a horse, and I’m small cause I’m a mouse. But we make it work.”

Pharfignewton would be gone for the next two months, possibly more when she achieved the Triple Crown. It would be lonely, but he could manage.

“You mentioned she was far away when I interrogated you.” Brain set the photo down, smoothing out a corner though it didn’t have any wrinkles.

“She’s still on the road to the Derby, I think. Can’t really get in touch with her though. Phones are kinda tricky with hooves, you know.” Pinky said. “She’s wanted the Triple Crown her entire life. So that’s why I gotta make a giant hat and root for her when she races!”

“I don’t understand how a hat factors into all this,” Brain said.

“Zort! I dunno,” Pinky shrugged. “You can’t have a Derby without horses, hats, and My Old Kentucky Home. Otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a Derby then, would it?”

Brain folded his arms. “I’m currently debating if I should take your words at face value or not. Your customs make no sense whatsoever.”

Pinky thought they made perfect sense, and cents, and all of the five senses really, but his stomach growled and that thought was soon forgotten. Brain never had Earth food before, had he?

Definitely a job for a genetically altered Earth mouse to show him the ropes!  

But first, Pinky had to clean the gel off his fur. It was starting to clump into spikes, and that wouldn’t do at all.

o-o-o-o-o

Pinky rinsed himself in the sink, sticking out his tongue to lap up some of the cool water as it trickled out of the faucet. Thankfully, the gel hadn’t settled into his fur and was very easy to wash away. And flicking the water around the sink with his tail was loads of fun too!

Brain stayed on the outer rim, pulling on the stopper and handles by the sink out of curiosity. He edged closer to the stream of water, almost touching it with a gloved hand, but decided against it. But he wouldn’t stop staring at it either, like he’d never seen water in his life.

Maybe he hadn’t?

The moon was made of cheese and not water after all. Water would make the cheese all soggy and mushy and wash away the cheesy taste that made cheese so delicious.

“C’mon, Brain! Poit!” Pinky pushed his fingers together, trying to send a squirt of water up to Brain, though it missed his nose by a mile and landed on a small crumb on the slope of the sink instead. “The water’s just fine!”

“I’ll have to decline your offer, Pinky,” Brain said. “My information about water is rather lacking, and I’d rather not cover myself in a substance without knowing more.”

“I guess water would leave the moon cheese not very tasty to eat, huh?” Pinky asked. He braced himself and shot out of the tiny waterfall, and he was very glad for all the focus he’d put into leg exercises recently, because his running start was enough to get him over the rim on his first try. “Well, all you need to know is that water is wet, it splishy-splashes all over the place, and it’s fun to play Marco Polo in!”

Brain didn’t look convinced though. He removed one of his black gloves and touched a puddle, rubbing the water between his fingers curiously.

Pinky turned off the water, then dried himself off with a fluffy towel. He double checked his chest to make sure the gel was completely gone and patted down his fur.

“This way, Brain!” Pinky called, jumping off the counter and onto a spinny chair. The seat twirled around for a bit, making him slightly dizzy, but it was all in jolly good fun. Brain carefully climbed down, gripping the drawer handles and moving slowly. He slipped on the last handle and landed awkwardly on his right leg. He grimaced for a moment, his nose scrunching up rather adorably. “Blueberry bagels and cream cheese, here we come!”

“Your sustenance on Terra, I assume?” Brain asked. He followed Pinky through a corridor and into the kitchen, his large head turning every which way to take in all the sights of ACME Lab. Now that it was daytime, there were more colors than just shadowy blue. Pinky wondered if Brain would try to name the colors he saw. Pinky tried once, but there were just too many pretty colors streaming in from the window pane above.

“They aren’t consonants, Brain. They’re delicious and all, but they wouldn’t fit with the alphabet. A little bit of a mouthful, don’t you think? Poit!” Pinky climbed up the cherry-print towel hanging on the refrigerator door like he’d done a million times before. He braced himself against the fridge door, pressed his legs against the handle, and pushed with all his might, feeling that familiar strain of his stomach muscles.

The door opened with a satisfying pop. Breathing heavily, Pinky tumbled more than he climbed down the towel, landing on the cold floor of the refrigerator.

“S-surely there has to be a more e-efficient way to open a door than your method.” Brain’s teeth chattered together, his ears flattening to avoid the sudden chill. He took a few steps away from the open fridge, his arms folded in front of his chest. “Is it a-always this cold?”

“Oh, I haven’t even opened up the freezer! If you think this is cold, you’ll really feel like a mousesicle in there! But it’s worth it if you wanna get to the strawberry ice cream with the cute little mini spoons! Maybe some other time though. Right now, it’s important to get a daily serving of cheese!” Pinky exclaimed as he pushed two small tubs of cream cheese from a middle shelf. They each landed on the floor with a thud, and Pinky jumped down and retrieved them, closing the fridge door behind him with his foot.

Brain sighed in relief as soon as the door was closed, his arms dropping to his sides.

“They keep the blueberry bagels by the bagel warmer,” Pinky said as he led Brain out of the kitchen and into a room that had been marked with a yellow and black caution sign. The bagels were so delicious they even had to warn everyone to take caution! “Oh, now that’s a tongue twister. Blueberry bagels by the bagel warmer. Boobelly beige by the baguette warmer...oh, that’s a toughie. I’ll work on it.”

The bagel warmer was an oddly shaped toaster, with lots of wires and bulbs sticking out along the sides and top. It even had a conveyor belt running through it, but Pinky thought it made this toaster really unique among toasters. Why, he’d even been toasted in this toaster himself! Though it wasn’t as much fun as crispy pieces of bread made it seem. He just remembered a lot of smoke and electricity. And there’d been a lot of narf inside too.

Pinky set the tubs of cream cheese on the floor, then climbed up to the conveyor belt, which was propped on metallic cylinders.

“This is so much easier with two mice!” Pinky crowed. He peered down at Brain, who curiously poked at a red wire on the floor. “I don’t mind eating bagels by themselves, but there’s something about toasty bagels that just warms the heart!”

“If they’re truly that delectable, I suppose there’s no harm in trying it,” Brain replied.

“Did your file thingies say anything about Earth food?” Pinky asked. Because Brain sure didn’t seem to know much about tasty things.

Brain shook his head. “The Selenians didn’t bother with information about the lifestyles or cuisine of Terrans. It was irrelevant to their cause.”

Oh. Pinky tried to imagine being an alien who didn’t know anything about cheese, but came up blank. He’d eaten cheese and food pellets his entire life. He couldn’t imagine a world without them.

“Pinky, are you aware that machine is also apparently a gene splicer?” Brain asked, pointing to the letters along the side.

ACME GENE SPLICER AND BAGEL WARMER, it said.

“So it does. But the only things that go in are bagels and lab mice. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone try to splice a pair of jeans. Oh, that reminds me!” Pinky snapped his fingers. How could he have forgotten something so very important? The silly machine was on the gene splicer setting! Pinky pressed a conveniently labeled button that said ‘press here for bagel warmer setting’. How nice of the scientists to label their stuff!

He was so glad he discovered that before sending the bagels through. The gene splicer setting would’ve made the bagels extra crispy, and while Pinky didn’t mind, extra crispy bagels were a taste one had to get used to first. Nope, it was better to start Brain off lightly!

“Can you please get two blueberry bagels from the bag, Brain?” Pinky pointed to a bottom cabinet where the bagels were kept, grinning at the new tongue twister he’d come with. Egad, he was good at this! “They’re the tan circles with a hole and blue specks in them! Kinda like a donut, except without the frosting and sprinkles. Zort, Brain! You’ve never eaten donuts, have you? Oh, I am definitely making a list of foods you need to try!”

Pinky hopped onto a tall table and neatly tore a paper towel off its roll, then laid it flat on the conveyor belt. Following Pinky’s instructions, Brain retrieved two bagels from the cabinet and passed them up to Pinky. Brain still seemed rather confused about the gene splicer and the bagel warmer being one and the same. Pinky carefully separated each bagel so that he had four half-bagels with the inside lying face-up and arranged them on the paper towel so they would all be nice and toasty.      

Then Pinky realized he’d forgotten another thing. Namely, that he didn’t know how to turn the bagel warmer on.

He scratched his head.

That could be a real issue.

“Pinky, do you actually know how to work this machine?” Brain’s voice sounded oddly strained. Pinky turned around. Brain was hanging onto the side of the conveyor belt, his legs wrapped around one of the metal cylinders. He’d tried to climb up himself, but his arms were too short to get a proper grip, and if he leaned over anymore, he’d fall right on his chubby head.

Pinky reached over, grasping Brain’s wrists and trying to haul him up, only for Brain to be resistant to help. He wouldn’t budge, his wrists feeling oddly tense under Pinky’s hands. His pink eyes were wide and apprehensive, pointed ears flattening against his head.

“Brain?” Pinky said. “I’m just gonna haul you up. Could you relax a bit please? It’ll be much easier.”

Brain didn’t move for a second, searching Pinky’s eyes warily. Pinky just gave him an encouraging smile. Brain looked away, his brow furrowing, but some of the tension left his wrists.

Pinky pulled him onto the railing of the conveyor belt, Brain’s feet scrabbling in the air briefly before settling firmly on the metal.

“Thanks,” Brain muttered. He walked over to the various buttons and levers, examining each one curiously.  

“You’re welcome, Brain!” Pinky brought one hand to his forehead in a salute, only to remember that Brain was an honest-to-goodness alien, and probably didn’t know that particular gesture. So Pinky tried to make the Vulcan salute instead, but it was kinda tricky with only four fingers instead of five.

“This is very intriguing,” Brain breathed, pressing his face against a small closed window that offered a look into the gears and wires within the bagel warmer. “Yes, pure lithium power source, proton accelerators, and automatic anti-inertia capabilities? The use of nanoplasmic charges leaves a lot to be desired of course, but to have the rest of these things in one machine at your fingertips…”

Pinky didn’t understand anything Brain just said, but the alien’s fingers were twitching in excitement, his nose smushed against the glass. It was the first genuine smile Pinky had seen from the alien since they first met, and Pinky thought it looked really good on him. Even nicer than the jumpsuit, which was already really fashionable. “If you figure out how to turn it on, that would be really great!” Pinky grinned. Brain pulled down on a nearby lever, and the conveyor belt began to move. “Egad, brilliant!”

“The lever was labeled, Pinky.” Brain waved him off, pointing to the word ‘on’ stenciled next to him. But his head tilted up and his chest puffed out too. He seemed to like that word a lot. “Wait, you figured out the machine was on the wrong setting, but you can’t turn it on?”

Pinky shrugged. “It’s not really my type, Brain.”

“Never mind,” Brain sighed, the tips of his ears turning as red as his nose. He turned back to the machine window. “I want to observe this process.”  

“Me too!” Pinky exclaimed, and he hopped over to the window, smushing his nose against it just as the bagels were swept into the machine. Blue electricity sparked and jumped all around the metal structures inside, and the glass warmed beneath Pinky’s hands.

It was a beautiful sight, and Pinky licked his lips as the bagels crisped from the heat.

Beside him, Brain watched the electricity intently, murmuring a bunch of smart words Pinky didn’t understand, but definitely enjoying the show too.

Within several minutes, the bagels gained an extremely nice golden brown crisp, and the conveyor belt moved them out of the bagel warmer. Brain pulled the lever up and the conveyor belt stopped moving, the thrum of the machine beneath their feet slowly fading away.

They weaved around long, multicolored wires as they made their way to the other side, where the bagels awaited them.

“Troz! Looks positively dee-lish!” Pinky exclaimed, poking at one of the bagels. Firm and flaky, just how they were supposed to be. His mouth watered in anticipation.

“The scent alone is quite appealing,” Brain agreed, taking several sniffs of the bagels. “I’ve never smelled anything like this before.”

Pinky grinned at him. “Oh, just you wait, Brain! The real magic is just starting!”

Sliding down the cylinders, Pinky retrieved the two cream cheese tubs they’d left on the floor and passed them up to Brain one at a time. His lower leg strength had improved a lot in the past few months, and it was easy for him to hang on while he passed the tubs up.

“Show-off,” Brain grumbled as he took hold of the second tub.

Pinky just laughed as he fetched two plastic knives from a drawer and carted them back to Brain and the bagels.

“Here you go! Bon appetit!” Pinky said. He gave one of the plastic knives to Brain, who gingerly ran his finger across the toothed edge as he examined the flat, see-through handle. “Oh, be careful with those, Brain. You don’t wanna cut yourself.”

“Not to worry, Pinky,” Brain said. “We have knives on New Selene. But I’ve never seen one with this particular material before. And much duller too.”

Pinky peeled away the cover of a cream cheese tub, drooling over the gorgeous smooth white surface inside. Brain copied him with the other tub, pulling off the cover completely. The alien took off his gloves and sniffed the cream cheese a few times, swiping one fingertip through the cream cheese. Then he tasted it.

Brain’s eyes widened immediately, his antennae perking up. He licked cream cheese off his fingertip four more times before he realized Pinky was watching him. Brain ducked his head and fiddled with his sleeves.

“That was…even better than I anticipated,” Brain admitted, his voice full of wonder.

“Aw, you don’t have to be embarrassed if you like it, Brain. I’m glad you think so, cause blueberry bagels and cream cheese is my favorite. Well, so are food pellets. And marshmallows, especially the puffy kind. And smiley face lollipops and…poit! I have a lot of favorites, it’s so hard to choose just one! Zounds, mac n’cheese too! You really need to try mac’n cheese, Brain! That one’s definitely going on the list. Anyway, if you think the cream cheese alone is good, try this!”

Pinky dipped the knife into the cream cheese. Once he got a good coating, he spread it across the surface of the bagel, took the largest chomp of the combined food he could manage, then swallowed. It went down a little rough, but it was delicious all the same.

“Scrumptious!” Pinky exclaimed. “It’s like a party in your mouth!”

Brain copied his actions again, and while he preferred to rip off chunks of the bagel and slather cream cheese onto smaller pieces, his enjoyment of the food wasn’t any less than Pinky’s. He made some funny ‘mmm’ noises in the back of his throat, his eyes closed in bliss as he worked his way through the first half-bagel.

Pinky started on his second half, licking cream cheese off his lips. This was a nice way to spend the evening.

“Brain, you’re welcome to share my cage if you’d like,” Pinky offered. “Mi cage es tu cage, you know.”

“Are you sure, Pinky?” Brain swallowed, thumping his fist against his throat to make the bagel go down. “I know we’re in a mutual partnership, but I wouldn’t want to impose in your living space.”

“You’re not imposing,” Pinky said. “Besides, plenty of unmarried people share living spaces these days.”

Brain was silent. He continued spreading cream cheese across a small portion of bagel, even though it was completely slathered at this point.

“Snowball and I were in neighboring cages. Aisam had to be housed alone because of their inclination towards territorial aggression. We had separate quarters for the journey to Terra as well.” Brain nibbled on a corner of his bagel. “Point being, I’ve never shared a cage before.”

“Sharing is caring,” Pinky smiled, finishing the last of his bagel. “Besides, it’s one more new experience for both of us. Isn’t that just dandy? I just hope Mr. Button and Nicholas didn’t leave too much a mess.”

“Very well. But we’re moving that sponge bed I slept on last night into your cage. It was much less aggravating for my back than the usual fare,” Brain said. “So…thanks for that, Pinky.”

“You’re welcome, Brain,” Pinky replied, rubbing circles into his belly, his hunger satisfied.

Beside him, Brain seemed satisfied too. And there was nothing better in all the world than sharing blueberry bagels and cream cheese with a new alien friend.

AN: OK this one’s more of a breather chapter since the last 5 were like wham bam nonstop stuff for the characters. Sorry it took so long to get this one out. Next chapter will have Pinky finally getting his hat and Brain’s first mall excursion!

#pinky and the brain #patb nova #patb fanfiction

[saharamae21]

All of My Wrongs - Prologue

This is more dialogue that I wanted.... But if I keep editing, I’m never going to post it.... I’m just not thrilled how it turned out, but it will be good. I PROMISE.

Let me know if you want to see this because I’m still on the fence if I want to post it on Tumblr or not..

Word Count: 1.3

Pairing: Topper x oc | Rafe x oc

Summary: Aurora Lansing is new to the OBX. She’s never stuck around in one place for long and has never made a lot of friends do to it. She is this free spirited and kind hearted person, but something dark lurks underneath the surface, making her kind of the opposite of the first two boys she meets. Topper is someone who can’t seem to let go. His uptight personality often masks the sweeter side of him. Rafe is filled with hatred most days, but something about Rory makes him softer. She’s the key to both of their better sides and they are the key dispersing the dark thoughts within her. As they all grow closer, jealousy and other ugly emotions begin to affect each one of them slowly. Rory wants to fix them both, but with all of the bad energy around the three she has to pick one of them. How can she choose who to fix without pushing the other over the edge of no return?

____________________________________________

We’ve never stayed in one place for long. My parents were the let’s save the world type of people and so whenever disaster struck, we booked a plane ticket. Tornado disaster relief, earthquakes, but this time, it was a hurricane. The Outer Banks, paradise on earth, or so the entrance sign said. This was my third city in four years. My mom promised me we would stay until I graduated this time. No more moving. I didn’t believe her though.

I let out a sigh as I helped unload the moving van. We always traveled light because we never knew how long we would be staying. This move felt different though. The house was huge and in the nicest part of town. We’ve never stayed in a place like this before. I walked in and looked around. There was a chandelier in the foyer and the staircase curved like those seen in mansions. I lived in a mansion. It wasn’t a secret that we had money. My parents spent time in the Peace Coup and that’s where they met. After that my dad continued working with other non-profit organizations while my mom became a very influential journalist, her work even being published for National Geographic. They saved and saved, eventually to spend on this. The house and car in the street, even the boat at the end of our dock. I couldn’t comprehend how much this would all cost.

Every move was the same as the last though, including this one. My parents would spend the entire first day playing interior decorator while my little brother and I explored the town. Skipper was the exact opposite of the rest of our family. He didn’t care about preserving our planet or saving the world. He cared about what he was doing and self advancement. I blamed it on him being the youngest and being spoiled.

Me, on the other hand… I was a carbon copy of my parents. I loved nature and all of the hippy vibes that they gave off. I just wished we didn’t have to move so much. No matter how much of a free spirit I was, I still needed one place to call home and I just haven’t found it yet.

“Aurora, I want to go home!” Skip complained. I rolled my eyes as I stood in the water. The waves lapped over my feet and I felt peaceful. I didn’t want to leave, but I knew he would just complain more. I tossed him the key to the house and told him that I’d be back later. I told him that he couldn’t let mom and dad lock the doors before I got home. He dismissed my words quickly and took off running. I knew he was going to lock me out of the house tonight…

Surely enough, the house was locked when I got back to my house that evening. The rain had just started and it wasn’t very heavy, but I would much rather be inside. I tried to hide on my porch, but the wind picked up and the rain stil pelted against my skin. I closed my eyes and imagined that it was water droplets from surfing or standing under a waterfall. A smile crept onto my face as I walked out into my driveway, spinning and cheering in the rain. The shower turned into a downpour and it washed my anxieties away.

“What are you doing?” a voice shouted. It was almost drowned out in the wind, but I heard it. I turned around to see my neighbor under an umbrella in the next driveway over. He looked about my age. He had this button up on and some board shorts, classic rich kid.

“I’m enjoying the rain!” I said as I ran closer to get a better look. He had dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. There was something about his eyes that I couldn’t stop looking at. Maybe it was how they looked sad. The eyes were the windows to the soul and I learned so much by looking into his. “Join me!”

He looked at me like I was crazy. I told him to drop the umbrella and live a little. I could tell by the way he carried himself that he didn’t let loose very often. He looked uptight and I could tell he needed this. He told me he was going to go inside now.

“I’m Aurora,” I said while he was turning his back on me. He turned back around and looked at me like I was a puzzle. He was trying to figure me out.

“I’m Topper,” he said. I laughed a little bit. I didn’t mean to, but who would name their kid that? I apologized as he scoffed and I knew that I was in for a challenge.

“Well, Bottom, you need to loosen up,” I said as I grabbed the umbrella from him slowly. He argued with me as water damped his hair. I told him to just feel the rain and tell me what he felt. He wasn’t very creative though. He told me he felt wet and cold.

“Listen, my name is Topper and I’ve had a really bad night. So, I’m going to go back into my house and act like this never happened,” he muttered. I frowned as he picked his umbrella back up. I opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong, but I knew he thought I was weird now.

“Can I borrow your umbrella?” I asked. Those were the only words that came into my head. A crash of thunder rippled through the air and I tensed. I knew if he could see me, the color would’ve been drained from my face.

“Why don’t you just go in and grab one?” he asked. I explained to him that I was locked out of my house and he sighed. “C’mon.”

I stared as he walked away from me. He told me to follow him once again and I ran over. He opened the front door and let me in. My jaw dropped a little bit at the extravagant decorations. He truly lived in luxury. He grabbed my wrist and quietly guided me upstairs. The warmth of his hand against my ice cold skin radiated through me. He pulled me into the bathroom and tossed me a towel. I smiled and dried off as he did the same. Even though he gave off a cold demeanour earlier, he seemed kind of sweet.

“So, what made your night so terrible?” I asked. He looked at me and asked why I cared. The coldness echoed through his words. He was building a wall between us. “I’m just curious.”

“It’s just my girlfriend,” he said. “She makes me feel so crazy sometimes.”

“She must be pretty special then. You know, to make you like that?” I said, smiling. His face lit up when he thought of her. It was the first real emotion he had shown me.

“Yeah she’s pretty great-” his words were interrupted by the door flying open.

“Dude! Tonight was awe-” a boy stood in front of me, staring. He also had this blonde hair that peaked out from underneath his white hat and these blue eyes. His eyes followed my figure. He watched the way my wet clothes clung to my body. I covered up with the towel feeling self conscious for a moment. “Who are you?”

“Rafe, this is Aurora. Aurora, this is Rafe,” Topper said, introducing us to each other. Rafe reached his hand out to shake mine, which was an awkward greeting in this situation. Still I took his hand and shook it firmly. His eyes never left mine after that point. A small smirk was always plastered onto his face and it gave me chills. I shivered from how low my body temperature had dropped from the rain. Topper ran to his room to grab me a sweatshirt, leaving Rafe here with me.

“So what’s your story?” he asked. Why did something tell me these boys were going to shape my entire existence in the OBX?

____________________________________________

Tagging some moots : @outerbankslut @jellyfishbeansontoast @jiaraendgame @bricksatanakinswindow @outerbongs @kiarascarreras @ilovejjmaybank @lindzaylove @potterheadhollander @rudths @spilledtee @queenieloveswriting @multifandomlovess @starlightstarkey

#topper thornton #obx topper #topper #outer banks topper #rafe outer banks #rafe cameron #rafe obx #rafe imagine #outer banks imagine #outer banks fanfiction #outer banks #obx #obx netflix

[savannah-lim]

You Gotta Be Squidding Me || Savannah & Winn

TIMING: Present LOCATION: Savannah’s office SUMMARY: Savannah meets with Winn to discuss Agent Sterling’s death and gets more truth than she bargained for. CONTENT WARNINGS: Discussion of murder and body horror

Savannah had no idea how she was supposed to put any of this in a report. Dr. Kavanagh had directed her to a gentleman called Winn Woods because she remembered she had seen something in a dream. Great. Excellent detective work, Agent. That doesn’t sound crazy at all. At this point though, Savannah was prepared to try just about anything. The Bureau had supplied her with a small rented office downtown so she at least didn’t have to interview people in a messy hotel room or keep going to the police station. She preferred not to have people looking over her shoulder. The buzz from the door told her Mr. Woods had arrived. Right on time. At least he was punctual. “Come in, have a seat. Would you like coffee or tea or anything?” she asked, closing the door after him.

It was one of those White Crests days where everything felt ominous — gray clouds overhead and a weird chill in the air, both typically foreign to August. Winn’s nightmares the night previous had been plagued with visions of the abomination, of the twisted corpse of Sterling ambling towards him, an inevitable end to what little of his life he’d managed to salvage. It was a wonder he’d managed to sleep. Since that day Sterling had washed up, Ulfric had done his level best to keep the body concealed. But ‘missing’ wasn’t much better than ‘dead’ — especially not where a federal agent was concerned. They’d both known it’d come back to bite them. And while Winn was a fine actor, one gift his mother had left him, there was no masking his unease. Human. Javier Sterling had been so painfully (pitifully?) human — until he hadn’t. Winn would tear his throat out again, spare him the indignity of his body, warped as it was. But that wasn’t the question, was it? “Coffee’s fine,” Winn said, noncommittal. It would give him time to think through a game plan. Smalltalk. He could do smalltalk. “How have you been liking White Crest, Agent Lim?”

“Coffee it is,” Savannah said, brewing a fresh pot. “Although the government doesn’t exactly offer generous funding for amenities, so I can’t promise anything about the quality.” She poured herself a coffee as well. Though she maintained a casual air about her, Savannah was already assessing the young man. His nerves were obvious, but that wasn’t necessarily an indication of guilt. If someone wasn’t nervous about being interviewed by a federal agent, there was something wrong with them. “I like it very well. It’s bizarre, which I find frustrating but also oddly comforting. I’m intrigued by things that are unusual. Something Agent Sterling had in common with me, I’m led to believe.” She handed Winn his coffee. “Did you know him well?”

“I think the first coffee I had was on the Hill. Representatives bring their own coffee, or suffer whatever their interns thought sounded good at the Trader Joe’s on Pennsylvania Ave.” Winn cocked his head. “Don’t know how much time you spent at y’all’s headquarters, or if you’ve always been on-assignment?” He took a sip from his coffee, ignoring the heat dancing across his tongue. Still too hot, but the pain helped to ground him in the moment. He’d dealt with government folks for most of his life. Could Agent Lim be discreet? It wasn’t as if the FBI was known for being bold and brash, not when subtlety could better pave the way to an answer. Winn wished, in that moment, that he had been close to Agent Sterling. Agent Lim’s hints that he’d been investigating the unusual… Could always tackle it the White Crest way, right? “Unusual?” Winn asked, more chipper than was probably wise. “Honestly, I barely knew him. Pointed him in the direction of a shop on Amity, but that was really the last time I ‘spoke’ to him.” Do not joke about Natalia killing Javier. Do not joke about Natalia killing Javier. “I can’t remember ever meeting him in-person, though.” Technically, not a lie.

"The Hill?" Savannah repeated, unsure if she was impressed or actively cringing. "Interesting. You didn't strike me as the political type." He'd struck her as a sort of empty-headed party boy, but then, there were plenty of those in politics too. "I did my training at Quantico, and spent most of my career operating around the New England area." She picked up her own coffee, sipping it. "But this isn't about me. Unless you just want to be impressed by my credentials. I might not have them much longer if I can't solve this case." And the more she looked into it, the more unsolvable it seemed. Winn's name had literally been given to her by someone who said she'd seen it in a dream. "That's interesting," she nodded, "because an anonymous source told me you might know something about his disappearance." 

“Representative Delacour. Or former? Figure she’s still up there; I try not to keep up with politics. I wasn’t up there often, just enough to figure out that there was better coffee in the world.” Winn shrugged, another sip from his own cup. Talking about his mother wasn’t his favorite recreational activity, so he was more than happy to drop the subject. He tried not to flinch at Agent Lim’s suggestion, a frown flickering across his face for just a second. Getting a federal agent involved in whatever was happening in White Crest, getting a human involved in all of this. Was that fair? No. It wasn’t. But less fair was keeping her in the dark, letting her wander into getting herself killed. Or, worse, the same thing happening to her that had happened to her former co-worker. Winn tried to think of how a hunter would describe what happened to Javier, Adam’s talk of mutations and infections coming to mind. Winn couldn’t even be sure that was what it was, but something about it rang true. Javier had changed so suddenly… “How much do you know about Cordyceps, Agent Lim?” Winn said, slowly, not letting even an ounce of fear slip into his voice.

“Well, we’ve got that in common,” Savannah scoffed. She knew just enough to make informed decisions at the voting booth, but when it came down to every single representative, Savannah was pretty clueless. Winn could have made up any name and she wouldn’t have known any better. She narrowed her eyes curiously, wondering where exactly he was going with this. “Cordyceps? Isn’t it a virus or something that affects insects? The thing that makes stuff grow out of their ugly little insect heads?” Fascinating, no doubt, but she had no idea what that had to do with her case. Javier Sterling wasn’t a caterpillar.  

Winn wrinkled his nose at the reminder of what the fungus did to wasps, ants, and others. Planet Earth had been a staple of insomnia-fueled nights over the last half-decade, so Winn knew the metaphor didn’t stretch all the way out. There hadn’t been anything (yet?) to suggest Winn or Ulfric had been infected by Javier. “Fungus, but yeah. They take over the host body and direct it towards a purpose. For Cordyceps, that means gettin’ up somewhere high and poofin’ its spores as far as they can go.” Winn still had more questions than answers, but… Shit, would it be nice to have someone to bounce shit off of. It wasn’t like he was good for anything more than a helpful sniff or slashin’ someone’s throat. “Damn, almost wish you could read my mind. Would make explainin’ this easier.” He drummed his fingers along the arm of the chair. “Agent Lim, I need you to take everything I’m about to say at face value, alright? I won’t lie, not if I can help it, but I’m gonna sound like I’m off my rocker. If you’re not gonna believe me, this ain’t goin’ anywhere productive.”

“Fungus. Right.” Savannah focused on him, eyeing him as he spoke, determined to figure out exactly where this conversation was going. It wasn’t often someone took the lead on her interrogations, but she figured the more talking he did, the more he might slip up and tell her something useful. God, nobody had given her anything useful in weeks… “Alright, I guess now I don’t need to watch National Geographic when I go home.” She chewed the inside of her lip. “People say that sort of thing when they’re about to say something nonsensical,” she sighed. “But nothing in this case has made sense so far, so I suppose let’s start with ridiculous and work backwards.” She gestured vaguely with her hand for him to go ahead. 

Winn almost laughed at the suggestion of nonsensicality. C’mon, Agent Lim. All he was askin’ was for her to believe her co-worker turned into a squid-man hybrid, and spit out a wackadoo language, before tryin’ to kill the werewolf sittin’ in front of her! It all made perfect sense. He groaned, leaning back in the chair. If it wasn’t so close to the new moon… But naw, no werewolfing it up. “I can do ridiculous,” he said, confident. “Javier Sterling washed up one morning while I was fishin’. Took me a minute to realize it was him, ‘cause somethin’ had happened to him. See, your boy had been infected with a— with a virus, if you like. I don’t rightly know what it was, but I can tell you what I saw. Not a fungus, but somethin’ from the ocean. I’d call it a growth, but then I’d have to rationalize the tentacle that wrapped around my arm. And nothing,” Winn wet his lips, “about this is rational.” Winn paused. “I’m not done, but figure that’s a lot to take in. Take, uh, take your time. It only gets weirder.”         

“Fishing.” Savannah scoffed. “Yeah, okay, go on. My co-worker washed up on shore and had a… a what? A weird fungal infection from the ocean? Are you saying it was a natural death?” What exactly was he confessing to? It didn’t make any sense. But then she remembered— “Was there a red-headed man with you?” she asked. “Covered in tattoos? Big beard?” She’d seen it in her dream too. Maybe what Regan had said wasn’t so crazy after all. Except that it was, and this whole thing was absurd. Her superiors were going to laugh her reports right out of the office if she tried to go back to them with this. 

Winn squinted at the perfect recitation of Ulfric’s description. There hadn’t been anyone around that day. As far as Winn knew, only one person even knew of what had happened to Javier Sterling, outside of Ulfric and Winn themselves. There were few explanations and Winn was eager to narrow them down. “Yes,” he said, evenly. “I’m keepin’ his name out of this.” No need to bring in Ulfric. ‘Sides, Ulf was out of town, last he heard. One phone call, and one of them could tell him to stay out of town. Winn had dealt the killing blow, even if Ulfric had made sure that Javier wouldn’t get up. “An anonymous source, huh? That sure is unusual,” he said, tone almost acerbic. “How much do you know, Agent Lim?” Whether she’d intended it or not, Winn’s hackles were raised, and he was just barely stifling the low growl in the bottom of his throat. 

Savannah scribbled down a jumble of notes. Not that she’d have any difficulty remembering this, of course. “I’m not at liberty to reveal my sources,” she said. “And if I tell you what I know, I can’t be sure that whatever you tell me is genuine knowledge that you came to independently.” She sighed. “Would it help if I say I saw it in a dream? Would that be more or less asinine than whatever you wanted to tell me?” She was losing her damn marbles, and she might be about to be threatened by a frat boy. “I hardly know anything, okay? Is that what you want to hear? That’s why I’m asking.” 

A long, long exhale of breath. “A dream?” Winn echoed, urging himself to calm the fuck down. “Naw, that sounds about par for the course… for White Crest, anyway.” Okay, Winner. Rewind. Back to square one. “Like I said, really, I’m happy to help. But so long as you’re withholdin’ your sources — and I get it, I do — I’m goin’ to keep back the name of our ginger friend.” She hardly knew anything. That was good and bad. Technically, Winn could lie his ass off. If he wasn’t a man of his word, he’d take that as an easy out. Funny thing ‘bout bein’ a counselor? It was easier to console folks, to let ‘em know it was alright to feel their own emotions than it was for Winn to get across his point, sometimes. So, an answer. “Agent Javier Sterling is dead,” he said, evenly. “He was dyin’ when he washed up, but I don’t know what got a hold of him. We were tryin’ to help him, and he attacked my friend. I moved quickly, because otherwise my friend would have died. I cut Sterling’s throat open. My friend grabbed a knife and gutted him. It was, I hope, less painful than what the infection would have done to him.” A pause. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Fine,” Savannah sighed. “Don’t tell me who the red-headed man is. I don’t care.” That wasn’t entirely true, but she was primarily concerned with finding out what had happened to Javier. The names of everyone else involved could come later. She froze momentarily when he announced Javier’s death. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. She’d suspected it from the get-go, but there was something chilling about the confirmation. “Right, dying from, um… ocean fungus?” She didn’t mean to sound so cavalier, but the whole thing was so hard to believe. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she’d have dismissed him out of hand. Her eyes widened and she stood up from her chair at his confession. Her body was stiff, her gaze trained upon him, as if he would disappear like a thief in the night if she so much as broke eye contact. “Did you just tell me— you killed Agent Sterling?” Savannah stared at this man, dumbfounded. “I think I’m supposed to arrest you for manslaughter,” she said, but somehow, she didn’t. She didn’t even move.

“Oh. The fungus was a metaphor. Probably more like an ocean… demon? Honestly, I was real close to dyin’ last month, so I haven’t had time to do any ‘investigating.’” Winn swung his legs up under him, crossed, and cocked his head. His body was loose. There’d be plenty of time for him to agonize over his decisions in whichever afterlife he ended up in, but this one? No. “I mean no disrespect here, Agent Lim, but d’you really think those charges’d hold up? C’mon, you’re smarter than that.” Winn hummed, taking another sip of his coffee. “I wouldn’t be convicted by any human court. The marks on Agent Sterling’s neck,” Winn raised his hand, eyeing it with faux-disinterest, “were made by claws, for one. I was actin’ in self-defense, like I said, for the other — which is, unless Maine’s laws are weird as fuck, I’m pretty sure’ll get me out without gettin’ charged. And for a third, I’d argue,” Winn sighed, “that I’m not the one who killed Agent Javier Sterling. I killed a monster using his body for somethin’. For what, I really don’t know.” Winn’s gaze turned hard. “And none of that’s goin’ to matter, ‘cause no one would believe a word either of us said.”

Savannah didn’t believe in ocean demons. Why would she? Ocean cordyceps had been hard enough to wrap her head around. This nice, respectful young man had just confessed to her as if it was just another damn August afternoon. Nothing to see here, folks. White Crest was the most bizarre place she’d ever experienced. “No, no, I don’t think they’d hold up. Where’s the evidence? Is there a body? A murder weapon? Or did you dispose of all that too?” She scoffed. Maybe she could get him on destruction of evidence, of covering up Javier’s death, but even that was a long shot. Yes, it would be her word against his, but since her story made no damn sense either, it was going to be tough to do anything at all. “I don’t know if I even believe you,” she said firmly, like that would give her some kind of one-up on him. “There is no such thing as people-possessing ocean monsters,” she said. This whole town seemed as if it was playing one huge joke on her. She folded her arms across her chest. “Take me to his body.”

Winn was quiet while Savannah ran through her litany of questions. There were only so many ways to bust open a mind, let someone know the world was much, much bigger than they imagined. Unfortunately for Agent Lim, Winn hadn’t had to explain himself — or the supernatural world at large — to a garden variety human in, uh, ever. But leading with Javier’s death had been the only option, right? Otherwise, what, shift in front of her? Naw, too dangerous, and he didn’t have spare clothes on him. “Thing about the truth? You don’t have to believe me. As for a body? Doubt it’s there, anymore. Enough flesh-eating things in our rivers that the corpse was destined to get snacked on. But, look, I get it. Evidence.” As much as he loathed to admit it, another journey through his memories could be the easiest solution here. It’d take time, time that Agent Lim didn’t necessarily have. “I want answers, same as you. But it might take some doin’, and it’s gonna require you to trust me. Trust that I want to—” fight? destroy? “—bring to justice whatever hurt Agent Sterling. I said before, I won’t lie to you. And I might be able to give you something to work with. Teamwork’d be better than workin’ against each other, right?” Winn stood, holding out his hand. 

Savannah's head was spinning. There was so much sincerity in the man before her. He was just honest, kind even. She wanted to scream, as if yelling would make all this go away, somehow make it easier to digest. She could yell over and over that this wasn't true, but she somehow felt the reality of it, no matter what kind of scepticism she might have wanted to win out, somehow she just knew that Winn was telling the truth. "You know this is the fucking weirdest buddy cop duo ever," she sighed, but extended her hand to his. "I'm going to need a drink." 

#paras #with: winn

[blackkudos]

Keegan-Michael Key

Keegan-Michael Key (born March 22, 1971) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer.

Key co-created and co-starred alongside Jordan Peele in Comedy Central's sketch series Key & Peele (2012–2015) and co-starred in USA Network's Playing House (2014–2017). He spent six seasons as a cast member on Mad TV (2004–2009) and has made guest appearances on the U.S. version of Whose Line is it Anyway? on The CW. He also appeared alongside Peele in the first season of the FX series Fargo in 2014, and had a recurring role on Parks and Recreation from 2013 to 2015. He hosted the U.S. version of The Planet's Funniest Animals on Animal Planet from 2005 until 2008.

Key has had supporting roles in several films, including Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), Don't Think Twice (2016), and Toy Story 4 (2019). Also in 2015, he appeared at the White House Correspondents' Dinner as the Key & Peele character Luther, President Barack Obama's anger translator. Key and Peele produced and starred in the 2016 action-comedy film Keanu. In 2017, Key made his Broadway debut in Steve Martin's Meteor Shower.

Early life

Key was born in Southfield, Michigan on March 22, 1971, the son of black father Leroy McDuffie and white mother Carrie Herr. He was adopted at a young age by a couple from Detroit, Michael Key and Patricia Walsh, who were both social workers. Like his birth parents, his adoptive parents were also a black man and white woman. Through his biological father, Key had two half-brothers, one of whom was comic book writer Dwayne McDuffie (1962–2011). Key only discovered the existence of his siblings after they had both died.

Key attended the University of Detroit Mercy as an undergraduate, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater in 1993, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in theater at Pennsylvania State University in 1996. While at the University of Detroit Mercy, he was a brother of Phi Kappa Theta.

Career

Mad TV

In 2004, Key joined the cast of Mad TV midway into the ninth season. He and Jordan Peele were cast against each other, but both ended up being picked after demonstrating great comedic chemistry. Key played many characters on the show. One of his most famous characters is "Coach Hines", a high school sports coach who frequently disrupts and threatens students and faculty members. On the penultimate episode of Mad TV, Hines revealed that he is the long-lost heir to the Heinz Ketchup company and only became a Catholic school coach to help delinquent teenagers like Yamanashi (Bobby Lee). During seasons 9 and 10, Key appeared as "Dr. Funkenstein" in blaxploitation parodies, with Peele playing the monster. Key also portrayed various guests on Real **********ing Talk like the strong African Rollo Johnson and blind victim Stevie Wonder Washington. He often goes "backstage" as Eugene Struthers, an ecstatic water-or-flower delivery man who accosts celebrities. There is also "Jovan Muskatelle", a shirtless man with a jheri curl and a shower cap. He interrupts live news broadcasts by a reporter (always played by Ike Barinholtz), annoying him with rapid fire accounts of events that have happened frequently exclaiming "It was crazy as hell!" Celebrities that Key impersonated on the show include Ludacris, Snoop Dogg, Roscoe Orman (as his character Gordon from Sesame Street), Matthew Lillard, Bill Cosby, Al Roker, Terrell Owens, Tyler Perry, Keith Richards, Eddie Murphy (as his character James "Thunder" Early from the movie Dreamgirls), Sherman Hemsley (as his character George Jefferson on The Jeffersons), Charles Barkley, Sendhil Ramamurthy (as Mohinder Suresh), Tyson Beckford, Seal (originally played by Peele until Peele left the show at the end of season 13), Sidney Poitier, Lionel Richie, Barack Obama, Kobe Bryant and Jack Haley (as the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz). He also played female celebrities, including Phylicia Rashād, Robin Antin, and Eva Longoria (as Gabrielle Solis on a Desperate Housewives parody).

Key & Peele

Key and his former Mad TV castmate Jordan Peele starred in their own Comedy Central sketch series Key & Peele, which began airing on January 31, 2012 and ran for five seasons until September 9, 2015. Key and his comedy partner Jordan Peele starred in an episode of Epic Rap Battles of History, with Key playing Mahatma Gandhi and Peele playing Martin Luther King Jr. The pair returned to Epic Rap Battles of History with the "Muhammad Ali versus Michael Jordan" battle, with Key portraying Jordan.

Key was introduced by President Barack Obama at the 2015 White House Correspondents' Dinner as Luther, Obama's Anger Translator, one of Key's characters from Key & Peele.

Friends from College

Key plays the most prominent male character, Ethan Turner, on the Netflix ensemble comedy Friends from College, about a group of Harvard University graduates and friends now in their late 30s living in New York City. He plays an award-winning fiction writer who is being encouraged to start writing for young adult fiction audiences.

Other work

Key was one of the founders of Hamtramck, Michigan's Planet Ant Theatre, and was a member of the Second City Detroit's mainstage cast before joining the Second City e.t.c. theater in Chicago. Key co-founded the Detroit Creativity Project along with Beth Hagenlocker, Marc Evan Jackson, Margaret Edwartowski, and Larry Joe Campbell. The Detroit Creativity Project teaches students in Detroit improvisation as a way to improve their communication skills. Key performed with The 313, an improv group formed with other members of Second City Hollywood that appears around the country. The 313 is made up primarily of former Detroit residents and named for Detroit's area code. Key also hosted Animal Planet's The Planet's Funniest Animals.

He made a cameo in "Weird Al" Yankovic's video "White & Nerdy" with fellow Mad TV co-star Jordan Peele. In 2009, Key hosted GSN's "Big Saturday Night", and has co-starred in Gary Unmarried on CBS. Key was a panelist on the NPR comedy quiz show Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me... on March 27 and July 24, 2010. Key has been in several episodes of Reno 911! as the "Theoretical Criminal".

Key and Peele were featured on the cover and in a series of full-page comic photos illustrating The New York Times Magazine article "Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?" on March 31, 2013. A live-action video version was also featured on the Times' website. Key co-stars in the horror-comedy Hell Baby. Key is one of the rotating "fourth chair" performers in the 2013 revival of Whose Line Is It Anyway?.

In addition to Key & Peele, he also co-starred in the USA Network comedy series Playing House, which began airing in April 2014.

Together with his comedy partner Jordan Peele, Key played an FBI agent in a recurring role in the 2014 FX crime drama Fargo.

Key was involved in audio episodes for the marketing campaign, "Hunt the Truth" on the website for the video game Halo 5: Guardians, voicing a fictional journalist and war photographer named Benjamin Giraud, who investigates the Master Chief's background.

Key has had small supporting roles in numerous films, including 2014's Horrible Bosses 2, Let's Be Cops and the animated The Lego Movie, as well as Pitch Perfect 2 and Tomorrowland in 2015. Key and Peele are currently working with Judd Apatow on a feature-length film for Universal Pictures.

Key is one of several hosts of the podcast Historically Black by American Public Media and The Washington Post.

In the summer of 2017 Key returned to the theatre after what he characterized as a "19-year detour into sketch comedy" for a production of Hamlet at New York's Public Theater, playing Horatio opposite Oscar Isaac in the title role. Key, who is a Shakespearean-trained actor, fulfilled his lifelong dream to play Horatio and received rave reviews for his performance. The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney noted that Key's comedic skills were on full display, "...but his ease with the verse and stirring sensitivity [was] a revelation."

Key voice acted in The Star, the animated film based on the Nativity of Jesus. He later went on to voice Ducky in Toy Story 4 and Kamari in The Lion King.

In 2017, Key made his Broadway debut in Steve Martin's comedy Meteor Shower.

Brain Games

Key currently hosts Brain Games on National Geographic

Personal life

Key was married to actress and dialect coach Cynthia Blaise from 1998 until 2017. They were legally separated in November 2015, with Key filing for divorce the following month. He married producer and director Elisa Key (formerly Elisa Pugliese) in New York City on June 8, 2018.

Key is a Christian and has practiced Buddhism, Catholicism, and Evangelicalism in the past. Being biracial has been a source of comedic material for Key, who told Terry Gross in an interview for NPR, "I think the reason Jordan and I became actors is because we did a fair amount of code-switching growing up and still do."

Philanthropy

Key has worked with the Young Storytellers Foundation as an actor for their annual fundraiser alongside Max Greenfield, Jack Black and Judy Greer.

#03/22

[lost-in-prose]

COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=n%2bsjkgnX&id=1E1BCBEB74F9286322052EE351BC53774CE0E9A6&thid=OIP.n-sjkgnXOTE9YQlyq3-6qgHaD8&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fupload.wikimedia.org%2fwikipedia%2fcommons%2f3%2f36%2fMers-virus-3D-image.jpg&exph=398&expw=748&q=betacoronavirus&simid=608030286204831497&selectedIndex=18&ajaxhist=0

Hey guys! So I already tried to create this once. I got down to the very end and my computer self destructed and deleted everything. So this is my second attempt and doing EVERYTHING OVER. Anyway, I have to do this for my biomed class, and I thought y’all would like to read some of this too. So, enjoy! I will have the sources at the bottom in case you want to check out the websites yourselves.

Anyway, stay safe and wash your hands you filthy animals!

What is it?

The COVID-19 is considered a betacoronavirus, which means that it is a single-strand RNA. It attacks the RNA in your body and takes over your cells. The way this virus is transmitted is through respiratory droplets that are spread when someone coughs or sneezes. These droplets could land in the mouth or nose of someone sitting nearby, travelling to their lungs and infecting them, too. 

There are different strains of the virus, alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. Alpha and beta are most common in humans. 

The good news about this virus is that it hasn’t changed much in a thousand years. I read somewhere that it was described as a raging storm. The waves were thrashing and it was chaotic on the surface, but underneath it was all the same. Most of us haven’t been exposed to this disease ever, unless we were alive in the 1960′s when they were first trying to create a vaccine for it. And lets face it, if you are on this website, you weren’t. 

So, when your body comes in contact with a new virus such as this, what does it do? First, the virus must sneak in through a back door and into our cells, like a burglar. Only certain proteins can unlock our cells, since the receptors on the cells only open for them, but when these certain proteins open the cells, the virus sneak inside. From there, they start damaging your cell before moving on to more. After they break from the old cell, your body sends white blood cells to fight them, since they just now detected the virus. If this doesn’t work, which in this case it doesn’t, your body starts to wreck havoc on your lungs and kills the tissue so that the virus can latch on and feed on the good tissue. Your body repairs you lungs, but that takes a while since they are fighting the virus in your body. Your lungs stay in the crappy state until your body can find a way to fight back. And as Laboratory head Katherine Kedzierska says, “The immune cell populations we have seen emerging before patients recover are cells that we see in influenza.” So there you have it guys. Our bodies are fighting the beer virus with influenza. Great. 

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=RHnBEvlJ&id=82E1F2FB32068A8E54E1BE52519280BFD4A22826&thid=OIP.RHnBEvlJ2DS3Z1XkfsEY6AHaDu&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fupnewsinfo.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2020%2f02%2fThe-death-toll-from-coronavirus-exceeds-1000-as-more-than.jpg&exph=485&expw=962&q=world+spread+of+coronavirus+map+who&simid=607993697382174593&selectedIndex=91&ajaxhist=0

Where Did it Come From?...WHERE DID IT GO? WHERE DID IT COME FROM COTTON EYED JOE

You see this mess up here?^ That is because a guy in Wuhan, China decided to eat a bat. Out of all the beautiful food on this planet, he decided to eat a bat. Since he got it from a bat, it is considered zoonotic. He then spread it to other people and they spread it to other people...you get the point. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know where he lives exactly, but I really want to smack him with the loaf of bread that I do not have right now.

Now, let’s talk about Wuhan, China. Researchers aren’t exactly sure where the first case was at, but a large number of people who first got it where it Wuhan. At first people believed that it was caused by the large seafood market in the city, but people near there who got the virus claimed that they never bought or ate anything from there. So, it limits us to the guy who ate a bat. 

When Should You Be Concerned?

As we all know by now, this has been considered a pandemic. A pandemic is a worldwide spread of a new virus, for those of you who do not know. 

There are more than 118,000 cases in over 114 countries, and professionals believe that these numbers are going to continue to climb. The World Health Organization have been watching this outbreak since it first started, and were alarmed by the spread and severity of the COVID-19. Already they are calling for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. Don’t panic, but be vigilant of your surroundings and take precautions to remain safe. 

How Bad Is It?

Right now, there are 193,475 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with only 7,864 deaths. Compared to the flu, which had 34 million cases, this isn’t that drastic. In addition, the death rate of the coronavirus isn’t as high as the others, either.

For example, by National Geographic(which is old data compared to what I just shared. Please don’t kill me)  the COVID-19 has 31,528 confirmed cases and 638 deaths, which comes to only a 2% death rate overall. In addition, SARS(2002-2003) had 8,098 cases and a 10% death rate. MERS(2012-present) has 2,494 cases and a 34% death rate overall. Ebola(2014-2016) has 28,616 cases and a 40% death rate. 

If you are worried about the death rate compared to age groups, I got that too. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-death-age-older-people-higher-risk-2020-2

How Are Other Countries Doing?

As of right now, there are 207,615 cases of COVID-19 in the world. China is first with 81,100, followed by Italy, Iran, Spain, and Germany. The total number of deaths is 8,248. China is first with 3,100, followed by Italy, Iran, France, and South Korea. 

But, in the light of all this gloom, there have also been many people to recover from the virus, 82,104 in fact. The recovery rates are: first China at 56,927, followed by Iran, Italy, South Korea, and Spain. 

With all these recoveries, you think people would stop stealing toilet paper. 

Treatment and Control

If you have any of the symptoms of the coronavirus, which would be coughing, difficulty breathing, etc., please contact your doctor. Don’t try to play superhero.

Get tested if you think you have the symptoms. 

Cover your nose and mouth if you sneeze or cough and throw away your contaminated tissues. Really, I shouldn’t be telling you this. 

Wash. Your. Hands. Sing the alphabet song through twice if you have to. 

Stay isolated. Even if you don’t have it, it would be best to not give anyone else the virus. 

If you’re sick, wear a mask. As stated above, you don’t need to give the virus to anyone else. 

As to control the spread, you can follow the above steps as well. Try to decontaminate your area as much as possible and wash your hands regularly. 

Recommendations

I would say just stay safe, people. I am no medical expert. I am a freakin sophomore in high school. From what I can gather though, you need to be smart. Wash your hands, stay home if you can. 

Citations: 

WHO. (March 11, 2020). WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 11 March 2020. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020. (Accessed March 18, 2020).

CDC. (March 16, 2020). What To Do if You Are Sick. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/steps-when-sick.html. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

Rettner, Rachael. (March 6, 2020). How does the new coronavirus compare with the flu? Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu.html. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

CDC. (March 17, 2020). SItuation Summary. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summary.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fsummary.html. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

Scott, Sophie. (March 17, 2020). Australian researchers discover how the body's immune system fights coronavirus COVID-19. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/research-how-bodys-immune-system-fights-coronavirus-covid-19/12059266. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

Munson, Marty. (March 17, 2020). How The New Coronavirus Behaves Inside Your Body, According To A Coronaviruses Expert. Retrieved from https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/familyhealth/how-the-new-coronavirus-behaves-inside-your-body-according-to-a-coronaviruses-expert/ar-BB11igK6. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

CoronaVirus{Map}. (n.a.). CoronaVirus{Map}. Retrieved from https://coronavirus-map.com/. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

Belluz, Julia. (January 27, 2020). Did China downplay the coronavirus outbreak early on? Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/2020/1/27/21082354/coronavirus-outbreak-wuhan-china-early-on-lancet. (Accessed March 18, 2020).

University Hospitals. (January 29, 2020). Coronavirus: Should You Be Concerned? Retrieved from https://www.uhhospitals.org/Healthy-at-UH/articles/2020/01/coronavirus-should-you-be-concerned. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

Akpan, Nsikan., Elliot, Kennedy. (February 7, 2020). How coronavirus compares to the flu, Ebola, and other major outbreaks. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/graphic-coronavirus-compares-flu-ebola-other-major-outbreaks/#close. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

Bendix, Aria. (February 27, 2020). Coronavirus patients over age 80 have a death rate of 15%. Here's the death rate for every age bracket. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-death-age-older-people-higher-risk-2020-2. (Accessed March 18, 2020). 

#coronavirus #coronatime #potato #health

[sustainabilitysarah]

Progress in Food Production Illustration

In 1968, when I was and impressionable six years old horrified by what the television was showing about the Vietnam War, listening to the Beatles sing 'All you need is love', my parents bought a book called "The Population Bomb" by scientist Paul Ehrlich. It suggested that we were running out of resources because our population was growing too fast and we were consuming our earth's life support system faster than it could

regenerate. Two years later, on the first Earth Day, I began my activism, rounding up the neighborhood kids and staging a clean up of the polluted stream behind our apartment that ran into the Hudson River. 

A year later my Beatle idol George Harrison held a "Concert for Bangladesh" to raise awareness of the suffering there. Like many kids worried about the "starving kids in Bangladesh" I asked in school why things were getting so bad. Like most school children around the world, we were told how the population bomb supposedly worked, how it ticked. The idea went back to the Reverend Thomas Malthus who argued in 1798 that "population increases geometrically, while food supplies increase only

arithmetically". This has been the prevailing wisdom for over 2 centuries and is often illustrated by the following graph:http://www.biology.iupui.edu/biocourses/N100/images/ageomgrowth.gif

http://occ.crescentschool.org/geography/human/unitvagricultural/malthusgr aph.jpg

Looks neat, right -- so mathematically precise and inevitable. The problem is that it is wrong. I felt it as a kid. It bothered me throughout middle school and high school and on in to college. The reverend's now famous "Malthusian" predictions of doom and gloom came from a man who never studied biology... we now realize that he was a religious zealot and bigot who made up theories to try and stoke anti- immigration fever, arguing that undesirable poor people were basically breeding like rats. The problem in his logic is easy to spot when you use Nexus thinking: FOOD IS A POPULATION. Food comes from living creatures who have populations. They expand GEOMETRICALLY. If you let them. If you encourage them. It doesn't matter if we are talking about Brewer's yeast or earthworms or oak trees or apple trees or chickens or ears of corn or cattle or cocoa covered ants... whatever you eat comes from living organisms that are programmed to reproduce as fast as they can... that WANT to reproduce... geometrically. Just like us. So... population increases geometrically, whether it is us or our food. Starving kids in Bangladesh or Ethiopia simply shouldn't happen, and, I will insist to you, WOULDN'T, if we allowed the organism we eat to do their thing.

The key to keeping food production in line with food consumption, I have been arguing, is to use the "food-waste-to-fuel-and-fertilizer-and-food" or FW2F3 formula wherein every molecule of nitrogen, phosphorous, pottasium and carbon and micronutrients found in our wastes in our burgeoning cities is transformed immediately, in situ, back into food through the magical transduction of anaerobic and aerobic biodigestion and urban vertical farming and micro-livestock.

Using these simple techologies to close the loops in the food/energy/water nexus, the curves on those graphs should continue to go up in lock step, until we reach the limits set by sunlight. And then we will have to figure out safe, harmless ways to grow not just ourselves and our "economy" but our ecology, and eventually help grow new planets. But even that... the promise of space stations and terraforming planets, isn't out of the question. After all, the one thing that doesn't seem to ever be in any danger of NOT expanding... is the universe."

Today’s lecture is about “Progress in food production: a new wave of ancient practices and post-modern technologies that use less water and less energy, produce less waste and can even produce more energy.”

And I believe, to paraphrase Deuteronomy 12:3, we have to start by “tearing down the altars and smashing the sacred pillars” that were erected by wrong headed Malthusians who used a gross misunderstanding of biology and a total lack of nexus and systems thinking to scare us into what I call “induced paralysis for profit”. The idea comes from what is called in economics classes “The Scarcity Model: the fundamental economic assumption of having seemingly unlimited human needs and wants in a world of limited resources, which states that society has insufficient productive resources to fulfill all human wants and needs”. 

When the scarcity model is used to create fear, to create an atmosphere of doom and gloom, to predict the inevitable arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (Conquest, War, Famine, and Death), political economists and political ecologists suggest that it is much easier for elite groups to manipulate the masses. They control the machinery of conquest and war, and they use the specter of famine to gain their power.

Food production sits at the heart of the nexus – every animal on this planet (and doubtless the vast majority of beings in our universe) finds food to be the fundamental. It is priority number one, for unless you are a being of pure light you need the food that grows with light to survive. And if you spread misinformation that famine is imminent, that starvation is just around the corner, you can mobilize armies.

However, looked at from a FEW Nexus perspective, this fear of famine we

have been living with since Biblical times (the four horsemen are part of the Book of Revelation of Jesus Christ to John of Patmos, at 6:1-8 in the New Testament written during the Roman occupation of Palestine) is a peculiar Middle Eastern and North European phenomenon it turns out, coming from civilizations in regions of the world where water stresses constrained food production. People in well-watered tropical regions rarely felt threatened by food scarcity and in fact were described by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins as living in a state of perpetual abundance. He postulated that hunter- gatherers were, in fact “the original affluent society” at a symposium entitled "Man the Hunter" in 1966 and this idea has been tested and found true for most peoples around the world where water was not a limiting factor. It explains why hunting and gathering and subsistence farming persist to this day, and why so many people resisted being brought into modern civilization or adopting modern agriculture methods. In fact the work of historian Anthropologist Eric Wolf, such as “Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century” and Yale professor James Scott in books such as “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed” teach us that there have been enough failures due to the form of agriculture that emerged from the conquering civilizations that the conquered were willing to sacrifice their lives to revolt against them. Somehow, it seems, those certain schemes to improve yields were social and ecological disasters that should have been rejected by civilizations but instead were used to confirm the Reverend Malthus’ scientifically unfounded hypothesis – a classic but often neglected example of what is known as confirmation bias – which wiki defines as “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative

possibilities”. When it comes to food production, the alternative possibility, which is persuasively argued in Richard Manning’s book “Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization” is that monocropping annual vegetation and basing civilization on grain agriculture, on the use of plants in the family Poaceae/Graminae, that is the grasses – wheat, rice, corn, barely, oats and sugar – yes, sugar is a grass – is, to caricature the 45th president of the world’s most powerful agriculture and military empire, “ a disaster”.

History records that agriculture and famine are the Jekyll and Hyde of the long and often militarized march of civilization. The one came because of the other, says Manning. Most of us were taught the opposite weren’t we? Taught that human life, as the 17th century imperial philosopher Thomas Hobbes decried in his book Leviathan, was “nasty, brutish and short” We were told that humans lived in a state of semi-starvation UNTIL they discovered agriculture. We were told that agriculture saved our species from hunger and misery, gave us the surpluses that enabled our climb to civilization. Sounds good, turns out not to be true.

Even Harvard’s Spencer Wells, a friend of mine who is the geneticist who leads the National Geographic Genographic project writes in his book “Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization” that when humans shifted from hunting and gathering in that original affluent society to grain agriculture the average height of men dropped from about 5 foot 7 to 5 foot 2 and women’s pelvic girdles narrowed to the point where death in childbirth increased in frequency. 

These were clear signs of malnutrition recorded in the fossils. Agriculture was to blame... floodplain agriculture dependent on disturbance species that grow like weeds after a disaster because they are weeds. And they end up causing disasters thereafter because they evolved to live in disaster environments, places where floods and fires ravage the countryside on a regular basis. In effect they DEPEND on disasters for their own reproductive survival. It is as though once we hitched our caboose to the weeds and became weed eaters, we started living for them and not the other way around.

Michael Pollan talks about this in his wonderful book that reframes our relationship to addictive plants called “The Botany of Desire”. 

He points out that you could look at us as the slaves of addictive plants that evolved to control us through their effect on our brains so that we would help them reproduce. This idea, which British Scientist Richard Dawkin’s calls “The Extended Phenotype” in the battle of Selfish Genes, isn’t really new. 

In 1872, when Samuel Butler published his utopian fiction “Erewhon” the major premise of the people who fled Europe to live on the island of Erewhon in the hopes of creating a better civilization was that they would not allow themselves to submit to the control of their addictions or any system that makes us into its own slave. On the island they refuse to use technology like cars and steam engines and typewriters and telegraph or any machines. It isn’t that they don’t know about these things – in fact they have an entire museum where they keep them safely on display in glass cases. They tell visitors, “in your civilization machines don’t serve you, you serve them. You go to work in the morning and waste your days slavishly building more machines and oiling them and fixing them and keeping them running. It is like the bee that is the servant of the flower... flowers can’t move to reproduce themselves, so they addict the bee with beauty and nectar and perfumes and the busy bee spends its whole life toiling just to help make more flowers”. The phenotype of the bee is being controlled by the genes of the flower, not the bee. This is the concept of the extended phenotype, which finds its purest expression in parasitology.

So there are some who believe that the crops we turned to in our modern agricultural systems are acting more like Parasites that food stuffs, and that when we think we are serving food in the “restaurant service” sense , we literally are serving food – i.e. we now serve THEM, as servants.

This makes sense from the perspectives of evolutionary psychology and behavioral ecology.

Whether it was drought in arid desert regions or winter freezing water into ice, the limits to plant growth and reproduction, and hence to animal fecundity were set by the availability of water. In the Middle East, certainly, it was not energy that was missing from the Nexus. Sunshine has always been abundant in those latitudes to provide energy for food production.

In the European countries the harsh winters did indeed constrain plant productivity and famines could result in winter if care wasn’t taken to take the enormous fecundity of the spring, summer and fall and store the harvest surplus for the fallow period. But Hunter Gatherers North and South, in the cold regions or the hot ones, originally depended on agroforestry, on tree crops, on perennials, not annuals. And they depended on the animals that depended on forests – on forest boars and jungle fowl and woodland ungulates – all the ancestors of our modern pigs and chicken and cows. In the north the forest leaf fall in the fall built up incredible rich soils during the winter ready for an explosion of food in the spring and summer which created enough surplus for the mammals we ate to survive the winter. In the south the forests retained the water that fell sporadically and created their own microclimates through transpiration. They forests created environments so rich in the cornucopia of foodstuffs that our mythology now recalls as “The Garden of Eden”.

And if you want some mythological proof of the disaster or agriculture, just look at the curse we were to endure after eating the tree of knowledge and getting kicked out of the garden, “To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; 19By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground”. So eating bread isn’t salvation, eating bread is the CURSE. No wonder so many hunters and gatherers said, “shoot, I’m going back into the forest, no way I’m doing hard time through painful toil to eat when I can pick fruits and vegetables and trap

animals.” And the fossil evidence of malnutrition affecting the pelvic bones of women, noted by Spencer Wells in Pandora’s Seed, is corroborated in the curse in Genesis when God says, “To the woman he said, "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

We can even comment on what this reveals about the emergence of patriarchal rule due to the shift to grain agriculture. My experience with hunter-gatherer populations is that the women are usually the ones who

understood the sheer abundance of biodiversity that nature offered to put into the cooking pot. I experienced it when I was living with Melayu and Dyak tribes in the rainforests of Borneo and was taken into the forest by the medicine woman who was cooking our meal and her grandson who climbed the trees to get the foods. She was called the “witch doctor” and as she laid out the huge variety of foods we collected to put in the cooking pot I had images of the witches’ cauldron with its “eyes of newt, frogs legs, bats wings” – all things that would have provided great inexpensive abundant protein but which today are shamefully associated with evil and

witchcraft. After all, women were BURNED at the stake for understanding and promoting biodiversity in diet by the European patriarchy, and children punished or mocked for thinking they could go into the forest as kids do and come back munching on lizards and grubs. Agriculture can be blamed not only for this tremendous patriarchal violence and loss of biodiversity as we simplified the landscape to a handful of weedy grasses, but for what James Scott calls the “dummification” of humanity. At one time, as I experienced among the hunters and gatherers of Borneo, harvesting food was an educational adventure that made women and children experts who rivaled the best Ph.D. botanists and naturalists who Harvard sent out. With agriculture we turned brilliant self-sufficient peasants into outdoor factory workers and, of course, quite literally when you are talking about the first 400 years of agriculture in the European colonized Americas, slaves. The violence inherent in agriculture rears its ugly head everywhere.

And it could be said that Genesis itself records the clearest indication that grain agriculture is the scourge of mankind, the source of its original sin of violence in The story of Cain and Abel. This chapter of the Bible is the clearest indictment of wheat agriculture one could imagine, and nobody seems to comment on it. Abel is a pastoralist who tends a flock of animals who wander about like ungulate hunter gatherers, eating what God has given them. His brother Cain is... a wheat farmer, somehow stupidly living out God’s curse to scratch a living in the hot sun through toil amidst the thistles and thorns that always accompany weed agriculture. Abel brings a lamb meat sacrifice to the altar of God, along with diverse fruits and vegetables he has gathered, and God is pleased.

Cain then comes with a bunch of wheat and the Bible says, “but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?7"If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it."...

To me this is a clear indication that the ancients saw wheat offerings as a kind of sin, the sin of an addiction, an addiction which Cain could not

master. In his anger he turns around and kills his gentle carnivorous animal slaughtering brother.

Think about it for a moment... it is enough to make Vegans go mad: The vegetarian is the killer, the slaughterer of baby goats is the gentle one.

Could it be that this ancient myths were there to warn us that wheat is a weed, that grains are drugs, that we haven’t been growing food all along, but addictive substances that will end up mastering us through the Botany of Desire?

So, to get back to Reverend Malthus, who in my opinion must not have spent an awful lot of time delving into the hermeneutic interpretation of the books he preached in his fiery diatribes against the poor and the immigrants, it is clear to me that the entire Matlhusian premise is based on a fabrication of the weed eaters, who most likely did observe that if they kept planting grains and consuming starches and sugars their own sickly but ever increasing population would outstrip the fecundity of the land and so human populations would increase geometrically while their drug-food agriculture would only increase arithmetically if at all.

But if Abel had been Abel, we might have returned to the garden a long long time ago, where food is a self-increasing population grown in permacultural symbiosis into perpetuity. The good news is, that the world as we know it IS coming to an end. And what is ending isn’t the good life, but the bad life we inherited from our dummified forebears. We can begin again. Permacultural Food Production shows us how.

[metalandmagi]

March Media Madness!

Hello and welcome to the post where I talk about all the movies, books, and TV I consumed this month in my seemingly never ending quest to shout my feelings into the void. And oh boy all the winter anime is ending so I feel dead inside.

*puts on sunglasses* Let’s do this.

Movies!

Bohemian Rhapsody: The one about Queen Freddie Mercury. And it’s pretty good. It’s a little weird seeing a biopic of a band with literally no struggles getting into the industry, and I wouldn’t say it does wonders for the negative stereotypes about bisexuals...but who cares because if you’re watching this movie, it’s because you just want to sing along to some Queen songs and see some big hair! 8/10

How to Train Your Dragon- The Hidden World: The third and final installment in the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, in which Dreamworks pulls a Butterfree on us, but at least we get a happy ending. This franchise holds a special place in my heart for so many reasons, and I’m glad that this one stuck the landing. Each movie has its own specific feeling and message, and they all advance the story in unique ways. Apart from being beautifully animated and hilarious, it also packs the big emotional punch we all were expecting and ends on a satisfying note overall. But it’s still not perfect. The other riders are at their most useless by far, and this is coming from someone who never really minded them before. They’re a lot more irritating if you’ve watched the tv series and can see how they can be useful. And Astrid really only provides emotional support instead of her usual ass-kicking. The villain was...fine...but he didn’t really pack much of a punch. And I really wished they had kept some sort of continuity and embraced the television series (I NEED A DAGUR CAMEO)! But these are mostly small things. If you haven’t given this franchise a try yet, please give it a chance! 9/10

Ralph Breaks the Internet: The poorly named sequel to Wreck It Ralph, in which Ralph and Venelope must travel to the internet to save Sugar Rush and keep the game characters from becoming homeless. It’s a fine follow up, but it definitely doesn’t have the same impact the first one did. There’s a heck of a lot going on in this movie, and it feels like it tried to do too much in terms of plot and character arcs in favor of sacrificing the humor from the first movie. And I really miss Felix and Calhoun. But there are a lot of good things about it too. Everything the Disney princesses do is pure gold, Shank is amazing, and there is a ton of effort put into building the world of the internet. I’m sure it will be pretty dated in a couple years, but it’s not just a quick cash grab full of name dropping and references (even though Disney seems like it wants it to be). It’s still worth checking out. 7.5/10

A Quiet Place: A family must survive in a world where deadly alien monsters that are attracted to sound have invaded the planet. I am the world’s biggest wimp when it comes to scary movies, and even I was interested enough in the premise to want to see this movie. And yes it’s amazing! The performances are all incredibly moving and believable, we get good representation of a Deaf character, the sound design is so creative it should be used in film classes, and it tells a thrilling and heart wrenching family story in only an hour and a half. I think I liked it because the focus wasn’t on the monsters just going around killing people. It’s about a family and what parents will do for their children. People like to say there’s a ton of plot holes, but if you actually think about them for more than five seconds, you’ll see there’s really nothing to pick apart because their decisions all make sense in the end.

My only question is about the cochlear device the daughter (Regan) uses. Was the dad (Lee) trying to make a new cochlear implant? Did Regan already have the internal component implanted in her cochlea? Had she been using one since before the monsters came? Did it break earlier because of the monsters’ connection with electromagnetic waves? Because if not...CIs don’t really work like that. I’m just confused about that situation. But that’s kind of nitpicky when this movie is still amazing. Even if you hate horror movies, I’d highly suggest it simply because of how creative its production is. 9/10

Mary Poppins Returns: It’s exactly what it sounds like...Mary Poppins returns to help the now adult children of the Banks family with the help of Lin Manuel Miranda. It’s fun, but it definitely goes on too long. Though I appreciate Emily Blunt putting her own spin on the character. Odds are if you like the original, you’ll probably like this too. 8/10

Fantastic Beasts- The Crimes of Grindelwald: The second movie in the Harry Potter prequel-verse, where Grindelwald basically becomes wizard Hitler and Newt is more concerned with winning Tina back then saving the world. Okay...this movie is not great. Structurally it’s a mess, the fun is being sucked out of the wizarding world, the characters make decisions that don’t align with previous behavior and make no logical sense, and there really is just the bare bones of a plot. There are also several characters that don’t need to be there and are just thrown in for fanservice (for now anyway). I found myself constantly saying how things don’t work like that and asking why things are happening. But even so, there are still good things about it. Visually it’s...fantastic. Jude Law makes a good young Dumbledore, and even Johnny Depp embodies what I always imagined Grindelwald at the height of his power would be like...I just wish it wasn’t Johnny Depp. I also wish it had more humor, because what was there was funny. It’s really just a transition film, which proves this franchise should never have been five movies, and Rowling should have focused on a Marauders era series or on young Dumbledore and Grindelwald. You just have to form your own opinion. 6.5/10

Maquia- When the Promised Flower Blooms: An immortal girl becomes a teen mom to an orphaned baby after her clan is killed. It’s basically a high fantasy version of Wolf Children. I honestly don’t know what to think about this movie. It does the family relationships so well and really drives home what it means to be a parent. However, its setting really throws me out of the movie because it tries to focus so much on the politics and background of this world without really succeeding. And because it is about a baby growing up, the pacing is so fast it will give you whiplash. But it is beautifully filmed and animated, and I would have bawled my eyes out at the ending if I wasn’t so distracted by how much I didn’t like the other characters and things that were happening at the castle. So...yeah, it’s a well animated, hard hitting movie that will probably mean more to parents overall. I just wish it was a TV series or a trilogy or something other than a two hour film. 7.5/10

Free Solo: A National Geographic documentary covering Alex Honnold, a man who is attempting to climb up the 900 meter side of El Capitan at Yosemite national park...without ropes or safety equipment. Yes, this is an incredible feat and the actual climbing portions are gripping and super intense. But personally, I found who Alex is as a person much more fascinating...and not necessarily in a positive way. Honestly, he can be a jerk. This sounds horrible to say considering he’s a real person and he’s doing something amazing, but seriously watch this movie and tell me this man is not one step away from being a sociopath. It’s completely understandable why he thinks the way he thinks, but it’s not exactly healthy for the other people in his life. I would be just as interested to see a two hour therapy session with him as I was with his climbing. Anyway, if you love gorgeous scenery and butt-clenching thrills with a side of psychologically interesting perspectives, watch this on the biggest screen possible. 8/10

The Matrix: REALITY IS AN ILLUSION, THE UNIVERSE IS A HOLOGRAM, BUY GOLD BYE

Yeah I’d never seen The Matrix, but I really didn’t expect it to be EXACTLY like the Oto arc in Tsubasa Chronicles. It’s too long, Neo’s an incredibly flat protagonist (but I feel like that’s on purpose to serve some sort of self-insert fantasy), and it seems like a YA dystopian fantasy series from 2013...but in an endearing sort of way. And hey it’s got a lot of cool slow motion fighting and neat body horror if you’re into that sort of thing. 7/10

Books!

Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman: What happens when California literally just runs out of water one day? A group of teens go on an apocalyptic field trip to find some of course! I’ve only read one other Neal Shusterman series before, but I’m sensing a pattern of how well Shusterman can propose a theoretical question and then build an entire world around it. And this duo knows how to cover as many bases as possible because every time I ask a question about how something world work, the authors answer it almost immediately. This is a great story with very well written characters, and it even has a small hilarious twist in the end that makes you completely rethink everything about one of the characters. Most importantly it doesn’t follow the Scythe series’ formula of terribly written romance. However...it’s definitely a major bummer. It’s very interesting to think about, and it’s a roller coaster of a story...but the roller coaster only goes down and makes you want to scream all the time. If you like books that make you question human behavior and society, definitely check it out, but get ready to start hoarding all the water you own. 8/10

Jackass!: Okay this one’s a manga, but I’m still counting it. Honestly I don’t even know how to describe the plot...there’s two boys...there’s pantyhose...there’s a fun side character who is openly gay and doesn’t take shit from anyone...there’s introspection about how to deal with developing feelings and realizing you care about someone. It has the most awkward premise ever, but it’s unfairly good I promise. The less you know going in the better. 8.5/10

TV Shows!

The Umbrella Academy: A family of seven children with super powers who were “adopted” by an eccentric billionaire become child superheroes. So naturally, they all grow into jaded adults who are now tasked with saving the world from the inevitable apocalypse. And it’s...amazing. Like, this should be the new Stranger Things amazing. It’s a Netflix original based off the Dark Horse comic series, and it has one of the most binge worthy plots I’ve ever seen. It is capable of pulling off some very weird things because it just leans into it. The setting and aesthetic is very similar to A Series of Unfortunate Events where different time periods seem to collide, and it works pretty well. It has (mostly) likable characters, interesting and/or empathetic villains, great use of music and editing, and Emmy worthy performances. The only thing I don’t like (aside from them killing off a perfectly interesting character for no reason at the beginning of the show) is the romantic relationship between two of the siblings. Because naturally they had to put a romance in it, and it just sort of conforms to the idea of “adopted siblings aren’t related so it’s not weird.” But even they have some great scenes together so I can’t be too annoyed. It’s amazing. Please watch it. 10/10

Ducktales (2017): The reboot of Ducktales, in which the three nephews of Donald Duck go on mysterious adventures with their obscenely wealthy uncle. I’m pretty sure we all know this as the cartoon where Scrooge McDuck swims in his giant pool of money. It took me a long time to get to, but I like it! Webby is an amazing character, and even though the boys can be annoying, at least they all have their own personalities. I just wish Launchpad was a little less...stereotypically clueless. I’ve never seen the original series, so I can’t compare them, but I’d recommend it for everyone who likes Gravity Falls style mysteries and satisfying story arcs. 8.5/10

Carmen Sandiego (2019): The Netflix original animated series that focuses on a master thief who travels the world stealing important artifacts before an evil organization can get to them first...AND HOLY CRAP WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS!? I don’t know anything about the original Carmen Sandiego franchise, but dang this revamp is awesome. Carmen is a great character who banters enough to be a Marvel protagonist, there’s unique animation, some mystery, and its own twists. The side characters may not be for everyone, but I like them...well, most of them. Apparently the purpose of the original franchise was to be educational, so they do sound like they’re reading the Wikipedia page for every new place they visit in the beginning of each episode, but at least the cultural things they mention always come back into play later. If you liked the new She-Ra or shows with great heroines, PLEASE WATCH IT! 9/10

Queer Eye (season 3): The third season of the ridiculous makeover show where five fabulous gay men rocket into people’s lives to boost their self confidence and keep them from living in filth. I hate that I love this show so much. I don’t like things that try to be overly emotional, but dang it, this show will just make you feel happy...and then sad...and then happy again. 10/10

Honorable Mentions

THE LAST SEASON OF STAR VS THE FORCES OF EVIL IS AIRING! Stop sleeping on this gem people!

Netflix finally released the rest of Arrested Development season 5

I started watching Yu Yu Hakusho because it’s a classic and the dub is hilarious.

I also started watching The Librarians. It’s...something that’s for sure.

And I’m currently reading Reign the Earth which is basically Avatar the Last Airbender set all in the desert.

#bohemian rhapsody #the matrix #free solo #maquia: when the promised flower blooms #fantastic beasts #the crimes of grindelwald #mary poppins returns #a quiet place #ralph breaks the internet #how to train your dragon #the hidden world #dry #jackass manga #queer eye #ducktales #the umbrella academy #media madness #long post #carmen sandiego

[titustheandroid]

What Therein is Contained

For my dead granddaddy

For all the arguments against, all the voices who told Hank Garvey to “sell this shit,” the man refused to these prizes. His record collection stacked to the ceiling, filled with discs by bands from the 60s and 70s nobody remembered the names of like Big Brother and the Holding Company, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and the Modern Lovers. Chairs placed on chairs, precarious and casting shadows over the rest of the room. In other spots, boxes sagged under the pressure of those above like old barn roofs. He had sat his ass in the middle of all this next to a post-war, stand-up lamp with beads hanging off the shade. Light, filtered by the shades clinging to his windows, dropped a blueness over him. Hank Garvey swaddled himself inside his own accumulation. He was dreaming something that could never really be.

He heard the click of the pull string first. Then almost toppled behind over his antique wooden chair. He felt the back of it breath half-relieved. The hand that pulled the string was attached to a face. Behind a week-old beard and tired eyelids, he recognized his son.

The boy didn’t have time for pleasantries. “Where’s it at?”

Hank didn’t know. So he kept his thin lips tight. He could feel on his gums the firmness that his jaw pressed them together with.

The boy put a calloused hand around his father’s sunken cheeks. “I know you know.”

The intruder hadn’t bothered to put his coat on the rack by the door like a civilized houseguest. There were no more pretensions that he was staying long in a place like this where they couldn’t even find the Mr. Coffee to put on for late-night visitors.

“Well even if you don’t, I can find it.” The hand released Hank’s face. He breathed deep through his nose. Even this stale, dry air felt refreshing.

Hank’s eyes adjusted to the light of his overstuffed living room. Stacks of newspaper and National Geographics rested on his dining table. There was one, an old one he recalled yesterday morning while sitting in his bedchair, about Amerigo Vespucci. The Italian explorer, in service of the king of Portugal, had sailed across the Atlantic and down the coast of South America. The feature in Geographic was about the indigenous people Vespucci encountered, or at least their remnants post-colonization. It also contained a few excerpts from the explorer’s letter Mundus Novus --New World. The final of which Hank recalled as particularly inspiring, something about the unknown and undiscovered that had been contained within creation since the beginning of time. But Hank had been unable to locate the issue buried among his collection.

Sometimes, when he went out on trips to the local farms, he felt himself like Vespucci. He was rediscovering the parts of the world lost to itself. These artifacts were representations of the past and the road that led from A to B. This minor accumulation included all the parts of these larger man-made organisms that mattered to Hank.

The boy had started pushing on the tables and desks to the floor. His heels cutting and crumpling their headlines and cover photos beyond recognition. Hank saw the face of former Mayor Hank Adley torn in two beneath the boy’s boot. He winced. For years, Hank pondered how two men with similar names from the same community could have such different fates socially and politically. Still Hank just sat there, watching.

Neither one said a word.

The boy stepped across a stack of papers. “You know what, you’re pathetic. Letting me dance around here like I know what’s what. I bet you’re too good of a man to hit me.”

Hank spread his palms face down on his narrow lap. The long, bony hands cracked at the finger joints beneath this little pressure.

“Not that you don’t wanna.” The boy turned around. His blue jeans were torn up at the knees, down to the individual threads drained of color. The young hands started to ruffle through a stack of sticky photographs. They lifted one up, triumphant like it was a newborn. “Remember this? County fair when I was ten, we both got stuck at the top of the ferris wheel. We had to smell the pigs in the barn cause they were dumb enough to set up the ferris wheel ten feet away. Shit.”

The boy had gotten his teeth knocked out the week before in a fist fight with Rick Talbot. Hank had taken them both to the fair to get ice cream and fried dough. He felt bad about it. So that’s how they’d both been roped into the attractions. Hank had wanted to see the demolition derby over on the dirt track. Instead he’d had to strain his neck to get a small glimpse. But mostly they just listened to the carnage like it was radio static.

“Well fuck. You distracted me.” The boy’s smile fell to the floor along with the shredded

newspaper.

The boy slipped out of sight, back to the kitchen. His voice was just a noise in the living room. A bunch of growls and cupboard slams pushed their way out of the kitchen. Then like a bell on Sunday morning, “There it is.”

With cyclone efficiency, a figure brushed past Hank and his lamp. The shadow left the door open, banging in the night wind at it scraped over the aluminum siding. The hinges croaked like steel nails on a slate chalkboard. Then somewhere in the distance, maybe a few doors down, there was a pop like champagne. Hank stood up and dragged his half-asleep feet to the door. He covered himself up with his winter coat and went to join the party. Wherever it was floating out there in the dark.

#creative writing #writerscreedchallenge #proseriot #writers on tumblr #amerigo vespucci #hoarding #father son relationships #flash fiction #fiction #titus the android

[primortravel]

New Post has been published on https://primortravel.com/things-to-do-in-churchill-manitoba/

Things to do in Churchill Manitoba

Churchill, Manitoba is the land of the polar bears. Located directly along the polar bear highway, it attracts visitors from around the world in search of the king of the Arctic. Being the premier place on earth to see polar bears in the wild, hopping on a tundra buggy, or heading to a lodge on the Hudson bay is the top attraction in Manitoba for good reason! When you do make your way to Churchill for the ultimate polar bear experiences, be sure to book a day or two before or after your safari to check out all things to do in Churchill, Manitoba because it will surprise you!

Things to do in Churchill Manitoba

We have visited Churchill Manitoba in both summer and winter. It is a quirky small and isolated town in Canada where nobody locks their doors (car or house) in case they encounter a polar bear and need shelter and where we’ve seen people walking in shorts at 30 below. Dealing with the elements is a way of life here and getting a taste of hearty northern Canadian living makes Churchill Manitoba one of the coolest places to visit in the world.

Walk with Polar Bears at Nanuk Lodge

There is no double that the top thing to do in Churchill is to see the polar bears. While most people head out on a tundra vehicle to see polar bears from the safety of a tundra buggy or rhino, we had the opportunity to walk with polar bears with Churchill Wild. Nanuk Lodge is Churchill Wild’s most remote lodge located in the heart of Canada’s Boreal Forest on one side and the Arctic waters of Hudson Bay on the other. Book your Polar Bear Trip with Churchill Wild here.

What sets this polar bear safari apart is that once our guides spot a polar bear from our tundra vehicle (called a rhino) we all get out from the safety of the vehicle start walking. It is the most incredible feeling to see a polar bear up close in the summertime as it basks in the sun munching on blueberries. We saw several polar bears during our time at Nanuk Lodge, but one moment was truly special when a mama polar bear allowed us the privilege of watching her take care of her cub as they played in the surf. If she didn’t want us there, she’d either leave or stand her ground. While we sat in silence witnessing this beauty, she was content to give us a glimpse into her life.

Relax at Seal River Heritage Lodge for Polar Bear Watching

We visited Churchill Wild’s Seal River Heritage Lodge in winter to see polar in their winter setting. It has the best setting on the entire Hudson Bay being that last spot that polar bears wander before heading out onto the Hudson Bay once the waters freeze. Many visitors don’t even have to leave the comfort of the compound as polar bears walk right by the lodge stopping by the fences to say hello before they are on their way. When the polar bears don’t stop by, we bundle ourselves up to head out on a walk in search of them. There is nothing more exciting than being out in the arctic wondering what you will encounter around the corner. Check out Churchill Wild for Polar Bear Safaris in Churchill Manitoba.

Kayak with Beluga Whales

kayaking with belugas, Churchill, Manitoba

Polar bears aren’t the only arctic animals worth seeing in the Arctic, one of the most exciting things to do in Churchill to interact with the playful and adorable beluga whales. We had the chance to go kayaking with beluga whales with Sea North Tours and it was one of the most memorable experiences we’ve ever had in our lives. Churchill is located directly in the migration route of belugas and each year, 3000 of the 60,000 beluga whales that migrate through the Hudson Bay stop at the Churchill River Basin. They are curious and will bump your boats and play in the wake as you paddle through a sea of white bumps in the ocean. Visit Sea North Tours to book your Beluga Whale excursion.

Whale Watching

Not only is Churchill the polar bear capital of the world, it is also the beluga whale capital of the planet! With so many belugas gracing its waters, there are other ways to go whale watching in Churchill to see the Belugas. You can go Stand-up paddleboarding, Beluga AquaGliding™, and take zodiac tours. Note: snorkeling with beluga whales is no longer allowed.

Other Arctic Wildlife

Arctic Fox at Seal River Lodge

Before we move on to more things to do in Churchill, we can’t forget other spectacular arctic wildlife. I know it doesn’t seem as exciting as polar bears, but trust me, seeing white arctic fox frolicking in the snow is one of the cutest things you’ll ever see in your life. The Arctic fox is so prevalent in the Churchill area, that when we were visiting Seal River Lodge, National Geographic was there filming them for weeks at a time!

Black bear at Nanuk Lodge

But Arctic fox isn’t the only wildlife we saw in Churchill Wild’s lodges, we saw Arctic Hare, black bears, a wolf, seals and moose. It is Canada’s safari capital.

Polar Bear Jail

Polar Bear Jail – Churchill

As you know, Churchill is the polar bear capital of the world, and citizens have learned to live with polar bears walking through town on a regular basis. While many walk right on through to continue on to the ocean, (with the only evidence of them being there are fresh paw prints in the morning) some polar bears decide to stay and become a threat.

Polar Bear Hotline

Watch for POlar Bears

A year ago, they used to shoot bears that came into town, but now there is a polar bear hotline where if someone spots a polar bear, they call a hotline. It is then time to try to scare the bear away from town which usually works. If it doesn’t, the bear is tranquilized and put into a polar bear holding facility known as the world’s only polar bear jail. Instead of killing the bears that wander into town, they are caught and held for up to 30 days (to deter them from ever coming back) They are then tranquilized and carried far away usually when the ice has formed on the Hudson Bay where they are released back into the wild in time for the ice hunt.

Go Dogsledding

Adorable Sled Dogs in Churchill

There is no doubt that dogs have played a huge role in shaping the north. We have had the chance to go dogsledding on numerous occasions and while visiting Churchill, we stopped at Churchill River Mushing to meet their adorable dogs. You can book dog sledding tours through the northern boreal wilderness in winter.

Dogcarting

If you are visiting in the summer months, never fear, you can go dog carting through the boreal forest too! If you don’t want to do a tour, they will also let you visit the dogs. That is what we did during our adventure to Churchill as we were a little short on time and didn’t want to do something we had already done. But if you have never gone dogsledding before, do it in Churchill where dogs were made for this weather.

Miss Piggy Plane Wreck

Graffiti Art on Miss Piggy

One of the quirkiest places to visit in Churchill is the Miss Piggy Plane Wreck. The Curtiss C-46 twin-prop cargo aircraft owned by Lamb Airways Ltd got its name of Miss Piggy because cargo planes were often overloaded when flying into Churchill. It crashed just after takeoff on November 13, 1979, after developing engine trouble. It been resting in its place on the edge of a cliff ever since. Today it is covered in graffiti and is one of the most popular things to do in Churchill.

MV Ithica Shipwreck

Another wreck to see in Churchill is the Mv Ithica Shipwreck. Located 19 km (12 miles) east of Churchill, this 1922 steamship ran aground in 1960. The 80-meter long wreck has been sitting off the coast ever since. At low tide, it is completely free of water and you can take a tour out to see it. Note: It is too dangerous to go inside and keep an eye out for polar bears if hiking out. Or better yet, hire a guide who knows what they are doing.

Prince of Wales Fort National Historic Site

Polar Bear Crossing Churchill Manitoba

I can only imagine what it was like to build the Prince of Wales Fort built 250 years ago in the harsh elements of Canada’s north. Located on the isolated and unforgiving coast of the Hudson Bay, the remote outpost is a national historic site. It was built as an outpost by the Hudson Bay Company during the fur trade of 1731 – 1771. Sloop Cove and Cave Merry joined the national historic designation in 1933. The Prince of Wales Fort played a key role in gaining control of the territory from the French.

Cape Merry National Historic Site

As we said above, Cape Merry was added to the National Historic Designation due to its strategic location and is a good place to head out for panoramic views of the Hudson Bay, the Prince of Wales National Historic Site, and the Churchill River. Named after the Deputy Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, John Merry, Cape Merry houses a stone battery, a Commemorative cairn, and a cannon dating back to the 1700s. It is here that Beluga Whales migrate through Churchill, so you’ll even be able to see them from the shore.

Marvel at the Northern Lights

Many people make specific trips to places like Iceland and Svalbard, Norway, but when visiting Churchill, the northern lights are so frequent in the winter, you’ll have no problem seeing them on a regular basis. Even in the summer, we had northern lights at Nanuk Lodge. (we were there in late August when days were a bit shorter in the summer). If you haven’t seen the Aurora Borealis with your own eyes, you won’t believe it when you do. To see colourful lights dancing in the sky is truly a spectacular experience.

When traveling with Churchill Wild, our guides kept an eye out for Northern lights and alerted us each night when they were active. So you can go to sleep resting assured that you won’t miss them.

Churchill SeaWall Murals

During our first visit to Churchill, we didn’t see these because they hadn’t been curated yet, but upon our second visit, we took a guided tour through the town where we saw some of the 18 murals spanning 30 km along the Hudson Bay Coast. The murals depict the hardships and life of a northern town to educate and inspire to protect the oceans. The colors make for beautiful displays scattered throughout the town.

Fly Over Wapusk National Park

We were lucky to be able to have a scenic flight over Wapusk National Park while flying from Churchill to Nanuk Lodge. If you aren’t staying in a remote Hudson Bay Lodge, you may want to book a helicopter or scenic flight over this incredible National Park. I think we spotted 23 polar bears walking along the shores of Hudson Bay. To see this sweeping coast from above is an awe-inspiring sight. During your scenic flight, you’ll also see the town of Churchill, the Churchill River, Cape Merry and Prince of Wales Fort, the Ithaka shipwreck.

The Itsanitaq Museum

One of our favorite things to do in Churchill indoors was ducking into The Itsanitaq Museum. It has an incredible collection of Inuit carvings dating back to 1700 B.C. If you are touring Churchill in winter, it’s also a good place to get in out of the cold.

Bird Watching

Who would have thought that the arctic would be so filled with wildlife? It is one of the premier places in Canada to go bird watching. More than 250 species of birds migrate through or nest in Churchill. The best time to see birds in Churchill is in the summer months. But we saw birds in the winter too. Notable birds to see in Churchill are snowy Owls, hawks, falcons, and tundra swans.

Buy a Souvenir at Here be

Bears Jewellery and Gifts

When visiting Churchill be sure to stop into the stores to pick up a souvenir. I have an amazing greenstone necklace with whale tale that I now wear regularly thanks to my purchase in Churchill. We also got some soap and mittens. The jewelry, clothing, and crafts up here are all hand-crafted with care. We popped into all the shops in Churchill including Wapusk General Store, Here Be Bears Jewellery and Gifts, and the Arctic Trading Company.

Say Hi to the Park’s Canada Staff

Located in Churchill’s VIA Rail Station, The Park’s Canada Visitor Reception Area houses exhibits about the history of the area’s land and people. The Hudson Bay Company played a huge roll in developing the area and the centre displays weapons and gear used by fur traders.

Churchill Northern Studies Centre

We took a drive by the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. We didn’t go it, but you can. The Churchill Northern Studies Centre is a non-profit research station offering nature study tours of the sub-arctic. This facility offers University credits and courses, but you can book facility tours too.

The Churchill Rocket Research Range

Who would have thought that Churchill had a rocket launcher? The facility was started by the American Space Agency in 1957-1958. We didn’t go to this, but when doing research for things to see in Churchill, I found out about it and wished that I went! It was designated a National Heritage Site in 1988 because as it was Canada’s foremost upper atmosphere research center.

Where to Eat in Churchill

Churchill had a surprising selection of restaurants that we had the chance to sample during our two trips up north.

Tundra Pub – offers locally sourced food from Arctic Char to Elk, and they have a vegetarian burger on the menu too. This has a relaxing pub atmosphere.

Lazy Bear Cafe – Lazy Bear Café is a good place to sample food indigenous to the regions, where they use locally sourced ingredients such as Arctic char, wild berries, bison, and elk.

Seaport Hotel – There are a few options at the Seaport hotel including the Dark Side Sports Bar, Captain’s Cove Lounge for live music and the Reef Restaurant and Coffee Shop.

Where to Stay

We didn’t stay in Churchill as we stayed at local lodges with Churchill Wild. But if you are traveling independently, there are B&Bs and motels in Churchill. Here are a few to choose from.

Seaport Hotel – Good base for Churchill with on site restaurants and bars. Check rates and availability on TripAdvisor

Iceberg Inn – Closest hotel to the train station with affordable simple and clean rooms. Check rates and availability on TripAdvisor

Churchill B&B – A private B&B situated a little away from the downtown core. Check rates and availability on TripAdvisor

Tundra Inn Lodge – In the heart of Churchill with restaurant located across the street. Check rates and availability on TripAdvisor

How to Pack for Churchill Manitoba

We visited Churchill in both the summer and winter months and packing is very different for both. But the rules remain the same, pack layers with windproof and waterproof clothing. Here is how we packed. We are going to put together a complete packing list, but to get you started here are our recommendations.

Summer

Even in the summer months, Churchill gets cold. Especially at night. You will want to pack a good windproof outer layer with varying degrees of mid and base layers. Check out Travel Tips for Winter Packing

Hiking boots

Wind and waterproof jacket

Wind and waterproof pants to wear over regular pants

Fleece sweater

Long johns / mereno wool base layer

tuque / hat

peak hat or tilly hat

bug jacket

Short and long-sleeved t-shirts

Bug repellent and/or bug jacket

Hat and sunglasses

Winter

We visited Churchill in late fall and it is freezing already. When going on a polar bear safari, the outfitter will check to make sure that your clothing is warm enough, if not, you will have to rent a parka, boots, etc. Heading up to Churchill in the winter months requires heavy-duty winter clothing. Check out 5 Winter Layering Tips to Dress for the Deep Freeze

Parka

Insulated Snow pants

Winter boots

Mittens

Glove liners

Goggles

Winter hat

Mereno Wool Base Layer – top and bottoms

Thick Wool Socks

Mid layer fleece or wool sweaters / pants

Sunglasses

Hand and Toe Warmers

Lip Balm

How to Get to Churchill

No roads lead to Churchill Manitoba, the only way to get to Churchill Manitoba is by rail or plane.

Calm Air – We flew Calm Air from Winnipeg to get to Churchill. Make sure to pack your stuff in duffel bags that are easily pliable. And there are weight restrictions. We found that putting our camera gear in our coat pockets and carrying our lenses helped us get through the weight restrictions at security. We had our flights booked with our tour operator, Churchill Wild.

Via Rail offers train service from Winnipeg to Churchill on Sundays and Tuesdays – it takes 48 hours by train to get to Churchill.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. These are all of the things to do in Churchill Manitoba including your polar bear safari and places to see after or before. It is truly a spectacular destination that is one of the final frontiers of adventure travel. If you are looking for an interesting and life-changing trip, consider Churchill for your next epic adventure.

Read More About Polar Bears in Manitoba

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[maryanntorreson]

The causes and impacts of the melting Himalayan glaciers

The Himalayas is a mountain range that’s home to many of the world’s highest peaks. Passing through India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Bhutan and Nepal, this incredible span of geography is an important cultural and ecological location. However, climate change threatens the area, and the impacts of the melting Himalayan glaciers could be devastating. 

We explore why this mountain range is so fascinating and essential, looking especially at its many glaciers. We also explore why these glaciers are melting and what the results of the changing Himalayan climate could mean. 

An introduction to the Himalayas 

First, let’s take a quick look at the mountain range itself. It’s a place that has significance to many and is firmly rooted in popular culture. However, given its size and scale, it’s often not understood especially well. 

What are the Himalayas?

The Himalayas are a mountain system in South and East Asia that spans around 1,550 miles (2,500 km), running west-northwest to east-southeast in an arc. This huge geographical range means that climates in the Himalayas vary between humid and subtropical in the foothills to dry desert conditions in the higher reaches. 

The Himalayan region is home to over 50 million people, yet an estimated 2 billion people rely on waters from Himalayan glaciers for drinking, energy, agriculture and more. Those who live there have their own distinct cultures, and there are various places of religious significance. 

The Himalayan mountain range is also a biodiversity hotspot, home to a vast range of flora and fauna, including species such as snow leopards, Bengal tigers and one-horned rhino. 

Where are the Himalayas? 

As we’ve mentioned, the Himalayas covers many hundreds of miles. As well as stretching across the northeast portion of India, they also pass through Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Bhutan and Nepal. 

According to Britannica, the mountain range itself starts at Nanga Parbat (26,660 feet), in the Pakistani-administered portion of the Kashmir region, and ends at Namjagbarwa (Namcha Barwa) Peak (25,445 feet ), in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.

How were they formed? 

By mountain standards, the Himalayas are a relatively young range. They began to form around 40 to 50 million years ago when tectonic plate movement drove the landmasses of India and Eurasia together. 

The pressure of the collision, and the fact that each continental landmass had about the same density, meant that the plates were thrust skyward, contorting the impact area and forming the jagged peaks of the Himalayas.

The modern Himalayas 

Today, the Himalayas remain a culturally and environmentally important region. Many different people live in the Himalayas, and it’s a source of life for many of them. However, in recent years it’s also become a popular tourist destination. 

Although tourism brings a range of economic and business opportunities and jobs, there are downsides. The effects on the environment, particularly with issues such as pollution, mean that the biodiversity of the area is under threat. 

University of Exeter Climate Change: The Science

University of Exeter Valuing Nature: Should We Put a Price on Ecosystems?

University of Exeter Tipping Points: Climate Change and Society

The Himalayan glaciers 

Incredibly, there are 32,392 glaciers in the Himalayas. Together, they are part of intricate geographic and climate systems. Let’s find out more about them. 

What is a glacier? 

As we explore in our open step on the subject, glaciers are large bodies of ice, originally made from snow that accumulates over long periods of time. They vary greatly in size and can be as small as a football field or stretch for hundreds of kilometres. 

Based on this, we can say that the definition of a glacier is a body of ice formed from the compaction of snow that moves downhill under its own weight. As you can imagine, for such a process to work, sustained low temperatures and snowfall are needed to create and maintain glaciers, meaning that they’re found either at high latitudes (the polar regions) or high altitudes (associated with mountains).

This map is generated from data provided by the Randolph Glacier Inventory. You will observe that ice is either found at high latitudes – i.e. the polar regions – or high altitudes – i.e. associated with mountains. Image courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, generated using data from the Randolph Glacier Inventory, GLIMS.

Why are they important? 

So why do glaciers matter? Well, they play a central role in the world’s water systems, contributing to various elements of life. Glaciers: 

Provide drinking water. Approximately 75% of all of the world’s fresh water is locked up in glacier ice. Glacial melt provides drinking water for people in various places around the world, including the Himalayas. 

Irrigate crops. Throughout history, countries have used melting glaciers to water their crops and power their agriculture. Even today, communities still rely on glacial melt in this way. 

Generate power. It’s possible to use the meltwater from glaciers to power hydroelectric dams, providing electricity for the area. 

It’s not just the immediate area that feels the impacts of glaciers. In the Himalayas, for example, the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra Rivers all originate from glaciers. These rivers provide water for countless millions of people. 

The glaciers in the Himalayas

The Himalayas are home to the third-largest deposit of ice and snow in the world. Only Antarctica and the Arctic have more. These glaciers feed some of the planet’s most important river systems, directly and indirectly supplying billions of people with water, energy, and incomes. 

Clearly, the Himalayan glaciers are an essential part of life for the eight surrounding countries, as well as further beyond. However, new studies have shown that the glaciers in the Himalayas are melting at an alarming rate. The consequences of this melt could be disastrous. 

Why are the Himalayan glaciers melting? 

The Himalayas in India and beyond have come under close attention in recent years. Several recent studies have shown that the situation could be much worse than originally feared. One study, in particular, found that if CO2 emissions are not cut drastically, around two-thirds of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) region glaciers could disappear. 

Glaciers in the Himalayas lost billions of tons of ice between 2000 and 2016, double the amount that took place between 1975 and 2000. Rising global temperatures are to blame – the result of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. 

Air pollutants from unclean energy sources are also contributing. The dirty air then deposits black carbon dust on the ice. This dust means the glaciers absorb more heat and thaw more rapidly. 

You can read more about measuring glacial change in our open step and learn about climate change and society with our online course. 

The image above is a satellite image showing multiple retreating glaciers in the Bhutanese Himalayas. As a consequence of this retreat, proglacial lakes form in front of these glaciers.

The impacts of melting Himalayan glaciers

There are real concerns about the potential impacts of the melting glaciers in the Himalayas and beyond. Here are just some of the devastating effects of glacier loss on the surrounding regions: 

Increased flooding. As more meltwater enters the water system, proglacial glacial lakes form. However, these lakes are often unstable, and when the dams break, they can cause catastrophic glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Similarly, more water in the glacier-fed rivers increases the risk of flooding. 

More extreme weather events. With more water and a warmer global temperature, the risk of extreme weather events increases. Scientists have already started to notice changes in temperature and precipitation extremes, for example. 

Changes in the monsoon. In Asia, the monsoon helps to support the livelihoods of millions of people. The annual rains are crucial to agriculture and water supplies.  As global warming changes monsoon patterns, the risk of flooding during this season increases. 

Lower agricultural yields. Global warming means that snow and glaciers melt earlier in the year, leading to floods in spring. However, by summer, when crops need more water, volumes of water are decreased. As a result, agricultural yields are lower, arid zones increase, and fishing in the region is affected.

Changes in energy production. Further downstream, the volume of water in dams may impact the production of hydroelectricity.

Ultimately, the melting Himalayan glaciers could cause real harm to the livelihoods of untold millions. Whether it’s changing weather patterns, extreme flooding, changes in food and energy production, or unpredictable water supplies, the risks seem very real. 

University of Groningen Making Climate Adaptation Happen: Governing Transformation Strategies for Climate Change

University of York Tackling Environmental Challenges for a Sustainable Future

University of Exeter Climate Change: Solutions

How can we improve the situation? 

So, the current and future danger of melting glaciers is evident. But what can we do to improve the situation? In reality, the only real solution is to prevent further global warming. There are many climate change solutions, and many of these focus on reducing your carbon footprint. 

Although individuals can take steps to reduce emissions, governments and corporations need to make far-reaching changes to policies and practices. As we stand on the edge of a climate crisis, there is much work to be done to improve the situation. 

Final thoughts 

The Himalayan glaciers are crucial not only to the surrounding regions but also to the billions of people whose lives are affected by them. Recent global warming and climate change have seen these glaciers melting at an unprecedented rate, and the effects are devastating. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the Himalayas glaciers, the environment, and climate change, we have a wide range of free courses available that can help. Our course on tackling environmental challenges for a sustainable future is an excellent place to start. 

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[theliterateape]

Gambling with the Currency at Hand

by Don Hall

At every casino in Las Vegas there are these pamphlets. Usually hidden away behind a sign that indicates that one must inspect their sports ticket before leaving the Sportsbook or a promotion for “$30,000 Credit for Gaming” with four paragraphs of fine print underneath. These trifold informational pieces are colored in a dull brown and beige — a sunset photo — with a muted title: “When the Fun Stops”.

“Some problem gamblers may gamble to relieve boredom or avoid feelings of anxiousness or stress. Others may gamble to ‘numb out’ when feeling helpless, guilty, or depressed.” — from “When the Fun Stops” by The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

In a year and a half of working in an Off-Strip casino flanked by an In-and-Out Burger, a Wendy’s, and a Siegel Suites, I never saw a single soul pick one up and peruse its contents.

The marketing of Las Vegas has promoted an adult playground of gambling, booze, and sex sans accountability for decades. From the days of the Rat Pack to the glamour of Steve Wynn, the city has made its bones on these core values. For every tourist from Japan or Iowa, however, there is someone who lives here in the grimy shadow of weekend fun, either cleaning up the mess left behind or searching through the refuse for something missed as the hungover travelers disembark.

Debra worked in HR for a local company for years. She was born in New Jersey and moved to Nevada in the early 2000’s with her sister. Her life was relatively average — some bills, a mortgage, car payments — nothing beyond her means. One day she slipped and injured herself in a Big Box store and sued. She won an insurance claim just north of a million dollars.

She planned on living off of this payout through her retirement. She paid off some loans, bought a car, financed a home for she and her sister. No more working for a living was almost a daily mantra. This life, however, bored her beyond words. They were in Vegas, after all, and the sirens of slot winnings sung their tune.

Five years later, most of the million dollars has been spent on video poker. Debra is broke but still plays three times a week with money she no longer has for money she won’t see again.

"Most people who gamble do so with no harmful effects. They set limits and stick to them. However, for a small percentage of the population, gambling can become more than a game, and lead to serious consequences for both the gambler and their family.

Here are some of the warning signs:

Gambling to escape worry or trouble Gambling to get money to solve financial difficulties Unable to stop playing regardless of winning or losing Gambling until the last dollar is gone Losing time from work due to gambling Borrowing money to pay gambling debts Neglecting family because of gambling Lying about time and money spent gambling" — from “When the Fun Stops” by The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

Teddy was a Big Deal in the world of fossil fuel safety protocol. It ain’t Tom Cruise or Barack Obama territory but it had paid extremely well for a long time. He was a hefty man with a booming laugh and a warm smile that sort of expanded his charm two or three feet around him.

When Teddy came there were some rules. This guy spent so much money in one sitting the General Manager would comment that if Teddy wanted everyone in the casino out so he could play in peace they’d be escorted off the property until Teddy was done. It never came to that but the rules were simple:

Teddy played the two ‘Dancing Drums’ slots exclusively, so the machines on either side were shut off.

He drank Sierra Mist and was on a constant refill protocol.

He was gregarious but didn’t want to be bothered by anyone so keeping the hangers-on on the floor away was key.

Teddy always played the maximum bet which for his machines was $8.80 per spin. He routinely dropped between $10,000.00 and $25,000.00 in an afternoon. He'd likely hit four or five jackpots in the $1,600.00 to $4,500.00 range. And he never tipped.

That was such an odd aspect of this guy. He obviously had tons of idle cash but was cheap when it came to the expected Vegas fee for service. It wasn't as if he was a lowball tipper -- he simply did not tip for any reason. He was our definition of a high roller yet behaved like the cat who'd come in looking for nothing but his $10.00 of free play and hopefully a comp drink.

"...eventually funds may not be available to meet the most basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, etc. In desperation the gambler may begin lying and/or stealing to cover up the problems, creating further stress for everyone around them." — from “When the Fun Stops” by The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

When I first encountered TC and his mother I was hit by the sadness in their situation. He and I were roughly the same age but, as I've been told we are all four bad decisions from homeless, he made all four of them and I had a couple more to go.

Walking the perimeter of the casino, I see an ancient Honda Civic parked slightly off the lines. In the drivers seat is a tall, skinny man, slightly hunched over smoking a butt out the window. He looks sunbaked like people do in the desert, his skin taut and leathery. Next to him is an old woman. Old like those pictures you see from Appalachia in National Geographic. She has an oxygen tube in her nose and is simply staring out the cracked windshield off into a distance I cannot fathom.

"You doing OK out here?" I ask in that managerial tone.

"Yah. We're good. Just waiting until we can get a room."

"You wanna come inside? It's, like, 112 degrees out here and I imagine your friend..."

"My mother..."

"...your mother might feel better in the air conditioning."

"Sho..."

He had an odd linguistic affectation in his speech that made him sound a bit like a child, his mouth wrapping around vowels that rounded them out. He dropped his square, got out of the creaky car, and pulled out a wheelchair that would've been at home next to the dirty doll Charleston Heston found at the climax of The Planet of the Apes.

I put them in the Sportsbook, grabbed a couple of waters for them, and spent a few minutes sleuthing their story. 

TC was well-known by some of the long-term staff. He used to be a player but hit hard times a few years back. No one knew what he had done for a living or how he was surviving but the profile was of someone now homeless, living in his car and occasionally a month-long stay at the hotel attached to our casino so his mother could sleep in a bed. He still was on the free play marketing list but rarely had the dollar to activate it.

"As they continue to gamble, they become more and more emotionally and mentally dependent on gambling, with less and less control. The long-term result is a steady deterioration of the mental and physical health of both the gambler and their family." — from “When the Fun Stops” by The Nevada Council on Problem Gambling

On some fundamental Irish level, I understand this compulsion. While never much into gambling my money as I've never been heavily motivated by its acquisition, my career since college has been a series of driving along the highway at night and wondering if I could survive the impulse of just letting the steering wheel go and closing my eyes.

In ‘89, I graduated and randomly chose Chicago as my new home without the safety net of knowing anyone in Chicago, having a job or prospects, or having ever been in the city. It was the move of a gambler throwing dice to see if the come-out was a natural and betting everything he had.

I lived in my car for four months as I explored this new city and looked for gainful employment, feeding myself and gassing up my home by playing trumpet on street corners downtown.

My chosen field was that of a music teacher and I did that in the public school system on the west side for a decade. Why quit teaching after ten years? Why not? I started a non-profit comedy theater that evolved into something weird but fun. Did that for fifteen years then quit to go work for NPR. A decade later, I decided to move to Las Vegas because isn't that what the hopelessly addicted to risk do?

Debra was distraught.

“Oh my gawd,” she moaned as she pumped another $20.00 in the video poker machine. “My sister’s birthday is Wednesday and I have to pick up her cake but I don’t have the $17.00 to pay for it!”

The odd disconnect between her dilemma and the twenty she just pushed into the bill validator was obvious to me but not at all to her.

“Debra. Why not cash out that machine and use that?” I said, smiling behind my mask.

“Huh? Ah, no, no, no. This money is for poker. I can’t use it for her cake. Maybe if I win some today...”

The next day I get a phone call. It’s Debra. Can I loan her $20.00 until Thursday? I can and I do. She sends me pictures of the party, socially distanced from her garage. Thursday she swings by and palms me the twenty like it’s a tip I’m not supposed to receive.

In the ongoing search for the true American experience, it seems obvious that it exists inside the off-strip casino. A room filled with shiny lights and electronic sounds populated with every stripe from every tribe: wealthy, impoverished, black, white, brown, make, female, non-binary, old, young, fat, thin, liberal, conservative, libertarian, beautiful, homely. All in the room for exactly the same reason: a short term investment in a possible future fueled by luck and circumstance.

Everyone who walks into the casino is prepared to gamble with the currency at hand. That currency cannot be defined simply by dollars available but the intertwined filthy lucre of personality, desire, and need with need being the characteristic with the most pungent strength.

Teddy wasn’t big on chit-chat. He came to plug in the dough and whack the spin buttons with a slap. Except with me. With me, for some unexplained reason, there was small talk.

“I love to travel, Don. Have you traveled?”

“I have. Used to play jazz trumpet for a living and went all over the globe with that.”

“Where’s your favorite place?”

“Edinburgh, Scotland. Took a theater company there for a month in ‘95 and fell in love with the place.”

“Oooooh! I’ve never been there! I have a lady friend I’d like to take someplace new. What else you got on Scotland?”

I went to my office, did some online searches, and put together a PDF of prices and places in Edinburgh. I dropped it off at his machine when he was cashing in a voucher.

His reaction was effusive.

“It’s people like you that make me come here, you know? The big properties are always offering me comp rooms and meals but they can’t give me the feeling of friendship that the people here do.”

Over the course of a few months, I gleaned that Teddy had lost his wife to cancer years before and that his children would have little to do with him. He often had “lady friends” but no one consistent and most were decades younger than he. Teddy was an almost desperately lonely man and felt less so in the casino where his propensity to be a high roller made him feel like he was important.

The 1995 trip to Scotland was another improbable gamble. The small nonprofit theater company I had founded was fraying at the edges. The ensemble needed a goal to achieve and I decided that taking a show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with seventeen actors who had no disposable incomes to speak of was just thee thing. I cashed in my pension from the days of teaching and managed a few sponsorships.

It was both financially devastating and artistically remarkable. In the parlance of the gambling addict, it was a win. I lost my ass and gained a cherished city.

TC checked he and his mother into a room one February night a month before the place was shut down by pandemic. During the graveyard shift, his mother was picked up by paramedics and transferred to a hospital. The next day, TC was outside in the courtyard weeping as if the world had ended.

She had been misdiagnosed, given the wrong medication, and had died during the early hours of the morning. TC was filled with sadness and guilt and a sense of impotent rage so like so many on the ass end of life.

He was without options. He was unemployed and unemployable. His one lifeline was his mother both in a financial way but also in that indelible manner that having a daily task, someone to care for, gives a person distraction from the crushing despair of living.

I brought him a bottle of water and a pack of cigarettes and sat down with him for a moment during my shift.

“I don’t know.” he said unprompted after a few minutes of sitting together.

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know what to do. They killed my mother. They didn’t even care. When I came in to the hospital, they took me to her and she was just dead. The doctor didn’t even apologize. They wanted to know how I was going to pay for her disposal. That’s how they said it. Her disposal. I used to come here, you know? When I had money? I used to gamble and laugh. I haven’t laughed in years.”

“You did the best you could.”

“NO, I DIDN’T! I didn’t do the best I could. How do you live with yourself knowing you didn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

I think about when the fun stopped for him or if it was ever really fun at all. I wonder if those in my current position watched it happen as TC went from being someone in between Debra and Teddy and started that slide into who he was in front of me and what responsibly did they take as witness to the decline.

Does the bartender bear some accountability to the alcoholic? Does the pimp have some obligation for the john? The casino feeds off of the weaknesses of thousands who come in from out of town to throw away their disposable income on a Hennessy-soaked memory haze of unfettered vice but does it have some sort of moral obligation to the folks who live here and still cash in their downfall with such abandon?

Sometime during the re-opening of Vegas following the COVID shutdown I realized that the place was leaving a mark. Not so much a scar but a dark bruise. A wound underneath the skin and, since there was no one to hand me a pamphlet, I decided that the fun had, indeed, stopped for me.

When I announced to Debra that I was leaving the casino, that I had found work that paid more and was remote to boot, she was distraught.

“This place. We get diamonds and they leave as soon as we get used to them.”

“The West?”

“Vegas. It’s a hard place for good people to thrive. Don’t. Don’t say I’m a good person. I’m not. I try but I’m not. Vegas eats up people. It chews on their hopes and dreams and spits them back out. Oh, I’m so depressed right now.”

She pumped another twenty into the machine and continued to chase the four aces.

“Did you hate it here?”

“Vegas? No. I love it.”

“No. The West. Did you hate it here?”

“No. It’s dirty and seedy but there is a thing about places like this that resonate a tune so few can recall singing. You ever read Neil Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’? The old gods can only congregate in places of bizarre spiritual congruence like House on the Rock or Disneyland. The West is like one of those mythic, tacky places in which the old gods gather.”

“You’re so weird. This is not a spiritual place. It’s a casino.”

“One and the same, Debra.”

Teddy never went to Edinburgh as far as I know. When Vegas re-opened, he stopped coming in to play. That has been the way of things during pandemic. Those with options other than Vegas found different games of chance. I can think of a dozen regular big players whom I haven’t seen since things turned sour. Perhaps the place lost its luster when requiring masks on everyone was too much a reminder of the outside world.

A week or so before I turned in my name badge and Title 31 credentials, TC came in. I hadn’t seen him since that day in the courtyard. He was wearing new clothes. His face was fuller as if he’d somehow become hydrated and healthier. He was obviously clean and his hair had grown out and been cut. 

He pulled down his mask. “Look! They’re implants!” he crowed as his brand new choppers shone in the light. “This is my wife!” and he motioned to a matronly Latina woman who seemed thrilled to meet me.

TC had sued the hospital. Vegas has a billboard for every fifty feet of highway announcing a lawyer waiting to help you cash in on tragedy and it is fitting that TC took advantage of one of them and made bank.

Like the rest of us he was simply gambling with the cards he was dealt, with the currency available to him. Will he squander it, buying pieces of hope, looking for another jackpot? Probably but that’s Vegas. That’s America, isn’t it? 

The America Dream we were promised is just another handpay pot of gold to be gambled away on the promise of the next dream, so why not? How can the fun stop if it was never really fun in the first place?

#casino life

[thewul]

Imagine a new world out there, all it takes is water and a landmass, and ships designed and equipped to set up colonies even several on a distant world, or several

Ships of a sheer size able to travel very far and very fast, which makes it a possibility to spend time on exoplanets that have not the best potential for life, because in all likelihood life will be there already, but the best potential for a sustainable and lasting human colonization

Imagine this in a context where we have wars here about just about anything, that distant worlds might be colonized and flourish, maybe irrelevantly of what we do here, that here is going to serve as a support while they have everything they need overthere

That trade and commercial relationships will emerge with worlds that may not consider themselves colonies but actual worlds, new worlds to deal with, where we are the ancestors, some might never know Earth and live on an Earth of their own

We have covered that aspect with MESH and Mars, but we can quickly come to the conclusion that Mars is a long time project that meanwhile there are ready made exoplanets

How can they thrive depends on how Earth thrives itself and the effort it can sustain to make them a success knowing that they will grow ingrate over time as they rely more and more on themselves alone

So it’s several worlds not just Mars

There are great chances that new societal modes will emerge based on the ones we have but different, and that are based on mobility. Indeed taking into account the sheer vastness of space and the distances that will take years to cross even aboard such ships as the TITAN or the MEGA TITAN, or even the largest we have which are the SUPRA that people will actually live and die aboard those ships

That these many worlds are stop overs sometimes for weeks months years even, but that home is the ship you belong to, where possibly you are born and possibly will stay all your life, where you have been going to school, upper studies, where you have your job and career, friends and family

So it is will be an increasingly atomized scattered way of life, where the true cement is logistics and telecoms

How you make that wide reaching ensemble scattered across space and atomized by the distances not disparate is by building up integrated and cohesive logistics and telecoms into it

Why MESH is so important is because it sustains GYES that sustains all the rest and makes it homogeneous

It's people of all races and all creeds aboard those ships that constitute this Bombardier civilization bound to spread to other worlds and in the end that civilization will not be bound by anything than its will to do, to engage with the quasi infinite medium that is space

Where other races exist with which we have to develop ties trade and commerce, industry and diplomacy, scientific collaboration and research, where they might just will become part of that Bombardier civilization and live aboard those ships same as the rest of Bombardier citizens

So yes it is a very different civilization that is not bound by a geographic space that is not fashioned by race or religion but by the effort, its many efforts but lets call it an effort, to make their civilization a success

It is a civilization that builds upon the rest, where historians social science researchers, anthropologists writers and thinkers consider these past civilizations in order to learn from their mistakes not to repeat them and capitalize on the rest, so yes it's not something out of the blue space civilization is has always been the finality of the civilizations that are found here and elsewhere present and past

For which space is the future for which space is the great frontier lying at the end of the road, to be pushed ever further, the new important and lasting story resulting from all that was before it, and nothing it seems will come after it

Inasmuch as a second planet in space and a third are a fascinating perspective what we need to contemplate is a million worlds and several millions

That indeed there is a race against time starting now to accomplish all this where the key is the ability to replicate and replicate fast do the thinking beforehand not during or after

And it is an experiment that starts here of all places turning the increasingly globalized world economy into a space age economy and building that new space civilization not from scratch because civilizations existed from a long long time ago but almost because what we want to achieve has never been done before

It's a very broad subject, in fact different ones that are all related, and when it's like that you have to tap into available talents to densify your understanding of the matter, to elaborate on it inasmuch as possible and there is a tool for that called writing, and authors that can take these different subjects much further because they made space and what is for now Sci Fi their lifelong pursuit furthermore we put in place Wayfarer as a series as the most cost effective solution to do just that

Wayfarer as a series is bound to be extensive, and it's bound to stay with us without any time limit as we put all this in perspective for now and for the future what is it like in space, to live there to build there and to make space age and the space civilization we want to build around that space transporter and industrial an everyday reality

A reality that starts here where this planet in itself has to transform from its present state of disparate income inequality when you look at it from a national or even regional perspective into a cohesive whole able to sustain the very consequent space effort that we are considering, for here for now and for starters as for the whole of it its several different systems that will be needed to constitute the embryo of this space transporter and industrial and its training grounds to keep accomplishing more of the same which over time amounts to the space civilization we want to build from the ground up

There are several things we can extrapolate, for example what is a Space Controller, and the answer would be that a Space Controller does the same job as an Air Controller here but in Space, it's the same meticulous attention to detail and proactivity that are needed but a different environment and constraints, it's a similar but different know how but there is already a consequent knowledge body to capitalize upon. And that stands correct for a whole variety of skills and key expertise that are consequent here and of use in space

And the more you put it in perspective, our understanding of space age as an age where everybody is equally educated and prosperous by which we mean that illiteracy and absolute poverty, even poverty, as things of the past the more we realize that the success of our operations in space and in the future depend of the success of our operations here in a general context that is far from perfect and that in itself will require a huge sum of collective and individual efforts to address

And so in themselves both the BPN and the BGP are tools for Bombardier not to go it alone because it is not meant to solve all of the planet's wide range of issues from income disparity to underdevelopment on its own but rather form vast coalitions of willing partners who's interests in the end amount to the same, a better educated more prosperous population for now and for the future, a future who's finality is space expansion and human colonization of distant systems

Many are those who will say that space is nothing but a luxury for now and we have to agree considering the living conditions of a vast swath of the global population, however space and space related research and applications can hold the answers for many problems and issues that we are facing here, ideally we should do both and ideally we should do more of everything, more is needed much more where Bombardier and the BPN and BGP have to play the role of global enablers, enabling individuals, organizations, corporations and governments to do more, meaning funding it

Foremost the funding of those who are able to deliver for which we dispose of established and proven criteria of measurability efficiency and accountability

When it's like that you can find inspiration in the way nature does things, and one way it does things is through cross pollination meaning that we can tap into existing know how and industrial strength of diverse parts of the world to cross pollinate the rest in order for strong industrial poles to emerge in the regions of the world where such industries do not exist

So if you ask me are developed countries going to build the rest I say yes it is a unique growth opportunity for them but that is not the whole answer, the countries lacking infrastructures and industry can build themselves from the ground up and modernize themselves if only they are shown how to do it and that there is the funding for it

Are we talking technology transfers yes but profit oriented in response to their initial cost and while retaining these different ownership as regards patents and technologies. Perhaps or surely when these target countries develop industrial poles new patents stemming from research will emerge that they are the owners of them but we can't go on almost blaming them for being poor while depriving them of that foot in the ladder

The foot on the ladder that is science and research conducted nationally and regionally and no some countries in the world cannot keep indefinitely holding 90% of the world's patents while the rest own nothing, making them solely consumers and never owners or even producers of anything but raw and semi finished materials is akin to condemning them to poverty while speaking of recession, it is non sensical and short sighted to say the least

And it is actually very damageable to the growth of the whole and surely explains the state of poverty of many parts of the world where all they have really is human capital and raw materials or foodstuffs for exports

That are sold for dirt cheap versus any finished product you can think of that cost close to nothing to produce and then are geared for exports for much much more

Which these finished products themselves that are costly and exported back to the aformentionned markets would be a big nothing without these raw and semi finished materials

At some point we need an explanation why a few holding paper patents are profiting while those whose minerals and raw materials constitute the bulk of these finished products are poor

Why are we forever stuck in that biased aid money logic and why patent holding countries are not paying people a fair price for their riches as they should and I find all of the G8 countries guilty in that regard, guilty they are

If I make a 100 billions profit out of raw materials that I paid 1 billion its shameful to say the least to visit with 1 million of aid money they can keep it, I think those export countries would rather be paid their 10 billions then pocket 1 billion and be suckered into buying into the aid money scam

The objective with the BPN and the BGP is also very much to constitute a critical mass to force a radical change upon this system that seems to be based on poverty, yes you are poor so that I can buy your resources for dirt cheap and no you can't develop because you will not accept those low prices anymore but rather seek to transform your own raw materials and minerals to my detriment

Because in the end all I have really is paper patents

And no I am not going to do much else than aid money which amount to a pittance peanuts to be precise

It makes me wonder what these patent holders would do with their economies without the raw materials that are readily available for cheap because they are traded in foreign markets, because the producing countries are either disorganized or pressured to practice low prices by richer countries and so forth and the answer is not much, the answer is that they would close shop

So a major wealth redistribution is needed for space age economy to lift off the ground and the BPN and BGP are de facto tasked with it, it is very much a prerequisite

We also need to look into the dereclit institution that is the IMF which did too little too late and is trying to achieve the impossible with meager means, the tenance of Christine Lagarde has been nothing short of despicable. As for the World Bank where's the money gone?

How come rich countries are in debt themselves what kind of scam this is considering the massive profits that they draw from the de facto income inequality where poor countries do not have any other options than to sell at the asking price of others raw materials and even their human capital, and where all they do is whine about illegal immigration and counterfeiting even of medicinal drugs targeting their home markets, no this doesn't make any sense at all so we are going to stop here and I think those concerned get the clear and full picture

A much needed change, a change that has been the topic of countless discussions in countless organizations governments and institutions so right now the time for words is spent, words and good intentions lead only so far without means, it is means that are needed large and consequent means to make that change

We need to put an end to people paid for nothing, for good words and speeches, mind you we can all make them what do they change in the end

How is it these speeches feed the poor clothe them and educate them for a better future, do not dare say aid money where's the money the real money that people are getting robbed in plain daylight and you call that a global economy

As for Zoellick his tenure of at the World Bank it has been nothing short of myopic, seeing the problems and doing nothing about them in the end, we spoke and I had thought that he had gotten the point but what did he do about it but point to governments living in poverty as partners who’s responsibility it is to implement recommended measures not the World Bank’s, pardon my French but screw partners in poverty, where is the money to implement whatever

This is not the end of this post however having decided to make it as extensive as possible to cover the issues and challenges we are facing to accomplish what we covered so far and the space age economy that we have brushed as the only alternative to poverty and underdevelopment, we need a much better planet and global economy and the both Bombardier, the BPN and the BGP are that coalition of willing partners who will put their money where their mouth is for a change

Housing health education jobs, as we define space age economy what is it, it is the contrary of being born to a world where you have to fend for yourself and that has nothing to offer to its new generations but more of the same

It is an economy where as a citizen you are entitled to decent housing, entitled to health, entitled to education and entitled to work and a career, it is an economy where your coming to the world is a source of wealth and income not a burden and where these things are planed for your beforehand

Are we anywhere close to that, yes some countries have entitled their citizens to such benefits but no it is far from being all countries because of the income not wealth disparities that are prevalent

If we take a look at many different countries on paper they are wealthy they dispose of vast mineral and human capital riches but because of either mismanagement or poor planning or both they are in fact poor and their citizens rank amongs the poorest of the poor why because of a lack of understanding of what we are dealing with here

What we are dealing with here is that producing a robot or cyborg that is anywhere close to the capacities of a human being and we can list them capacity by capacity would cost at the very least tens of billions to produce, while people they're taken for granted, they're readily available and they're worth nothing in many parts of the world, there are no consequent investment in them in their well being and in making them valuable parts of a greater whole

And thus the whole crumbles under the unsolvable dilemma that any robot off the shelve that can be found in many industries costs tens of millions while a human being who's brain surpasses the capacity of supercomputers, who's eyes are more accurate than the latest and most expensive cameras who's hand motions and body motions in general would cost a fortune to imitate with mitigated success, who's intelligence and imagination we seek to translate as AI far surpass those of AI models for now, all of this is taken for granted that it costs nothing

That they can die of curable diseases, malnutrition or insalubrity while any robot that can be found in an automobile factory is insured for millions costs tens of millions and tens of tens times that to design build and procure

Robots are worth more than people, and there is has been a constant drive for automation because automation is the future yet the future that is taking shape where automation becomes a source of wealth and people are regarded as globally expendable even in rich countries people sleep under a bridge or die of cold in winter is not a option should never be an option, is an option for seeing our world and way of life become even direst to the point that whatever little employees and workers can procure out of the work of their hands and even in the future out of their intellect is getting diminished not improved by progress

Where we do not add to people's skills, but rather at some point we will turn them down because their skills have become inadequate and a burden cost wise versus automation automated systems and AI

That is the future we are building right now putting value in things and not in people and that is definitely not the future Bombardier the BPN and the BGP are intent to build or considering as a viable option for the future

Yes large scale automation automated systems and artificial intelligence have a key role to play in our future operations but no, not at the cost of diminishing the intrinsic value of human beings their capacities and skills and their infinite potential for growth, infinite because of their intelligence and imagination that are not bound by anything but by their will to do and the means that they dispose of

I would like to go back to how BCS was redacted on single desktop tied to the internet using publicly available online resources, it is not much in itself but many are those who lack even water electricity and sanitation, so where and how are we enabling people all over the world to do the same as I did, so are yes they are it is not all bleak but many are those who aren't

So before anything a space age economy is an economy that enables people that puts value in people that educates and cares for its people and that believes in their capacity and talents and drive to accomplish what they want and in doing so they fulfill their role in society they make it wealthier and prosperous they lead it further they accomplish for it more then any and all robots can more than artificial intelligence can where robots and automated systems are themselves enablers and a support not the means to replace people because they are more cost effective to operate

And I mean operate not design build or own that part is way up there in terms of costs designing building and purchasing such automated systems or randomly automated if we consider AI as a replicable not replicable entity or several of them working together

Imagine a new world or several of them, distant outposts at first then thriving colonies as the populations increase, how does it change things it changes everything with trips that last years to arrive and as the size of the ships increase it is brought down to months, still a journey but a much faster one and as the journey time is reduced to months we discover a different perspective than travelling in space for years which is time consuming and the realm of astronauts scientists technicians engineers construction workers so we there is over time a change in the constitution of that population taking shape

And we start seeing travelers and colons with their families where spending a few years in a distant system is not a far fetched dream but an everyday reality, where TV and the internet display ads asking for candidates willing to relocate to distant systems for work there either on their own, mining workers and oil industry workers and other ads geared towards welcoming families to populate these different systems

Space tourism becomes an ongoing commercial activity and the dream inasmuch as it was discovering our planet, which is something we want to do with Bombardier its tour operators and AIR Bombardier, the dream becomes achieving more than that in your lifetime it becomes visiting a distant exoplanet and even maybe several of them, where a journey to the Moon is both the easiest and least expensive and where other systems are competing with their natural beauty and sights to attract space tourists

As such the ARK mission as a whole is the cornerstone of all of this and that is why in itself it is with with Odyssey that is geared towards the exploration of our solar system the most important mission of Bombardier Space, maybe the most important missions of all time these two because their success determines the success of the whole of it and that of future space missions

#neo thunderstorm