#((yeah I looked it up and this was during the 70s Energy Crisis

[thevalicemultiverse]

Jimmy Carter had the audacity to suggest Americans keep their thermostats at a temperature that would slightly make Americans uncomfortable, and he was soundly obliterated by Reagan in one of the most catastrophic election defeats in US history. Comfort is a bipartisan concern.

Alice: I'd like to think he was defeated because of more than just suggesting people be a little cold to -- save energy, I'm guessing. I'm not the best at American history.

[thiswasinevitableid]

Okay well then!!!! I am very glad and excited to share my most recent idea I had while rereading Yeti Hunting again!! And the new Incubus one too!! They're almost exactly the same idea, just different flavors I suppose. Also Joe is trans in both the ideas but that's less to do with the ideas themself and more to do with just me projecting on him sgfjgsjfhsjdh

Okay so it's like a reverse au so Stern is some kind of cryptid, but as far as Barclay knows they're just two good human friends (but maybe they wanna be a little more than friends...). And then one day Joseph goes into heat and tells Barclay he's sick to try to keep him away, but Barclay being the sweetest man alive goes to his house with fresh soup to take care of him and Joe seems really panicked about Bar being there and tries to make him leave but he is CLEARLY unwell and Barclay is very stubborn when it comes to helping people he cares about and so he plants himself down on the couch and says he's not leaving until Joe tells him what's wrong and Stern tries to hold onto his human form but it's taking too much focus and energy and whoops Barclay finds out his friend not human and currently in distress and so horny it hurts and if he can help his friend and fuck him at the same time, well then that's just a win all around (bonus points if at the end Barclay is kinda sad because he thinks Joe just needed somone to fuck him, not nessacarry Barclay, but Joe frantically assures him that he is SUPER into him and if it were anyone else he would have kicked them the hell out and probably skipped town bc he couldn't trust anyone else with a secret like this).

Or!! (This is where the incubus part comes in) Joe is an incubus and currently hiding out in his human disguise at the Amnesty lodge and it's going fine for a while, but then he starts talking to and getting to know the really hot chef. And they slowly start growing closer and closer. And maybe in this world, the power an Incubus gets from sex depends just as much on their desires as it does the human's. And this has never been an issue for Stern before, but now he's falling for Barclay and wants him and no one else so he's getting less and less energy from his encounters and Barclay is worried about him because he doesn't seem like himself anymore. Almost as if he's... dulled? When Barclay looks at him the blue of his eyes seem muted and his general aura seems... gray. And it all comes to ahead when Joe finally stops insisting he's fine and after dinner one night he asks if he can speak to Barclay privately, and he comes clean about everything and Barclay, while a little shocked, rolls with it very well and cups Joe's face in his hands and kisses him softly and it like,,, you should have come to me sooner, I'd do anything for you,,, and yeah it's really tender,,,,

Okay that's it I'm sorry it's so long and probably incoherent. I tried to use at least little formatting to make it better but it's a tumblr mobile ask, I'm not sure even the new paragraphs will translate over. The general idea is that they're close friends and Stern is Not Human and Barclay finds out under less than ideal circumstances :3 I know these are far from original or unique but I just wanted to share my ideas with you bc you're the inspiration for a good 70% of my private writings, but if you like them enough and ever feel like doing something with them that'd be cool ;3

Here you go! I went with scenario one. Content Note: some “mating” talk and mild subdrop at the end (which is, of course, taken care of)

The two canvas bags are ready to burst. Barclay peers into them, contemplating the addition of another box of tea, in case Joseph doesn’t like the other two. Mama was cagey when he asked, he doesn’t know what’s ailing the other man, only that he’s sick. 

Joseph manages Amnesty Lodge, where Barclays’ been a cook for the last six months. Barclay was initially wary of him; his cosmopolitan bearing and clean-cut appearance is so out of place in the rustic mountain town of Kepler that the logical explanation is he’s one of those city types who fell on hard times and got stuck here. 

It took less than forty-eight hours for him to prove Barclay wrong. Polite and polished, efficient and stunningly good in a crisis, Joseph handles the day to day chaos of the lodge while Mama, the owner, took care of the big picture stuff. His friendly greetings and consistent compliments about Barclays cooking gradually turned to afternoons spent at a table with his work so they could talk during lulls in business. 

When Joseph leaned against the counter, sleeves rolled up, laughing as he helped Barclay tidy the kitchen, the cook rushed headlong into his crush and never looked back. He regularly dreams of blue eyes and a movie-star face, finds his day doesn’t really start until Joseph pokes his head in to say good morning. 

He’s been without that greeting for two days now. Joseph never misses work, and his sudden absence worried Barclay enough that he checked with Mama to be sure the manager was okay.

“Joe’s fine big fella, just under the weather is all.”

The one time Barclay got sick, Joseph brought him tea and soup himself, checked in on him every hour, and--if Barclay’s fever addled brain is to be trusted--fluffed his pillows. It’s the least Barclay can do to drop off snacks and be sure his friend is okay. 

It’s a short drive to cabin Joseph calls home; he used to live at the Lodge, but as it got more crowded, he moved to his own space so those who needed a cheap, safe place to stay could have one. 

His knock on the door is answered by a brisk, “Who is it?”

“Barclay. I, uh, I brought you a get-well gift.”

Joseph opens the door to the cabin and to an entire new universe of fantasies. His normally slicked-back hair falls, relaxed, across his forehead, his loosely tied blue robe shows a tantalizing V of skin, and the dreamy-sleepy expression makes his face even more kissable. 

“Hi.” Joseph takes a step forward, taking the bags and bringing his face achingly close to Barclays’. Then he freezes, reversing into the house, “I, um, it was very sweet of you to bring all this. But you need to go.” He takes another step back, then doubles over with a groan. 

Barclay hurries across the threshold, setting the bags on the floor and steadying him over to the couch.

“Fuck, do you need me to get you like a heat pack, or a puke bucket?”

“No, no I just need to lay down, and for you to g-” he shudders, curling in on himself and tipping sideways. 

“Joseph, you’re really sick, I’m not gonna just leave you here. I mean, fuck, what if it’s your appendix or something?” He sits down next to the shaking man, rubbing his back comfortingly. 

“It’s not, I promise. Oh lord” he whines, looks at Barclay with frantic eyes, “I hope you can keep a secret.”

“Of course I can. Whatever I can do to help, I want to.” 

“Careful with those promises, big guy.” The nickname comes out in a growl as Joseph stands, undoing his wristwatch. 

“Oh FUCK!” Barclay scrambles back, almost falling over the arm of the couch.

There’s a monster where Joseph just was. Years ago Barclay saw a Maned Wolf in a zoo, and he’d swear that’s what he’s looking at now were it not for several glaring issues. First, it’s standing comfortably on two legs. It’s paws are more like hands, able to hold the watch and adjust the collar of its shirt. And he’s never seen a wolf, maned or otherwise, with spines down its back and a whip-like tail.

The creature runs a clawed hand through the fur at the top of it’s head, the way Joseph does when he’s nervous,  “So. I can’t tell you everything, at least not right now. What I can tell you is that this is the form I was born into, somewhere far away from earth.”

“Okay.” Barclays brain grinds like a broken ice machine as a familiar voice speaks to him from a fanged mouth. 

“I, um, I’m what humans call a Chupacabra. To answer the usual questions: no, I’ve never been to Puerto Rico. No, I don’t eat goats. And no, I’m not going to eat you.”

“Okay.” His heart is still racing, but not from fear, which is the most confusing was this could have gone.

Pointed ears flick, worried, “Are you in shock?”

“Kinda, yeah.” He nods as Joseph sits next to him with a heavy sigh. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out this way. I took the next few days off to avoid this exact scenario. I figured I wouldn’t see you, but forgot how thoughtful and caring you are.” Claws gently stroke Barclays hair, “my wonderful Barclay.”

He’s about to bring his hand up, cup those strange fingers to his cheek and whisper “always”, when Joseph pulls away. 

“I, I’m sorry. Again. I always get too handsy when I’m in heat. That’s the second worst side-effect, after the fact that being in my disguise is untenable when I’m in the thick of it. It’s like wearing a wet, wool sweater made of nausea.”

“....Hold on, you had to take time off work because you’re horny?” 

“Almost. Heat doesn’t come that often for me, which means whenever it happens, it’s intense. I have a hard time eating or sleeping, I can’t focus, and I spend most of the week masturbating. Which is not as fun as it sounds; I’m not even at the height of the damn thing and last night I humped a pillow on the kitchen floor while dinner reheated.”

Barclay groans, tries to hide it when the ears swivel his way, “Uh, guess I’m glad I brought you lots of food so you remember to eat. Shoulda, uh, put some lube or something in there as well, huh?” 

Joseph chuckles, “My nose tells me you put molasses cookies in there, so I’ll let it slide.”

“There anything else I can do to help?”

“Well…” he shakes his head, “never mind, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“Do what?”

“My heat is more manageable when I have a partner. Fucking someone relieves things more effectively than masturbation does. But I can’t-”

“I can help with that.” The offer is out before his brain catches up with his mouth. 

“Barclay, my kind have a very, um, involved mode of, um, well, I guess you foreplay. As, as much as I’d love for you to be my mate” he winces, “see, that’s what I mean. I say things like that, most of them not even possible given the fact you and I can’t reproduce.” 

“Uh, does it help if I say hearing you call me that is really hot?”

Blue eyes widen, and a tail traces up Barclays leg, “Only if you mean it.”

“I do.”

A narrow, long tongue flicks into the air, “In that case, big guy, how about we have a little planning session over dinner?”

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

Barclay parks in the driveway, next to Josephs’ sedan. He heads past the house and down a short slope to a creek, the twilight sky casting the forest in eerie grey-blue. There’s a tire swing leftover from a previous resident, and he idly pushes it back and forth as he waits for the game to start. 

“It’s like hide and seek” Joseph wipes his mouth, cleans cookie crumbs from the table, “We start outside, move inside, and you go as long as you can without me catching you. After all, I want a mate who can hold his own.”

He stuffs his hands in his jacket pocket to warm them. A yip bounces out from the trees behind him. When he turns, he quickly spots glinting eyes and bared fangs hidden in the undergrowth. 

Sprinting towards the cabin, he realizes Joseph laid a trap for him from the start; by asking him to begin at the creek, he’s forcing him to run uphill to safety, slowing him down. He lets his lizard-brain, concerned only with the fact that something dangerous is chasing him, take over and drive his legs as fast as they’ll go. The back door is locked, he double-checked that on the way down, so he doesn’t waste his time trying it, races to the front of the cabin and slams the door shut just as something huge rounds the corner after him. 

The nob jiggles, his pursuer testing the lock and discovering the thrown deadbolt. Barclay uses those few seconds to secure the windows on the first floor, throws his jacket down into the cellar as a failsafe, and bolts up to the bedroom. His hammering heart insists that locking that door is not enough, so he crawls into the closet and shuts himself up among the meticulously organized shirts and slacks. It’s not enough space for him to stand, so he tucks his knees to his chest and waits. 

“What happens if I, like, completely outsmart you.”

A toothy smile, “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you.”

Each of the downstairs windows rattle in turn. Then the scratching starts, claws on wood coming closer with each breath. Joseph is climbing the wall up to the bedroom window that Barclay knows for a motherfucking fact he did not secure. 

A shuff as the window slides open, the cryptid landing with remarkable stealth on the bedroom floor. Barclay tracks him by the light coming under the closet door, his mouth covered so his breathing won’t give him away. The shadow pauses, sniffs, and then the bedroom door opens and shuts. Barclay’s not moving until he hears the front door do the same. 

Just as his legs start to protest being smushed up against his chest, the door reopens. Snuffling signals Joseph closing in, and an instant later the only light coming in is from the far ends of the door. Slowly, his last line of defense rolls to the right, revealing the creature crouching on the other side.

“Not a bad effort, big guy. You actually confused me for a minute with the scent trail of your coat downstairs.” Joseph reaches for him and Barclay, remembering that he’s not supposed to give up until he’s pinned, leans away. 

“That’s how my mate wants to play?”

“J-just following your instructions, babe.”

An intrigued purr, “I guess you are. All the more reason you’re the perfect partner for me.”

The words Barclays dreamed of hearing for months distract from the claws closing around his ankles. He lets out an undignified yelp when Joseph pulls his legs straight out and drags him out of the closet. Once he’s free of the forest of clothing, the cryptid picks him up and drops him on the bed. He moans and Joseph snickers, joining him on the bedspread. 

“Fuck, Joseph, no one’s ever been able to do that before and it’s so, so fucking hot.” He arches his back and shifts his limbs to help Joseph undress him.

“It’s because you’re the perfect size; big and strong, large enough to give me a decent cuddle when I’m human, but still small enough to be an easily subdued mate.” He gets the humans’ jeans and boxers off, hesitates, and then tosses them on the floor with a pained expression, “I’ll fold those later.”

“Gonna hold you to that. Also, wanna point out that it wasn’t that easy to subdue me.”

Joseph nuzzles his cheek, claws caressing his thighs, “Barclay, I was jogging while you were sprinting.”

“You coulda caught me right awaAAy ohwhatthefuck.” Tingling heat glides down his throat as Joseph licks a stripe along the skin, “fuck, it, it feels like the time I tried hot wax.”

The cryptid sits up slightly to look at him, “Is that a...good thing?”

“Fuck yeah. I really fucking liked it but it was fucking murder with the chest hair.”

Joseph runs his claws through the hair in question, “I like it.”

“I know, I saw you eyeing me that one time I used the springs at the lodge.”

“You can’t prove anything.” Joseph leans back down, curling his tongue around Barclays left nipple. The sensation makes him buck his hips, which Joseph correctly takes as a signal for more. He moves to the other side, takes his time teasing it and licking down the sensitive center of Barclays chest. Noses his stomach, nips his sides, and slides the alien heat of his tongue into the crease of his thighs. 

“Y’know I, ohfuck, I assumed from all that talk yesterday you’d get right to fucking me.”

Joseph kisses the inside of one thigh, “I, um, I thought about it, almost ripped your jeans to shreds and took you on the floor. But I wanted to be sure you were turned on. You’re not just a warm body, Barclay. You’re my mate. That means your pleasure matters as much as mine.” He licks up Barclays’ cock, hardened from rubbing against the soft fur of his belly, and sighs, “and what a mate.”

“Fuck” he squeezes his eyes closed because if we watches that mouth saying everything he wants to hear in between sucking his dick, he’ll cum in ten seconds flat. 

A final lick to the tip and then Joseph hops off the bed, “Did you prep the way I told you?”

“Uhhuh.” 

“Good.” Joseph returns, sets several items he can’t see by his feet, “that’ll make things easier. First things first” he produces a cock cage, sliding it into place, “these are a few things I smuggled over from my original home. This is enchanted, so it can go on an erect cock but still prevent the wearer from cumming until it’s removed.”

“That’s just cruel, babe.” He sits up on his elbows to kiss Josephs snout, earning him a pleased yip. 

“If you cum too fast, I won’t be able to properly breed you.” He winces again, “sorry, I sound like one of Indrids romance novels.”

“Again, gorgeous, I find it really fucking hot.”

The spines on Joseph’s back ripple, “You think I’m gorgeous? Like this?”

“I do. Also kinda scary, but in a hot way.” Now it’s his turn to cringe, “see? I sound like cheap porn written by an eighth grader when I’m horny. The way you sound is fine.”

Joseph lovebites his ear, then retrieves the other two items from the end of the bed. 

“And how does this look, big guy?”

“Like it’s either going to kill me or make me cum like a dozen times.” He furrows his brow at the strap-on. It’s narrower than the average human dick, with a pointed, slightly up-curved tip. What’s worrying him are the spikes. 

The entire shaft is coated in short protrusions. They don’t end in points, thank god, but if they’re at all stiff this is going to be miserable. 

“Here” Joseph waves him over, “touch it.” He guides his fingers along one side and the spines bend fluidly under his touch, and now all he wants to know is how they feel inside him. Joseph also moans, bucking his hips so the toy slides along Barclays palm.

“It’s, ohlord, also enchanted so that the wearer feels it as an extension of their body and can cum with it. Also, please decide in the next thirty seconds whether you want to be on your back or your stomach.” Amber pre-cum drips down Barclay’s fingers. 

“Stomach is better for meWHOAH, ohfuck, okay we’re doing this.” Now flipped on his belly, he raises his ass. The cryptid kneads it appreciatively before holding it open and sliding his cock in with once, graceful thrust. 

He bottoms out with a groan, which is more articulate than Barclay is managing to be as the spines rub and glide inside him, finding every patch of nerves, every angle to drag against in just the right way. Joseph hauls him onto his knees and then he’s off, growls and yips filling the as he fucks him. Barclay only just registers the bed banging into the wall so forcefully the headboard is cracking when claws sink into his hips and Joseph pulls him all the way onto his cock and pulses into him. 

“Holy fuck that was fast.”

“I, I didn’t jack off once today. Didn’t want to waste it, wanted to save it all for my perfect mate.” He’s thrusting again, not as hard but twice as fast, “shit, you feel so good, big guy, please tell me Mama okayed your time off for tomorrow.”

“Wh-why are we talkingAHnnn, about this now?”

Hot breath tickles his ear, “Because now that I know what’s like to cum in you, I don’t plan on cumming anywhere else for the next day and a half.”

“Ohfuckme” Barclay groans happily into the pillows as Joseph empties into him, cries out when his tail whips across his calf.

“Shit, did that hurt?”

“No, no it felt good, fucking-A babe every fucking part of you is amazing.”

The cryptid whines, pleased, and wiggles his hips, giving Barclay an idea. 

“That’s, uh, that’s why I want you for my mate, because you’re so fucking goo-mmph” his face presses harder into the pillows as Joseph pins his shoulders down and fucks into him, snarling “yes” over and over again. When he finishes this time he hunches over, nipping Barclay’ shoulders and neck. 

“You catch on quick, big guy.”

“Thanks, babe. Uh, are we gonna switch it up at any point or am I staying like this until tomorrow night?”

“No, we can fuck however we want. After” a fuzzy hand rubs circles on Barclay’s abdomen, “I’ve cum in you enough times that I can feel it from out here.”

Barclay moans, tightening around him as his hips snap once more, already imagining being full and fucked out. Maybe it’ll take all night. He’ll be limp if it does, but right now nothing sounds better than melting into the bed while Joseph fucks his ass like it belongs to him. 

After forty-five minutes, his cock is aching, his mind holds only thoughts of how good it feels to do as Joseph tells him, and he’s been cum in so many times that wet, obscene sounds accompany the cryptids thrusts. Said sounds pale in comparison to Josephs’ voice, which is spinning increasingly impossible scenarios the longer they’re in bed. 

“I hope they take after you.” Joseph murmurs. 

Barclay just manages to turn his head, “Who?”

A muzzle playfully nudges his cheek, “Our kids.”

His heart seizes and shakes at the words; they both know that’s not what will happen. Joseph warned him he might say things like this, said he could tell him to knock it off if need be. 

“Maybe they’ll, ahnn, they’ll have big, beautiful brown eyes and bigger hearts, just like you.”

He doesn’t want him to stop. Every thrust hits deeper, every point where their skin meets buzzes brighter when he talks like this.

“H-hope at least one looks like you, blue eyes.”

A guttural whine, tingling heat as Joseph laps tenderly at the back of his neck, “We’ll just have to see, usually we’re born in threes so, soOH, oh I’m close, shitshit” 

“That’s it babe, fill me up, c’mon, c’mon I want it so bad, Joseph, baby, please.” 

There’s a howltrill as cum spurts into him, Joseph panting as he smooths his hand around Barclays side.

“There, that’s done it.”

Barclay whimpers as he pulls out, his mind and body pulled tight, certain that if he doesn’t cum soon he’ll propose marriage instead and that’ll be a fucking disaster. 

Joseph carefully rolls him over and unlocks the cage, “Do you want to cum?”

“More than anything. Oh!” he’s unprepared for Joseph to sink down on his cock, “oh fuck, yeah, wanna cum so bad babe please, I’ll be so good, be such a good mate if you just let me cum in y-fuuuck” A trio of sensations levels him as he climaxes; his vision whites out, his hips jerk more violently than they ever have before, and a line of cum drips down his leg. 

Somewhere far away, Joseph says, “I think we’ve earned a break.”

He nods, body limp as the cryptid climbs off him. Then he’s falling, spinning helplessly down in a pit of realizations. 

Joseph didn’t mean any of those things he said. His friend needed a mate and Barclay, lovesick fool he is, was eager for a chance to play pretend that he didn’t think about what would happen when the game ended. Even if Joseph keeps him here through tomorrow, the next time they meet at the Lodge he’ll act like nothing happened. 

Fuck, Barclay didn’t even get to kiss him during all this, and now he’ll never get the chance, never, nevernever-

“Shit, I should have put a towel or a spare blanket down. Now I’ll have to strip the bed before I can--Barclay? Oh, oh baby, what’s wrong?” A hand pets his face and he turns away from it, refusing to open his eyes. Joseph takes his hand instead, “it’s okay, I’m here, whatever you need I’ll-”

“Don’t. Don’t say that. You can’t give me what I need, it isn’t your fault I, I know I’m not really your partner and I, I…” he sniffles, wipes his palm under his eye. 

“Barclay, look at me please.”

Reluctantly, he opens his eyes just in time to see Joseph dip down and kiss him. It’s awkward, their mouths not made to fit together, but he savors it all the same because it’s Joseph, his Joseph, kissing him like he hoped he would. 

“My heat can make me say some ridiculous things. What it can’t do is make me feel affection where none exists. In fact, the reason I wasn’t able to keep my disguise on yesterday is because being near you meant being near the mate I wanted most in the world. I, um, suspected you might share my feelings, but I didn’t want our first interaction as boyfriend to be me asking if you wanted to spend a day or so with me while I was in a sex haze. But then you offered to help, and I wanted it so badly that I barreled ahead without making sure you understood that this was me declaring my feelings. I’m sorry.”

Barclay climbs into his lap, not caring about the mess he makes in the process. The cryptid laughs, hugs him close.

“I, I shoulda said something sooner too. Not that I regret how we spent our first date.” He kisses Josephs chin.

“Me neither, though I don’t think it quite counts.” He rubs their foreheads together, “can your boyfriend take you out to dinner on Friday?”

Barclay grins, looks into loving, blue eyes, “Yeah, he can.”

[defyingthestars]

A mess of my unorganized, tinhatty ramblings about Taron and Richard and sexuality, under the cut...

Ok so the two questions I’ve been asked to address are whether I think Taron and Richard really hooked up or got together in some way, and whether I think Taron is queer, and I think the answer to both is yes. Taron has a lot of very close male friends. He is very very affectionate with them and has mentioned this many many times. He loves male affection, he loves a bromance, etc. He loves this talking point. Another talking point he loved during the press tour for Rocketman was that mutual friends of his and Richard’s had been “trying to set them up for years.” Ok, two things to that point. Whichever friends these were, they almost certainly knew that Richard is not straight, and secondly, I have never heard of two grown men whose friends wanted to “set them up” unless they wanted to set them up. Which I think is what they actually meant.

Taron has also talked about how he had a sexuality crisis as an adolescent. He had really bad anxiety and some of it, he thought, came from thinking he was gay. He says he went to therapy, and this therapist convinced him he wasn’t gay, he was just anxious. He tells this story so cavalierly that it’s almost a little shocking, in retrospect. Did he get inadvertently put through some sort of low-impact gay conversion therapy? Maybe. Whatever this therapist told him, he made it work in his head well enough, for a while. He found theatre. He found dressing up and getting attention for something he loved. He still has these very intense best friendships with the boys from Aberystwyth, one of whom I remain convinced he was in love with, and was in love with him. He eventually got movie roles, and on one of his movies, he met his girlfriend. He calls her his partner, which I know is a British thing, but somehow coming from him makes it sound as queer as I believe they are, so I love it.

So, this brings us to Rocketman. Taron has been effusive, glowing, adoring, enraptured, enamored and in every possible way ass over teakettle in love with Richard since they met. He like lost his mind a little bit...or found it. I think the process of making this movie took a lot out of both him and Richard, and changed them in various ways, permanently. 

I think they hooked up probably very early on. I think it became part of the process for him, and he convinced himself it was helping him build his character, really feel like Elton. I think they had a lot of drunken, messy nights. I think he either explained it to his girlfriend, or just told her about it, and she tolerated it during the filming, but I totally think she knew. Richard’s girlfriend at the time was, eh, whatever, (sorry, I don’t know anything about her honestly and she seems like a non-starter in his life, eek. Sorry sorry.) and I think they just...did stuff. I can’t speculate on specific acts because that’s what the fanfic is for. But they fooled around, and they enjoyed themselves. No one ever talks about what goes on on film sets, so they knew they were safe, no matter how much they maybe bled over. It worked, and the results for the film.....I mean fuck.

Absolutely this went on through the time Richard wrapped— Taron’s insta post from Richard’s last day is extremely telling, imo. He is being funny, but he’s also guarding his true feelings under the joke of how much he can’t stand him. Oh, because, that’s right, Taron caught fucking feelings. Surprise surprise. 

So, Richard wrapped, and I think he left for a minute and then came back to London. They went out the night before the Carpool Karaoke filming and got “blind drunk” (Taron’s own words) and something definitely went down that night because they were...how they were. 

You can just look at Richard’s reactions when Taron tells him he loves him, or how Taron calls him “old fruit.” They’re so fucking cute but they’re also way way over the top in that “heh heh we’ve kind of been fucking and now we have to remember how to act like best buds* again and I hope this isn’t going to get awkward later on” kind of way. They overdo* it, but it plays great for the show. The looks between them are genuine, but if you look carefully you can see Richard restrain, just a bit more than Taron.

Richard went right back to the US after this thing was done.

Taron wrapped the film. 

At some point within literally 2-3 days, two unbelievable things happened:

Taron broke up with Emily, and Richard met and somehow instantly became attached at the hip with Brandon.

Taron had a gay crisis when he was 13 and he had another one when he was about to turn 29. I am sure of it. He had fallen for Richard, and didn’t know any other way to handle it than to panic, dump his girlfriend and shoot his shot. 

Taron and Richard went to this weird Land Rover launch event thing in late November, literally looking like a couple. Taron had blown up his life and shaved his head. They had a weird energy between them— my theory is Taron tried to tell him at least some of this that night, and it backfired. Richard was either committed to this thing with Brandon, or just didn’t want to try or even think about dating Taron like that. They had fun, and Richard loves him, but “not in that way, mate.”

Sometime around Christmas, Elton and David invited them—Taron and Richard—over to dinner. I think this was some kind of Elton ambush. Richard had a boyfriend but it was the two of them who got invited — and they thought this was some kind of big holiday dinner party but it was just them, and two other gay couples in their 50’s, 60’s or 70’s. I think Elton wanted to make them see what was right there if they wanted it, or at the very least give them the Big Talk, if there was anything left unsaid, about life, and living it, and how to be happy and avoid cocaine. 

They didn’t get together any more, I don’t think. Richard didn’t come out but he didn’t go back in, either. He went on holiday with Brandon, and Taron had what I think of as his sad gay winter. He might have hooked up with other people, I have no idea. At some point he took out Elton’s earring, and then he got back with Emily.

By May, when he and Richard saw each other again in New York, enough time had passed that they had a beautiful, bittersweet comfort between them, imo. 

ouch and wow this photo hurts

there are a lot of feelings there. Richard doesn’t look like this with, like, anyone. also they’re drunk. 

now they’re just messy and wasted but something went down later because wow 

the Met Gala was my last big tinhatty night for them, I guess. I have seen somewhere that B might have been there at the afterparties? idk man but they were hanging out with some party kinda people and doing some party kinda stuff so anything could have happened to leave Taron looking like that. ***I was informed that he was not there and was in fact having a small fit and unfollowing Richard on instagram while this event and these photos were unfolding, so. yeah. 👀***

Then the film came out...the rest is history. Taron will still take a loving jab at Richard in an insta comment occasionally. I think it’s just his little way of dealing with that soft sting that hasn’t quite gone away. Richard probably never sees them. But if you ask Taron about Richard one day in many years he will still probably call him one of my very best friends.

*This kind of overkill of being best friends became Taron’s defense mechanism for the entire rest of the press tour. He proclaimed his love for Richard at every possible turn. He asked him to marry him. He told fans he’s at the front of the queue. He called him his best friend over and over. He was making sure, in every public place, that Richard knew that Taron still loved him regardless and there were no hard feelings for what happened between them and there never will be.

[bobasheebaby]

100 New Girl Prompts

So many prompts, most of which are funny. Break at 15 cause it’s mega long.

1 "I'm using my bride/groom card!" — Cece

2 “Can we just take a minute to celebrate me?" — Schmidt

3 “So many emotions." — Nick

4 “I'm totaling my assets. It's really bleak." — Jess

5 “Look at those horny horny hippos.” — Nick

6 “I got mozzarella sticks for fingers." — Nick

7 “Every moment you're on this Earth is a moment I know where you are." — Nick

8 “It is my Secret Santa alias." — Winston

9 “Friend face." — Winston

10 “It's perfectly fine to watch TV all day." — Nick

11 “If I were off my rocker, would I take a weekly selfie with my cat?" — Winston

12 “I can't find my driving moccasins anywhere." — Schmidt

13 “Believe it or not, that's not the first time someone's broken my feeling stick. I have a travel size." — Jess

14 “Put on some pants, or at least some really high socks." — Jess

15 “You like me? You like my personality?" “I was surprised, too.” — Schmidt & Cece

16 "I just wanted to listen to Taylor Swift alone!" — Jess

17 “That's like the president and the vice president not being best friends." — Winston

18 “I'll take the strongest drink you have, and also a wine spritzer on the side in case I don't like it." — Jess

19 “You have the right...to remain hugged." — Coach

20 “If you are for one second suggesting that I don't know how to open a musical, how dare you!" — Schmidt

21 “I was sabotaged by my baby box." — Jess

22 “We are literally the most embarrassing people on the planet." — Jess

23 "It's a weird life, but it's where I'm at right now." — Nick

24 "You gave me a cookie, I gave you a cookie." — Nick

25 “Go put a dollar in the jar right now." — Coach

26 “This is my jam." — Coach

27 “Saturday is a day for sleeping, and damn it, you will not take that away from me!" — Winston

28 “Are we eating or are we not eating?" — Winston

29 "Eating cookies and avoiding confrontation." — Jess

30 “Because it's a great story, and I'm a teller of stories." — Nick

31 “I like being weird." — Jess

32 "This is the worst thing to ever happen to me. I've lived a very fortunate life!" — Jess

33 "I don't like it. It's too much responsibility." — Nick

34 “Are you cooking a frittata in a sauce pan? What is this – prison?” — Schmidt

35 “I hate your mustache because I miss your upper lip.” — Schmidt

36 “He’s/She's got that giant heart that's part compass and part flashlight and he’s/she's just the greatest person I have ever met.” — Nick

37 “Who's that guy/girl? It's NAME." — Jess

38 “Watch your front because we've got your back!” — Cece

39 “Picking lint off of a man's/woman’s sleeve is the most intimate gesture.” — Cece

40 “Blast from the past, how's that ass?” — Jess

41 “I hate this. I just wanna sit around and do nothing, but that is not hot.” “That's hot to me. You add some sweatpants to that and that is better than porn.” — Kai & Nick

42 “Look at that font! What is this? Amateur hour? At least use Palatino.” — Nick

43 “I’m like a sexual snowflake. Each night with me is like a unique experience.” — Schmidt

44 “Where have you been? I am having a major life crisis, and you guys are, what, just driving around, French kissing each other like a couple of Dutch hookers?” — Schmidt

45 “No sig oths.” “Just say ‘significant others.” “Maybe you have that kind of time, but I’m on a tight sched.” — Schmidt & Cece

46 “I know this isn’t gonna end well, but the whole middle part is going to be awesome.” — Nick

47 “NAME, you’ve been staring at this guy/girl for 5 minutes. Please tell me you’re checking him/her out, otherwise you’re a serial killer. Which would explain a lot.” — Schmidt

48 “This is a horrible neighborhood. There are youths everywhere!” — Schmidt

49 “Guess whose personalized condoms just arrived!” — Schmidt

50 “I’m really gonna need you to step it up tonight, okay? When I see you, I wanna be thinking, ‘Who let the dirty slut out of the slut house?’” — Schmidt

51 “Can someone please get my towel? It’s in my room next to my Irish walking cape!” — Schmidt

52 “Have you seen my sharkskin laptop sleeve?” — Schmidt

53 “Don’t pretend to know my pain.” — Schmidt

54 “Do I regret it? Yes. Would I do it again? Probably.” — Nick

55 “I don't know what I'm doing emotionally or -- let's be honest -- sexually.” — Jess

56 “What if I have some idea of love in my head and it’s just totally wrong?” — Jess

57 “Life sucks. And then it gets better. And then it sucks again.” — Nick

58 “I like getting older, I feel like I’m aging into my personality.” — Nick

59 “You know, sometimes I feel like I’ve never really felt love.” — Winston

60 “When you care about somebody you do what's best for them even if it sucks for you.” — Schmidt

61 “Old people freak me out. With their hands and their legs. They’re like the people version of pleated pants.” — Schmidt

62 “I’m gonna have to run all the way home, and I have my slipperiest loafers on.” — Schmidt

63 “Downstairs neighbour put a password on their wi-fi.” — Nick

64 “You were denied a cell phone because you have the credit score of a homeless ghost.” — Schmidt

65 “I’m only attracted to guys/girls who are afraid of success and think someone famous stole their idea.” — Jess

66 “This place is fancy and I don’t know which fork to kill myself with.” — Nick

67 “Without sex, he’s/she’s not your boyfriend/girlfriend. Okay? He’s/She’s a friend you buy meals for.” — Schmidt

68 “I feel like I wanna murder someone. And also, I want soft pretzels.” — Jess

69 “So when I do the chicken dance, I do it a little differently. Instead of doing claps, I like to do a peck. It’s more realistic.” — Jess

70 “NAME doesn’t have a life plan. He/She doesn’t have a day plan. I once found a note that he/she wrote to himself that said, ‘Put on pants.'” — Jess

71 “I don’t want to kiss and tell, but I ruined my dresser during intercourse. Will you go to Ikea with me?” — Jess

72 “Can I get an alcohol?” — Nick

73 “I want to kill you, because I respect you. NAME! I think I understand hunting!” — Nick

74 “Look, we’re not trying to be mean. We just don’t want you to be yourself… in any way.”

75 “I have decided to give up on men/women and put all of that energy into tomatoes.”

76 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? No, a summer’s day is not a bitch!” — Nick

77 “I only wanna make a drink a coal miner would want. Straight forward. Honest. Something that says, ‘I work in a hole.'” — Nick

78 “I’m not convinced I know how to read, I’ve just memorized a lot of words.” — Nick

79 “I like chipmunks more than squirrels.” — Nick

80 “I can’t believe I’m the sober one. That’s actually never happened before in my life.” — Nick

81 “Beans are nothing but soggy nuts.” — Schmidt

82 “Can I interest you in some white noise?” — Winston

83 “Those are pickles in progress.” — Winston

84 “Who’s talking to you, Depression-era garbage man?” — Coach

85 “I need everyone to shut up.” — Coach

86 “Your asses belong to me now.” — Coach

87 “That’s what’s up, that’s what’s up. No doubt. Diggity.” — Coach

88 “I hate when Schmidt cries. He sounds like a ghost singing ‘Hey Ya.'” — Coach

89 “I’ve made out with half of the guys/girls in this room.” — Cece

90 “You always see the worst in people.” “Yeah, because people are the worst.” — Jess & Nick

91 “I’m sorry we’re not going this weekend.” “But It’s free.” “Did you say free?” “Yeah.” “We’re 100% in. I’ll go pack now.” — Nick & Jes

92 “I’m going to end up alone. I’m going to be a single old man/lady flashing people on the subway.” — Jess

93 “I’ve got two perfectly good forks on the end of my arms.” — Nick

94 “If we needed to talk about feelings they would be called talkings.” — Nick

95 “When you question my pajamas, you make me question our entire friendship!” — Jess

96 “Why can’t I have the things that I want?!” — Schmidt

97 “Bathtubs are medieval filth cauldrons.” — Schmidt

98 “They don’t hate me because I’m old. They hate me because of my personality.” — Schmidt

99 “It’s like you’re ripping the side block out of my mental Jenga.” — Schmidt

100 “I’m not actually quite sure how to stop this.” — Schmidt

[daringherring]

Actually, Decepticons are the bad guys

@warworldcmdr​ wrote a very thoughtful response to my "hot take" post the other day and brought up a lot of points that I want to address--some of them good, some of them bad.

I'll start with what I agree with: Yes, it's probably true that a lot of the people writing "very nice and helpful, even to my enemies" Decepticons are young. And even if they're adults, yes, it's valid for people to write what they want, however they like it, whether I enjoy it or not. So yes, although my point was "I'd really prefer not to interact with people who write Decepticons in this way, as it makes me uncomfortable", Dai is probably right to call me out for making the blanket statement that it's "not cool" to write """nice""" Decepticons.

It is also true that Autobots have done some shit, whether individually or as a system. Yeah, Transformers Animated is morally grey as shit, and there are some players in IDW who really make you take a step back and whisper to yourself "what the fuck". It was never my intention to claim that Autobots are entirely pure and innocent actors in any of the Transformers series; arguably in G1 they're the best they get, since they were explicitly written to be the good guys to the Decepticons' bad guys, but in other series boy does shit get muddy. More on that later, but honestly my post was not about Autobots. "Sometimes Autobots are also not great" does not negate the fact that in every (yes, every, once again except for Shattered Glass) continuity the Decepticons have the explicit goal of universal domination.

For the sake of relative brevity, I'm only going to focus on the three continuities Dai brought up: the G1 cartoon, Transformers Animated, and the IDW 1 run (2005-2018).

So, what are G1 Decepticons about? Dai claims that they have "no motive beyond saving their homeworld from an energy crisis", but canonically that's just not the case. The original motive the Decepticons had for starting the war on Cybertron was to rule Cybertron. Then they lost that war, and after a while they started another one... once again, with their entire motive being to rule Cybertron. Prior to the war, there was no energy crisis. That happened because after 5 million years of fighting, they eventually used up all of the planetary resources.

After the Autobots leave Cybertron in search of new energy sources and the Decepticons follow them, Megatron's motivation turns from simply ruling Cybertron, to ruling the entire universe. Seriously. He says it in almost every episode. He wants to conquer the universe, and while yes, part of his strategy is to send fuel back to Cybertron... that's so that the Decepticons can conquer Cybertron once and for all, giving them a secure home base from which to conquer the universe.

Now, most of the G1 cartoon is centered around the fighting between Autobots and Decepticons on Earth, with occasional side trips to Cybertron, so we don't see a lot of what's happening elsewhere. What we do see of other planets is that Megatron and the rest of the Decepticons have no qualms whatsoever about killing or enslaving the sentient alien inhabitants of those worlds. That's just part of their strategy: find a planet with resources, enslave the local population, plunder it for all it's worth. We see this happen repeatedly on Earth, as well as on Saturn's moon Titan and the planet Tlalak.

There's also a whole mess of stuff happening on Monacus, the gambling asteroid, which definitely involves slavery and other forms of exploitation, and it's more than just implied that Megatron is running that entire operation. I’m not even going to get into season 3 because I’m tired and this post is getting too long as it is. Then there's TFA. I'll be the first to admit that the Autobots of Transformers Animated are heavily morally grey; not so much the main cast, Optimus' team on Earth, but the Autobots as a whole... yeah. You could easily make a comparison between Autobot-run Cybertron and post-9/11 America in terms of rampant xenophobia and government surveillance. It's uncomfortable. It's meant to be; that's good writing! But once again, the Decepticons are still the bad guys. I'm just gonna quote straight from tfwiki here: "The Decepticons came to prominence as a sub-faction of the Destrons around 70 million years ago. They advocated the use of the AllSpark to bring Cybertron itself to life, that it might serve as a cosmic juggernaut that would allow the Transformers to return to the era of expansion and colonization of other worlds they had enjoyed nearly 700 million years beforehand. When the Decepticon leader Megazarak was ousted by charismatic rhetorician named Megatron, tensions finally exploded, and the Autobots and Decepticons went to war for possession of the AllSpark." We all know what happened with the AllSpark: the Autobots eventually launched it through a space bridge, and Megatron spent the next 4 million years, plus the entirety of the Animated cartoon, searching for it and plotting to use its power to return to Cybertron and conquer his home planet. So that he can. You know. Turn it into a giant spaceship that he can use to conquer the universe. Once again, there's nothing to do with an energy crisis. In fact, there's nothing in Animated to suggest that there is, or ever has been, an energon crisis. The Decepticons just explicitly want control so that they can go on a galaxies-wide killing and pillaging spree. IDW 2005 is a whole different beast. Like Animated, it's incredibly nuanced in its character portrayals, and there are a lot of shades of grey on both sides. And there's 13 years' worth of regularly produced content available, so it's probably the largest body of Transformers works within a single continuity. There's a LOT to go through. I'm quailing just at the thought of it. G-d, do I not want to go through all of IDW 2005 and point out all the explicit Nazi imagery, calculated genocide, fascist talking points, and etc. I'm not even going to do it in this post. Fuck it, I'll write another essay on the matter at some point if people really want to know why the Decepticons are the bad guys in IDW. Right now, I'll settle for saying that Megatron could not more obviously be an allegory for Hitler, and being an artist before he started publishing inflammatory writings designed to push his world into a bloody conflict does not make him more sympathetic. Being oppressed by an unfair world order does not justify or excuse the invasion and occupation of foreign territory and the massacre of millions of innocent civilians. Seriously. Am I talking about Megatron right now, or Hitler? The Decepticons, or Nazi Germany? One is literally a fictional carbon copy of the other.

And finally, here we have a continuity where the energy crisis contributes to the escalation of the war. You know what it's an exact historical replica of? The Great Depression! Yes, Decepticons and Germans were both starving prior to their armed revolt. And you probably know what I'm about to say: that doesn't make any of what came after okay, or reasonable, or just some understandably angry lashing out! Genocide is genocide, and genocide is always bad. Look. I get that there are "nice" Decepticons in canon. I get that there are also terrible Autobots. That's reflective of real life, too: the Allies were responsible for their share of heinous war crimes during WWII, and there's plenty of documentation out there that actual, literal Nazis were real people too. Anyone can fall for ubiquitous propaganda when it's being served to them day and night by sources they trust. There were a lot of soldiers who were just following orders, a lot of civilians who believed they were doing the right thing by turning in their neighbours and friends for seditious talk, a lot of people who fell into line because they were afraid. There were also a lot of people who genuinely believed in what the Nazis stood for and celebrated their victories every step of the way. Functionally, there is no difference whatsoever in the end results of the true believer's actions, the fearful capitulator's actions, and the loyal soldier's actions. At the end of the day, they're all still Nazis. So, yeah. People can write what they want. But respectfully, if people want to write Decepticons who are really just nice and helpful and wish the war were over and everyone would just get along, UWU, without ever distancing themselves from the Decepticons as a whole and the many atrocities they've perpetuated? I'd rather they wrote that somewhere far away from me.

If you want sources for any of my canon just @ me I guess, I’m too tired right now.

[letterboxd]

Housing Crisis.

Vivarium director Lorcan Finnegan talks to Steve Newall about his surreal suburban sci-fi nightmare.

Vivarium sees a young couple (Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg) looking to buy a home together, find themselves trapped in Yonder, a bizarre housing development full of identical family residences. In this interview, conducted following the film’s screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival, Lorcan Finnegan talks about his intriguing film, the horrors of housing, The Quiet Earth, and his experiences with Nathan Barley and Charlie Brooker.

Is the lifestyle sold in Vivarium where you see us going or are we already there? Lorcan Finnegan: I think that’s where we are. Except it’s just a little bit more exaggerated to highlight the absurdity of it. So it was kind of us taking the way we live already, more or less and just kind of amplifying it up so that you can see how weird it is.

You mentioned a housing crisis back home in Ireland during last night’s Q&A. Is it the same as here, where capital has been sequestered away by the wealthy and everyone else is a bit fucked? Yes. Basically, a massive divide, and there’s whole entire families living in hotels. I listened to a radio interview recently and they were talking about how that may seem like a nice proposal, “Yeah. We live in a hotel,” but a whole entire family in one room after a few weeks it’s going to start getting chaotic.

Our government was paying for people to live in motels. Yeah. But why?

Because people were living in cars. Families were living in cars. Buildings are left locked up because people are waiting for the right time to sell them because they’re waiting for the market to pick back up and there aren’t compulsory purchase orders put in place by the governments and there isn’t enough affordable housing. Housing’s just become this thing that you can’t actually buy a house. You have to be really rich.

I think you might’ve described it as an obsession last night. It’s definitely an obsession here. There’s a conversation earlier in the film, I think it might be with one of the parents at the school about the market…? Yeah, she’s saying, “The market’s going through the roof. You should really jump on it now.” And Gemma [Imogen Poots] says, “Oh, we’re going to go and see the estate agents later.”

Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots in dystopian nightmare ‘Vivarium’.

That sort of exchange fills up so much space in everyday conversation. Yeah. It’s a real obsession in Ireland, owning property. The idea of land ownership and all of that kind of thing. It’s strange. It’s just a mindset though because the Spanish live in apartments and rent their entire lives and that’s not considered strange and things are more affordable. I mean, obviously, the same thing happened in Spain. It’s a bit of a mess there as well and Greece. But yeah, the housing crisis really is an ongoing thing.

We made Foxes, a short film, in 2010 roughly but the time it was finished was 2011 and that was already reacting to something that was happening around 2005 which was just increasingly just getting worse. And since making that, made another film, Without Name, which is sort of about a property developer as well. It’s very different, about a guy who’s a surveyor who’s sent out to measure a piece of forest for a shady developer and the forest has a kind of spirit that protects it from this person and it gets psychedelic and weird.

And then by the time we came around to doing Vivarium, which we’d been working on for a few years just between things and gradually building the script up, it was all back again. We’d come full circle and it’s the exact same problems all over again. So within the film, the film has this kind of cyclical arc to it. It opens with footage of birds that have that kind of lifecycle as well and it seems that we just keep on repeating the same thing as well. It’s the cycle of strangeness.

My partner made an observation about the film, which was when you take away the contemporary issues it’s a very bleak analysis of what it means to be a family or what your purpose in life is. Yeah [laughs]. That’s the existential dread part [more laughs].

How’s your existential dread? I don’t know—we were just tapping into the anxieties of young people to kind of shake them up a little bit. That was an intention. I remember when we started into the script we were thinking what is it that scares people in their late 20s, early 30s these days? What is it that actually scares them as opposed to some sort of big monster? Godzilla was a product of the fear of atomic energy or nuclear war.

We were trying to coming up with a version in a stranger way of a monster, like the estate agent who would lead you to your doom. And people have this anxiety of moving to the suburbs and getting kind of trapped there and losing all sense of purpose and their life just sort of dwindling away while they repay the mortgage.

You had quite a sort of negative slant on the concept of mortgages. Yeah. That you just pay it off until you die.

Right, you can just dig that hole. Just dig that hole, keep digging that hole. Yeah. Dig the hole. Yeah. Keep on digging. Yeah. I mean to me it’s a big sick joke—the film—in a way. I don’t think it’s necessarily saying you shouldn’t do this, it’s just sort of highlighting how odd it is that we do it and that it’s not a necessarily the only society possibility. There’s other versions, other outcomes could happen. The little girl at the start of the film, Molly—she says she doesn’t like the way things are. So she’s like hope for the next generation.

Your casting of the other child that arrives in Yonder is amazing and you make some really interesting choices of what barriers you present to the audience to make us not really sympathise with the kid. Particularly the modulation of that voice. That voice is fucking weird. It was written as being weird. A weird kind of mimic of them but not quite right. And because he doesn’t have anybody else to copy, it’s kind of a hybrid of voices and we did have to dehumanise him because the real kid did sound quite sweet. He had a lisp as well [laughs]. He’s brilliant.

So we edited the film with the real kid’s voice and were just thinking about ways of what we’re going to do. And then we had the idea—myself and the editor—that what if we use Johnathan Aris as the voice of the kid because he’s the first estate agent that comes in. And so we got him in to do a little demo and he just did a few lines. And it really worked. It was really weird but it worked. It wasn’t quite right yet but we thought, “Okay. That’s what we’re going to do. when we finish it.” So then when we did we got him in for a whole day and he did the entire film as ADR and then we spent a lot of time in Denmark with the sound mix designer and tweaking that and kind of shifting the pitches and syncing it to his lips and adding in little bits of the little boy on either end of the word like coming in and coming out accenting his lip smacks so that it would sit into his mouth more. It was really tricky but I think it was worth the effort.

I was thinking about how the uniformity of the town of Yonder must have been a real advantage when it comes to shooting. Did you go into this going, “This is great. We’ve got all these advantages because we know we can just reverse this and do that and…” No. No. It was more like a terrible nightmare [laughs]. It’s like being dropped into this thing where you’ve got barely any time to make the film and this is all you have to make what you thought was going to be much bigger. Yeah. It was pretty stressful. It had all been storyboarded and planned a certain way which all had to change there and then with the clock ticking. Actually, on the very first day, there was a power cut because they hadn’t got a generator in Belgium. They were going off the local power and this massive warehouse—there wasn’t a sound stage—and, yeah, the power went for half a day. So we lost half a day the first day which meant the whole schedule was messed up and the storyboards were no longer viable for what we had to shoot. So we had to figure out how to rearrange shots, minimise the amount of coverage to be able to shoot the scenes.

So much is unseen in the film and that really works to the advantage of the audience. Was it a limitation thing for you or did you know that you could make it more interesting that way? We thought about showing how the whole thing works and all that. We do have our version in our heads, how it all works underneath and the whole lifecycle of these other things. But I found it more interesting to just give little bits of it than show it. What we’d show wouldn’t be as good as what you’d imagine anyway, probably.

I guess it helps if you are on the same page, that you have a bit of architecture in mind. Yeah, exactly. You know what the rules are to the place and all that kind of thing. Like with the weird fluffy clouds. It took people quite a while to get on board with that [laughs]. I was like, “No, it will look good.” And it needed that sort of storybook aesthetic to me anyway, that it’s this sort of surrealist painting, being trapped in that world. Do you remember The Witches—the Roald Dahl film that Nick Roeg directed—and there’s the little girl who’s trapped in the painting by a witch? That had some sort of profound effect on me when I saw it, it looked really creepy to be trapped in something that looked like a painting.

You mentioned The Quiet Earth last night and so I have a parochial responsibility to ask what resonates for you with that film. Well, actually the last sequence part of Vivarium was inspired by that. And also just maybe some of the kind of crossfading or aesthetic. I know it was ’85 or something like that but it had a sort of 70s vibe to it. And the quantum strangeness of The Quiet Earth… Vivarium has that quantum element, things shifting and changing and loops and kind of thing. And the idea of being alone in kind of suburban environments, with nobody else. When we were in development, we were watching everything—all those sci-fis that dealt with similar themes and we really liked The Quiet Earth. Very good performances all and the lead character just being a normal-looking guy which they used to do in the past instead of these kind of Gillette models.

Bruno Lawrence in Geoff Murphy’s ‘The Quiet Earth’ (1985).

So this film was obviously, a very difficult process for you. How do you feel about doing more at this point? Did you get PTSD from this experience? I actually probably did for a while, yeah. But yeah, it’s a weird masochistic compulsion. You make a film, you go through agony and then when you finish it you just want to go and do another one. But the next one is potentially less complicated. A little bit more in the real world with elements of the supernatural, and then another one that is a little bit insane, with a location that’s augmented to extend it and make it into sort of an environment but not creating an entire environment. The tricky thing with Vivarium is it always had to have a certain vibe to it and for Yonder to have no wind, no rain, artificial light, and feel very synthetic but at the same time tangible. So I don’t think they’ll be doing another one with quite as limited kind of environment to create and build. Not for a while anyway.

I threatened to bring up Nathan Barley when we first sat down. It feels like an increasingly prescient kind of work. I think sort of an amalgam of sort of cynicism and futurism. What did you take away from your time working on that show and just around Charlie Brooker projects in general? I mean I wasn’t really on Nathan Barley. I went to set a few times and I had to dress up as a lampshade in one episode. Actually, I think it was the first time seeing a director working. It was Chris Morris directing that. I remember he was closing his eyes for a while, thinking about the scene, then he was like, “Okay,” and then got stuck into it again. I thought that was really interesting.

I did do graphic design in college but I kept on doing narrative work and things. I don’t know why, I just kept on doing things were sort of sequentially telling a story. And then when I was working with those guys, we got hired to make the first mobile video content for video phones that had to come preloaded with content. Charlie’s company had won some sort of contract to make comedy for these phones, both live-action, and animation, but they had tiny budgets. So we were a team of two writers, a designer, an animator, me, and a producer and we had to make all this stuff. I was just supposed to be a runner and then I started editing with them and then we were shooting and then I’d go and have to do some stuff on Nathan Barley and other shows that the production company was doing.

But I ended up having to make a lot of these live-action comedy sketches and be in them—act in them, shoot them, and edit them, and all that kind of stuff—which was cool because it was like going back to college again, but now making films and doing the kind of opening graphics and all that kind of stuff. So it was a great experience. And nobody saw it anyway [laughs]. I was sent on a course to learn how to use PD150. It’s a little Sony mini-TV camera, and that was that. Got really into making stuff and editing it and all that kind of thing. Good fun.

Originally published by Flicks and reproduced with permission. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. ‘Vivarium’ is available digitally from March 27.

[mspaleoart]

Lystrosaurus – Late Permian-Early Triassic (255-250 Ma)

I’m back! I was sort of at a loss of what animal to talk about when I came back from my hiatus in earnest, but during the spotty downtime I had last week, I read When Life Nearly Died by Michael Benton, and that pointed me in the direction of this chubby little gentleman, whose name is Lystrosaurus. Lystrosaurus is one of the (very very VERY) few animals to survive the Permian-Triassic Extinction event, and we’re gonna take a look at why exactly that is.

Lystrosaurus is yet another synapsid, or proto-mammal. This guy was a member of the second wave of Paleozoic synapsid radiation, a member of the order Therapsida, which were characterized by being more similar to true mammals than the first group, the pelycosaurs. Edaphosaurus and Cotylorhynchus were both pelycosaurs, and were a bit more basal. Lystrosaurus shows a few of those therapsid traits, most importantly the shape of its skull and its semi-sprawling gait. On the less mammalian side of things, it probably had a beak made of horn for shearing vegetation. It had the characteristic deep body cavity for digesting all the tough plants it ate. It also had no teeth except for a pair of enlarged canines, which it probably used to uproot its food. The most common species was about the size of a schnauzer, although a much rarer species grew a bit larger. All-in-all, it wasn’t really anything special compared to its contemporaries.

Despite being tiny and rather typical of an animal from its time period, Lystrosaurus is an important animal for a few reasons. Even though plate tectonics are common knowledge and accepted as fact now, it took a long time for it to gain any serious traction. Alfred Wegener was pretty much laughed off when he first suggested the continents move in 1915. As a part of this theory, Wegener also suggested the continents had been united at some point into a supercontinent he called Pangea. His contemporaries heard the idea and basically said, “Okay but continents don’t move, obviously. Have you ever seen a continent move?” To their credit, the evidence at the time was, more or less, Africa and South America fitting together and other such things. Which, yeah, we know were right now, but back then it wasn’t so obvious. The next several decades were a slow march to acceptance of the theory of continental drift. Lystrosaurus figures into this by having been found in Asia, Africa, Europe, and even Antarctica by the 70s. At that point, even the most hardened skeptics shrugged and said, “Okay, yeah, fine.”

Lystrosaurus is known from an absolutely stupid number of fossils. The Great Karoo Basin in South Africa has an unreasonable amount of Lystrosaurus remains. They make up 95% of the animals found there, and they’re so abundant that paleontologists pull their hair out trying to find literally anything else. The most studied parts of the Karoo Basin span the late Permian and Early Triassic, and once you get into the Triassic rocks, it’s pretty much Lystrosaurus all the way down. Why is that?

Because nothing else survived the Permian Extinction.

There are five major mass extinctions in the Phanerozoic Eon. I’ve talked about two of them on this blog so far. I talked about the End-Ordovician extinction event when I covered Endoceras, and the End-Triassic extinction with Effigia. And I’m here to say that those events were fucking peanuts compared to this one. This was the single greatest crisis for life on earth, to the point that it’s often called The Great Dying. This was the destruction of about 90% of all species on earth at the time, and for a while we weren’t even really sure what was causing everything to fucking die. The most accepted theory nowadays is the series of eruptions of the Siberian Traps at the end of the Permian period. Basically, most of what we now call Siberia turned into a volcanic wasteland and exploded every so often, anywhere from every few thousand years to every few months.

These were more than volcanic eruptions. This was fire and brimstone, magma punching massive holes in the earth and launching toxic gasses and solid ejecta into the atmosphere. Anything remotely nearby suffocated or was struck by fiery debris. This wasn’t the most severe killing agent, though, not at all. The Great Dying earned its name because of the secondary effects. The gasses spewing into the atmosphere blocked out the sun and caused flash-freezing, followed by periods of global warming. Glaciers melted and released even more toxic gasses trapped beneath them, poisoning the seas and killing anything unadapted to anoxic conditions. It’s pretty telling that the majority of the marine animals that survived into the early Triassic were clearly adapted to life without plentiful oxygen. Plants on land were suffocated or frozen to death, and the ecosystems collapsed from there. The earth was a frigid, barren landscape. The seas and land alike would be littered with corpses of animals and plants. The earth has mechanisms to balance these influxes of toxic chemicals, but the problem was that by the time those mechanisms could get started, Siberia would erupt again and start the process all over again. If you were to walk around Pangea during the peak of this crisis, 1) It would fucking suck, and 2) You’d probably come across a very distressed Lystrosaurus before finding any other animal.

Why in the goddamn hell did Lystrosaurus survive when so many other animals didn’t? It’s a complicated question, because it’s important to ask another question first: What animals are vulnerable to extinction events? There are a couple of broad categories of vulnerable animals during mass extinctions:

Large animals: Large animals are especially vulnerable because they need more energy to keep themselves going, and almost always have small populations and slow reproductive cycles. This goes for predator and prey alike. When plants start dying, herbivores can’t feed themselves, and the large carnivores that prey on them don’t have anything substantial to eat. This is the reason animals like elephants and rhinos have such a hard time bouncing back after we nearly hunted them all to extinction.

Specialized animals: Specialized animals are almost always doomed in big extinctions. If an animal is really, really good at functioning in a specific environment, it’s going to bite it as soon as that environment gets thrown off-kilter. Animals that specialize in eating a specific plant or hunting in a specific environment don’t usually survive when everything gets hit.

So, the animals who are most likely to survive a mass extinction are the small generalists, who can thrive pretty much anywhere. Lystrosaurus fits this description, but forget all of that for the purpose of this conversation, because the Great Dying decimated life of all sorts. Generalists were more or less just as likely to die off as the specialized animals or the big guys. So, we ask again, why did Lystrosaurus survive when so many other animals, even those similar to it, didn’t?

There isn’t really an answer to that question. Scientists have puzzled over the remains of Lystrosaurus and asked over and over again, “Why this little bastard?” and they’ve come up with nothing substantial. It was luck that a little beaked herbivore was one of the lucky few. There’s no adaptation that made it particularly hardy in the face of total metazoan annihilation. There’s no reason it survived the act break between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. It just did because it happened to survive. This isn’t a parable of survival as much as it is one of dumb luck. One of the characteristics of a mass extinction is that it is essentially indiscriminate. Lystrosaurus had every reason to perish like its relatives, but it just didn’t. Being the generalist that it was, it wasn’t hard for it to recover when the Siberian Traps died down and life finally gained a foothold. It multiplied at an absurd rate and covered the earth. The early Triassic was unequivocally dominated by waddling herds of Lystrosaurus. An argument could be made that it’s the single most successful genus of synapsid in history, although Mus and Rattus would probably argue that point.

Whew. That was a lot. I hope it serves as a fitting return! Lystrosaurus was an animal I’d been meaning to cover for a long time, but only now felt like I was able to do it any justice. There’s so much to say about Lystrosaurus, to the point I could write a book about it. The cover would probably look something like this:

I’ll see you next time!

******************************************************************************

Buy me a Coffee, if you’d like!

[mr-michael-kyle]

BEDMINSTER, New Jersey — Former President Donald Trump informed Breitbart News exclusively he thinks “there’s something wrong” with his successor, President Joe Biden, as evidenced by Biden’s cognitive impairment on public display.

Asked during a nearly two-hour exclusive interview last week at his golf club here in northern New Jersey, the place he has been residing and working for the past several months, if he runs in 2024 whether he would rather face Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump informed Breitbart News he thinks Biden is not up to the job. Even so, he was unsure if he does decide to run in 2024 whether or not he would face Biden or Harris—or maybe someone else the Democrats would put forward.

“I don’t think you’ll face Biden,” Trump stated. “Biden is not an old man, by the way, but there’s something wrong. But he’s not an old man—he’s going to be 79; that’s not old. I know folks that are a lot older than that, and they’re as sharp as they were 40 years ago. Biden is just not an old person. They talk about age. If you’re in your 70s and even your 80s, I know so many people even in their 90s, like Bernie Marcus of Home Depot and so many others; they’re in their 90s and sharp as can be. However something is wrong. Something is going wrong there. I don’t wish to predict that far ahead. It’s such a long time, and I don’t know—things are happening left and right.”

Biden’s approval rating is sinking nationally and in key states from coast to coast, dropping to the lowest levels of his presidency thus far in most recent surveys. That sinking approval rating—and rising disapproval—comes amid a series of crises most notably in his failed withdrawal from Afghanistan but additionally in his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, his open borders policies resulting in record surges in migration across the U.S. border with Mexico, and a flagging economy that’s seeing soaring energy prices and inflation across the board on everyday household products. Polling out this week additionally reveals a solid majority of Americans think Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was a failure and {that a} solid majority of Americans similarly blame Biden personally for it.

Asked about Biden’s unwillingness at the start of his botched withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan to take phone calls from foreign leaders—reports poured in that leaders from Europe frantically tried to no avail to reach Biden in the immediate aftermath of the Taliban overtaking Kabul—Trump stated Biden was likely not in the mood to do his job.

“I would imagine Biden was not in a mood to take phone calls at that point because he was getting hammered,” Trump stated.

Trump also mentioned he has received calls from some foreign leaders who expressed dismay with Biden’s performance. “Yeah, I have,” Trump stated when asked if some foreign leaders are calling him about Biden, without identifying any specifically:

US President Donald Trump speaks on the phone as he answers calls from people calling into the NORAD Santa tracker phone line in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 24, 2018 (Photograph by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photograph credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images).

“They can’t believe it,” Trump added of the foreign leaders expressing concern to him about Biden. “They can’t believe it. Just like you can’t believe it. Just like any sane rational person can’t believe it. We were going to get out—however we were going to get out with dignity and with honor. We were going to get out with all the people. And we have been going to take all of the equipment.”

Trump also ripped former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled the country as the Taliban encroached on Kabul in mid-August, as corrupt and inept.

“I’ve always stated Ghani was a crook and Ghani had total control over the U.S. Senate and to a lesser extent the House,” Trump stated. “That was his power. As soon as it became obvious we were leaving, I always stated he would leave just prior to us, and I also stated probably he’d take whatever he could take, and he took a lot of money. However Ghani was a total crook. He was a bullshit artist. He had a great line on bullshit, even when I met him: ‘Oh, thank you, Mr. President.’ Thanks for what? I didn’t want to be here in the first place. But Ghani left”:

President Joe Biden, right, meets with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, left, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday, June 25, 2021 (AP Picture/Susan Walsh).

Interestingly, this week, a transcript and audio recording of one of Biden’s last telephone calls with Ghani before the Taliban took over leaked out.    It showed Biden caring more about the “perception” of which side was winning rather than who was actually winning. The explosive transcript, according to Reuters, shows Biden pressing Ghani to present a false picture to the world of the Taliban not winning.

“There’s a need, whether it’s true or not, there’s a need to project a different picture,” Biden reportedly advised Ghani in the 14-minute telephone call on July 23, less than a month before Ghani’s government fell and he fled the country.

Trump, in his interview with Breitbart News, also stated the now fallen Afghan government’s military was not fighting for their country or a cause—however instead for a paycheck—something he said led to their not being able to stop the Taliban.

“The soldiers had been among the highest-paid soldiers in the world. You know who paid them? The U.S. taxpayer,” Trump stated. “When [now-former Secretary of Defense James] Mattis used to come up to me and say, ‘Sir, they’re fighting for the country,’ I would say, ‘No they’re fighting for a paycheck.’ That’s why we had so much of the blue on green and green on blue. We had a lot of that, the shooting of our own soldiers; we had more than we’ve ever had. These have been highly paid people, and that’s why they were doing it. As soon as the payments were going to stop, once we were leaving, they basically were going to stop fighting. They went to the other side with our equipment.”

Asked about Harris—and her decision in the first week of this crisis to abscond to Vietnam and other Asian countries on a foreign trip for several days while Biden was twisting in the wind—Trump stated that he doesn’t blame her for abandoning Biden:

US Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she departs from Paya Lebar Air Base in Singapore on August 24, 2021 (Picture by Roslan Rahman / AFP) (Picture by ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP through Getty Images).

“It’s not a great time,” Trump stated. “It’s not a great time. She probably wants to get away. Who can blame her?”

Trump stated that Harris—whose net approval rating according to NBC News, is by far the lowest any vice president has had in the first 12 months all the way back to Al Gore in the 1990s—is not doing well in the job.

“If you go by the polls, she hasn’t been doing too good. She definitely hasn’t been doing too good,” Trump stated:

VP Harris has lowest feeling thermometer of any first year VP going back to Gore in 1993 … with an unprecedented “very negative” rating on @NBCNews survey tracking. pic.twitter.com/Ii3AlR5EZ2

— Bill McInturff (@pollsterguy) August 25, 2021

Trump also stated Harris’s handling of the border crisis has been a “disaster,” adding, though, that the border is “looking great” compared to Biden’s mishandling of Afghanistan.

“If they gave her the border, which supposedly they did, that’s a disaster,” Trump stated. “The border is a disaster. The border is looking great now because in comparison with Afghanistan, the border is being well-run. But it surely’s the worst border we’ve ever had, and I gave you the best.”

Trump also stated that “fortunately,” however, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his administration’s policy of the Migrant Protection Protocols forcing Biden to reinstitute the Remain in Mexico plan—something he stated is “actually a favor to the Biden administration because it’ll make them look better.”

“It’s incredible. By us winning, it’s a favor to them because the news in the coming year won’t be as bad as it could have been otherwise,” Trump stated, referring to the Supreme Court case relating to litigation that Texas and Missouri brought against the Biden administration’s border policies. “But it’s not easy to get, as I understand it, and it’s great news it was just upheld by the Supreme Court.”

[calcdad]

What Happened™ with Artpop

Right so i’m not editing this i’m just going for it but try to follow along and if it’s a bit scrambled like do let me know but otherwise here we go

So like before I get started, it really should be known that this isn’t a conspiracy theory and the illumanati is super stupid and not real and not about this shit at all but really what this comes down to is a difference between an artist and a management team, but the way in which management ran things is very indicative of how sociological phenomena come into play when making such business decisions and it’s really interesting 

also a lot of this will be copied and pasted from my friend whom i elaborated on this with and slightly modified but i’m assuming if you’re reading this you don’t need much context for how much mystique shrouds the artpop era as well as the blackout era, which is a very necessary era to examine so that we can use tools from that to look further into artpop 

For like the last 18ish hours i kind of got back into gaga demos for whatever reason and found myself on youtube with all of those artpop conspiracy theories and “demos” and like eighteen different versions of partynauseous, the unwatermarked version of red flame (which i have and it’s like okay at best), and 70 pages deep into google later this is what i’ve really gathered 

Artpop’s failure was a flop because of sabotage by her management which she didn’t know about, and the purpose of the sabotage served to mark her as  martyr for pop music so that she could enjoy more long run consistent success like britney and not burn out so fast like katy 

Before going into artpop, look to Britney Spears, her elusive original doll era before her breakdown, and her life as a whole

In like late 2004-2005-2006, after she broke her knee and right before her breakdown, she was preparing for the release of an album called original doll. she even went to a Kiss FM interview and played the demo of the lead single, mona lisa, though i don’t know if she had permission to do this and people who are reasonable and not conspiracy theorists will tell you she didn't have permission and that's why the whole album was scrapped, but in 2004 she was one of the most powerful celebrities on the planet you know like that doesn’t really just happen to people with that power(?) anyways like keep in mind there’s no secret plot to kill these girls or anything, it’s literally all just about business

the album was talked about in i think a handful of interviews, was recorded, registered, etc, and just suddenly scrapped entirely, no warning. Like put on a “don’t ask about this” list, never spoken of again except for when it was remastered and put on the extended version of the singles collection in 2009, though there were edits to the lyrics etc that refined it from the song it was, which conspiracy theorists largely attribute as a foreshadowing of her fall, into something that makes it seem less ominous and more like “i’m the only one of myself”.

then look to her famous breakdown, note how blackout originally had a bunch of jazz tracks recorded for it (like let go, baby boy) and like it really isn’t crazy or wild for albums to shift direction dramatically like that indicates no conspiracy theory whatsoever. If anything it’s really just indicative of the fact that she was going through it and artistically she was trying to express her emotions but because she was going through it she couldn’t really like...do it with precision and stuff because she was all over the place and like this makes sense because she’s checked into rehab for amphetamine problems before, abuse of which can be required by pressing management to keep constant energy but also cause psychosis-like side effects which closely resemble her behaviour in 2007 but also like she’s recently confirmed that she has bipolar disorder and was likely not getting the treatment she needed! like, that’s normal, there’s no illuminati involved 

an important factor to point out is that Britney Spears has been a star all her life, and when she was signed on to be the songstress of baby one more time, she forever changed the boundaries that hollywood would have with women, and she was just the puppet for the idea. like, britney spears was 17-18-19 and on top of the world, SO sexualized when she was 17, and i’m sure to her she didn’t care because money and fame is promising at that age you know? but like the moment she was nearly nude on magazine covers when she was 17 and 18, it really gave photographers and directors the okay to gradually make younger and younger girls sexualized and poor britney is just out there living her career (which she may or may not have even really wanted as several interviews indicate)

But look further! She was harassed in interviews SO many times during her relationship with justin timberlake about her sexuality and she was a teenager! a young girl! Several industries, though it was clearly not their foremost goal, used the product of Britney Spears as a virgin to be deflowered before the world for our entertainment. What comes after she’s used up? that doesn’t really matter as long as she’s making the money at the moment

In looking at this, you really have to keep in mind that like...Britney Spears and Lady Gaga and Madonna and all entertainers are abstract entities of a sort. I’m listening to artpop as I write this right now, and those vocals on the track are stefani germanotta’s yeah, but like, Britney and Stefani are people off stage and when they’re out of the public eye. When you’re in nothing but the public eye for your entire life the way britney was, it’s not surprising to find that she might struggle with an identity crisis and wonder who she is at some point when she isn’t Britney Spears the performer. she isn’t stupid either, and i’m sure her current day activity is indicative that she’s reflected on who she was when she was younger and ignorant and she doesn’t want any part of that kind of a person anymore. Imagine living 25 years thinking you know who you are and then you realize that one day, who you’ve always been which is the person you are on stage, will some day step off the stage for good. you have to wonder a bit what is left with your life you know?

A N Y W A Y S britney had a great comeback from a legitimate personal struggle and like, she’s the comeback queen of our generation, but furthermore, her and her camp are guaranteed financial security from her product for at least another ten or so years. America loves a good comeback. We don’t love it enough to give her a #1, but she’ll scrape top 40 for the next ten years, and you know the clubs will never stop paying homage to her old music and poor remixes of her new stuff which isn’t even bad but is so clearly departed from the woman who went through the breakdown that it’s almost a new product entirely  

Set the stage to artpop: this was said to me by a friend of mine who cares about lady gaga much more than I do, and like, it doesn’t even seem that farfetched so i’m gonna copy and paste it here- "What happened was that her management team was pushing her to keep going after her hip surgery so she started self medicating in heavy doses of opiates and then her team saw the danger coming and saw the potential for lost money so they dropped her and left her addicted to opiates, a half healed hip, fibromyalgia and ptsd"

I mean, this sounds a lot like britney and her amphetamines to keep up energy for her workload right? But like, looking further, Lady Gaga had amassed a LOT of fame and power in SUCH a short time. This is a highly unstable structure in any discipline, be it economics, chemistry, psychology, or jenga. She was under a lot of pressure to keep surpassing the bar that she herself had raised so high, her hip being broken was awful, but also i know she’s intelligent enough to understand the sociological cycle of celebrities. 

There’s only one celebrity who comes to mind who can really handle being a public personality for an extended period of time the way these girls have to be, and that is Madonna. And like, that’s really why she’s around. She’s been at least 100 distinctly different people over her career because she draws a very clear, hard line between who she is as a performer and an icon and who she is as a person, and it is remarkable that she’s kept these two entities separate for so long. Her life is not always madonna the entertainer. She very much goes home, “clocks out” of being madonna, and goes back to a relatively normal life. She’s an entertainer as a job, and some of these girls become privy to the mindset of being the entertainer who they are, which can have sever psychological consequences.

Further, to again clarify the identity crisis that these people like, reasonably go through, is like “subliminal lyrics”. Like, i do think they put words in their songs sometimes, not because "it's the only way they can speak", but because they're so fucked that they really think it is the only way they can say something you know? Like these girls aren’t literally going to be murdered for speaking, but we have NO idea what is in their contracts and what they can and cannot say, especially in the stage of being massively popular but relatively new. They won’t die, but the legal or financial implications of fulfilling a certain image or product that the company wants to produce could be extremely severe that they could realistically never recover. This is nothing new, either. hollywood has always been like this and there is no reason to think that these girls couldn’t have gone through a similar position.

Do I think artpop would have done better if she hadn’t paraded around promoting it as god come to earth in an album? absolutely. It’s a phenomenal club album, it’s a glorious acid trip of a dance album, and she really should have just called it that. I do think that Artpop Act II was legitimately planned and she had such high hopes for all of this, but so much is also out of her control.

Personally, I haven’t really spoken to anyone who personally thinks artpop is as bad of an album as everyone said it was. Literally, not one person i’ve discussed this with thinks it was a bad album at all. Gaga herself seemed so...shocked that it did so poorly. I was shocked that it was received so poorly. Mainstream media ruined her over it, yet it debuted at #1 and was the 9th best selling album of the year despite coming out on November 6th.

So like, what I think happened is that her management strategized sociologically. They looked at Britney’s breakdown. Britney isn’t dominating top 10, but she doesn’t need to; she’ll always be relevant and rakes in 50 mil for an easy residency. Gaga had too much too fast, and the public is waiting to claw someone so perfect down whenever they can. Gaga could claim a couple more #1s and burn out like a shooting star, or she can tumble, come back, and plateau at 3rd or 4th consistently as opposed to 1st temporarily and 10th in the end. So like, i think that her management definitely paid for some of the reviews about artpop to be bad in order to get the ball rolling on such gamble. But I don’t think Gaga knew. Like, she split with her team during that era, so if they were going to leave her, they have no reason to tell her but also they could still profit and the gamble wasn’t with their own lives that they were playing with. 

the gamble of a comeback isn’t even a new strategy. Like, britney’s was organic, and gaga’s response was organic, but there have been staged comebacks.  Madonna’s initial stumble with erotica and her evita comeback were legitimate ones, but further comebacks with Ray of Light and Confessions were absolutely and meticulously calculated by a brilliant business woman who made waves and rode them like a surfboard to the top. What sold Artpop is Gaga’s dedication. She really believed it was a good album and was astonished when she appeared to be so wrong about how much the public would like it. And that drove her to work hard and readjust her craft.

And like, I do think that she’s looking back and realizing how ahead of its time artpop was. Look at that record as a business investment not so much immediately, but for the future. SO many songs we’re hearing today are reminiscent of the insane EDM that we heard on Artpop. Aside from the slight dip into hip hop and r&b brought about mostly by beyonce and adele’s respective presences, as well as the faux trend of country pop which is dying as quick as it came, Artpop is what is on the radio today. Mark my words and just like, watch HOW many think pieces will be written in the next five years hailing artpop as ahead of its time. Artpop laid the foundations for all of these DJs to make their mark on mainstream music, and consider what DJ White Shadow posted about artpop’s little sister. It’s a reflection artpop was never bad, and now is a better time moreso than ever to venture back into that kind of music. When music historians look back on music trends, i do believe Artpop will probably be one of the most, if not the most, important album in Gaga’s catalogue because it came out four years before all of this music and predicts the exact structure and flow of what is popular, yet at the time was deemed unlistenable, which, again, i do believe was paid for by someone in order to set up for something like this long-term business investment i’ve been describing.

What’s really funny to me about all of this, is that like, comebacks do not always work. Look at Witness. I’m sure that Katy will try to spin this as her blackout or her artpop but like, it won’t work for several sociological factors discussed above. First, katy took her place as first for a fast five years and i’m sure she’s burned out by now. People really are like...over her. Second, Witness won’t define, shape, or influence anything, as it’s all really current music specific to that period of time in 2016-2017. Third, the “breakdown” associated with witness isn’t authentic. Like, it could have been predicted a mile away from that comment she made at the grammys. The subsequent hair cutting and witness world wide and all of that stuff were management’s grasps at achieving the authenticity that britney and gaga had, and like gaga didn’t even really have a breakdown. The only breakdown that Katy is going through is like, realizing that she doesn’t really bring anything revolutionary to the table nor has she ever, even though she has records. She really was a vessel for producers and a record label to rake in the cash while she got to play famous for a bit, but she’s never stood for anything or really contributed artistically, and she wont’ be able to dig deep and “find something” worth redeeming. She has been manufactured from the start, but the tragedy of her is that you can tell that she really thought she was different and ahead of the game. The struggle for her will be for her to realize that she’s nothing that her team told her she was for ten years, and she’s gonna have to deal with that alone and it’s going to be really really hard you know? There’s nothing redeemable about katy perry. Gaga will be seen as an innovator, truly the top of the influx of pop girls in the second half of the 2000s all vying for britney’s place. Gaga will be remembered as the one with the insight, the foresight ten years in advance, and not some one off like fergie or gwen stefani. Katy did a little better in the beginning, but ultimately slow and steady wins the race. And witness was a gamble that producers lost on.

This was super condensed because I couldn’t get my ideas in order the way that I wanted them to be, but like TLDR: Artpop was a gamble by management in order to place gaga as a martyr who can bring longtime success and she’ll be remembered for being so insightful with her musical intuition and what she was doing in 2013 and the illuminati isn’t real but small businesses do shady shit with contracts all the time so is it really so unrealistic as to believe that they took a gamble on artpop when the cards where in their favour to do so with all of her potential energy from being on such a high pedestal? it really isn’t because like it worked sis lmao and that’s just how business works! 

[catsandtruecrime]

Historical True Crimes: Jonestown, and Why We Need to Stop Using the Phrase “Drinking the Kool-Aid”

The case of Jonestown is one that’s shockingly unknown to many young people today. I had personally never heard of this case until I was making my way through the Casefile podcast and I finally decided to dive into the episode titled, “Case 60: Jonestown (Part 1).” The description for the episode read “You may think you know the story, but do you…”

“Um…I don’t think I do know this story…” I thought, as soon as I read the description. I wracked my brain, trying to think of cases I’d heard before.

Jonestown…Jonestown…that sounds kind of familiar I think? Clearly it’s a town where something bad happened. I ran through my mental list of “Mass Shootings That Have Occurred in My Lifetime.” Aurora, Orlando, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook….nope, no Jonestown there.

I pressed play and Casefile’s standard disclaimer filled my headphones. “Our stories deal with serious, and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time that you need support, please contact your local crisis center. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support, please see the show notes on your app, or on our website.”

There was a pause, and then something that I had never heard from the Anonymous Host before.

“This series on Jonestown deals with horrific events. The series deals with mass murder and suicide of men, women, and children, as well as other abuses. The episodes are graphic and distressing, especially episode 3. It will not be suitable for all listeners. Please use your discretion.”

Distressing these episodes were, but most distressing was the fact that I had no idea what Jonestown even was before listening to them. At Jonestown, America saw the greatest loss of civilian life in a single event until 9/11 occurred. Many of us vividly remember the tragedy of 9/11, but the tragedy of Jonestown has fallen by the wayside, and is almost even mocked in a way, by the widespread use of the phrase, “drinking the Kool-Aid.”

After I heard about Jonestown for the first time, I wanted to tell everyone about it. So here is me doing just that.

In short, Jonestown was a compound populated by a church-turned-cult, led by Jim Jones. Jones was born in Indiana in 1931, and grew up in a troubled household. His father was a disabled World War 1 veteran, and his mother was an outspoken factory worker, who was rarely home. As a result, Jones spent a lot of time alone in his younger years.

Noticing that little Jim was often playing outside by himself, a neighbor decided to invite him to church with her one day. At her evangelical Nazarene church, Jones found a sense of belonging for the first time. When he looked at the preacher, he saw someone to look up to, not because of his faith, but because of what the preacher inspired in others; the preacher was loved, adored, and respected by his congregation in a way that Jones wished he could be.

Eventually, Jones branched out to other religious denominations as well, and began going to their various churches. Jones was especially intrigued by pentecostal churches, as he enjoyed the theatrics and faith healings that these churches often offered.

By the time he was 10, Jones had decided that he wanted to be a preacher, and he was practicing on his friends and pets whenever he could. Eventually, he began preaching in lower income black neighborhoods, and he tended to focus on social justice and inequality.

*insert record scratch here* Time to pause the story for a moment. Knowing that Jones would be the one to eventually head the cult that became Jonestown, it’s important to discuss how cults work. We all like to think that we would never join a cult and that we’d be able to see what’s happening before we were to get sucked in.

Cults, though, tend to prey on the disadvantaged. Whether it’s due to poverty, racism, or religion, people who join cults tend to be those that are excluded from “the rest of us” in some way, and they’re people who are searching for acceptance and belonging.

Jones was coming into his own during the 40s, 50s, and 60s, during a time of intense civil unrest and mounting racial tensions in America. On top of that, there was also the imminent threat of nuclear war, which absolutely terrified many Americans.

With that information, and with the scene set, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

It’s largely questioned whether or not Jones actually believed in the need for equality, or whether he was just REALLY GOOD at honing his message to effectively target the people that he knew he could rope into joining him. He certainly knew how to speak and he had mastered the rhetoric that would grip people most tightly, dropping the ideas of desegregation, equality and social justice on the ground, small pieces of candy leading them into his gingerbread house in the middle of a Guyanese jungle, where they would ultimately meet their demise.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…Jones really began building his congregation when he was 21. Initially, he began preaching at a Methodist church in Bloomington, Indiana. When he began calling for desegregation and racial integration between churches, though, the Methodist church’s congregation (made of 100% rich white people) said, “Um…yeah, no thanks, dude.” So Jones said, “Well okay, then, I don’t need you anyway,” and he started recruiting people to form his own congregation, which came to be known as The People’s Temple.

Eventually, Jones became a sort of civil rights icon at the time. He preached in black neighborhoods and welcomed black citizens into his church with open arms. As Jones felt his steam building, he started abusing amphetamines and other drugs, which gave him the energy to visit potential worshippers and preach at all hours of the day and night.

With the energy came some more negative side effects, however. Jones became increasingly paranoid and was terrified at the prospect of a nuclear war. He had an intense fear of abandonment and regularly threatened anyone who tried to leave his congregation after they had joined.

As he continued to build his congregation, he shifted his messaging after reading through the entirety of the Bible. Jones paid particular attention to any negative events or contradictions as he read, ultimately coming to the conclusion that God will protect no one. Jones began telling his congregation that he was their only savior, and that he would be able to do more for them and protect them better than God ever would.

In 1963, Jones urged his congregation to move to Redwood Valley in California, claiming that they would be safe from nuclear war once there. Around this time, Jones and his congregation also began crusades, where they would take busses around the country, stopping along the way to hold events where Jones would preach, oftentimes in low income, minority areas.

During these crusade events, Jones would perform “miraculous” faith healings, in which he would appear to fix ailments and injuries. What the congregation didn’t know, though, was that all of these “healings” were staged.

In one example, Jones had one of his aides pose as an attendee; she sat in a wheelchair with a cast on her leg, appearing to have broken it and was unable to walk as a result. Jones approached the “injured woman” and willed her leg to heal, cutting off her cast and pulling her up from her seat. To attendees, it appeared that this woman had just been granted the ability to not only walk, but run down the aisles, all thanks to Jones.

Jones was also well known for wearing sunglasses no matter where he was. This wasn’t because Jones cared deeply about his eye health, though. They also served a couple of other purposes, like hiding his eyes from giving away his emotions or showing what he was really looking at. For example, when new members would come to his masses, his aides would take their names and phone numbers under the guise of needing a way to contact them for future events.

In reality, his aides would call people’s houses and would sometimes even go so far as to travel to their house and sift through their trash, essentially doing recon on their new members and gathering information about their lives. At the next mass, they would slip Jones a piece of paper with specific details about particular people. Reading from behind his sunglasses, he would call them out by name and reveal details about their lives that he (supposedly) couldn’t possibly have known. He claimed that he had ESP and that he was a prophet, hence why he seemed to “just know” things about his partitioners.

Jones started organizing fake assassination attempts on himself as well; at a time when notable civil rights icons like Martin Luther King Jr. were being assassinated, Jones needed to create the illusion that he was just as important as they were; he told his followers that there were countless people and organizations that wanted him dead. He also used this as an excuse to begin testing his followers’ loyalty.

Jones and his inner circle would write false declarations of child abuse, sexual assault, and even murder on behalf of Jones’s followers. They would be forced to sign the declarations, or else they would be ridiculed and beaten by other members of the church. If anyone wanted to leave at any point, Jones had a signed declaration on file for the person, stating that they had committed some crime, which he could hold over their heads and use to ruin their lives if they left him. He also had his followers sign blank pieces of paper so that he had access to their signature and could make it appear that they had signed just about anything he needed them to.

According to Julia Scheeres in the Sword and Scale podcast episode on Jonestown (Episode 50), Jones was “fascinated with the idea of control, and he wanted to see how far he could push people.” It was around this time in the 70s that Jones became obsessed with the idea of revolutionary suicide. He took the idea from the autobiography of Black Panther, Huey Newton. Newton’s idea was basically that you shouldn’t be afraid to go down fighting; for example, if the police are trying to shut down a protest, don’t go quietly, even if it means being killed. This was still a radical idea, but Jones took it even further.

Jones spun this idea to fit his own narrative and said that revolutionary suicide meant being willing to die “for the cause,” which was really dying for Jones himself. Essentially, he believed that his followers should be so loyal to him and The People’s Temple that they should be willing, and even happy, to die if Jones deemed it necessary.

At the same time that Jones was building his congregation, Guyana was a newly formed country in South America, and the government was struggling to provide enough food for their citizens. Ultimately, the government decided to lease land in the jungle to people who were willing to come to Guyana and build farms to contribute to the country’s food supply.

After a negative investigative article came out in New West Magazine, alleging abuse in The People’s Temple. Seeing his opportunity, Jones and his family, along with several hundred of his followers, moved to Guyana to build The People’s Temple Agricultural Project in the middle of the jungle. The journey to their roughly 3,800 acres of land took them to the capital of Guyana, Georgetown, where they had to journey by river to their settlement. They were roughly 6 miles from the nearest sign of civilization at the settlement that Jim Jones called Jonestown.

When his followers arrived to Jonestown, his aides confiscated their passports, money, and other worldly possessions. They were essentially stuck there, as Jim Jones had reportedly once told them, “If you want to go home, you can fucking swim home because we’re not paying your way home.”

Away from the pressures of American society and the American government, Jones was no longer afraid to be truly himself and make his increasingly radical views known. Armed guards patrolled the compound borders and temple members were forced to spend long days in the fields and participate in “White Night” drills, where Jones conditioned his followers into complacency regarding the idea of revolutionary suicide.

While they started out as a means to berate “disloyal” temple members, the White Nights eventually turned into what were essentially suicide drills. Jones would bring out a vat of punch (which was actually of the British brand, Flavor Aid) and urged his followers to drink from it. This idea had been on his mind for some time, as he had practiced this with his closest inner circle, even before relocating to Jonestown.

After everyone had drank their cup of punch, he would tell them that the punch was poisoned and that they would all be dead within the hour. Guards and Jones’s aides watched his followers, and anyone who appeared to be mad at their seemingly imminent death became targets for the rest of the night. Their lives were made harder and they were watched more closely after the drill if Jones was convinced that they wouldn’t be loyal to him and his commands in the end.

Tim Stone, one of Jones’s former aides, said that Jones once told them at a White Night, “Now I would like each of you to stand up and tell me how happy you are to die for the glory of socialism.”

While Jones produced videos for his remaining congregation still located in the US showing how happy everyone was at Jonestown, the reality was far different. At Jonestown, residents struggled to produce enough food for everyone and many people went hungry most days. Since they were quite literally in the middle of the jungle, they were also responsible for building their own shelters and there weren’t enough shelters for everyone. They crammed into tiny buildings and some members wrote home to their families about the conditions at Jonestown.

Eventually, enough family members of Jonestown residents became concerned for their loved ones and went to the US government for help. They believed (correctly in most cases) that their loved ones were stuck in Jonestown and weren’t being allowed to leave.

Congressman Leo Ryan got wind of this and his interest in the American settlement in Guyana was piqued. On November 14th, 1978, Ryan, along with two of his staffers, nine journalists, and 18 family members of Jonestown residents made their way to Jonestown. Once they got to Guyana, Jim Jones was hesitant to allow them into Jonestown, but when Ryan and the other visitors insisted on meeting with temple members, Jones reluctantly agreed.

Jones and his followers did a good job of putting on a show for their visitors, appearing happy to live in this utopia in the jungle. To the skeptical visitors, however, the act wasn’t good enough. They saw through the propaganda Jones was orchestrating and their suspicions were only confirmed when multiple temple members slipped the visitors notes, begging to leave with them and asking for help. When Ryan confronted Jones about the notes, Jones calmly replied that there was no need for concern; if his followers wanted to leave, they were more than welcome to do so.

On November 18th, 1978, Ryan and the rest of the visitors, along with 15 temple defectors, prepared to leave Guyana. At 5:20 p.m. a plane filled with defectors was preparing to leave when People’s Temple loyalists emerged from the forest and from behind tractors that were parked on the airfield. They were armed with guns and began shooting at the defectors and the visitors.

At the airstrip, Congressman Ryan, one defector (Patricia Parks) and three journalists (Bob Brown, Greg Robinson, and Don Harris) were killed. 11 other people, including staffer Jackie Spear, were injured. Spear was shot in the arm, but survived after hiding behind one of the plane’s wheels. Reporter, Tim Reiterman, along with the rest of the visitors and defectors, survived after fleeing into the jungle to hide.

At approximately the same time, Jim Jones announced another White Night over the loudspeakers at the compound. He called everyone to the pavilion building that was located in the center of Jonestown. As residents filed in, 25 guards, armed with rifles and crossbows, encircled the pavilion. Jones’s aides carried a large steel drum to the center of the pavilion and filled it with Flavor Aid as they had countless times before.

Next, Jones’s medical staff emerged and mixed cyanide, valium, potassium chloride, and chloral hydrate into the Flavor Aid. Jones pulled out a tape recorder, hit record and began preaching.

“In spite of all that I’ve tried, a handful of our people, with their lies, have made our lives impossible…there’s no way to detach ourselves from what’s happened today,” Jones began, on what’s now known as Q042: The Jonestown Death Tape. Jones told his followers that an attack on the congressmen and the other visitors was occurring as he spoke.

He told his followers that once the world finds out about the attack, “they’ll parachute in on us,” and “they’ll kill your children,” referring to the Guyanese military and the United States FBI and CIA. Jones told his followers that the Guyanese military was already moving in, and that they would torture and kill all of them if they did not kill themselves. He instructed everyone to line up, babies and toddlers first, to take their cup of punch, which would bring them all peace. He told them not to fear death, and that it would be like falling asleep.

As Q042 progresses, you can hear children crying in the background, and the tape seems to stop and start throughout. On the Jonestown episode of Sword and Scale, Julia Scheeres points this out and describes that the reason for the starting and stopping is that people were protesting; each time someone would attempt to speak out, Jones would stop the tape, as he didn’t want it known that some of his followers were challenging him.

The only protestor heard on the tape is Christine Miller, who proposed that they should let the children live, or that they could instead take one of the planes at the airstrip and seek asylum in Russia.

As he shut down Miller’s protests, Jones kept preaching and encouraged his followers to drink. He urged parents to calm their babies and instructed older children to comfort their younger siblings. As everyone lined up, Jones’s nurses filled syringes with the punch. The first woman in line used one of these syringes to squirt punch into her baby’s mouth, before drinking her own cup of poison.

The nurses tried to coax hesitant parents into handing over their babies to have the poison administered, and those who refused were forced to hand them over by the armed guards. As babies and younger children began crying, Jones and the nurses told parents that it wasn’t because of any pain, that the punch was just bitter. Soon enough, though, the children started convulsing and writhing in pain. Their eyes rolled back into their heads, and eventually, one by one, they went limp with death, their mothers doing the same shortly after.

Tim Carter was one of the few survivors of this White Night and is quoted in Part 3 of the Casefile coverage of Jonestown, saying, “Outside, I saw a woman named Rosie on the ground, holding her dead baby…inside I just wanted things to stop. I looked to my right and saw my wife with our son in her arms and poison being injected into his mouth…my son was dead and he was frothing at the mouth…my wife died in my arms and my dead baby son was in her arms.” Carter also stated later, “They were fucking slaughtered. There was nothing dignified about it. Had nothing to do with revolutionary suicide. Had nothing to do with making a statement. It was just a senseless waste. Senseless waste and death.”

As panic ensued, nurses began pouring the liquid into people’s mouths and injected it directly into them if they resisted. In the chaos, two of Carter’s friends pulled him away from his dead wife and child, and the three of them escaped into the jungle.

Christine Miller, the protestor heard on the Q042 tape, was forcibly injected with the poison and died soon after.

As Jones’s most loyal followers continued to drink their own poison laced punch, they left the pavilion after they drank, in order to shield remaining residents from watching them die. As the field outside the pavilion filled with dead and dying people, bodies were dragged into rows and placed on their stomachs so that remaining followers wouldn’t see their contorted faces.

Eventually, as aides ran out of room to line the bodies up, they were piled on top of one another and one of Jones’s doctors walked around with a stethoscope to confirm that each person was dead and not faking it.

Roughly forty minutes later, the light had left Jonestown. It was dark, except for lights coming from the pavilion, and Jones concluded his final speech. He switched the tape recorder off. Instead of drinking his own poison as he had forced his followers to do, Jones chose to die with a single bullet to his head. After seeing his followers contort in pain and after promising his followers that their death would be just like falling asleep, Jones decided that that wasn’t how he wanted to die. It remains unclear whether Jim Jones shot himself, or whether he had one of his aides end his life.

Ultimately, 909 people died in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. Of those, 304 were children.

The next day, a rescue team was sent to Jonestown, but they carried no medical supplies as they weren’t expecting to find any survivors. Shockingly, there ended up being 33 survivors who were either able to escape into the jungle, or avoided going to the pavilion all together for one reason or another.

Once recovered, survivors were airlifted to a Guyanese hospital, and then transported to a US Air Force medical evacuation aircraft. Some survivors who hid in the jungle remained there for up to three days before feeling safe enough to emerge. Many had been shot while trying to escape and had infected wounds by the time they were discovered, but all were simply glad to have survived the ordeal.

On November 20th, 1978, two survivors joined the recovery team to help identify bodies. In the end, only 631 of the 909 dead were identified, leaving nearly 300 people whose identities remain unknown. It took 8 full days to put all of the deceased into body bags.

The Guyanese government denied requests to facilitate the burial of the dead, leaving the American government to decide what to do with the 909 bodies being transported back into the country. Of the 631 identified bodies, barely half were claimed by family members back in the United States. The remaining 412 unidentified bodies and identified but not claimed remains were buried in a mass grave near Oakland, California where a memorial for the Jonestown victims now stands.

Larry Layton, who was instrumental in the attack at the airstrip, was the only one who was captured and faced charges for the Jonestown massacre. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison and completed his sentence in 2002. From everything I could find (which wasn’t much), it appears that Larry Layton now lives and works in Northern California.

One of the largest debates surrounding Jonestown is whether this should be considered a mass suicide, or a mass murder. Julia Scheere argues that it should be considered the latter, and that Jones had always had the intention of killing his followers in Guyana, pointing to the early suicide drills he conducted with his inner circle before moving to Guyana as evidence.

Scheere argues that a mass suicide was always Jones’s plan, and that many of the deaths that occurred in Jonestown can’t be considered suicides, as one third of the deaths were children who were forced to drink the poison, in addition to all of the other residents who were either forcibly injected with poison, or had it poured down their throats against their will.

Scheere also asserts that the use of the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” is insensitive and offensive to both survivors and victims of the Jonestown incident, and I agree with that assertion wholeheartedly. Since learning about the Jonestown incident, this phrase has essentially vanished from my vocabulary, and it’s my hope that it only gets rarer and rarer as more people learn about the atrocities that inspired it.

There are obviously WAY more parts and pieces to this story, which I would definitely recommend learning more about the next time you need an internet rabbit hole to dive into. From Jones’s “Rainbow Family” to more in-depth accounts of all of the abuses committed against his followers, this is only the tip of the iceberg that is Jim Jones and Jonestown.

I’ve included references and additional readings and recommendations below if you’re interested, but even if not, I hope that the next time you hear anyone talk about “drinking the Kool-Aid,” you’ll think of the 304 children and 605 adults who perished in Jonestown on November 18, 1978, and pass this story on to whoever still feels okay saying this phrase. Besides…it was Flavor Aid…it wasn’t even Kool-Aid, anyway.

SOURCES/SEE ALSO

Sword and Scale Podcast, Episode 50

Casefile Podcast, Case 60: Jonestown (Parts 1-3)

Part 1

Part 2 

Part 3 

Truth and Lies: Jonestown, Paradise Lost, available to stream on Hulu

Jonestown: Rebuilding my life after surviving the massacre

Archive footage of Jonestown

Q042 Transcript and MP3

[jtem]

More Unpopular Opinion:  Did the British invent Global Warming hysterics?

Back in 1989 the British, the BBC, the official government network with a royal charter produced a TV "Documentary" series called, "After the Warming."  This series, hosted by James Burke, took the form of a television series/report IN THE FUTURE, looking back at the past & surveying all the earth changes caused by global warming. In it, the host, James Burke, laid out the entire "Global Warming" narrative side by side with "Solutions" such as a ridiculous Carbon-trading scheme, one where all the nations were allotted carbon limits, based on population, and all the third-world countries were going to trade their unused Carbon Credits to the industrial world in exchange for low-energy refrigerators.

Yeah, it really was *That* stupid... <link>

"Global Warming" hysterics does not originate here in the United States. In fact, NOAA, NASA & the rest of the United States government was a VERY late comer to the scheme, late promoting the narrative where fossil fuels on the verge of running out anyway are causing temperatures to rise slightly during an ice age, an ice age where we are overdue for a return of the massive glaciers wiping out our cities.

“Oh no!  Western civilization might last a little bit longer, pretending the oil isn’t going to run out anyway, as if oil warms the planet instead of cooling it with, what, all that particle pollution & sulfur! I repeat, oh no!”

The whole global warming narrative, complete with hysterics, was in Europe, fully formed, at least since the 1980s.

Back in the 70s, during the first energy crisis, “Climate Change” was all about Global Cooling. Not warming, COOLING. <link>

So, the “Global Warming” narrative popped up after the “Global Cooling” narrative (which flopped), it was already going strong, in Europe by the 1980s and... and...

AND THE BAD SCIENCE WAS ALREADY PART OF IT!

Check this out:

<Quote>

After the last deep ice age, (about 10,720 years ago) an enormous lake (Lake Agassiz) remaining from melting glaciers in central Canada burst through, and dumped an enormous quantity of water through the St. Lawrence River and out into the north Atlantic. This fresh water diluted the Gulf Stream and literally stopped it, because the diluted water was not dense enough to sink.

</Quote> Actually, the "Ice Dam" theory and it's reversal of the warming trend is dated by most sources to about 13 thousand years ago, not less than 11 thousand.

Google:  Younger Dryas Cooling

The ice age ended, the earth warmed, the glaciers were shrinking and then it all threw itself into a reverse called “The Younger Dryas cooling.” This ended nearly 12 thousand years ago and is popularly blamed on something called an “Ice Dam.” So they got all of that wrong. Period.

AND VIRTUALLY NOBODY CREDITS THE ICE DAM THEORY!

The "Ice Dam" theory is popular, but there doesn't appear to be any science to back it up. In fact, what science there is seems to falsify it.  <link> ...skip to paragraph 2, please. So there you have it, folks:  The "Global Warming" hysterics complete with ridiculous Carbon Trading schemes & horribly inaccurate science was already in full force, in the U.K., brainwashing the gullible in the 1980s, before most of the Tumblr “Activists” were even born.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

7) He’s a Team player

 “He may have been the face of “Marvel Team-Up” during the ‘70s and holds an ongoing reserve Avengers membership card, but Peter Parker is mostly a lone wolf.”

 Not really.

 Peter was a member of the Avengers from 2004 up until very recently and served as a member of the FF during that time too.

 He also formed his own team the Outsiders for awhile, is currently working alongside the Prowler on and off and has formed partnerships with Ben Reilly and Black Cat at various points, the latter for 25 straight issues.

  “Even excepting the extended family of Spider-People, he tends to prefer to work alone, as much about protecting those around him (who have a notably high mortality rate) as it is about how his wise-cracking patter irritates anybody who spends an extended period of time with him.  The irony of it is that he is at his best when he’s bouncing his particular foibles and personality off of somebody else.”

 Yeah. Those ‘somebody else’ being his villains. He’s at his best as a solo hero cracking wise against his villains.

  “Readers have gotten a chance to see the different sides of Miles — that is, how he works differently in a team situation compared to alone — plenty of times.”

 Hooray! We get to see Miles share the spotlight instead of develop his own character and skills and relationships with his supporting characters and villains as much as he could!

 “The underrated “All-New Ultimates” had him band together with some street-level fellow teen heroes, and the current “Champions” book revolves around a similarly adolescent hang-out situation with Ms Marvel, Nova and the newly Amadeus Cho’d Hulk.”

 All-New Ultimates wasn’t underrated. It just sucked shit.

 And what does he even do in Champions besides exist?

 “Placing the character in different contexts allows his personality to be thoroughly rounded out in a way that Peter sticking to himself doesn’t necessarily.”

 Yeah except Peter’s personality was able to be well rounded because we could develop his character from his thought captions and his relationships with his villains and supporting cast members.

 Heads up fellas! In a superhero narrative about a solo superhero it’s actually you know, BETTER, if things are more cohesive and self-contained to their own characters and world rather than roping in people from other parts of the universe regularly for interrupting crap.

  6) Lasting Character Progression

 “The basic root of all stories is to put your hero through the ringer, and have them emerge at the other end not only having achieved their goal (saving the world, getting the girl etc,) but also having gone through some evolution and maturation. Character progression, the boys in the biz call it.”

 We’ve already established the author’s grasp of this concept is flimsy at best. But let’s go on...

 “One of the issues of comic books, a serialized form where multiple different authors will work on the same character over the course of years, even decades, is consistency of character and creating lasting change in them.”

 Uh huh...hasn’t there been multiple examples of characters and franchises being enriched through multiple voices trying their hand at the series and often times developing the series and characters even though they are far from the latest guy to work on them?

 Wasn’t Chris Claremont like the fourth guy to regularly write X-Men?

 Didn’t Tom DeFalco develop Spider-Man and his world over 20 years after they were invented in really awesome ‘has made it into other media multiple times’ kind of way?

 Didn’t fucking DAREDEVIL become what we know him as today 20+ years and multiple writers later?

  “Unlike Peter Parker, who has admittedly moved on considerably since his introduction as a teen milquetoast but has nonetheless fallen prey to retcons, re-imaginings and really bad story arcs up the wazoo, Miles has benefited from his core solo book being almost entirely with the Bendis/Pichelli/David Marquez creative team.”

 Yeah those guys plus any ghostwriters Bendis might’ve used.

 This argument is such shit.

 First of all consistent creative teams don’t matter as much if they consistently aren’t that great. Marquez and PIchelli rock...Bendis sucks hard and began Miles existence in a way that could’ve been much better.

 This argument is also asinine because of course Peter has more bad stories and retcons he’s been around for nearly x10 the amount of time!

 This is like saying Spider-Man is just inherently better than Wonder Woman or Superman because he never existed in the 1950s when comic book writing sucked and where nothing ever lasted and has never gone through multiple full scale Earth 1, Earth 2, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, New 52 timeline rewrites.

 It’s stupid, cheap and utterly desperate.

 It is also utterly dishonest.

 To begin with maybe Miles has never had any stories which are as bad as the worst Peter Parker has to offer.

 But he’s also got absolutely nothing which hits the heights of runs like the Roger Stern run, the DeFalco run, the DeMatteis Spec run (either of them) or baller stories like many of the ones I listed above.

 And worst of all HE’S BEEN RETCONNED TO SHIT TOO!

 In Spider-Men Miles is shown getting Peter’s web shooters in a completely different way to how he did in the main series and that was from allegedly the exact same writer.

 Miles’ mother was DEAD for what, like a year in-universe and even longer than that in real time but now she’s magically alive again as if that never happened.

 Oh but some of the ramifications from after she died are still here.

 And Miles’ history is fucked because he’s been transferred to the mainstream 616 universe so how the Hell does his origin story even work now that there is a whole other person who is the Prowler?

 Shit, his backstory hinged upon Peter Parker being DEAD. That got retconned long before Secret Wars and now he’s in a universe where there is another Peter Parker who’s completely different and who never died to motivate him.

 Miles by virtue of Secret Wars and stuff even before that has had his whole goddam history BROKEN and it took less than 10 fucking years.

 Peter’s history took at least 34-45 years to get this convoluted and most of that at least made sense when you thought about and is even now easily fixable. Every day Miles spends in 616 is another day it becomes harder to fix his character and his history.

  “Not only have readers watched him grow and change over time, he’s done so with consistency and not without consequences which stick.”

 Again his mother and the guy who’s death motivated him were dead then came back to life.

 You can’t say THAT about Uncle Ben or Gwen Stacy.

  5) A SINGLE VISUAL STYLE

 “Besides the consistency in character, the solid stalwart creative team behind the Miles Morales “Spider-Man” books has also resulted in a consistency of visual style.”

 Marquez and Pichelli ARE NOT THE ONLY ARTISTS TO HAVE WORKED ON MILES!

 I’m not even talking about people on team books or books where Miles has guest starred in.

 I’m talking about actual Miles Morales solo books. There are multiple issues which were not drawn by either of those artists.

 “In the early days of Peter Parker, the art was one of the real strengths, even above the classic plots of Stan Lee. Steve Ditko’s still-unusual style was tamed a little when John Romita, Sr. came on board, but there was a continuity in the look of “The Amazing Spider-Man” throughout the ‘60s which made for a clear, definable signature.”

 No there wasn’t.

 Spider-Man blossomed in popularity when Romita Senior showed up, and a lot of that was to do with his art.

 The female characters in particular looked nothing like they did under Ditko.

 Spider-Man and especially Peter Parker changed how they looked under Romita from Ditko.

 Whilst the differences aren’t as drastic as say comparing Bagley to Immonen back in the USM days, it was nevertheless very obviously different so no there really wasn’t any continuity.

 “In the age of rotating creative teams and fill-in artists, that kind of consistency is a rare thing. Peter’s certainly not been with such a steady pair of hands since, perhaps, John Romita, Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps during the ‘90s or Mark Bagley on the original “Ultimate Spider-Man.””

 Bullshit.

 John Romita Senior was the art director of Marvel for years and whilst the trained eye could distinguish the styles Spider-Man as drawn by basically every artist ever until the black costume or arguably Ron Frenz showed up consistently cut close to Romita Senior’s rendition of the character as the in house style.

 Laying Ross Andru and Keith Pollard Spider-Man next to Romita Senior’s Spidey doesn’t immediately raise any red flags for inconsistencies.

 Then you have the fact that Bagley drew Amazing Spider-Man for around 60 issues in the early-mid 1990s and Sal Buscema drew Spectacular Spider-Man for something almost 10 years straight.

 “Nearly all of Miles’s appearances in his own series have been drawn by Sara Pichelli and David Marquez, however, who each bring a bold line and cartoonish, manga-influenced energy to the character.”

 Whilst it happening too frequently is a bad thing different artistic styles add variety and flare to a character.

 If Spider-Man had stayed more or less consistent we’d never have witnessed the bold experimentation of Todd McFarlane or Romita Junior or the raw unadulterated awesomeness of Mark Bagley.

 None of their renditions of Spidey and his world look the same as one another or Romita Senior’s but they are all resonant with somebody and all capture the the characters in different ways.

 In fact from time to time changing creative teams can be immensely helpful for injecting energy into a series and for catching the appeal of new readers. If Pichelli and Marquez’s styles turn a group of people off staying consistent to it screws Miles more than it helps him.

 The argument here is basically Miles looks fairly similar every time you see him in his own series therefore he’s better than Peter who’s had multiple artistic greats work on him and bring different touches and flares to the character.

   4) The Supporting Cast

 “One of Peter Parker’s great strengths as a character was always his supporting cast. Outside of the tights, he had plenty of interpersonal drama to contend with between his extended family, colleagues and romantic interests. Back on patrol, he also had a varied and well-defined collection of loved ones for whom maintaining a secret identity and keeping them safe was paramount. In recent years, between “Brand New Day” and other continuity finagling, that’s fallen by the wayside.”

 First of all saying the supporting cast fell by the wayside indicates the author never read BND though I cannot say I blame them.

 There was an active effort to reintroduce and expand the supporting cast in BND and it was actually often at the expense of Peter Parker himself.

 Second of all there is 100% a supporting cast in Slott’s current run, just not the old one people like but rather the new crappy one filled with Slott’s pet characters. Again I forgive the author for not reading Slott’s crap but then they shouldn’t talk about it as if they have and get stuff wrong.

 Third Peter Parker’s character shouldn’t be judged upon the last 10 years alone or what’s current. The character is the sum of his experiences not whatever the Hell is happening this second. That’s like saying Wonder Woman inherently sucked more than Miles Morales in 2013 because she was living through the shitty Azzarello run.

  “Aunt May has passed away and been resurrected more times than Superman, most of his pals have moved on, and nobody’s really stepped in to fill that gap.”

 Again, only in the last few years which isn’t the majority of the character’s history.

 And Aunt May has never died. She’s only had her death faked and it was only three times. Superman only seemed to die legitimately the once to my knowledge.

 “Miles, meanwhile, has been party to plenty of teen crushes, has had to reckon with not only his own fraught familial situation but also that of Peter, and has to balance his superheroics with attending a private school for the gifted.”

 Peter meanwhile across his history has:

 Had to contend with his best friend and roommate’s father being a villain who knows his identity.

 His BFF being in love with the same girl as him.

 His friend’s girlfriend flirting with him and later them falling in love as his friend goes insane.

 Multiple romantic interests,

 His aunt nearly marrying one of his villains

 One of his villains being his boss.

 His friend thinking he’s having an affair with their girlfriend when he was actually trying to help them but then he finds out said friend is actually having an affair themselves with one of his ex girlfriends.

 His girlfriend hating his alter ego because she thinks that they killed their father who already knew his secret identity and asked him to look after his daughter.

 Falling in love with a reforming costumed criminal who only loves Spider-Man not his own identity and who went behind his back to criminals to get super powers.

 His boss using the photos he gets paid for to slander his name

 And more than I could ever list here.

 So Peter has conceptually done...basically all the shit that Miles has done...only first and better in most respects.

 “Best of all, though, is Ganke: his LEGO-obsessed best friend and confidant, an endearingly dorky rock to lean on that readers also can’t help loving.”

 Best of all though is Mary Jane Watson Parker Peter’s party loving best friend, confidant, lover and once wife, an endearingly complex, heartbreakingly flawed, genre defying female character with a decades long organically unfolding character arc who was a rock to lean on but who also saved Peter’s life physically, mentally and emotionally multiple times who most readers can’t help loving but who gets fucked by sexist people who actually work for Marvel.

[fitnesshealthyoga-blog]

New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/its-a-fentanyl-crisis-stupid-national-pain-report/

It’s a Fentanyl Crisis, Stupid! – National Pain Report

By Kaatje “Gotcha” van der Gaarden, PA-C, MPAS. 

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on Dec 17, 2018 on Medium Health.

Featured Image: TEDxABQ 2018 “A Working Parachute: spinal cord injuries, ketamine & comedy” which turned into a 9 min stand-up set! Photo credit Allen Winston Photography

In 2012, life was great: I proudly wore a white coat with a stethoscope around my neck and finally felt useful to humanity. Two decades earlier, as a stuntwoman, my parachute did not quite open, and I landed on my sacrum (tailbone) at 70 mph, crushing the sacral nerves. I had lost two inches of my spine, fractured several vertabrae, and would spend a year in ICU, hospitals, and a spinal cord clinic. I was left with traumatic cauda equina syndrome,¹ suffered from residual pain, and was left with a “sitting disability.” For my atrophied lower leg and foot muscles, I used leg braces, a cane or scooter and I sat on a padded office chair. I’ve schlepped pillows and camping mats with me ever since my skydiving accident. Frequently, lying down for a few minutes was the only way to deal with my disability.

Kaatje “Gotcha” van der Gaarden

As a Physician Assistant in primary care, I loved my job and providing a true provider-patient collaboration. I had ample opportunity to prescribe opioid medications. Responsibly, of course. In my toolbox, I had excellent interview skills, the State’s Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP), and a urine test. The PMP would let me know me if patients were doctor or pharmacy shopping, although it couldn’t take into account other states. A urinalysis would tell me if the patient was taking the opioids as prescribed, or diverting, or using other, illegal drugs, or medications that were not prescribed. Heck yeah, I even had my patients sign an Opioid Use Contract.

One patient’s husband worked for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and he told me one that opioids went for about 70 cents per milligram on the street, in 2012. However, I never assumed someone was gaming the system and tried to keep an open mind. Some patients did want me to refill their emergency room (ER) hydrocodone prescription, for complaints like a mildly strained knee. At that point, I would print out knee exercises instead. I always tried to understand my patients’ emotional and physical health and encouraged exercise and healthy habits (even if most days, I couldn’t prepare food so I ate LAY’S® Limón Potato Chips and gummi worms).

Another patient had just moved from Arizona, with a history of using 30 mg of MS-Contin, a long-acting morphine tablet, three times a day, plus another opioid, Percocet 10 mg instant relief (IR), one tablet every four to six hours for breakthrough pain. The patient was full-time employed, doing fairly intense labor, and was incensed when I wanted evidence of his “bad back.” The patient did not bring any records during his first visit, but he later returned with a lengthy health record — his pain deriving from five back surgeries, three of them revisions for the original surgeries.

I had never heard of “ultra-rapid” or “slow” opioid metabolizers² which affect adequate treatment, and still believed the Center for Disease Control (CDC) had society’s best interest at heart. The opioid crisis seemed far away, and I believed that did not affect my patients, or myself. Mistakenly, I thought there hardly would have been an “opioid epidemic” had medical providers only accompanied any opioid prescription with this warning: “Use your IR (instand relief) opioid medication when you truly have breakthrough pain, a 7–8 or higher, or it will no longer be as effective.”

Perhaps. But complicating matters was that opioid medications did seem to be prescribed for relatively mild to moderate pain, or in situations where acute pain would soon resolve. For example, to my patient with that strained knee, seen in a Colorado ER. In 1991, I’d fractured my lower leg above the ankle, after a car stunt gone awry, and wasn’t prescribed any opioid medication. The ER doc in Florida who applied the hot pink cast, from my toes to my knee, pointed me to a Walgreens to buy Tylenol (acetaminophen) for the simple, uncomplicated fracture.

Although I was in tremendous pain myself from the sky diving accident and crushed sacral nerves, I denied suffering from intractable pain. Yet I was battling worsening neuropathic (nerve) pain, as well as residual musculoskeletal pain from the sacral and vertebral fractures, on a daily basis. I made it through each workday by lying down on the exam table during lunch. Work gave me great happiness, but physically I had no energy left to cook, maintain friendships or even have a hobby.

That year I recall having to do five mandatory continuing medical education credits by the State on “responsible opioid prescribing.” This seemed ludicrous since I always looked at the PMP before going into the exam room. Especially with a patient that was on medications that fell under the Controlled Substances Act.³ As a non-contract employee, I also paid my own DEA license at $780 every three years for the privilege of writing controlled substance prescriptions. I was ticked off with the cost, but also with what I perceived as government encroachment on my medical decision making.

Sure enough, over the years, after the CDC Opioid Guidelines came out (which are voluntary, and not legally binding), I began to realize that there is no true opioid epidemic. There’s an epidemic alright, of people taking opioids with multiple medications and then adding alcohol and other illegal drugs on top. What we most certainly have is an alcohol epidemic, with 88,000 deaths⁴ annually, and this epidemic is starting to effect millennials. I blame those hipster beers with ridiculously high alcohol percentages, as millennials are dying of liver cirrhosis in record-breaking numbers.

Despite the ongoing alcohol epidemic, from 2012 to 2016, using opioid medication became synonymous with being a “drug seeker.” The “opioid crisis” narrative was perpetuated and fueled by mainstream media, whose culpability lies in using labels like “opioid overdose deaths” instead of the more appropriate “mixed drug intoxication.” True opioid deaths (opioid medications alone) range around five thousand deaths annually, according to Josh Bloom, writing for the American Council on Science and Health.⁵ New York City’s medical examiner’s office is unsurpassed when it comes to accurately determining cause of death: in 2016, 71 percent of all drug-related deaths involved heroin and/or fentanyl.⁶

Looking at the numbers, most of the so-called “opioid deaths” seemed to be people who did not take their medication as instructed, if opioids were legally prescribed in the first place. Seriously, because who cooks their Fentanyl patch and injects it? Not chronic pain patients, who need slowly titrated medication to bathe, cook, work, take care of kids, or go to school. Patients were indeed dying from respiratory depression, caused by taking legal or illegal opiates. But how many of those deaths are suicides? If patients with severe pain, on a stable regimen, are denied access, they may turn to suicide, or illegal opioids like heroin, now tainted by illegal fentanyl. That is not an opioid crisis, but another iatrogenic consequence of the “guidelines.” The Law of Unintended Consequences never fails.

How was it that the CDC took advice from an anti-opioid advocacy group, Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP)⁸ in constructing the Opioid Guidelines? PROP had lobbied Federal officials and the FDA for years, to change opioid labels. When they were (mostly) rebutted, PROP got involved with the CDC, behind closed doors. The Washington Legal Foundation⁷ notified the CDC in 2015, as in their opinion, the CDC broke the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) law. Washington Legal Foundation states that a Core Expert Group, advising the CDC, conducted their “research” and “Draft for Opioid Guidelines” in secret, without input from pain experts, pharmocologists, or patient groups.

Dr. Jane Ballantyne (current PROP President) was part of that Core Expert Group and is notorious for her anti-opioid stance. Another Core Expert Group member is PROP executive director, and founder, Dr. Andrew Kolodny, who refers to opiate medication as “heroin” pills and proclaimed that “oxycodone and heroin have indistinguishable effects.”⁹ Yet you oughtn’t compare a 5 mg tablet of oxycodone to IV heroin, without qualifiers on potency. Dr. Kolodny, an addiction expert, doesn’t even distinguish between “plain” heroin, and heroin cut with fentanyl, which is 100 times stronger than morphine. About 80 percent of fatal overdoses are now due to illegal fentanyl. By muddying the issues of opioid dependence, opioid addiction, and heroin use with either false or incomplete statements, PROP also does a disservice to people who are addicted to heroin or illegal fentanyl.

Research has found that 75% of heroin addicts have a mental health illness, and 50% have trauma from (sexual) abuse before age 16, something that gets drowned in Dr. Ballantyne’s simplified narrative of “continuous or increasing doses of opioids [… ] can worsen a person’s ability to function and his or her quality of life. It may also lead to opioid abuse, addiction, or even death.”¹⁰ Like many others, I argue that (illegal) fentanyl, and indirectly, profound loss of hope, is the main driver behind the current “mixed use overdose” deaths.

Dr. Kolodny was Chief Medical Officer of The Phoenix House, an addiction center, at the time he helped draft the CDC Guidelines. PROP also avoids mentioning the Millennium saliva,¹¹ or other DNA tests, to identify how individual patients metabolize opiate medication and that some are “ultrafast” metabolizers. PROP fails to mention opioid blood concentration measurements, no matter how imperfect.¹² However, no one doubts the conflict of interest: PROP Board members are involved with grants from the CDC, addiction centers, medical device companies to develop an opioid tapering mechanism, and even consulted with law firms investigating lawsuits against opiate pharmaceutical companies.

PROP was originally funded by Phoenix House, one of many addiction centers that prescribes buprenorphine. PROP is currently funded by the Steve Rummler HOPE Network,¹³ another anti-opioid group that lists Dr. Ballantyne and Dr. Kolodny on the medical advisory committee. Dr. Kolodny admitted in a 2013 New York Times article titled “Addiction Treatment with a Dark Side” that as a New York City Health official, he lobbied on behalf of the buprenorphine pharmaceutical industry. He was quoted as saying, “We had New York City staff out there acting like drug reps [with $10,000 incentives -KG].”¹⁴

Buprenorphine was the supposed miracle drug after methadone, but its known side effects include serious diversion, addiction, and possibly, lifelong treatment. Dr. Kolodny publicly promoted buprenorphine in various media outlets, despite evidence of buprenorphine overprescribing, pill mills, and overdoses. The true scale is not known, as most ERs and medical examiners do not test for the presence of buprenorphine. The CDC does not track buprenorphine deaths, despite a 2013 study¹⁵ that found a tenfold increase in buprenorphine-related ED visits, according to the Federally funded Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). As “bupe” availability increased, so did diversion and overdose deaths.

Interestingly, that Dr. Kolodny promotes the idea that heroin and opioid medications are the same molecular compound. Actually, buprenorphine has a molecular profile¹⁶ that more closely resembles heroin, than hydrocodone. Dr. Kolodny indirectly claims that CDC “Guidelines” are effective, when the truth is that by the time PROP advised the CDC, prescriptions had already tapered off. This is evidenced in his statement as chief medical officer from a Phoenix House Q&A,¹⁷ dated December 2015: “It will take some time, but we’re already beginning to see a plateau in opioid prescribing.” Dr. Kolodny appears to take credit for a trend that had nothing to do with PROP, and he omits the fact that prescriptions are down since 2011, and yet overdoses are up.

Mainstream media occasionally, and accidentally, reveals the truth. CNN¹⁸ in 2018: “Fentanyl-related deaths double in six months; US government takes some action.” Then again, the echo of Dr. Kolodny’s statements, as reported by CNN: “The recent rise in popularity of these synthetics has been called the third wave of the opioid epidemic; the first wave was attributed to the overprescribing of painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone and the second to heroin. The drugs are all chemically similar and act on the same receptors in the brain.” Again, not one word about potency.

Few realize that when the CDC issued the Opioid Guidelines in 2016, there was inadequate research done ahead of time to determine the true cause of the rise in opioid-related deaths. There are no long-term studies on the effects of chronic opiate therapy. Very few, if any, pain management experts or pharmacologists were consulted to determine potential impacts on their practice. Neither veterans nor chronic pain patients were given a true opportunity to issue public comments to the CDC or any other Federal authority prior to the implementation of these new prescribing mandates. The CDC ended up targeting one of the most vulnerable groups, patients with intractable pain.

The CDC’s Guidelines also affect patients with cancer and patients who no longer receive cancer treatment because, unfortunately, both groups report similar pain levels. The guidelines allow the use of opioids during cancer treatment, but they are confusing when it comes to equally severe, post-cancer treatment pain. I fear this “opioid” crisis is far from over, and yet, trust me, this will go down as “reefer madness” in another hundred years. It is a manufactured tragedy that does real harm to patients with intractable pain. The “opioid” crisis also hurts human beings who suffer from heroin, opioids or other addictions by siphoning money, goodwill, and energy.

Few people realize that the CDC hired a PR agency to help sell the American people myths on the “opioid epidemic.” The agency, PRR, designed graphics to “educate” primary care providers that “one in four patients on opioids will develop addiction.” Even the National Institute of Health,¹⁹ another federal entity, estimates this to be 5 percent, not 25 percent. Another research team²⁰ concluded in Pain Medicine that opioid therapy for chronic pain patients (note: in absence of prior or current drug abuse) resulted in a 0.19 percent incidence of abuse.

The language used by the media as well as PROP contributes to misunderstanding; using words like addiction, tolerance, dependence, abuse or opioid use disorder as if they mean the same, directs the casual observer to bias. It’s clear that PROP never was an independent, neutral entity advising the CDC, yet they ended up dictating federal policy, based on flawed evidence. Dr. Ballantyne, Dr. Franklin, and Dr. Kolodny in Politico.com²¹ in March 2018: “We agree with Satel that the answer is not to force millions of chronic pain patients to rapidly taper off medications they are now dependent on (Italics mine). But then, neither is the answer to absolve overprescribing for pain.”

I’m not a linguist, but in that essay, PROP uses the word “addiction/addicted” 16 times, and “dependence” twice. The CDC could have ensured that patients with severe to intractable pain (no such distinction is made) would not lose access to their medications. And yet, that is exactly what happened. Stable patients on long-term opioids were tapered against their will, as the CDC “Guidelines” state it is undesirable to titrate above or equal to 90 morphine milligram equivalent²² daily (aka MME/day). But this was meant for opioid-naive patients, not those on long-term opiate therapy. Primary care providers, who were forced to follow these “Guidelines,” either stopped prescribing opioids altogether or forced patients to rapidly taper to below 90 MME.

Dr. Ballantyne is correct in her remarks that it isn’t realistic to expect zero pain levels, especially for acute pain that is expected to resolve quickly, like a sprain or an uncomplicated fracture. But people with severe to intractable pain are condemned to a world of suffering. Recall my patient with the five back surgeries? I wonder about him. He was working full time, on 180 MME a day, but in his mid-fifties, arthritis would worsen soon. My own story did not end well; I ended up with yet another spinal cord lesion, a benign hemangioma at chest level, which causes “central neuropathic pain syndrome.” My old cauda equina syndrome morphed into “severe, chronic adhesive arachnoiditis.” This is an incurable, intractable, progressive neuroinflammatory disorder whose pain is considered on par with having terminal cancer pain. Still, I try to make the best of it, see my essay, On Being Bedbound.

The CDC and PROP came for me: after using opioids exactly as prescribed, and less than 30 MME daily, my primary care clinic was forced to stop my opioid prescription, and that of all patients. I was not accepted in any pain management clinic, in an urban area of almost one million. Pain clinics here no longer provide “medical management,” yet perform epidural steroid injections ($3000 a pop), which may have contributed to, or worsened my adhesive arachnoiditis syndrome. I’m lucky to live in an urban area, where the academic hospital’s pain team took over my prescription.

But what about elderly and impoverished patients, or those in rural areas? PROP and the CDC claim primary care providers “overprescribe” and are responsible for most of the opioid prescriptions. But they fail to publicly acknowledge that pain management clinics no longer accept patients. This epidemic of undertreated patients will become known as one of the cruelest moves by a Federal agency on an already compromised population. I do feel for teenagers and adults who become addicted. Yet there ought to be a different, more sensible approach towards legitimate, chronic pain patients who need opioid medications, as well as people who develop a substance use disorder, who deserve our help and sympathy.

It is a conundrum of extraordinary proportions. At a time when managed care and Electronic Health Records dictate the length and quality of an office visit, there is less and less time to sit down and connect with a patient. Not just with chronic pain patients. Medicine and society would benefit greatly from the extra time clinicians deserve, to encourage exercise, eat healthier, lose weight, stop smoking and assess if a patient needs other support, like therapy.

In my opinion, it is loneliness, the feeling of not being connected to humanity in a meaningful way, combined with economic hardship, that leads to unhealthy lifestyle choices, as witnessed by the Rustbelt being hit hardest. Research shows that rats who were offered spring water or water laced with heroin, choose heroin. When those same rats were given ample toys, space, and other rats to play and have sex with, they did not choose the heroin laced water. That’s right, happy rats don’t need no heroin!

It cannot be denied that in previous decades, pain was both undertreated, and opioid medications prescribed for relatively minor, self-resolving aches and pains. Forget for a moment, the narrative that places blame on overprescribing, the opioid manufacturers, or the pharmaceutical distributors that, for example, flooded impoverished communities like those in West Virginia.²³ Forget all that, and focus on what is going on. Ultimately, patients with intractable pain pay the price of ignorance by scientists, journalists, politicians, and laypeople alike.

For this humanitarian crisis, there are no perfect answers. For example, as Red Lawhern, Ph.D. and prominent pain advocate²⁴ recently communicated with me (12/3/2018): “there is promise in genetic testing but hasn’t yet been fully reduced to routine practice and may not be covered by insurance.” Luckily my DNA testing was covered, on the condition it tested for depression. I also discovered that ketamine infusions help me most, but will leave that topic for my upcoming book, The Queen of Ketamine. Sadly, amidst the opioid paranoia, non-invasive alternatives like ketamine infusions aren’t mentioned for neuropathic or intractable backpain, which often has a neuropathic component. Research also shows that adding an anti-seizure medication to an opiate mediation provides better neuropathic pain contral, with less morphine²⁵.

In the end, I don’t think Tai Chi, Tylenol and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is going to cut it for meningeal inflammation or other (neuropathic) pain syndromes. I believe the tide is turning. It will take time, and in that time, patients with intractable pain will choose to end their lives. But we are not alone, and it helps to know that courageous voices, notably the Alliance for Treatment of Intractable Pain, are speaking up for us. The print and online magazine Reason²⁶ has long been a voice of, well, reason. As Red Lawhern stated in a must-listen November 2018 radio interview,²⁷ “We must address underemployment, socioeconomic despair and hopelessness which are a vector for addiction. And end the War on Pain patients.”

Love, Kaatje

Kaatje Gotcha, model and stuntwoman-turned-Physician Assistant, found comedy, writing and advocacy after developing Adhesive Arachnoiditis. This spinal cord disease causes intractable neuropathic pain and leaves her mostly bedridden. Prior to that diagnosis, she’d survived a nighttime skydiving accident, landing at 70 mph. This caused Cauda Equina Syndrome; a subsequent lumbar puncture and epidural steroidal injections may have exacerbated her previous injuries.

Kaatje’s courageous spirit led to writing “The Queen of Ketamine,” available on Kindle in February. This is a comedic yet pragmatic memoir  on adhesive arachnoiditis, the opioid “epidemic,” neuropathic pain, dating with a disability, while offering hope and practical advice. Kaatje’s 2018 TEDx talk and book publication will be posted on her Facebook page, at www.kaatjegotcha.com and Instagram @kaatjegotchacomedy. Find her essays on Medium, and follow her on twitter.

Cauda Equina Syndrome https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1148690-overview

Opioid Metabolism https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/771480

Controlled Substance Act https://www.dea.gov/controlled-substances-act

Alcohol Epidemic https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-facts-and-statistics

Opioid Epidemic Deception https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/10/12/opioid-epidemic-6-charts-designed-deceive-you-11935

Overdose Deaths by Heroin/Fentanyl 71percent https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/epi/databrief89.pdf

Washington Legal Foundation and PROP https://www.forbes.com/sites/wlf/2015/12/15/cdc-bows-to-demands-for-transparency-and-public-input-on-draft-opioid-prescribing-guidelines/#c82eda135bc3

Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing http://www.supportprop.org/

Dr Kolodny refers to “Heroin” Pills https://www.healthline.com/health-news/secondary-drug-industry-booming-amid-opioid-epidemic#2

Dr Ballantyne’s Narrative https://www.statnews.com/2015/11/30/chronic-pain-intensity-scale/

Millennium Opioid Metabolite DNA Test https://www.millenniumhealth.com/services/test-offerings/

Opioid Serum Measurements http://paindr.com/serum-opioid-monitoring-wheres-the-evidence/

Medical Advisory Committee https://steverummlerhopenetwork.org/our-team/

NYT: Addiction Treatment with a Dark Side https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/health/in-demand-in-clinics-and-on-the-street-bupe-can-be-savior-or-menace.html

Sharp Rise in Buprenorphine ER Visits https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/DAWN106/DAWN106/sr106-buprenorphine.htm

Heroin and Buprenorphine Molecular Profile http://paindr.com/heroin-hydrocodone-buprenorphine-prop-aganda/#comment-334500]

Q&A with Dr. Kolodny, Phoenix House https://www.kolmac.com/2015/12/qa-dr-andrew-kolodny-chief-medical-officer-phoenix-house/

Fentanyl, as Reported by CNN https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/12/health/fentanyl-opioid-deaths/index.html

NIH Estimates Pain Patient “Addiction” 5 Percent https://medlineplus.gov/magazine/issues/spring11/articles/spring11pg9.html

Pain Patient “Opioid Use Disorder” without Risk Factors 0.19 percent https://academic.oup.com/painmedicine/article/9/4/444/1824073

Rebuttal by Dr. Kolodny and Dr. Ballantyne https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/13/opioid-overprescribing-is-not-a-myth-217338

Morphine Equivalent Dosing https://www.wolterskluwercdi.com/sites/default/files/documents/ebooks/morphine-equivalent-dosing-ebook.pdf?v3

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/cops_and_courts/drug-firms-poured-m-painkillers-into-wv-amid-rise-of/article_99026dad-8ed5-5075-90fa-adb906a36214.html

Red Lawhern, PhD and nationally known Pain Patient Advocate http://face-facts.org/lawhern/

Combining epilepsy drug, morphine can result in less pain, lower opioid dose. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140915153613.htm

Jacob Sullum, Reason journalist and syndicated writer https://reason.com/archives/2018/03/08/americas-war-on-pain-pills-is#comment

“Unleashed” Matt Connarton Interviews Red Lawhern 11/28/18 https://www.spreaker.com/user/ipmnation/matt-connarton-unleashed-11-28-18

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Joe Galvin of Vistage: Life After The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Be Different For Small Business

Last year I had a great conversation on what digital transformation means for small businesses with Joe Galvin, chief research officer for Vistage, a peer mentoring membership organization for CEOs, business owners and executives of small- to mid-size businesses with more than 22,000 members in 20 countries.

Vistage recently published a report based on a survey of their membership on how the coronavirus pandemic is effecting their confidence and impacting their business.  So I was glad to spend a few minutes with Joe hear more about what he’s hearing from the Vistage community about how they’re operating during the pandemic. And how this experience may change the way they operate once we get past this trying time.

What Will Business After the Coronavirus Be Like?

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. To hear the full interview watch the video or click on the SoundCloud embedded player below.

Small Business Trends: What’s the Corona Curve?

 Joe Galvin: If you would take a traditional bell curve and flip it around, that’s the Corona Curve; where there’s a trigger event. And that was when we first heard Wuhan, China’s having some flu disease, right? We ignored that for a long time. But then a trigger event occurs. Which initially was the first stock market drop the week of March 3rd.

What We Know So Far

Then last week it was President Trump’s speech about shutting down travel. And now we’re on this slippery slope to the bottom. We don’t know where the bottom is. And you think about you’re sliding down a hill at night, you’re just holding on as best you can and everything changes because we haven’t yet started to find the bottom…

In China, we’re now beginning to see signs of the bottom. We’re seeing port activity open up. We’ve seen another day of zero new cases. We just learned that 80% of China’s factories are back operational again. And a belief that in another four to six weeks they’ll be at 90% capacity.

A Look at How Things Have Changed

So signs are beginning to emerge that they’ve reached the bottom. We’re not there yet. So any data you look at or we took a survey, closed on March 9th. March 9th that was a week ago Monday. And 15.6% were extremely concerned about coronavirus. I’m sure that number would be in the 70s now.

Small Business Trends: Wow. It’s moved that fast. I know you have the Vistage CEO Confidence Index. And it actually went from 91.5 at the end of 2019 to 84.7 at the beginning of the year. Where do you think it is now?

The Profound and Long-Term Effects

Joe Galvin: Don’t know. We came into this year under the premise that this slowdown was slowing. It’s time to prepare for prosperity. And then a Black Swan event occurs. A Black Swan event is an event that’s totally unpredictable, has a lasting and long-term effect. And in retrospect, maybe we should have recognized this was going to happen. 9/11 is a great example. It happened suddenly.

It had a profound and long-term effect on us. And you know, in retrospect, maybe we should’ve thought about that this could happen. Now, clearly we’ve had movies like Contagion and Outbreak about pandemics before. Different government agencies have grown or shrunk over time.

But to be surprised that this happened now in retrospect, yeah, we should have seen it. But in the meantime we’re all scrambling to, as we go down that slope, try to find the bottom. Because until we get to the bottom, we can’t assess the damage.

A Look at Digital Transformation

Small Business Trends: You mentioned digital transformation, and I know previously we had a conversation that started with digital transition before we even got to transformation and what would it looked like back then. What is digital transformation from an SMB perspective going to look like after we get past this hurdle?

Joe Galvin: That’s a great question and it’s one that we’ll have to sort out with time, but I think you’ll see some organizations, small mid-size businesses, are already thriving in this environment. Those folks that are intact, those folks that are in outsourced technology.

Those people are all thriving. In fact, some of these pure digital companies that support the digital environment, they’re going to do much better because so much energy is coming towards them as opposed to the physical world. It’ll radically accelerate the death of brick and mortar. But humans will still want to gather, so the entertainment stuff will come back. I think for small and mid-size business, it’s going to reinforce and reward those who have done the prudent financial planning.

Maintaining a Cashflow and Cash On Hand

Folks that maintain an adequate cashflow and cash on hand. People that have arranged for and already have a line of credit with their local banker. The government’s going to throw a ton of money in a small business administration. In fact, we’re going to post something on that on our website later today for folks. But the SBA is just a small little government agency. It’s not prepared to scale to pass out trillions of dollars. So it shouldn’t be your first line of defense, but know it exists there.

HR 6201 which extends the unemployment insurance, some of the implications about providing tax credits for that and some of the nuances. That too will be in place with time and we’ll sort that out. But in the short term, you got to get with your local banker and make sure you’re in a good place. Having said that, when you get to the other side, we will be at a lifetime low interest rates both business-wise and personally.

It’ll never get lower in your lifetime then what will be coming out of this. So establish that line of credit. Maybe do a refinance. I’ve got a daughter and son-in-law who are on the cusp of buying a house because, yeah, it’s craziness out there, but the interest rates are lifetime. I mean this is unbelievable. So there’ll be opportunities when we get to the other side, but until we get to the bottom of the corona curve, we’re just scrambling to survive.

Mom and Pop Business After The Coronavirus

Small Business Trends: But let’s face it, small businesses like the traditional mom and pops or the traditional meat and potatoes main street small businesses, they don’t have lobbyists that are in D.C. that are looking out for their interests and bringing them the money. So what can be expected really from the government when it comes to assisting those kind of small businesses?

Joe Galvin: I think in the longer term you’ll see the government there, but the federal government doesn’t move quick on anything or for anything. And irrespective of your political positions in these current times, the government just functions that way. So I think the immediate concern is our economy is driven by the consumer. The consumer represents two-thirds of our GDP. Consumers are home, they’re grounded. And those businesses, restaurants, all the ones we’ve been talking about, those people are going to be hurt right away.

So the unemployment insurance, the understanding that they will continue to receive a paycheck. And if they do get furloughed or laid off, there will be an opportunity for them to access funds. I think that’s really important. The small and mid-size businesses, both through their local bankers and through government supported programs, have the ability to get the bridge loans and the funds they need to stay in business because again, depending on how long the health crisis exists is how deep the economic crisis is going to be and how quick we can ramp up.

How to Address the Unemployment Issues

So I would like to see more done addressing the unemployment issues. I know there’s talk about a thousand dollars to every family. Well, for those of us able to continue to work in our really financially solid companies, I would rather see that money directed to those people that are in need, the people that live in the hourly wage or the gig economy, the Uber drivers that you and I use on a regular basis, the waitresses at the place, the people that clean the rooms in the hotels for those of us that are business travelers.

I would like to see more energy directed towards ensuring those consumers can maintain their space in society. So when the opportunity to work comes back, they can slide back in without a devastating financial effect or the real promise of hunger in our country in places that we haven’t experienced it before.

So I’d like to see more directed towards consumer support and the ability to help small and mid-sized businesses. I think our big businesses got a big boost in the tax cuts and many of them chose to do a variety of things with that money these days. But they’ve got the wherewithal and the resources to take care of their own. And we really have to rally around, I think, our small businesses and more importantly, the people that work for them to help them get through this period of time because we’ll all have to recover through this together.

Business After the Coronavirus

Small Business Trends: What are the kinds of industries, from a small business perspective, may not come back?

Joe Galvin: Well, I think it’s not about segment but about individual businesses. Clearly in the restaurant business, that’s going to hurt. There are no small business airlines except for maybe some commuter retail, high-end jet kind of things and I’m not really going to worry about that. I think some of your manufacturers are going to get really hurt. Let’s assume now that China gets geared back up and let’s assume that you are somewhere in that supply chain.

Lean manufacturing is a great concept. Just-in-time inventory was super for the CFO trying to manage cash and inventory. But right now, you can produce as long as you have inventory and as long as your supply chain continues to function. So there will be a ripple, especially if you’re connected to China. But we saw a lot of the folks that were affected by the tariff wars that are still going on are the same people that are getting hurt now in the corona crunch.

There Will Be Some Business Fall Out

So I think there’ll be some carnage there, I call it the corona carnage. There’ll be some carnage there. But again, those businesses that have good solid relationships with their customers. I think you’ll be rewarded and punished going forward based on how you treat your employees during this period of time and how you treat your customers.

I personally am extremely pissed off at one of my most important travel partners, specifically because the way they treat a certain situation. And they will be subsequently punished on the other side of this. Just as another one stepped up for me big time and they’ll be rewarded.

So you’ve got to appreciate the fact that in loyalty with customers and with employees, your trust is based upon a history of interactions and is strongly influenced by the most powerful. And this is a paradigm shift. In a paradigm shift, everybody goes back to zero. Whatever you did before, whatever good guy credits or hero points you got, don’t matter. What have you done since this effect? So I caution people, I said think carefully about how you treat people, people that work for you and the people that use your product today, because memories are long and crises are short.

Businesses Need to Step Up

Small Business Trends: What about the kind of companies that had tattered reputations? And they earned those tattered reputations in the past, but at a time like this, step up. So I’m thinking like a Facebook. Facebook, we know they’ve had their issues, a lot of issues in the past, but they seem to actually really be stepping up in a real time of need right now. What do you think about them?

Joe Galvin: Well, again, we don’t know where the bottom is, so we don’t know how dramatic an impact this will be. So we’re all making guesses as we go down that slope.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Joe Galvin: But I think again, in a time of crisis, your most recent interaction tends to dominate interactions in a world before. Right now, if you’ve got a 20 year relationship with someone and then they go left instead of right during this time, you’re more likely to forgive them.

Picking Small Business Partners

If you’ve only done business with someone a couple of times or you don’t have a strong relationship or you said they had a not so good reputation to begin with, that’s where you start from. So yeah you might be able to help yourself. But again, once this passes, you fall back into those prior behaviors, you go right back to where you were. So it will be as short or as long term as the consistency of your behavior.

Small Business Trends: Amazon has done some really interesting things. They said, hey, we’re going to hire 100,000 more people and pay them a couple bucks more per hour to help in the fulfillment centers. And then they also said that they are going to, and this is kind of on the small business side, if you are not selling items that are deemed to be necessities, essentials, don’t send them into the fulfillment center because right now we’re focused on streamlining the process of getting the things that people need to them. So that’s kind of a hardship on small businesses, but for the greater good from a customer perspective, how does small businesses view Amazon at this point?

Joe Galvin: Well, I think for those that are tied up in that ecosystem and sit outside those essentials, it’s a big worry because now your business is on hiatus. If you’re a digital business tied to this digital platform and they said, look, your stuff’s not going on the digital shelves these days.

How Digital Business Is Changing

That’s obviously going to be a problem. The question is how long will that last? I mean, quite frankly, our online shopping behavior probably hasn’t altered that much. I mean, there are things that we’re ordering that do we really need to order that now? But again, by ordering that you’re putting money into the economy and you’re doing consumer spending.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Joe Galvin: A couple of other thoughts too that triggered is if this had happened 20 years ago before Amazon, before Facebook, before the internet, think how crazy this would be.

Small Business Trends: Wow.

Joe Galvin: Right? And even another thought too we had is if this were occurring in November when it’s getting darker and colder… Now the southern hemisphere, it’s going the other way obviously. But now it’s getting lighter and warmer. Could you imagine how much darker this might be? So I think it speaks to one that our humanity has stepped so far forward into digital and into technology that we’re much better to ride this out and to be able to achieve some level of normalcy and understanding.

What Else Do You Need to Know?

Small Business Trends: So what are one or two things that maybe we haven’t talked about that you’re hearing from your small business executive membership that is still on their mind or is still pressing on them that maybe it’s below the surface that we aren’t hearing about in the media?

Joe Galvin: One of the things we have in Vistage, we have our networks, which allows members across the country, around the world to communicate in digital platforms. And we’ve been mining those and listening to those and created a coronavirus network specifically to help our members communicate beyond their local groups. And we’re starting to see questions now come out about how do I deal with customers, right?

My customers are asking for a deferment or they’re canceling or they’re saying, look, I can’t pay you for 90 days. So again, your customers will reward or punish you based on how you behave. So how do you now answer those customer questions, right?

How to Manage a Distributed Sales Force

Do you come to your customer and say pay me or go in default, or do you work through that? Or if you’ve got a sales team that used to work in a big call center and dial for dollars and high five each other rallying up every day and now everybody’s at home. How do you manage that distributed sales force?

And then as you get a little bit deeper into this say, well, hey, I couldn’t make my quarterly call. I couldn’t make my quarterly bonus goal because nobody’s buying. All those proposals, those companies that got the fiscal year of March 31 and they’re waiting for that big fourth quarter hockey stick. Thanks for playing. That kind of stuff isn’t going to happen. So how are you going to recalibrate on the sales side and on the customer side?

And there’s a lot of energy on the finance side and we touched on that with the SBA program, HR 6201, and some of the other things that people are doing on the finance side. But I think there’s a big talent issue that goes on. We had just… February unemployment was at 3.5% effectively full employment. And the talent wars were the top raging issue. And you know what, there’s a truce in the talent wars right now, right?

What to Do About Hiring?

Some people are continuing to hire, but most people are saying, you know what, I’m going to hold off right now because I just don’t know. Right? Some companies are going to have to release people and people who are good employees are now going to be free agents in the market.

And as I said, once we get through this and we get to the other side and we start to climb out, you’re going to see a reverse game of musical chairs where everybody’s going to be walking around but instead of chairs being taken away, more chairs will be added every day. As restaurants want to scale up, manufacturers want to scale back up. And they’re going to go back to their employees who they had to let go. And if they treated them right on the way out, they’ll come back.

Joe Galvin: And we know a lot of people stay in their job just because it’s easier to stay in your job, but once you’re out, you’re out. And again, you’ll be rewarded or punished based upon how you created your culture leading up to this. How you execute on your culture, is it consistent with what you’ve said?

Or did you have a culture that said employees first and now you’re behaving exactly differently. And will you be rewarded on the backside for that? Because, again, we’ll get through this at some point in time. There’ll be greater pain for some sectors than others. But when you get to the other side, the decisions you make today will have a big standing about how long and how hard it is for you to climb out and then what that new normal is going to look like.

This article, “Joe Galvin of Vistage: Life After The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Be Different For Small Business” was first published on Small Business Trends

https://smallbiztrends.com/

The post Joe Galvin of Vistage: Life After The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Be Different For Small Business appeared first on Unix Commerce.

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Joe Galvin of Vistage: Life After The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Be Different For Small Business

Last year I had a great conversation on what digital transformation means for small businesses with Joe Galvin, chief research officer for Vistage, a peer mentoring membership organization for CEOs, business owners and executives of small- to mid-size businesses with more than 22,000 members in 20 countries.

Vistage recently published a report based on a survey of their membership on how the coronavirus pandemic is effecting their confidence and impacting their business.  So I was glad to spend a few minutes with Joe hear more about what he’s hearing from the Vistage community about how they’re operating during the pandemic. And how this experience may change the way they operate once we get past this trying time.

What Will Business After the Coronavirus Be Like?

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. To hear the full interview watch the video or click on the SoundCloud embedded player below.

Small Business Trends: What’s the Corona Curve?

 Joe Galvin: If you would take a traditional bell curve and flip it around, that’s the Corona Curve; where there’s a trigger event. And that was when we first heard Wuhan, China’s having some flu disease, right? We ignored that for a long time. But then a trigger event occurs. Which initially was the first stock market drop the week of March 3rd.

What We Know So Far

Then last week it was President Trump’s speech about shutting down travel. And now we’re on this slippery slope to the bottom. We don’t know where the bottom is. And you think about you’re sliding down a hill at night, you’re just holding on as best you can and everything changes because we haven’t yet started to find the bottom…

In China, we’re now beginning to see signs of the bottom. We’re seeing port activity open up. We’ve seen another day of zero new cases. We just learned that 80% of China’s factories are back operational again. And a belief that in another four to six weeks they’ll be at 90% capacity.

A Look at How Things Have Changed

So signs are beginning to emerge that they’ve reached the bottom. We’re not there yet. So any data you look at or we took a survey, closed on March 9th. March 9th that was a week ago Monday. And 15.6% were extremely concerned about coronavirus. I’m sure that number would be in the 70s now.

Small Business Trends: Wow. It’s moved that fast. I know you have the Vistage CEO Confidence Index. And it actually went from 91.5 at the end of 2019 to 84.7 at the beginning of the year. Where do you think it is now?

The Profound and Long-Term Effects

Joe Galvin: Don’t know. We came into this year under the premise that this slowdown was slowing. It’s time to prepare for prosperity. And then a Black Swan event occurs. A Black Swan event is an event that’s totally unpredictable, has a lasting and long-term effect. And in retrospect, maybe we should have recognized this was going to happen. 9/11 is a great example. It happened suddenly.

It had a profound and long-term effect on us. And you know, in retrospect, maybe we should’ve thought about that this could happen. Now, clearly we’ve had movies like Contagion and Outbreak about pandemics before. Different government agencies have grown or shrunk over time.

But to be surprised that this happened now in retrospect, yeah, we should have seen it. But in the meantime we’re all scrambling to, as we go down that slope, try to find the bottom. Because until we get to the bottom, we can’t assess the damage.

A Look at Digital Transformation

Small Business Trends: You mentioned digital transformation, and I know previously we had a conversation that started with digital transition before we even got to transformation and what would it looked like back then. What is digital transformation from an SMB perspective going to look like after we get past this hurdle?

Joe Galvin: That’s a great question and it’s one that we’ll have to sort out with time, but I think you’ll see some organizations, small mid-size businesses, are already thriving in this environment. Those folks that are intact, those folks that are in outsourced technology.

Those people are all thriving. In fact, some of these pure digital companies that support the digital environment, they’re going to do much better because so much energy is coming towards them as opposed to the physical world. It’ll radically accelerate the death of brick and mortar. But humans will still want to gather, so the entertainment stuff will come back. I think for small and mid-size business, it’s going to reinforce and reward those who have done the prudent financial planning.

Maintaining a Cashflow and Cash On Hand

Folks that maintain an adequate cashflow and cash on hand. People that have arranged for and already have a line of credit with their local banker. The government’s going to throw a ton of money in a small business administration. In fact, we’re going to post something on that on our website later today for folks. But the SBA is just a small little government agency. It’s not prepared to scale to pass out trillions of dollars. So it shouldn’t be your first line of defense, but know it exists there.

HR 6201 which extends the unemployment insurance, some of the implications about providing tax credits for that and some of the nuances. That too will be in place with time and we’ll sort that out. But in the short term, you got to get with your local banker and make sure you’re in a good place. Having said that, when you get to the other side, we will be at a lifetime low interest rates both business-wise and personally.

It’ll never get lower in your lifetime then what will be coming out of this. So establish that line of credit. Maybe do a refinance. I’ve got a daughter and son-in-law who are on the cusp of buying a house because, yeah, it’s craziness out there, but the interest rates are lifetime. I mean this is unbelievable. So there’ll be opportunities when we get to the other side, but until we get to the bottom of the corona curve, we’re just scrambling to survive.

Mom and Pop Business After The Coronavirus

Small Business Trends: But let’s face it, small businesses like the traditional mom and pops or the traditional meat and potatoes main street small businesses, they don’t have lobbyists that are in D.C. that are looking out for their interests and bringing them the money. So what can be expected really from the government when it comes to assisting those kind of small businesses?

Joe Galvin: I think in the longer term you’ll see the government there, but the federal government doesn’t move quick on anything or for anything. And irrespective of your political positions in these current times, the government just functions that way. So I think the immediate concern is our economy is driven by the consumer. The consumer represents two-thirds of our GDP. Consumers are home, they’re grounded. And those businesses, restaurants, all the ones we’ve been talking about, those people are going to be hurt right away.

So the unemployment insurance, the understanding that they will continue to receive a paycheck. And if they do get furloughed or laid off, there will be an opportunity for them to access funds. I think that’s really important. The small and mid-size businesses, both through their local bankers and through government supported programs, have the ability to get the bridge loans and the funds they need to stay in business because again, depending on how long the health crisis exists is how deep the economic crisis is going to be and how quick we can ramp up.

How to Address the Unemployment Issues

So I would like to see more done addressing the unemployment issues. I know there’s talk about a thousand dollars to every family. Well, for those of us able to continue to work in our really financially solid companies, I would rather see that money directed to those people that are in need, the people that live in the hourly wage or the gig economy, the Uber drivers that you and I use on a regular basis, the waitresses at the place, the people that clean the rooms in the hotels for those of us that are business travelers.

I would like to see more energy directed towards ensuring those consumers can maintain their space in society. So when the opportunity to work comes back, they can slide back in without a devastating financial effect or the real promise of hunger in our country in places that we haven’t experienced it before.

So I’d like to see more directed towards consumer support and the ability to help small and mid-sized businesses. I think our big businesses got a big boost in the tax cuts and many of them chose to do a variety of things with that money these days. But they’ve got the wherewithal and the resources to take care of their own. And we really have to rally around, I think, our small businesses and more importantly, the people that work for them to help them get through this period of time because we’ll all have to recover through this together.

Business After the Coronavirus

Small Business Trends: What are the kinds of industries, from a small business perspective, may not come back?

Joe Galvin: Well, I think it’s not about segment but about individual businesses. Clearly in the restaurant business, that’s going to hurt. There are no small business airlines except for maybe some commuter retail, high-end jet kind of things and I’m not really going to worry about that. I think some of your manufacturers are going to get really hurt. Let’s assume now that China gets geared back up and let’s assume that you are somewhere in that supply chain.

Lean manufacturing is a great concept. Just-in-time inventory was super for the CFO trying to manage cash and inventory. But right now, you can produce as long as you have inventory and as long as your supply chain continues to function. So there will be a ripple, especially if you’re connected to China. But we saw a lot of the folks that were affected by the tariff wars that are still going on are the same people that are getting hurt now in the corona crunch.

There Will Be Some Business Fall Out

So I think there’ll be some carnage there, I call it the corona carnage. There’ll be some carnage there. But again, those businesses that have good solid relationships with their customers. I think you’ll be rewarded and punished going forward based on how you treat your employees during this period of time and how you treat your customers.

I personally am extremely pissed off at one of my most important travel partners, specifically because the way they treat a certain situation. And they will be subsequently punished on the other side of this. Just as another one stepped up for me big time and they’ll be rewarded.

So you’ve got to appreciate the fact that in loyalty with customers and with employees, your trust is based upon a history of interactions and is strongly influenced by the most powerful. And this is a paradigm shift. In a paradigm shift, everybody goes back to zero. Whatever you did before, whatever good guy credits or hero points you got, don’t matter. What have you done since this effect? So I caution people, I said think carefully about how you treat people, people that work for you and the people that use your product today, because memories are long and crises are short.

Businesses Need to Step Up

Small Business Trends: What about the kind of companies that had tattered reputations? And they earned those tattered reputations in the past, but at a time like this, step up. So I’m thinking like a Facebook. Facebook, we know they’ve had their issues, a lot of issues in the past, but they seem to actually really be stepping up in a real time of need right now. What do you think about them?

Joe Galvin: Well, again, we don’t know where the bottom is, so we don’t know how dramatic an impact this will be. So we’re all making guesses as we go down that slope.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Joe Galvin: But I think again, in a time of crisis, your most recent interaction tends to dominate interactions in a world before. Right now, if you’ve got a 20 year relationship with someone and then they go left instead of right during this time, you’re more likely to forgive them.

Picking Small Business Partners

If you’ve only done business with someone a couple of times or you don’t have a strong relationship or you said they had a not so good reputation to begin with, that’s where you start from. So yeah you might be able to help yourself. But again, once this passes, you fall back into those prior behaviors, you go right back to where you were. So it will be as short or as long term as the consistency of your behavior.

Small Business Trends: Amazon has done some really interesting things. They said, hey, we’re going to hire 100,000 more people and pay them a couple bucks more per hour to help in the fulfillment centers. And then they also said that they are going to, and this is kind of on the small business side, if you are not selling items that are deemed to be necessities, essentials, don’t send them into the fulfillment center because right now we’re focused on streamlining the process of getting the things that people need to them. So that’s kind of a hardship on small businesses, but for the greater good from a customer perspective, how does small businesses view Amazon at this point?

Joe Galvin: Well, I think for those that are tied up in that ecosystem and sit outside those essentials, it’s a big worry because now your business is on hiatus. If you’re a digital business tied to this digital platform and they said, look, your stuff’s not going on the digital shelves these days.

How Digital Business Is Changing

That’s obviously going to be a problem. The question is how long will that last? I mean, quite frankly, our online shopping behavior probably hasn’t altered that much. I mean, there are things that we’re ordering that do we really need to order that now? But again, by ordering that you’re putting money into the economy and you’re doing consumer spending.

Small Business Trends: Right.

Joe Galvin: A couple of other thoughts too that triggered is if this had happened 20 years ago before Amazon, before Facebook, before the internet, think how crazy this would be.

Small Business Trends: Wow.

Joe Galvin: Right? And even another thought too we had is if this were occurring in November when it’s getting darker and colder… Now the southern hemisphere, it’s going the other way obviously. But now it’s getting lighter and warmer. Could you imagine how much darker this might be? So I think it speaks to one that our humanity has stepped so far forward into digital and into technology that we’re much better to ride this out and to be able to achieve some level of normalcy and understanding.

What Else Do You Need to Know?

Small Business Trends: So what are one or two things that maybe we haven’t talked about that you’re hearing from your small business executive membership that is still on their mind or is still pressing on them that maybe it’s below the surface that we aren’t hearing about in the media?

Joe Galvin: One of the things we have in Vistage, we have our networks, which allows members across the country, around the world to communicate in digital platforms. And we’ve been mining those and listening to those and created a coronavirus network specifically to help our members communicate beyond their local groups. And we’re starting to see questions now come out about how do I deal with customers, right?

My customers are asking for a deferment or they’re canceling or they’re saying, look, I can’t pay you for 90 days. So again, your customers will reward or punish you based on how you behave. So how do you now answer those customer questions, right?

How to Manage a Distributed Sales Force

Do you come to your customer and say pay me or go in default, or do you work through that? Or if you’ve got a sales team that used to work in a big call center and dial for dollars and high five each other rallying up every day and now everybody’s at home. How do you manage that distributed sales force?

And then as you get a little bit deeper into this say, well, hey, I couldn’t make my quarterly call. I couldn’t make my quarterly bonus goal because nobody’s buying. All those proposals, those companies that got the fiscal year of March 31 and they’re waiting for that big fourth quarter hockey stick. Thanks for playing. That kind of stuff isn’t going to happen. So how are you going to recalibrate on the sales side and on the customer side?

And there’s a lot of energy on the finance side and we touched on that with the SBA program, HR 6201, and some of the other things that people are doing on the finance side. But I think there’s a big talent issue that goes on. We had just… February unemployment was at 3.5% effectively full employment. And the talent wars were the top raging issue. And you know what, there’s a truce in the talent wars right now, right?

What to Do About Hiring?

Some people are continuing to hire, but most people are saying, you know what, I’m going to hold off right now because I just don’t know. Right? Some companies are going to have to release people and people who are good employees are now going to be free agents in the market.

And as I said, once we get through this and we get to the other side and we start to climb out, you’re going to see a reverse game of musical chairs where everybody’s going to be walking around but instead of chairs being taken away, more chairs will be added every day. As restaurants want to scale up, manufacturers want to scale back up. And they’re going to go back to their employees who they had to let go. And if they treated them right on the way out, they’ll come back.

Joe Galvin: And we know a lot of people stay in their job just because it’s easier to stay in your job, but once you’re out, you’re out. And again, you’ll be rewarded or punished based upon how you created your culture leading up to this. How you execute on your culture, is it consistent with what you’ve said?

Or did you have a culture that said employees first and now you’re behaving exactly differently. And will you be rewarded on the backside for that? Because, again, we’ll get through this at some point in time. There’ll be greater pain for some sectors than others. But when you get to the other side, the decisions you make today will have a big standing about how long and how hard it is for you to climb out and then what that new normal is going to look like.

This article, “Joe Galvin of Vistage: Life After The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Be Different For Small Business” was first published on Small Business Trends

source https://smallbiztrends.com/2020/03/business-after-the-coronavirus.html

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[underachievers-please-try-harder]

Interview // Eleanor Friedberger

I interviewed Eleanor Friedberger for 7digital.

Your last album was partially inspired by your move from Brooklyn to upstate New York, and Rebound was also influenced by a change of environment, right?

Yeah. I mean, before trying to sit down to write anything I think it’s really valuable to immerse yourself in a new state of mind. Having a different country or city certainly helps. So I spent about two months in Athens last year.

Did you head there specifically for inspiration?

No, I went because after the presidential election in the US I really wanted to get out of the country for a bit. (Laughs) I mean, I wanted to go somewhere else to start writing and I had always wanted to spend more time in Athens. My mother’s Greek-American and I’ve spent a lot of time in Greece, but mostly on beach holiday-type visits, and when I’d arrive into Athens it would usually only be for a night or two. I hate using such a generic word, but there’s a very special atmosphere and energy there. I wanted to take some Greek lessons, which I did, and I thought that I would also write songs for the album. It turns out I didn’t do much writing but I did a lot of research, and I also met a bunch of musicians and formed a band while I was there, and played a few shows, which was very valuable.

It’s interesting you say you left after the presidential election. Were you surprised by the result?

Yeah, I was definitely in that camp of total shock and horror. I had been travelling so much that year and I was away the night of the election – I was in Tel Aviv in Israel, of all places, doing a gig, and then in Rome the day after that. It was such a strange feeling to be so far away from home and yet still be so upset. I felt incredibly alienated, and I wanted to try to capture that feeling somehow on an album.

You’ve described your trip to Greece as a reconnaissance mission. How so? What did you take away?

Well I have a few specific anecdotes, like going to this nightclub that was called Rebound. For me it encapsulated all the problems, and then also the glamour and ruined fabulousness, that is Athens to me. The neon sign, with the lightbulb that’s been out for God knows how many years. There’s a no smoking sign but when you go downstairs everyone is smoking. There’s music that you think is familiar that could be The Cure or Joy Division, but then you listen more closely and you can’t understand any of it...

I also met a lot of Greek musicians, and it was a nice treat to remember that you can just form a band with anybody. But I also felt a particular sense of pride getting to play with other Greek people, because I’m half-Greek. It was funny to suddenly to be in a band and to look around onstage and see people that could be my brothers and my cousins. (Laughs) It made me feel a sense of belonging in a very foreign place. And Greece for me has this perfect balance of foreign and familiar.

In terms of taking something away... I grew up in Chicago and I went to university in Austin, Texas, so for me that was almost as far away as I could go in a sense. It was like moving to another country. And then I moved to London when I was 22 and again that was a huge change. I try to do that sometimes. It’s just the feeling that you get from going somewhere with just two suitcases and feeling like you’re a foreigner in a strange land, and then how quickly you assimilate to that place and how quickly you can make that place your home... That process is really exciting to me and I would do that every couple of years if I could.

You left the US because of political turmoil, but the political climate in Greece is hardly idyllic.

(Laughs) No, in fact it’s far more complicated and worse in a lot of ways. But because this is such an ongoing crisis, economically speaking, things had actually settled down a bit when I went there. But still, I went to a place where there are protests and marches certainly every week, if not sometimes more. I think a lot of people find [protests] just part of the daily fabric of life there in a way, which is kind-of comforting in a weird way. But you’d see instances, like a garbage collectors strike happening during a heatwave, like, literally just piles and piles of garbage on a 100 degree day, for days and days. Those are stark reminders, like, “Something’s not quite right here.”

Speaking of protests, did you attend any of the women’s marches?

I did. During the first women’s march, I met up with another American woman who I’d just met in Athens and there was a very small gathering outside the US Embassy in Athens, but I’m glad that I did that. It was really funny because we didn’t really know what we were doing, and moments later there was this very well organised march of Greek people just protesting the election of Trump in general. (Laughs) So it completely superseded us. But then this past year when it was the one year anniversary of the initial women’s march, I was in Los Angeles and I was glad that I got to attend that.

So what was your starting point for Rebound?

For me it was an instrument I bought. I kinda got it as a joke: I just walked into a music store and there was this late 70s Casio keyboard that was really beautiful and I just turned it on and messed around with it for five minutes, and thought, “Oh, I’m going to buy this. Even if I write one song with this it will be worth the price.” And I took it home and it became my new best friend, and I ended up writing loads of songs on it. It had a built-in drum machine with different drumbeats, and you could also use the automated basslines, so I ended up making up all these songs, writing melodies on the keyboard with my right hand and then making up lyrics after the fact. And I would just build these parts of songs and put them together.

Did you have any musical reference points?

Mostly as a reaction to my last album, I wanted to make something where it sounded like I was taking my time a bit more. I wanted to make something that sounded kind-of cinematic and meditative, and more like a soundtrack to an unmade movie or something. And have it be more artificial-sounding, in contrast to my last album which was really warm and organic, and about five people playing in a room together.

I mean, originally I thought I wanted to make something that sounded really harsh and angry and aggressive with loud guitar feedback and me trying to scream. But maybe I’m not capable of that kind of music? It’s interesting as to what you set out to do and what comes out. It’s like, I always think about copying certain things and then in the process of copying something you come out with something totally new and hopefully unique.

Recording this album was a more solitary process than previous records. Was that challenging?

Well the challenges are that it’s only up to you, and you can only do as much as you’re capable of doing, but the rewards are, “Oh my god, listen to this f**king guitar solo I just played! I didn’t even know I could play guitar.” Playing guitar leads was the most exciting thing to me, and that’s the kind of thing that I would never have given myself. I have no problem paying someone to play on my record, saying, “Can you do something like this?” I enjoy that process of producing and directing someone else, but I would be embarrassed to get someone to record me trying to play the same thing on the guitar 50 times, which is maybe what I had to do on some of these songs.

Do you have someone you use as a sounding board?

Not really. By the time I show songs to someone I’m pretty confident about them being right, though obviously things will change. But actually when I was long-finished with the demos I played them for my friend Bradford Cox, who’s in a band called Deerhunter. He did say, “This is s**t,” about one song in particular, like, “Nobody needs to hear this.” Which I took to heart. (Laughs) I mean, he was also playing me some demos and I would say, “I don’t like this, I like that.” To be fair, the first thing I played him he was like, “This is perfect. You don’t need to change a thing.”

You said you wrote music first and lyrics second – is that different to how you’ve worked previously?

Yes, for me that was a big difference. Normally I start with all these scripts almost, and then set them to music and this was the opposite. But I went through a similar process when it came to actually writing the words, which was just several months being conscious of writing things down that interest me, whether that’s something somebody said or something I see on the street, or a text message, or something in an email. With the title ‘Nice To Be Nowhere’, someone said that to me about four or five years ago, and I was like, that’s gonna make a good piece of something some day.

On ‘Make Me A Song’ you draw on an encounter you had with a born again Christian, right?

I think that song is about a lot of things, but mostly about having expectations and then having them be completely turned on their head. I think it’s always really interesting when you think somebody is one thing and it turns out they’re something completely different. And in that case, I was in a foreign place and I met someone new and I’m having a nice time and then suddenly they’re telling me, “I love Jesus. Jesus is my best friend. I write songs for Jesus.” And then they try to convince me to do the same thing. And I don’t mean to say it as a judgemental thing. I was trying to keep an open spirit to that, but of course I did think, “This guy’s a f**king freak.” But in hindsight he helped me write a song. (Laughs)

Four albums into your solo career, do you think you’ve learned anything new about your outlook or your capabilities?

I would say it’s always little by little, you know. I definitely feel more confident in knowing what I’m doing, but at the same time because this album was done so much by myself – and then I went to Clemens Knieper’s studio in the end – I’d never second-guessed an album as much as I did this one. I feel like the more you know, the more critical you are so there’s that double-edged sword of being more competent but also being less secure in a way. Sometimes I think it’s a sweeter spot to be naive.