#18 error messages was my record for today

[nessutus]

That Tumblr experience

[mochiroreo]

Oh goodie! Pt. 2 [smile, you’re on camera]

18+ MDNI

Pairing: (Dark)Older!Eddie Munson x innocent!nerdy!reader (afab!reader) x (Dark)Older!Steve Harrington

Summary: being a latchkey child, you are used to being alone. So when your parents announced that your whole family is moving to Hawkins, you paid them no mind and just packed up your bags. What you are not expecting was that the house that your family just bought comes with two neighbours that are in dire need to have you in any way.

Word count: 10.9k (I stopped myself AAAAA)

Trigger warning (for this chapter): a

DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT. NONCON. Manipulation. Gaslighting. NON CONSENSUAL DRUG USE. 100% FILTH. Obssession. MEAN STEDDIE. Non-consensual recording. Fingering. Squirting. Tiddy sucking. Unprotected P in V (wrap it before you tap it please) age gap. Hidden relationships. Spanking. Overstimulation. She/her pronouns. Pet names (no use of y/n).

Author’s note: thank you so much for the support on part 1! Never have I ever thought that my first ever smut fic would get this much love! As always, I am still learning on how to write fics and stories in general, you guys don’t have any choice but to learn with me hehe. English is not my first language, so forgive me if there are any grammatical errors or typos! This was also non-beta’d oops. Love lots! 💖

You woke up snug on your blanket and plushies, your eyes adjusting to the sunlight.

You slowly sat down, looking around to realize that you’re just in your room which made you confused on what happened. Your eyes felt tired from crying as your mind went back to the events last night. You remember how Steve’s thick fingers felt hot on your skin, on your thighs, in between your legs. And how he pumped them in and out of you in an unforgiving pace. How Eddie’s strong,firm, tattooed arms held you while playing with your breasts with his mouth.

Your face immediately went hot with all those vivid details, your legs closing in instinct with the sudden surge of emotion while your heart beats loudly in your chest. It felt so wrong to you that it made your skin crawl. So wrong that you’re afraid it might have already ruined your blossoming neighbourly relationship with them. Your eyes were tearing up as you blame yourself for letting it get out of hand. For letting yourself be held by them. The guilt slowly eating you up. You held your face and tried to breathe in and out as you tremble, trying to get out of your bed.

Slowly walking outside of your room, you peek left and right to make sure that you’re alone. Making your way downstairs, you have noticed how you’re now wearing a pair of pyjamas. With your stomach grumbling, you headed straight to your kitchen for a glass of water while thinking what you can cook, convincing yourself that you cannot be sick while wallowing in guilt. Putting your glass on the countertop, you noticed some take away boxes with a sticky note.

“Hey princess,

We hope you’re feeling fine. We bought you some food, so please eat up once you wake up. We’re working overtime today and this week in general, so we won’t be around much. We wanted to give you space either way.

Here’s our number if it gets too much. Don’t forget to message us when you wake up.

Love,

Steve & Eddie xx”

At the bottom of the note, both their numbers were scribbled with hearts around it. The note would’ve made you smile, if it weren’t for the emotions that you’re feeling. You held the containers of food and just decided that you’re not hungry anymore, putting them away inside the fridge. You held the note in your hand, planning to throw it away before deciding against it. Putting it inside your pocket.

The feeling of guilt wasn’t just about you doing the sexual acts. You’re pretty sure that your friends have done so much more, the constant gossip of ‘who slept with who’ and ‘how long did they last, or did you last’ was around you since you were 16, though remaining ignorant on the actual deed. The amount of romance books with detailed scenes about sex made up for your lack of experience, though its “vanilla” like what they’ve said. It doesn’t bother you one bit, though it does make you redder than red with how oblivious you still are when it comes to the real thing. No prior experience till now.

What bothers you is that how out of all people you could have done it with, you did it with the neighbours that was just planning to help you and look out for you. At least, that’s what you think. Your mind is telling you that it's your fault, not theirs even though at the back of your head, someone is telling you that it is indeed their fault... Seeing how your parents even trusted them to look after you while they’re out of town, you never doubt your parents' judgement, so you know that it’s only your fault. Your mistake. You gripped your hair out of frustration, ignoring the gnawing feeling of self-pity laced with confusion if what happened last night was wrong even though it felt right. You took a deep breath, running your hands on your face with a sigh.

Your mind is racing on how they would look at you now. You’re scared that they might tell your parents how you acted towards them when they were just trying to help you out. You can’t help but think that maybe its okay to text them, before deciding not to cause you really don’t know what to say to them.

You took a warm bath, ignoring the shivers while you wash yourself. Memories from last night just won’t leave you the whole day. Biting your bottom lip, you sighed while breathing in the scent of strawberries and honey from your body wash and hair products. The day went by with you feeling down, feeling as if not only did you disappoint your parents, but you have also taken advantage of Steve and Eddie’s kindness. Wearing a pair of comfy pyjamas, you’ve let your mind rest and drifted off to sleep, telling yourself that you’ll be avoiding Steve and Eddie at all costs for now. You do not want them to get an idea of you taking advantage of them or their kindness, of disappointing your parents even further if word comes out. You do not want to feel the confusion of it all again.

Eddie and Steve did not like it at all.

They did not like it one bit. Steve watches Eddie pace back and forth, constantly checking his phone before looking at Steve, working on his laptop, which only made the man sigh. “No message, Eds.” Steve calmly says, showing his phone screen. Eddie groaned in frustration before letting out loud series of swear words. “Fuck! She’s been avoiding us, Steve! It's almost one week!” Eddie’s chest is slowly heaving, his wifebeater barely containing his taut chest with how fitted it is to him. He took several deep breaths, stretching his arms before sighing and taking a sit on his armchair sofa. Inked arms flexing as he took hold of the sides of the chair before ruffling his soft locks in madness.

Steve dropped by to his house when he noticed that all the lights in your house are off except your room. He just finished his jog when he went past your place, dressed up in grey sweatpants and a fitted shirt. He knocked on Eddie’s door to let the other know that you’re trying to avoid both of them based on how you did not reach out. Eddie immediately threw a tantrum, thinking that what happened last week was enough to somehow show you how they wanted you. How much they needed you. Steve pushing the idea that you are made for them.

They sat side by side, Eddie passing Steve a blunt which he gladly accepts. Taking a deep breath, Steve blew the smoke upwards, the weed easing his and Eddie’s nerves. Steve has never been that much vocal compared to when he was younger. Sure, maybe in bed or when he is having fun in genral. But never when he’s mad now, which made him harder to read throughout the years. And in Eddie’s eyes, that’s what made him a tad bit scarier than him. Steve calls it “emotional maturity”, Eddie calls it “manipulative asshole 2.0”, thinking that he’s the 1.0 version.

They know that they’re spiralling down towards this obsession towards you. That magnetic pull when they opened the door and found you, its like what they’ve been unknowingly wishing for all throughout. They’re very much aware that if people knew, they’ll frown and get disgusted with how perverse their actions are, but they’re pretty sure that even their friends, Jonathan and Billy, would get where they’re coming from. You are just so— divine. Perfect in every way in their eyes. Your shyness, the soft timbre of your voice, the way you swoon under your parents’ touch when they praise you for being such a good girl— just the air that you breathe makes them drunk enough to constrict their air flow. You fit flawlessly on the gaps they didn’t know they have.

“I have a feeling she’s confused. Guilty, even. Pretty sure that’s what been running inside that pretty little head of hers.” Eddie spoke, taking a deep breath to feel the high immediately. “I think she needs to smoke some weed.” He joked, eyeing Steve. Steve’s eyes widened a bit before changing position and seating down the couch in a more comfortable manner.

“Do you still have some goods on you, Munson?” Steve asked him with hazy eyes, ashing the blunt. Eddie looked at him with a scoff, pouring the both of them some whiskey in a glass. His ring-clad fingers clacked on the bottle and the glass when he grabbed it to offer one to Steve. “I’m a fucking changed man, Harrington.” He smirked, taking a drink and feeling the burn of the whiskey down his throat.

“I know, but do you still have some on you?” Steve rolled his eyes, also taking a sip of his alcohol. “What do you need? I can get it from some of my friends at the other side of town, where me and the band used to play.” Steve gave the other a smile, taking another hit. “Can you get some Ketamine? You decide how much.” The long-haired man looked at Steve with confusion before it clicked when Steve just gave him a knowing look. A loud cackle left Eddie’s mouth, the gears in his mind slowly clicking as he connects the dots of Steve’s ideas. They both salivate at the thought of having you, knowing how their actions are crossing the borderline of obsession without the guarantee of going back once they have a proper taste of you.

And it looks like they don’t even have the plan of going back.

Your parents came back briefly from their trip, your face glowing as you watch them tell you about their latest ventures and things that they got you as it reminded them of you. You swallow down the urge of telling them the events, basking in their smiles and comfort when they praised you on how you’re so understanding of them, at the same time apologising for being barely beside you. You shake your head with a smile, before giving them each a peck while saying how much you love them and how happy you are already by seeing them come home.

Running down the stairs when your mom called you, you did not notice that Steve and Eddie were present, talking to your dad while having some beer at the dining table. Your smile slowly faltered, replaced with with wide eyes laced with embarrassment. Steve heard your steps, looking at your direction before Eddie followed. They both gave you a warm smile, your dad doing the same. “Peach! They were just telling me how you are such a good girl for not giving them a headache when they were looking after you. Cannot thank these men enough, makes me feel at ease knowing that there’s an adult figure around you while me and your mom’s out and about with work.” You dad exclaimed with a smile, giving both men with a pat on the back. “Just tell me when one of you gentleman feels like going on a date, I can hook you up with one of my single friends or colleagues.” Your mom teased, giggling at her statement.

You faked a smile, nervously fiddling with the ends of your skirt. You don’t get why they would lie about them looking after you when you are sure that they know you did not step outside your house the whole time your parents are gone. But you are also thankful that they haven’t mentioned anything to your parents. You focused your gaze on your house slippers, before trying to block out their conversation. You feel Eddie’s eyes follow you as you go through your fridge, grabbing a pint of ice cream and a spoon before sitting down at a bar stool at the kitchen counter. “Mom, what did you call me for?” Asking her with your mouth full of ice cream, she only laughed at you before grabbing a napkin and wiping the sides of your mouth. The action made you smile, scrunching your nose to which both men ound adorable, hoping they would be the ones to do it soon.

“Me and your dad might need to go back at our old house to sort the deed and for smoother transitions of our jobs. Apparently, something wasn’t filed properly in regard to our old property. While some files are missing from our old office, so me and you dad is thinking that maybe we can sort it out the sooner the better.” She explained, a melancholic expression writte on her face as she watches your expression change. “Oh...” you muttered “but there’s going to be a storm, they say.” You tried to reason out.

“I know honey, which might make this trip longer. Like our previous trip overseas.” your chest felt heavy, resisting the urge to cry and telling her your mistakes, you just gave her a small smile with a nod. Your mom smiled back, before whispering a series of apologies.

Steve watched the whole interaction, eavesdropping. As a latch key child himself, he’s happy that despite being your parents being barely there, they never shied away from showing you affection and assurance even though it's not always enough. He keeps his emotions at bay, because even though he is at awe, he is also annoyed at you. Annoyed at how you’re acting that nothing happened that night. At how you refused to leave your house, not even texting them when they gave you their number. Since that night, all Steve thought about was how you tasted. How it engulfed all his senses. He kept on telling Eddie how sinful you tasted even though the other guy had his share as well.

You felt Steve’s burning stare, meeting his eyes when you looked up. You felt your cheeks heat up, before putting your head down. Eddie’s laughter is ringing throughout the kitchen, telling your parents some wild stories about his youth. You excused yourself after knowing when your parents will leave once again, eyes planted onto the floor the whole time you’re walking towards your room.

For you, the nights are getting colder and lonelier. Trying to stop the wobbling of your lip as you’re close to crying, you bit you bottom lip before wiping your eyes.

There was a faint knock on your door while you were reading a book inside your room. Fixing your glasses, you looked up before answering “come in”. Your door slowly opened, revealing Steve and Eddie. Steve looks dashing, wearing his usual black office slacks, a grey button-down shirt with the top two buttons undone. Eddie wearing his black leather jacket, fitted top underneath with his black ripped jeans.

Your eyes widened a little, taking them in and how they look so good every time you see them before distracting yourself with the book in front of you. “H-hi?” They barely heard your greeting as you put your book down, fixing your glasses while avoiding their stares. Their stares felt heavy, making your palms clammy and sweaty with the sudden nervousness you’re feeling as memories from weeks before came back. Both of them looked around your room, both thinking how adorable you decorated it. Pink walls decorated with pastel blue trinkets, fairy lights, tons of plushies with some books littered all over the carpeted floor.

“Can we talk, sweetheart?” Eddie asked, his brown doe-eyes focused on you, face laced with concern. Steve just gave you a small smile, looking around your room more before his eyes landed on the unfinished shelves. He took a mental note on how he can help you with your room soon.

You nodded your head obediently, motioning for them to come in as you push 2 stools towards them. “I’m sorry, I don’t usually have guests inside my room. Do you want to seat on my bed instead?” You asked them in a hushed tone, intimidated with how big of a contrast they are to your room. Eddie softly chuckled, moving both stools so they can sit directly in front of you. Both of them sat down, their huge frames struggling to even sit comfortably. “No no, this is alright. Quite comfy.” Eddie joked, making you giggle before taking a seat.

“I—“ you started, grabbing a plushie beside you while you try to ease your nerves. “I uhm— i’m sorry.” You softly whispered, looking up to Eddie and Steve with shy eyes and flushed cheeks, looking fill of remorse. This took both of them off-guard, expecting you to tell them to fuck off or how you’ll tell your parents about what they did. Taking a shaky breath, you continued “I-I really did not want to— I swear I did not mean it to h-happen. Y-you’re just trying to help cause my mom and-and daddy— they know you’re both kind and I did that but— but it felt so good, and I don’t know why” you try to explain while your eyesight gets blurry, lips forming into a pout while your brows furrowed in frustration while you pour your heart out.

Eddie’s breath hitched, while Steve took a deep breath. “Sweetheart, you did nothing wrong.” Leaning in, Steve answered in a hushed voice, not wanting your parents to come in after telling them that him and Eddie will just have a quick chat with you to see if you’re fine with them looking after you. “It felt good, right?” The older man asked to which you nod your head before whispering “yes.” “It’s not wrong, baby.” Eddie looked at your face, your eyes red while you sniff. “Baby, look at me” his voice dipped lower, giving Steve a quick side eye. “It wasn’t wrong, okay? It felt good, it felt so good. And you liked it, didn’t you?”

You tried to hold your stare while feeling so embarrassed, you only nodded. Steve tsk-ed, shaking his head “words, baby. Come on.” God, the room was suffocating. With such heavy stares, the air felt thick and as if trying to close in on you. Your mind is reeling on all the emotions that are so new to you that you don’t even know what is happening, and what words are coming out of your mouth. Every breath they both take; you feel on your skin. Their close proximity is leaving you no room to have clear thoughts on what they’re even saying to you.

“Yes. F-felt good. But— but I don’t know. Its still wrong..” Closing your eyes in frustration, you try to clear your thoughts even though its invaded by Steve and Eddie’s silhouettes. Steve looked at you in awe, mischievousness glinting in his eyes while he takes you in. He knows you’re fighting yourself. He knows you are having an inner turmoil on what the heck is happening and how things are progressing. He knows that even though the guilt is slowly consuming you, you wanted it to happen again.

Eddie watched you take deep breathes, his mind reeling on how you look so delectable while you consider what is even happening with you and how they’re playing with you. Like Steve, its evident to him that you were trying to stop the unseeable force that pushes you towards them. He wanted to run his fingers over your whole body. His eyes started travelling lower before he stopped himself and spoke again.

“What about this, we will give you some time to think about what happened. It’s a lot, we know it sweetheart. So, just put it aside for now, okay? As long as we know now about what you thought about it. As long as you don’t push us away.” The statement made you gasp slightly, shaking your head “oh no-! I-I would never!” You looked at them with wide eyes, slightly panicking that you just gave them the idea that you will be ignoring them even. Steve just chuckled at how cute you are, his hand now finding your arm while he rubs it up and down gently. The touch made your insides gooey, oddly liking the warmth of his palm.

“Now that we’ve got that sorted. How about you come to our place for dinner, when your parents leave?” Steve continued his actions, watching how your face slowly shows doubt. Before you can even answer, he continued while tucking some strands of your hair behind your ear “you know, we thought it would be a nice chance to get to know each other more. Some nice dinner meal to ease your shyness around us. Kind of like a sleepover, somehow.” He looked straight to your eyes, smiling.

And when Steve gave you a tender smile, your indecisiveness disappeared, finding yourself nodding before answering and accepting their offer. Eddie and Steve gave you a quick hug, before leaving your room. You stood in the middle of your room awkwardly, holding both of your cheeks on your hands.

“Wednesday.” You whispered to yourself, looking at your calendar “2 days after mom and dad leaves.”

20 minutes early.

You are 20 minutes early, standing awkwardly in front of the massive black oak door that you feel like will eat you one of these days. This is the first time you’ve visited Eddie’s house. Looking at his house with amazement on how gothic and mysterious his house looks like overall, the complete opposite to Steve. You love how the blacks and reds are evident on every exterior part of the house, even his garden, that you’re pretty sure the inside of his house would be the same. The metal dragon decorations kind of intimidating you.

You took a deep breath, adjusting your glasses and your knee-high socks. You went over your outfit in your mind once again, figuring that if you don’t like it anymore, you can always run back home, and change given that you’re early either way. You’re wearing a pink checkered skirt, paired with knee high socks that has some lace at the end while wearing a thick platform loafer shoes. You chose a cream cardigan, leaving the top and bottom buttons unbuttoned that fits your simple make-up and your low pig tails.

Shaking off your anxiety, you scold yourself on how you’re overreacting as if you’re going on a date with them when in fact its just going to be a friendly dinner. You ignore the dreadful gut feeling that you kept on getting throught the days leading up to the said dinner, repeating to yourself that everything will be fine and you’re with the adults that your parents trust either way.

Easing the nervousness out of you after a 5-minute pep talk, you gain the courage to finally press Eddie’s doorbell which made your insides queasy. The seconds dragged by as if they’re hours, thinking that maybe you should run back home now and text them that you have a stomach-ache or the flu. You were seriously considering it before the door opened, revealing Eddie in a loose metallica shirt and a black denim short that shows off more of his pale,tattoed skin. His pretty brown eyes widened as he open his arms for a quick hug to which you shyly gave him. “Oh sweetheart, look at you. So pretty.” His eyes scanned your whole body, loving how his flattery dusted your cheeks pink. “Mr. Munson, please.” “What did I say? Call me Eddie.” You giggled shyly, playfully giving his shoulder a shove.

You look fucking delicious in his eyes, how your whole existence is begging him to ruin you on the spot. The pigtails, the fucking skirt that he is pretty sure will show your ass to them if you lean over, and oh how your knee-high socks emphasise your thighs. You are perfect. Deliciously perfect for them to eat your innocence whole and not share it with the world.

Eddie’s smile widened, his name giving him goosebumps when you whispered it. “Just saying the truth,” he continued, guiding you inside his house. “Welcome to my humble abode” he gave you a quick tour on his living room, before finding your way towards the kitchen where you can hear someone moving around. “Is that our princess, Eds?” The nickname made you chuckle, scratching your nape embarrassingly while you walk towards Steve. “The one and only” the longer haired guy answered with a grin, pushing you softly towards Steve. Steve immediately swoons on how you’re dressed up, eyes wrinkling as he gives you the biggest smile. “Oh darling look at you! Is this all for us?” He cooed, giving him a playful shove like what you did to Eddie. Steve only chuckled, grabbing some plates to plate up the dinner he made. “I hope you’re a big fan of roast?” He asked to which you only nod.

Eddie grabbed some cutleries, motioning for you to follow him towards the dinner table. The table was decorated so beatifully, some red candles with gothic candle holders adorn the table making you gasp in awe. “These are like the ones from the book that I’ve read!” You exclaimed, clasping your hands together while Eddie laughs loudly at your reaction. “What type of books have you been reading, doll?” He playfully asks, pulling your chair out while Steve arranges your plate for you.

Their actions felt so domestic that you needed to pull your head out from the clouds and tell yourself that its just dinner between good friends and that they’re adults, they probably like women their age anyways. Women cooler than you. You were deep in thought before Steve served you a glass of juice and a glass of wine for him and Eddie. “Thank you for this” you tell them with a smile, sitting comfortably on your chair. Eddie just grinned while Steve waved his hand, telling you not to worry about it.

The dinner went too well that for the first time this evening, you weren’t feeling nervous or shy around them. You joked around while you tell them your hobbies, from baking to reading. Steve telling you how he wants to learn how to bake too, urging Eddie to tease him about his sudden decision about learning how to bake. Eddie told you briefly about his background, how he was in a band before earning a lot by being a producer and owning his own record store. Steve,meanwhile, told you about his job at his father’s company before making his own that handles sports and golf clubs. Your mouth was open the whole time, gasping and in awe on how they managed to accomplish so many things on their age to which they only shrugged before saying thank you with a humble smile.

You all moved to Eddie’s lounge room, after getting kicked out by the said man for trying to help with cleaning and washing the dishes. Steve told you about how him and Eddie met after they graduated highschool through common friends, even though they went to the same school. You asked him why, saying that he’ll tell you more about their highschool life once you warm up to them completely to which you just smile in an understanding way.

Eddie came to the lounge room, a bottle of whiskey in one hand while the other holds two glasses. He gently puts them on the table, looking at you. “So, we’ve figured out that since the night is still young, might as well drink a little. Do you want me to make you a cocktail, peach? I make some mean cocktails” Eddie gave you a smile, pouring some whiskey on his glass.

“Uhm I don’t know..” you answered, unconsciously fiddling with your fingers while you shift on your seat. “Aw, come on. It’ll be fun! Just to loosen up, nothing too hard.” Steve leaned in a bit, his smile tugging on your chest to say yes. You looked at Eddie that gave you just a smirk, tilting his head “anddd, your parents are not here. They won’t know, we won’t tell them. We promise. Scouts honour.” He held his left hand up, making you laugh “you’re not even a boy scout Mr. Munson— I mean, Eddie. But okay, fine.” You held your hands up in defeat, giving both of them a roll of your eyes, making Steve scoff while poking your sides saying how sassy you are; Eddie already gone to make you your sweet cocktail.

Eddie grabbed a margarita glass, quickly making work of a strawberry margarita while adding more strawberry puree on the mix to make it sweeter. He took a glance on where you and Steve are, making sure Steve is distracting you before sliding his hand on his back pocket to get a small baggie with a white powder. Putting in half of the bag on your drink before shaking it, he quickly puts it back on his back pocket before decorating your drink with fresh strawberries.

He went back to the lounge room, watching Steve laugh at your reaction when you took a big gulp on the whiskey. “Steve!” You cried before coughing, “you told me it will taste nice!” You pouted, huffing and crossing your arms while the bitter aftertaste of the alcohol lingered on your tongue. Steve only laughed harder, clutching his stomach “I did not tell you to drink almost half of it! Geez!” He wiped his teary eyes from laughing too hard, before calming down. Eddie sat beside you, handling you the pink concoction “Here you go mi lady, one strawberry margarita for you made by the best.” He boasted, giving Steve a side eye while the latter just returned it with a smirk, taking a sip of his almost empty whiskey.

“Are you sure this is sweet, Eddie? My first-time drinking alcohol and Steve made me drink a yucky one” you scrunched your nose in disgust, pouting to which Eddie cooed “trust me, I told you I will make you a mean cocktail. Drink slowly though, it might hit you too hard given that its your first-time drinking.” You eyed the margarita, before slowly taking a sip. Your eyes widened, a smile slowly creeping up your face “this tastes so so good!” You took more sips before giving Eddie a pat on the back “sorry for doubting you!” You giggled, loving the taste of the drink.

You hummed while drinking it, unaware of how both men are watching you while continuing your conversations with them. Unconsciously, you started talking animatedly about random topics about you, sipping you drink constantly as Eddie pours more to your glass. You just watched him while giggling, taking another sip. Time went by as all of you talked from one topic to the other then all of a sudden, you felt dizzy. Too dizzy for a 2 and a half glass of margarita.

You started fanning yourself, fiddling with your top as you try to remain seated and act that nothing is wrong. Biting your lip, you closed your eyes for a bit as another wave of dizziness washed over you, your heart racing while your body kept on getting hotter. You opened your eyes and held on to the couch, clutching it before letting out a soft gasp. “I-I don’t f-feel so good..” you whispered in a breathy way while looking at Steve. His face is holding an amused smirk as he watches you wriggle on your spot. “M-might’ve been... too— too m-much..” you slurred, slumping back to the couch as your fingers nimbly moved by itself, unbuttoning your cardigan to let your body cool. Eddie watched your movement, tongue licking his bottom lip at how you’re unravelling in front of them.

You started taking deep breaths, mind slowly leaving your body, feeling as if you’re melting onto the couch. Both men moved closer. Steve wiped your forehead, placing a tender kiss while your body is now covered in a light sheen of sweat. Eddie moved closer to your neck, leaving trail of soft, wet kisses. “Let go, baby. It’s alright, we got you. Want to see you crumble. Wanna see you break.” He whispered on your skin, making you whimper.

The whimper made Steve’s jaw slack, a deep growl erupting from his chest. “Let’s move her to the room,you got it all set up?” He asked Eddie, watching him carefully lift your body. “Of course.” Eddie smirked, his ring-clad fingers felt nice on your searing skin that you cannot help but mewl and chase the coolness,leaning more in his touch.

They placed you gently in the middle of the bed, Steve looking around to see if all cameras are working. They bought more just for this, thinking that one copy is not enough for them, they even bought an extra one that they can pass around so they can video you up-close. “U-ugh..” you kept on wriggling on the bed, your body trying to at least regain some control. You feel your body getting numb, though you kept on babbling while you cross your legs. There was a sudden urge that made your stomach tingle, wetness slowly dampening your cotton underwear.

The bed dipped, Steve and Eddie slowly removing articles of your clothing one by one which made you sigh in relief, the air and their fingers cooling your skin lightly. “Now baby, want us to help you? Its too much, isn’t it?” Eddie cooed, swiping his thumb on your bottom lip as you let out some soft gasps. He watches you try to answer, your pupils blown wide as you nod your head “y-yes.. yes.. too much f’me..” you whined, your eyes tearing up a bit. Steve grunted when you were left in your underwear, licking his lips nervously as his eyes darted from your bra to your wet cotton panties. “Fuck.” He murmurs, making Eddie look at you as well. “Its like she fucking knows” he laughed, his husky voice ringing in your ears.

Both men looked at each other, having an unspoken conversation. They know that once they do this, there’s no going back. The possible consequences if your parents find out, the judgement of other people, the guilt. Yet their desire and want for you overpowered all those thoughts, giving each other a firm nod.

Eddie unclasped your bra, letting your breasts spill free making him moan at the sight while Steve slid off your panties. His mouth salivated at the wetness, his long and thick fingers dipping slightly making you squirm while breathing heavily. Strings of your cum connected to his fingers before lifting it towards his mouth to suck it off. The action made Eddie’s cock harden, stripping himself off of his shirt and his jeans as Steve does the same, both men now kneeling on the bed only with their boxers.

“You want this, honey?” Steve asked, his hand holding your face as he grips it harshly making your eyes water. “Y-yes.. yes..” you mewled. Steve’s grip tightened slightly as his voice dipped “louder, honey. Need to hear it loud and clear.” His dominance made you shiver despite feeling like your soul left your body already. “Y-yes! Yes please—want it, want it.” You babbled, not even sure what you’re pleading about nor that you’re naked and at mercy of the two men you least thought would do this to you.

“Good girl.” Eddie praised you, following Steve on discarding his boxers. His hands grabbed the flesh of your thighs, spreading it to expose your cunt. “Fuck, look at how wet you are sweet girl... this is all for us yeah?” He asked, grinning from ear to ear as Steve moved away slightly to grab a video cam, recording your dripping pussy. “Come on, Munson. Time to show our sweetheart how good we can make her feel.” Steve urged, sitting behind you as he lifts you up a little, your back resting against his broad,hairy chest. You were boneless, easily maneuvered by them two. Your mind is foggy, watching Eddie’s head disappear between your thighs.

Eddie’s tongue gave your pussy tentative licks first, groaning at your sweetness. The vibrations went straight to your clit, making you moan. Steve held the camera directly pointing it at Eddie while he whispered to your ear. “That’s it, sweetheart. Moan for us, let us hear you.” His words made your pussy clench on nothing while Eddie eats you out. Heavy breaths from all 3 of you can be heard in the room besides the wet slick from how Eddie devours your pussy. His tongue going in and out as his thumb finds your clit to rub it in soft yet fast circles.

“Does it feel good, baby? Want us to do this to you since you met us, huh?” Steve nudged your head, waiting you to answer him. “Answer me, whore.” He commanded, making you cry out. “F-feel so.. feel so g-good I-I wan’ it s’bad feels nice s-so nice—“ your babbling got cut off when Eddie pushed one of his fingers in, not giving you enough time to savour it before he pulls it out, only to push it back in. It made you gasp softly as he adds another one, the feeling of his fingers and his tongue overwhelmed you.

You tried to close your legs, your eyes rolling back as you let moan after moan fall off your lips. “Fuck, you’re already losing your mind. Its not even our dicks yet!” Steve laughed, amused at how you’re wriggling under his hold while he flicks your nipple to make it hard under his touch. Eddie chuckled, continuing his ministrations. He is sucking harshly on your clit, flicking it occasionally while his fingers pump in and out of you. He felt you clench around his fingers, your thighs shaking while you cry out, feeling your cum coat his fingers.

Eddie groaned at the taste, lapping every drop before he moved his face away, fingers still inside you. “Such a naughty girl, did not even bothered to ask for permission before cumming.” He snorted, smacking your cunt with his other hand. Steve tsked in disapproval, pulling your head back by your hair, pigtails now ruined.

The harsh grip made you choke a sob, your scalp stinging at the action. Tears overflowed from your eyes, your eyesight blurry and out of focus. “We’ll let it slide for now, yeah? I forgot that sluts like you need to be taught first.” Steve saw your blown-out pupils, loving the control he had over you. He is vibrating with how much dominance he can exert over you, his blood pumping adrenaline all over his body knowing that they are the first ones that saw you like this. Held you like this. Breaking you like this. His cock is hard under you, slightly grinding it on your lower back for friction.

Eddie inserted his fingers into you once again, pumping it in a vigorous pace. You are now sobbing, trying to close your legs once again even though Steve is gripping both of your thighs wide open now. With your face scrunched in pleasure, you try to warn them that its too much even though you can’t form a coherent sentence. You felt a band snap inside you, before feeling something gush out of you. Eddie’s eyes widened, before continuing his actions. He started laughing darkly, continuing despite your slurred protest. “Shit! Did you see that, Harrington? We fucking got a squirter here!” He exclaimed, making Steve’s cock twitch. Eddie grabbed the camera with his other hand, zooming it in on your pussy as it squirts. He held his wet hand over your mouth as you struggle to catch your breath, pushing it inside your mouth. “Suck.” He ordered, watching you suck and clean his fingers messily.

You are far gone, your eyes glassy and blown while drool slowly build up on the sides of your mouth. Steve noticed how you don’t answer anymore, only mewls and moans kept leaving your mouth now. He gently dropped your torso on the bed, before positioning himself. “Eds— fuck— you gotta let me have her first man. I’m going to fucking explode.” A deep groan left his mouth, tugging on his cock to ease the dull pain of holding back. Eddie just sighed, tying his hair into a messy bun as he watches Steve collect some of your slick using his cock to lube himself. “Fine,” the elder mumbled, letting Steve grab your thighs to push it high once more, positioning it on a mating press.

Steve lined his cock on your entrance, watching your pussy clench in anticipation. Brushing his hair up with his shaky hand, not that his nervous. But the thought of corrupting you, fucking you first almost made him cum on the spot without being inside of you. He took a deep breath, eyeing your face as you look at him with unfocused eyes, propped up slightly with the pillows. He slowly pushed his huge cock in, watching your face contort in pain. Your hands moved a little, trying to grab his arms while you cry. Eddie held you, kissing your tear-stained cheeks. “Shh, it’ll be fine sweetheart. You’re taking Stevie so well.” Eddie whispered on your skin, hands playing and pinching your nipples to distract you from the discomfort. Steve kept pushing, inch by inch as he grinds his teeth.

You’re tight, too tight that Steve feels every part of your insides hugging his length. When he bottomed out, he released a breath, his forehead now graced with sweat as he waits for you to feel comfortable. Eddie, now sucking your breasts, playfully bit your nipple making you squeak and move your hips. Steve took this as a sign, pulling out until the tip before slamming back in, making you choke a sob. Steve moaned loudly, breathing ragged as he slowly find his pace. “Fuck,oh fuck— honey—“ he mumbled, his fingers gripping your thighs as if his life depends on it, dipping a little to fuck you in a deep angle.

His cock was hitting your cervix, his hips now snapping in an animalistic way that every thrust of his comes with a moan and strings of praises from him.

“Taking my length like a good girl”

“Yeah? Am I filling you up real good, princess?”

“Fuck, look at you. So fucked out. Your cunt is taking me so well like your fucking made for us.”

You only answered him with whines and moans, drooling from the pleasure that both men are making you feel. You answered every praise with a series of “ah ah ah” in rhythm with his every thrust, though a particular thrust made you cry out, nails raking over his arms as you try to hold him close. Steve chuckled, hitting the spot again. “Right there? God— you’re so beautiful.” He leaned in when Eddie backed away, his lips finding yours. Steve licked the sides of your lips to clean your mess slightly before slotting his on yours. He licked your bottom lip, making you open your mouth. Teeths clashing and tongues colliding, he savoured the feeling of your softness on his taste buds. Never have he felt on high like this for someone, the amount of pleasure doubled inside him. Your nails raked on his broad back as you try to hug him close, Steve’s head now burried on the side of your neck, leaving marks on your neck. You cry out in pleasure and overstimulation, face scrunched while feel your body chasing its high. Your climax hit you like a truck, sobbing as you feel your release while Steve continues to pound on you like a wolf in rut.

Eddie watched with envy and lust, tugging on his own cock to relieve some pressure while his other hand holds the camera to film you and Steve. His own patience wearing thin when he noticed the cream at the base of Steve’s cock while your thighs shake. Eddie wanted to shove his cock down your throat at the same time but held himself back knowing how oversensitive you might be to take them on both.

Steve groaned when he felt the stickiness of your release with every thrust, his hips slowly faltering, feeling himself close. “I’m so close honey— g-god you’re sucking me in so well. Want me to fuck you full, sweet girl?” Your hands gripped his arms again, trying to shake your head with how overstimulated you are. Steve only hissed, before pulling out of you to tug on his cock and spill his release on your stomach. He threw his head back, combing his hair while he spill every bit on you, watching it paint your stomach and chest. Your quivering thighs rests on the mattress, twitching slightly. Steve’s ragged breaths can be heard, smiling to himself. If this is how it feels every time he gets to taste you, then he will make sure that he gets to taste you every chance he gets.

With a sigh, Eddie pointed the camera on your wasted appearance. Eyes closed as your hair sticks to your forehead and skin wildly, lips red and slick with the amount of times you’ve bitten it out of pleasure, tears staining your cheeks in euphoria. Eddie held your face affectionately; his heart being squeezed in delight and softness as you open your eyes to look at him beneath your lashes. You leaned into his touch and sighed. The action made his skin heat up with want and need, letting go of the camera before holding your face between his hands to kiss you deeply. You softly hummed in the kiss, mouth quickly opening and letting Eddie explore every crevice of your mouth, his tongue toying yours as he slots himself in between you.

Eddie pulled away slowly, string of saliva connecting your lips as his hands explore every inch of you. His rough, calloused hands took its time with every curve as if savouring and burning it in his mind. Fuck his conscience, he wants you like this for him every time. When he felt your body relaxed under his touch, his lips found your sternum down to the vallety of your breasts, leaving trails of wet kisses and hickeys. Your hands found his hair, tangling your fingers as Eddie continues his actions. The slight tug of his hair when he sucked hard on your skin made his cock twitch, making him move away to flip you on your stomach.

He watched you relax on your forearms, eyes finding Steve as he sat down near the edge of the bed to watch you two. Body now relaxed as he took a quick smoke, eyes wrinkling as he smiles to the both of you. You just looked at him with hooded eyes, before you looked back at Eddie when you felt him slide his tip in your folds. “I’ll never get tired of this if this is what you look like every time you come undone.” He murmured, licking his bottom lip as he slowly inch his way in to you. Eddie’s eyes drinking how you back is arched deliciously, hands finding the curves of your waist to knead and grope.

The intrusion made you gasp, your eyes closing with the seansation once again. Eddie tried to pace himself knowing how rough Steve has gotten you, but the mixture of your cum and squirt, the tightness of your pussy and how it feels around him made it impossible. Once balls deep, he quickly found himself pulling back to his tip before slamming his hips onto you once again. The rough trust made you wantonly moan, gripping the sheets with your mouth agape.

It was a never-ending cycle of pleasure for you. Eddie’s hands now gripping your hips that he is sure will leave bruises on your skin, his balls slapping your clit as he gives you deep-fast thrusts to hit that one thing that makes you scream in need. You turned your head to the side, fresh tears now streaming down your cheeks, making Steve crawl towards you to wipe them away.

“Oh baby, such a perfect girl for us. Cannot ask for more.” He whispers in awe, soft lips kissing your heavy eyelids as you take every inch of Eddie’s cock, your nose scrunching in pleasure as Eddie finds your clit once again, this time rubbing it fast. He felt you clench on him, making his hips falter for a bit and a his felt out of his lips before continuing his punishing pace. You cry out as you feel him pull your hair, your puffy cunt gushing out slick because of the sting of his action, your walls crumbling down as your release shock you.

Eddie huskily moaned, cream forming at the base of his cock once more while you try to crawl away from him, feeling so spent and overstimulated, making his grip on your hips tighten to the point that you feel his rings kiss your skin. He continued abusing your g-spot with every thrust, his breathing heavier that earlier, chasing his own high that is so close he can feel it all over his body. “F-fuck— peaches I-I’m— I’m gonna cum on this fucking pussy— s-so fucking good—“

He spanked your ass, groping the flesh when it became red. He spanked it again and again, feeling you clench every time. His thumb ghosted slightly on your puckered hole, mumblig to himself how him and Steve will use it one of these days. The sensation made his breath hitch, hips coming to a still before he pulls out to tug on his cock and spill his every bit of his cum on your back, “fuck!” He loudly exclaimed. Eddie threw his head back, strings of curses falling out of his mouth. He slumped down on the bed, chest heaving to chase his breath, staring directly at your abused cunt that is dripping your juices. Your body gave up, laying down flat on the bed with your thighs slightly shaking.

Eddie and Steve looked at your tired form, chest swelling with a mixture of emotions. Guilt, pride, a certain affection and softness towards you. Now that they have you on their palms, yor taste on their tongue, they won’t let you go no matter what you say.

Both Steve and Eddie stood up. Eddie turning the cameras off and grabbing some boxers for him and his best friend. While Steve directly went straight to the bathroom to grab a wash cloth and ran it under lukewarm water to clean up the mess they made on your body. The men gently laid you on your back, your quiet snores can be heard as they clean you up and make you comfortable the best that they could, placing you in between them.

Steve slid his arm under your head while Eddie’s arm draped over your chest to give you a hug and cuddle you, “I know we planned this out but— I don’t think we can really let her go after this.” Eddie mumbled, sleep slowly crawling on his system while looking at you. Steve only chuckled, careful not to wake you up, combing his hair. “Me too. That was just— fucking phenomenal.” Both men knew that at that moment, they’ll have you any way possible and have every inch of you.

As the night settles, the cool air of Hawkins made its way to the room you all shared, where soft and steady breaths can only be heard while both men cuddled you. Steve’s thoughts ran at all the things that might happen when you wake up, while Eddie’s full of thoughts about how quickly their obsession with you is pulling them in deeper and deeper, yet both held no remorse for what they have done.

The sun rays were peeking through the room’s heavy maroon curtains, one particular ray shining across your face. You grunt, body slowly trying to twist into a more comfortable position while your head throbs. Trying to turn, you felt restricted with two set of arms holding you, making your body jolt to sit up. Your eyes immediately opened, ignoring the harsh sunlight and the throbbing pain of your head as you look around the room.

This isn’t your room. Too far from your usual décor. Your face slowly pales at the realisation, before you feel someone shift beside you. You looked down and saw a pair of familiar tattoed arms laid across your stomach, and a mop of chestnut hair resting on the other side. You felt both of their touches on your skin, making you look down and realising that you are naked. Its like a bucket of ice water was splashed against you, a gasp escaping your dried throat that almost choked you when your hands found its way to your mouth to cover the shock. You tried to wiggle out of their hold, the situation slowly sinking on you as you try to remember what brought you on the bed with them. You ignored Eddie’s soft grunts when you tried to move his arms away, trying to crawl out of bed as a wave of nausea hits you.

“Peach?” Eddie grunted, his voice low and deep, brown eyes slowly opening to look at you. Eddie’s voice made Steve shuffle close to your naked body, his voice laced with sleep when he noticed you sitting up “Sweetheart, come back to bed please.” He mumbled, rubbing his eyes when the sunlight hits him. You shook your head, a shaky breath escaping your lips as you successfully crawled out of the bed.

Your feet found the cold floor, your legs slightly trembling, taking notice of the slight stickiness between your legs which made you hold yourself. Quickly making your way towards the open door of the bathroom, you saw your reflection which made tears cascade on your cheeks and bile slowly rising up your throat.

Steve and Eddie quickly followed your form, clad in only their boxers. They stayed outside near the open door, watching you take yourself in the mirror. Your hair is dishevelled, hickeys littered across your skin. You looked down and saw some bruises near your hips and thighs along with some more marks that both men did. It made the bile rise up your throat quickly, flinging yourself towards the toilet bowl as you retched and vommited everything inside your stomach. Both men quickly went inside, Eddie holding your hair up while Steve rubs your back soothingly, not one of them saying a word.

Emptying more than what your stomach had, you sobbed loudly on their touch when Steve wiped your mouth gently with a cloth. Your mind is not comprehending what is happening, nor remembering how it became like this. You cried out in frustration as you think of the night before, always getting stuck on the part where you had drinks, making you cover your face in shame and guilt. “Shh, shh, come on honey. Let’s get you back on the room.” Steve softly whispered, helping Eddie guide your boneless form while you continue to cry.

You sobbed even when they were putting one of Eddie’s shirt on you and making you take some sips of water, your body feeling uncomfortably sticky. You have never imagined your first time like this. Losing your virginity like this. For you, you always thought that your first time would be with someone you dated for a long time that you cannot help but love them. Soft dances, gentle caresses and touches that won’t leave marks. All those romance books made you think that your first time should be a gift to the guy you’ll love for the first time as well. The shame of losing it this way made you sobbed harder, your heartbeat quickening as you get overwhelmed with all the emotions hitting you all at once.

Your train of thought was shattered when both of them kneeled in front of you, Steve rubbing soft circles on your thighs while Eddie holds your hand. “Breathe,baby. Breathe.” The older of the three of you whispered, brown eyes holding pity when you wipe your tears, looking through blurry eyes at the both of them. “Why..?” You manage to croak out, voice raspy and rough making you cough a bit.

Steve gave Eddie a quick look before he speaks “You wanted it, sweetheart. You told us last night.” He spoke gently, a pang of guilt hitting him when he said those words, but he knows that he needs to do this in order to have you fully. “W-what?” You mumbled in disbelief, “b-but I-I can’t remember last night—! I-I’m trying to but I c-can’t!” You cried out, hands gripping your hair in annoyance as you keep on trying to remember. “I-I lost my virginity this way when I— I told myself I won’t— this is wrong..” you told them, wiping your tears. The word made Eddie’s jaw tick in annoyance, Steve’s stare turning dark. “I-I’m sorry Mr. Harrington, Mr. Munson I-I— this is wrong— I m-must’ve been— this was a mistake I-I’m sorry.” You try to get out of their hold, planning to scramble your way out with your clothes on your arms but was cut off when Eddie stood up, his neck red as he try to control his emotions when you kept on saying that it was a mistake.

“Mistake?” He scoffed, crossing his inked arms over his chest as he looks down on you, the warmth pooling his brown eyes now gone. “Mistake? Sweetheart—“ he leaned down a little, watching you look up at him beneath your lashes. “You asked for it.” The deep timbreof his voice made your skin crawl, shaking your head in disbelief, looking down to meet Steve’s eyes that are now stern cold. “You did ask for it. In a sweet way too.” Steve answered with a smile not reaching his eyes, fingers fiddling with the frayed end of the shirt you’re wearing before he continues “Do you think we’ll do this if you did not ask?” Your mouth hanged open, stuttering with what they both said “I-I that’s— T-that’s not how I—“ you try to reason out, feeling your throat constrict in anxiety.

“Not how you what?” Eddie asked out of annoyance “not how you act when drunk? How would you know when its your first time drinking?” His harsh tone made you feel small, blinking your tears away. Steve only hummed, still kneeling in front of you. “Y-Yes! But- but I would not react that way— I-I know myself! I—“ you argued, looking frantically at both of them. Your stubborness made both of them sigh, Steve standing up suddenly to walk away and grab something.

Your eyes followed him, wearing only nothing but sweatpants. You noticed him holding a video camera, face now void of emotion before putting it on your lap. “Here ya’ go. Maybe this will refresh your memory?” You stared at him in confusion before looking back up at Eddie that only motioned for you to go on. “Open it.” He mumbled while your trembling hands try to figure out how to turn the video camera on. “Now press this one, the gallery.” Steve asked you to, hitting play after you follow his instructions. Your stomach churns in anxiety when the video immediately started.

Your eyes widened when you watched Eddie’s face disappeared between your thighs, your ears not believing that all the needy whimpers heard from the video came out of your mouth. “Yeah? You like that sweet girl? Told you, all you just need to do is ask.” Steve’s voice can be heard despite all your whimpers, Eddie chuckling when he moved away slightly to slide in his finger inside you, making you moan really loudly. The obscene noises you all made pricked your skin with goosebumps. The video continued, closing your eyes when you heard Eddie say “Shit! Did you see that Harrington?! We fucking got a squirter here!” And as you cry out on the video saying “more, please. P-please..”

Eddie noticed you closing your eyes, huffing before he took hold of your face. “Open your eyes and watch. See if you didn’t asked for it.” You felt helpless, only nodding while your lower lip tremble, trying to hold your tears in. Steve played the next video, the camera pointing towards your face and torso, tears evident as Steve pounded your pussy roughly. His harsh breaths and moans can be heard mix with yours. The camera focused on his cock going in and out of you, making Steve’s cock harden while he watch the video with you.

“God— you love being fucked like this don’t you?’ You only hummed as an answer in the video, making Steve thrusting into you deep. “What? I can’t hear you honey.” He teasingly asked, making you answer loudly “uh-huh! Wan’it!” You looked so fucked out in the video, arms holding him close when he leaned in for a kiss. Steve pressed next which played Eddie’s video, fucking you from behind. His rough hands spanking your meaty ass, watching it jiggle before groping it. You heard Eddie mumble when his thumb touched your ass hole “me and Steve will be using this soon, right doll?” You watched in disbelief till his cum painted your back, making you turn off the camera.

You did not notice that tears were streaming down your face again, looking at both men in disbelief while your mind screams at how disappointing you are. With a trembling hand, you handed them the camera while shaking your head. “N-no. No—“ you covered your mouth in shock before breaking down. Your whole body trembled, making Eddie sit down beside you like Steve. Both of them holding you close.

You don’t have the energy to push them away or deny their touches despite it bringing you an odd sense of comfort. Steve and Eddie held you for a few minutes which felt like house, waiting for your breathing to calm down. “Now that you’ve watched it, do you believe us now..? I told you, it wasn’t just us that wanted it. You wanted it first..” Steve whispered, tucking some strands of your hair behind your ear that sticked to your skin because of your tears. “You kept on begging us! I knew we should’ve took evidence of it from the very start, right Eds?” Steve asked the elder that is now resting his face on your shoulder. “Yep, should have recorded how clingy you were, how polite even. You mommy and daddy raised you right,huh?” The mere mention of your parents sent your mind into a frenzy, body shaking when you begin to sob uncontrollably again “Please! P-please don’t tell— don’t tell t-them please! M-mommy and daddy—!” You were slowly panicking, mind drifting that Steve held your face between his hands. “Oh honey, no. No, we won’t tell them. Cause now, you are also our good girl. Right?” His thumb wiped some of your tears away as you stare at him before turning your head slightly to find Eddie already looking at you.

“Mhm, should be our good girl if we don’t want you mommy and daddy finding out, huh?” Eddie huskily whispered on your tear-stained cheeks,making you gulp. Steve looked at you in anticipation, cocking an eyebrow waiting for an answer. You slowly nodded your head, head hurting from getting overwhelmed that your body doesn’t have the energy to go against too. “Words, honey. Use your words now, come on. Say that you’re our good girl forever and we won’t let your mommy and daddy find out” Steve’s voice was clipped, tone serious when he looked down on you. “Y-your good girl..” you mumbled, eyes looking down when you felt both of them grin.

It’s only morning but your body felt tired as if you’ve spent the whole day awake. Your mind too numb while you feel like the room closes in on you, you closed your eyes, sighing in what you’re not sure if its because you’re tired or if its because you accepted your defeat. The shame and guilt that you did this all on yourself. Steve and Eddie’s words sinking in deep inside your mind. You let go, resting your head on Eddie’s which made Steve chuckle darkly.

“There she is. Finally found our good girl, Munson.”

[comeonamericawakeup]

Looks like his goose is cooked but good!

Unbelievable!!

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 10

At 3:00 today, Washington D.C., time, Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered a statement about the recently unsealed indictment charging former president Donald J. Trump on 37 counts of violating national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Although MAGA Republicans have tried to paint the indictment as a political move by the Biden administration over a piddling error, Smith immediately reminded people that “[t]his indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida, and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.”

The indictment is, indeed, jaw dropping.

It alleges that during his time in the White House, Trump stored in cardboard boxes “information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.” The indictment notes that “[t]he unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Nonetheless, when Trump ceased to be president after noon on January 20, 2021, he took those boxes, “many of which contained classified documents,” to Mar-a-Lago, where he was living. He “was not authorized to possess or retain those classified documents.” The indictment makes it clear that this was no oversight: Trump was personally involved in packing the boxes and, later, in going through them and in overseeing how they were handled. The employees who worked for him exchanged text messages referring to his personal instructions about them.

Mar-a-Lago was not an authorized location for such documents, but he stored them there anyway, “including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.” They were stacked in public places, where anyone—including the many foreign nationals who visited Mar-a-Lago—could see them. On December 7, 2021, Trump’s personal aide Waltine Nauta took two pictures of several of the boxes fallen on the floor, with their contents, including a secret document available only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, spilled onto the floor.

The indictment alleges that Trump showed classified documents to others without security clearances on two occasions, both of which are well documented. One of those occasions was recorded. Trump told the people there that the plan he was showing them was “highly confidential” and “secret.” He added, “See, as president I could have declassified it….Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

This recording undermines his insistence that he believed he could automatically declassify documents; it proves he understood he could not. In addition, the indictment lists Trump’s many statements from 2016 about the importance of protecting classified information, all delivered as attacks on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, whom he accused of mishandling such information. “In my administration,” he said on August 18, 2016, “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

The indictment goes on: When the FBI tried to recover the documents, Trump started what Washington Post journalist Jennifer Rubin called a “giant shell game”: he tried to get his lawyer to lie to the FBI and the grand jury, saying Trump did not have more documents; worked with Nauta to move some of the boxes to hide them from Trump’s lawyer, the FBI and the grand jury; tried to get his lawyer to hide or destroy documents; and got another lawyer to certify that all the documents had been produced when he knew they hadn’t.

Nauta lied to the grand jury about his knowledge of what Trump did with the boxes. Both he and Trump have been indicted on multiple counts of obstruction and of engaging in a conspiracy to hide the documents.

Eventually, Trump had many of the boxes moved to his property at Bedminster, New Jersey, where on two occasions he showed documents to people without security clearances. He showed a classified map of a country that is part of an ongoing military operation to a representative of his political action committee.

Trump has been indicted on 31 counts of having “unauthorized possession of, access to, and control over documents relating to the national defense,” for keeping them, and for refusing “to deliver them to the officer and employee of the United States entitled to receive them”: language straight out of the Espionage Act. Twenty-one of the documents were marked top secret, nine were marked secret, and one was unmarked.

These documents are not all those recovered—some likely are too sensitive to risk making public—but they nonetheless hold some of the nation’s deepest secrets: “military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States,” “military activities and planning of foreign countries,” “nuclear capabilities of a foreign country,” “military attacks by a foreign country,” “military contingency planning of the United States,” “military options of a foreign country and potential effects on United States interest,” “foreign country support of terrorist acts against United States interests,” “nuclear weaponry of the United States,” “military activity in a foreign country.”

Smith put it starkly in his statement, “The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk.”

On Twitter, Bill Kristol said it more clearly: “These were highly classified documents dealing with military intelligence and plans. What did Trump do with them? Who now has copies of them?” Retired FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi noted that there is a substantial risk that “foreign intelligence services might have sought or gained access to the documents.”

There is also substantial risk that other countries will be reluctant to share intelligence with the United States in the future. At the very least, it is an unfortunate coincidence that the Central Intelligence Agency in October 2021 reported an unusually high rate of capture or death for foreign informants recruited to spy for the United States.

Since Trump supporters have taken the position that Trump’s indictment over the stolen documents is the attempt of the Biden administration to undermine Trump’s presidential candidacy, it is worth remembering that Trump’s early announcement of his campaign was widely suspected to be an attempt to enable him to avoid legal accountability. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith precisely to put arms length between the administration and the investigations into Trump.

Smith noted today, “Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice. And our nation’s commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. Applying those laws. Collecting facts. That’s what determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“The prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the Department of Justice. They have investigated this case hewing to the highest ethical standards. And they will continue to do so as this case proceeds.”

Smith added: “It’s very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. To that end, my office will seek a speedy trial in this matter. Consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused. We very much look forward to presenting our case to a jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida.”

Likely responding to MAGA attacks on the FBI and the rule of law, Smith thanked the “dedicated public servants of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with whom my office is conducting this investigation and who worked tirelessly every day upholding the rule of law in our country,” before closing his brief statement.

The indictment revealed just how much detailed information Smith’s team has uncovered, presenting a shockingly thorough case to prove the allegations. Trump’s lawyers will have their work cut out for them…although the team has shifted since this morning: two of Trump’s lawyers quit today. The thoroughness of the indictment also suggests that Trump and his allies might have reason to be nervous about Smith’s other investigation: the one into the attempt to overturn results of the 2020 election.

Some of Trump’s supporters are calling for violence. After Louisiana representative Clay Higgins appeared to be egging on militias to oppose Trump’s Tuesday arraignment, Democratic senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) issued a joint statement calling for “supporters and critics alike to let the case proceed peacefully in court.” Legal scholar Joyce White Vance noted that it was “extremely sad for our country that this isn’t a bipartisan statement being made by leaders from both parties.”

A lengthy and complete summary

#Trump federal indictment

[tteokdoroki]

SHE’S MY FAVOURITE GIRL. | K.BAKUGOU.

OCT 29TH. KATSUKI BAKUGOU + POSSESIVE SEX.

KINKTOBER M.LIST. / M.LIST. / TAGLIST. / KOFI.

ৎ୭ synopsis. your best friend’s girlfriend doesn’t like you, but can you really blame her? i mean, you’re perfect ! pretty, smart, likeable and you have her boyfriend wrapped around your perfectly manicured finger.

ৎ୭ wc. 12222.

ৎ୭ genre. mdni, 18+, smut, dark content, college!au.

ৎ୭ cw. please read ! heavy smut, characters aged up to twenties, fem!reader, best friend!bakugou, spit!kink, slight!manipulation,  dub-con, cheating, thigh-riding, handjobs, cherry chasing, recording, cumplay,  tummy bulges, possesive sex, unprotected sex. not proof read, beware of errors.

ৎ୭ author’s note. happy friday everyone!! ah!! my final day of kinktober! i’d like to thank everyone who read and were excited for my fics, it’s honestly been really fun taking part in kinktober this year and hopefully i’ll join the next! i guess you could call this the grand finale, until the mikey fic comes along, but for now thank you and please enjoy <3 ( also i finished writing this at 6am today so i apologise if it’s riddled with typos !! )

ৎ୭ now playing. tonight - doja cat ft eve.

katsuki bakugou’s been your best friend since as long as you can remember.

your mothers had always been close, kept in contact after they graduated and reunited when word spread they’d be having babies around the same time. katsuki, of course, came first— nothing could ever beat him and you always followed, popping out just months later.

just like your parents, you went through everything together. took your first bubble bath side by side, learned to crawl in unison— stood tall and walked in tune with one another. you’d punched out bakugou’s first wobbly tooth in first grade and he’d comforted you after you cried on your first day of school.

you were completely and utterly inseparable.

joined at the hip, you picked each other for every team in middle school and studied together for every honours class test in high school and when crushes came into play, bakugou never once looked away from you. ‘why the fuck would i need other girls when i have you?’ he’d say, lips pulled into a toothy smirk, vermillion eyes bright and mischievous as he’d try to shove whatever spicy hellish concoction he’d made for his bento that day, down your throat.

and gradually, whenever katsuki looked at you, a warm feeling would blossom in your chest— he made you feel like the only girl in the world, like you were his favourite girl.

people always told you how cute you were together, katsuki bakugou and his sweet little girlfriend yn...and you’d believe them. doodled his name in every one of your notebooks, hearts over the ‘i’ and your future children’s names scrawled in loopy font underneath. there was no one more perfect for your best friend than well...you.

except bakugou didn’t seem to think that way, not when moves halfway across the country for a college that you guys had never even talked about. your best friend left you behind but you would be fine, there were facetime calls and text messages and 3AM movie nights over discord while you both half awake and stealing glances at one another until one of you drifted off first. your best, your katsuki...he would tell you stories of the guys he’d met at the dorm, the ones he’d tell to back off while they tried to flirt with you over call. he would ask about your day, your classes— tell you that he was so proud of his girl and the praise always shot right to your tummy. the praise would make you touch yourself after your screens went dark and you were alone in your dorm with his name on your lips.

katsuki, katsuki, katsuki.

you’d chant his name like he was yours, like he was the one making you feel good and not the tiny fingers you have stuffed in your little cunt. you think of him when you cum, when you fall asleep, when you wake up in the morning… and maybe you’re a little obsessed...but after all, he’s all you’ve ever known. in your mind, bakugou was yours, he was always yours.

until he wasn’t. until he was hers.

“i’ve met someone,” the blonde mumbles to you on call one night, he’s sheepish and embarrassed— something that katsuki rarely ever expresses so you know he’s being serious. immediately your heart sinks, jealousy and anger curling around your beating heart and blackening it—how dare he? who is she? you and katsuki were made for each other, college wasn’t supposed to change that. and if your best friend sees your face twist into a frown, he doesn’t say anything about it. “she’s sweet, got a feelin’ yer gonna like her.”

you won’t, you already don’t.

you hate whoever the hell she is.

and katsuki sees that written all over your face, in the downturned corners of your glossed lips and the crinkle between your eyebrows. “she’s great,” he tries again, tries to reassure you because he hates seeing you upset and hates being the cause of it even more. “i promise.”

there’s no way she compares to you, she couldn’t be greater than you. “‘m sure she is.”

“yer upset with me, aren’cha?” the blonde asks you, clearly worried as his lips pull into a frown and you remember the sense of pride shooting through your veins at making him feel guilty. bakugou deserved that, especially after choosing some girl over you. “don’t be—“

“‘m not,” you say back, rolling your eyes and putting on a disinterested act just to vy for more of bakugou’s attention— you want his eyes on you and only you, not the bitch who’s swiped him from right underneath your nose. your lips push into a pout as you look away from the screen, shrugging your shoulders into the cool night while your childhood best friend rubs a hand over his face, clearly apologetic for having to break the news to you this way.

“c’mon angel, yn, look at me...don’t be fuckin’ mad, okay? don’t deny it either, already know that’cha are,” bakugou coos, rough as he leans into his shit-quality facetime and presents you with his furrowed brows and darling ruby gen eyes that you love so much. “you’re always gonna be my favourite girl, okay?”

you can’t help the smile that curls on your lips. “mkay,” you say in a quiet babyish voice and relief floods your best friend’s face. “do you promise?”

“pinky fuckin’ promise.”

but as it turns out, bakugou had lied.

his girlfriend wasn’t as great as he’d made out to be— in fact she was worse. her name doesn’t come up in the conversations the two of you have over your weekly calls but you manage to pull the handles of her social media accounts from between the loose lips of katsuki’s roommate— kirishima, with the promise of a few lewd videos and a chance for him to hook up with you. the red head’s chance with you wouldn’t come however, since you intended to save yourself only for the blonde with the firm, iron hot grip on your heart and all feelings for him replaced any guilt you had for manipulating kirishima the way you did.

nonetheless, ochako uraraka is the name he gives you and you decide that she’s nowhere near bakugou’s type. ‘yer gonna love her,’ is what you remember him telling you as you scroll through her instagram accounts— you hate her, is what you think. the girl is try hard, she wants to be cute but she looks annoying— she takes bakugou on dates you know he would hate, makes stupid comments about the stuff he loves that she dislikes, forces him to try foods you know he would turn his nose up at when he was back home with you. you pick at everything you can about her and try to convince your best friend that he’s making a terrible mistake but no matter what you say it’s always; ‘jus give her a chance, y’gotta warm up to her,’ and ‘i really like her, you will too.’

and you can’t, you won’t, you refuse. you refuse to acknowledge ochako as anything close to perfect for katsuki, no matter how hard he tries because you’re the one for him, you’re perfect for him and in your books she simply didn’t make the cut.

it’s not like ochako adored you either, the first time you’d met her guard was up miles high despite the sweet smile she’d given you in the presence of your best friend— and it’s not like you could blame her, in katsuki’s eyes, you appeared flawless… a vision of what a woman by his side should look like and that bothered her.

it bothered her to the point where she would try to sabotage your friendship with her boyfriend whatever chance she got— pretending to like your silly childhood games, kissing him when she was sure you were looking, prematurely ending the nights in which you hung out with bakugou by strategically placing a hand on his thigh and mumbling dirty words into his earn until his cheeks turned pink and he was rushing away with her. she was coming between you and your best friend and you hated it.

you hated her.

so you made sure of it, at your next visit to katsuki you’d win him back and remind him of who his favourite girl really was.

“s-she hates me suki! she...s-she said i wasn’t good enough to be your friend!”

you hiccup your way through practiced words as bakugou locks the door to his frat house’s mancave— crossing the room in three short strides to be right by your side again. with soft hands, you cling to his toned arms and squeeze them beneath your grip, pressing yourself impossibly closer to your best friend. tears stream down your cheeks— fat droplets of saltine liquid clumped in your pretty lashes while you cling to him, small sniffles echoing through the room and just barely heard over the thumping bass of the music outside.

katsuki’s face, aged like fine wine over the years— ruby stone set eyes softening, falls flat at the sight of you so distraught and upset. it kills him inside to see you cry.

it hurts him more than a punch to the gut.

false waterworks and a wobbling bottom lip were all it took to get katsuki bakugou alone and away from the welcome party he’d thrown in your honour. the stardust sparkles in your watering eyes causing an unexplainable tightness in his chest, enough for him to pull you into the nearest empty room to comfort you. it’s not like you had lied about your reason for tearing up anyways— just moments before your best friend’s girlfriend, ochako, and her equally annoying buddy, mina, had cornered you in the hallway to confront you.

“you should go for hanta, or denki or maybe even eijirou. he really likes you,” the brunette had told you, swirling her solo cup of booze as her gaze swept over you. “so long as you back off of katsuki,”

you’d grinned with faux innocence, pushing yourself off of the wall the two girls had backed you up against to invade her personal space. “you’re sweet ‘chako!” you had squealed, revelling in her offended expression as you latched onto her as if you were best buds. “thanks but no thanks! all eiji knows is ass and good pussy. which you have neither of. my eyes are on suki.”

ochako had glared and grunted, stumbling back to get rid of you. “that wasn’t an offer,” came her snappy response. “you’re too clingy, too childish for him. katsuki wants a real woman.”

thinking of the bitch’s words only makes you angrier, makes you act harder to draw sympathy from katsuki so you can execute your plan of revenge. you were going to show her, show him— that you were just as much of a woman as ochako was and that he’d been making a huge mistake just by being with her. “she said i was too immature, that she’d get rid of me,” you blubber, jutting out your lower lip even more. “you won’t do that, right suki?” your acting could be a gift from god, an oscar winning performance one might say. you could tell by the unhappy twitch of bakugou’s frown— deeper, harder, that you’ve got him in a chokehold of guilt.

“fuck, y’really torn up about this huh, angel?” bakugou sighs, thick brows knitted together. you almost laugh, the sound coming out as a light gasp— like you would let ochako hurt your feelings. she had absolutely nothing on you. you were katsuki’s sun stars and moon, she would see that shortly. he moves towards the door, reaching for the handle. “i’ll go ‘n talk to her.”

“no!” you huff shortly, gripping him tighter and tugging your best friend over to the couch in the corner of the room— the route you’ve planned in your head and the final destination katsuki’s lap. “want you to stay, can you help me feel better, suki?” he looks to you as if he doesn’t know what to think, but how can he say no to you? he never can, not when you’ve been by his side your whole life and put his needs before your own. you throw him down onto the couch in one swift move, slotting yourself into his lap just like you would when you were back home— testing katsuki’s limits before your plan comes into play.

he accepts you at first, nodding his head with a warm hand rubbing on your back. hugs don’t count as cheating right? bakugou thinks. he couldn’t think to keep you at arms length, not when you were so warm— not when you were the sweetest person he’d ever met crying over a fight with his girlfriend. he’s conflicted, he knows he should be out there with ochako but you’re his best friend, you would do the same for him...right?

distracted by his thoughts and his seemingly endless list of problems brewing between his girlfriend and his best friend— katsuki almost doesn’t notice the way you slowly start to grind against his thigh, your chubby cheek pressed against his heartbeat to muffle the small whimpers gathered in your glossed lips and wet tongue. almost.

bakugou, before anything else, is a hormonal college boy— turned on at the slightest feeling or scent of good pussy. you know he won’t be able to resist you and the warmth of your sweet folds as they brush over his rough jeans, the beginning of your arousal sinking through the black denim fabric. you know that he couldn’t say no despite the dig of his rough fingertips into your supple waist— hormones clouding the red rhinestones in his irises when you pull back from his chest to look at him. “h-hey...hey! the fuck are you doin’ brat?” the blonde curses despite the pillow cushion to his words, he’s never harsh with you, he doesn’t want to upset you. your hips shift against katsuki’s thigh just right and your smaller-than-his fingers sink into his right arm in a tight grip as you cry his name. “fuckin’ stop with that!”

bottom lip wobbling, your face crumples and so does katsuki’s. he doesn’t want to see you cry, even if you grinding down against the meat of his muscled thighs is wrong, even if it drives him insane to feel your needy hole clench around against him. “w-what? what’s the matter ka’suki?” your words are let out with a faux whimper, faking your hurt until you make it. anything to get the plan to ruin his stupid little relationship going. “you don’ wanna help me? am i doin’ somethin’ wrong?”

you know just what to say, after all no one knows bakugou better than you— it just makes manipulating him way too easy. “what? no? the fuck are you on ‘bout?” katsuki struggles to get out, large hands attempting to push you off again while his thighs tell a different story, flexing the right one beneath your cunt, holding back a groan when your whole body shudders and your pretty eyes cross. “‘course i wanna help you angel, jus’ not like this. got a girlfriend now—“

“but you promised!” you sigh, putting on a bit more of a show now that you know you have your best friend’s attention. your fingers dance down towards the hem of your skirt, hips never stopping their straddled dance over katsuki’s thigh. “you said you’d help me feel better, ‘m your best friend suki, you want me to feel better right?” your tone is accusing with your facial expression innocent to match— you tug your skirt up, pinching the fabric between two fingers to reveal your naked pussy, rosy and puffy lips spread open against his jeans with a glisten as you leave a wet patch in your wake of grinding.

“fuck, i did...yeah i fuckin’ did,” bakugou sighs hotly and leans back into the couch, his large hands swallowing your thighs as if he wants to keep them spread— hazy eyes trained on the way your clit becomes swollen and bumps his thigh with every rut of your precious hips to get yourself off. “but angel,” he almost whines. “my girlfriend…”

grinning, you take his hands from your thighs and guide them slowly across the expanse of your body. “e‘nough ‘bout ochako,” you say, sliding his palms across your tummy, fingers feather light as they walk up your rib cage, squeeze your thighs again before brushing roughly under the swell of your breasts— calloused pads of his finger tips tweaking your nipple from under your shirt, as you’d forgone a bra too. “she’s not more important to you than me, right katsuki?”

you say his full name this time, the three syllables hanging onto the gloss that coats your lips and only briefly pulling his gaze away from your sticky cunt and catching your best friend’s attention. his thigh twitches at the sight of you, top pushed up over your breast and skirt lifted just so he can get a peek at the fruit in eve’s garden, and like the story goes the snake in his ear is telling bakugou to take a bite out of you and what you gave to offer.

bouncing his thigh against your blossoming cunt, bakugou breathes his next words. “never, fuckin’ never.”

in victory, your arms wrap around bakugou’s neck for support before you begin to lift and drop your hips slowly against his leg as he gives it the momentum it needs to watch your pretty cunt cum. “then help me forget how mean she was to me, kay?” you use a faux timid tone, grinding down in your friends lap with a front row seat to the blonde losing his sanity over how shiny your sweet slit has become just from humping him.

“f-fuck, okay angel, okay...” he rasps nervously, hands finding your hips again to grind you along. “whaddya need?” bakugou’s eyes don’t dare to tear away from your mound, watching it wetly glide across his leg and you swear you see his eyes, vermillion in colour, roll back as his tongue darts out to wet his lips. “jesus…” he adds, flexing his leg again and only looking up when you simper his name and your slit drools just that little bit more.

your body is wracked with a set of trembles as heat starts to boil between your thighs, adding to the strings of slick that tie you down to katsuki’s. “need you to touch me,” you speak, your voice just as shaky as the rest of you while you rut against bakugou to your heart’s content. “gonna take off my shirt, okay? t-then my skirt. want you to see how good you make me feel, suki.”

dangerous blood red eyes shimmer with something you’ve never seen in them before— you can tell just by looking into them that katsuki wants you in so many ways, more than just you being his best friend and his sudden desire for you makes the fire in your lower belly burn brighter. the sight of him like this, eye-level with you, you in his lap while his cheeks grow tinted with berry red and flush under the neon simmering of LED lights only serves to make slick pool beneath you— destroying his pants with your arousal, katsuki looks desperate for a taste of you, adam’s apple bobbing as his dazed gaze flicking from your face to your puffy folds, exposed to the room’s chilly air.

he’s pussy whipped already and hasn’t even had the best of you yet.

the blonde practically whimpers as you pull away from him to take of your shirt, a soft curse falling from between his chapped lips as you throw it into the abyss of the room— the fabric seemingly taking his feelings of guilt towards ochako with him, for his hands scarred and calloused settle on the bare fat of your waist to help pull you along, dragging you by your ankle tot the high heavens of pleasure, burning pads of his fingers sinking into your supple flesh. “fuck, have y’always been this fuckin’ soft?” your best friend muses, brows creased and cock swelling beneath his jeans.

you’re sly, like a vixen prowling through the forest and katsuki is the prey that can’t escape the grip your sharp teeth and claws have on him. “yeah suki,” comes your sweet sigh, leaning forward in his grip until your nose bumps his chin, until your lips are a breath’s width apart. “you like touching me, right? i’ve always wanted you to touch me like this,”

“jesus fuck, baby,” katsuki bleats weakly, swallowing thick and you feel his chest vibrate with a shaky breath from your proximity to him. for a moment, he hesitates, the thoughts in his brain trying to decide between right and wrong, between his girlfriend and his best friend before he takes the plunge and slides a hand beneath your skirt to pull at your peachy ass— the other wrestling with the clasp of your bra, making you grin in victory. “yeah...fuck yeah, love touchin’ you like this...f-fuck, i can’t believe ‘m doin this,” he slurs but mirrors your smile as he pulls your bra away and tosses it away to join your lost shirt. “y’fuckin’ pretty baby, you...you know that right?”

of course you, you know that you— you’ve always been his type, why couldn’t he see that?

your nipples pebble once they hit the cold air and instead of giving him a response, you let your fingers tangle in the softness of his blonde hair and pull bakugou down to your chest. “show me, tell me how pretty you think i am,” your voice is soft, breathless as you glide across his thigh, despite the edgy command you give him and bakugou listens like the little pervert he’s become— before you know it, the heat of his sweltering mouth encapsulates your nipple and his pink tongue runs circles over your areola, tasting the light perspiration on your skin as he grunts softly against it. “o-oh! ka’suki!” you cry, fingers tightening their hold on his hair.

slurping noises shoot through the air, forming their tune in harmony with your entticng moans, airy light and ringing through bakugou’s ears. he can’t help but fall for the way you sound— delirious with arousal as he guides you back and forth over his leg, growing so rough that your clit occasionally bumps the curve of his knee, growing bold enough to grind it against you and make you squeal, force you to gush, anything. he just needs a reaction from you to soothe the aching throb to his fat cock. “god, yer tits are just as pretty as the rest of ya, so fucking pretty, so fucking—” the boy’s voice is muffled as you force his mouth onto your unattended breast, breath hitching as his teetth sink into the supple mound from shock or maybe even from revenge as you practically manhandle him and manipulate him to pleasure you at your will.

“shut up, katsuki,” you grunt impatiently but keep your voice innocent, face contorting with bliss as he follows your lead, sucking and biting at your breast while his calloused hand squeezes at the other. “o-oh! just like that— like that! y’gonna make me cum like that ‘suki!” bakugou looks up at you wide-eyed and hungry, seeming perfectly content with his mouth full of your tits and his thigh coated in the essence that bleeds from your pretty pussy as you circle your hips over him needily. he can’t help but wonder what you look like when you’re close to tipping off of the edge, can't help but wonder whether your cherry bitten lips will push into a pout or if they’ll fall open as you moan from deep within your chest— if your nose will scrunch and your eyelids will flutter just as much as your creamy cunt.

bakugou doesn’t have to wait much longer for his lack of patience and brash approach to everything has him swiping his thumb eagerly across your clit— stringing you along the path to your orgasm as a tight knot builds within your lower tummy. your body reacts to his touch, making him hum against your salvia stained breasts while you start to shake, struggling to even make one stroke of your hips over his thighs and fisting more and more locks of his sun-kissed hair between your trembling fingers.

“you like that?” bakugou hums observantly, his mouth letting go of your breast with a pop, tracks of his own drool running down his chin— you nod your head, picking up the pace of your hips just to make yourself cum to the point where you’re practically bouncing on katsuki’s thigh, pretty tits swaying in his face and activating a predatory look in the flecks of his red rouge eyes. “yeah y’fuckin do baby, holy shit...everythin’ ‘bout you is s’fuckin’ perfect, could watch you all day, let you use me all day. jus’ wanna see you cum, angel…” he drawls on and on, drawing roughly cut shapes into your puffy clit, groaning at the sight of your pillowy folds and the strings of slick leaking from between them as they connect you to his thigh messily. “wanna watch y’come apart just like this, c’mon you can do it, fuck angel, fuck…”

and if it weren’t for that bitch, ochako uraraka...maybe his words could come true.

“katsuki! ‘m gonna...gonna— !” but it’s hard to focus on hating her for stealing away your katsuki when he’s making you cum like a bitch in heat all over his thigh. the neon lights reflect in your teary eyes as your best friend pushes you head first into an orgasm, the pressure building up in the pits of your stomach unwinding faster than you can register as a stream of clear liquid gushes from your heated mound. “‘hmygod, ‘suki...don’t stop, please don’t stop!” your eyes cross and thighs lock around bakugou’s hand but he can’t bring himself to pull it away from your cute little cunt as the circles on your swollen nub grow tighter and tighter, pulling more yet tinier spirts of your release out of you until you can barely breathe. he watches you eagerly, taking in the sight of your skin shining with sweat under the gentle hum of the LED lighting in the room along with your soft lip caught between your teeth and the tiny, shaky whimpers you let out.

bakugou could just cum from the sight of you alone, the view of you swaying and dizzy from cumming for him, making his cock stir in his pants. you collapse against your best friend’s chest until the world stops spinning, letting the scent of him bring you back down to earth and put the objects in the room back in their place. “holy shit, angel. did y’just fuckin’ squirt f’me?” he asks tenderly, pulling his fingers from between your messy thighs and cursing under his breath when he spreads them apart and watches the slick separate with them.

“mhm, was all for you katsuki,” lazily, you smile and attempt to shimmy off your now ruined skirt— making a b-line for the hem of katsuki’s shirt next, pushing it up to reveal his golden skin and perfectly carved abs. “you can taste me if you like,” your voice acts like silk running through his ears as you let go of his shirt, giggling at the crease of curiosity between bakugou’s brows as you push his fingers towards his mouth and force them inside. he makes a muffled noise of surprise but a fire lights up amongst the almost brown flecks in his ruby gem eyes at the taste of your sweet nectar against his tongue. “am i sweet, suki?” you add huskily.

he nods slowly, looking at you like a child who’s been given candy while cleaning off his fingers quickly, hungrily as if your cum is laced with some kind of additive— he can feel himself growing addicted. “so sweet baby, s’good,” he mumbles, letting you tear through his shirt.

“i want you to have more of me, katsuki, don’t you want more of me?” you coo innocently, hands that could only be dwarfed by bakugou, dancing down his frame on the path towards his zipper before he stops you. wide eyed, you look at him and cock your head in mock confusion, bottom lip jutting out as you prepare for a fake display of tears. “w-what’s wrong?”

“ochako, i—” katsuki tells you as if he’s had a sudden epiphany, realising where he is and what he’s doing and trying to push you off. he’s never been a cheater, he’d always thought he could be loyal but all it took was one bat of your eyelids up at him and he was feasting on the sight of your rosy, saccharine pussy as if it were his last meal... what the fuck was katsuki bakugou doing? he didn’t need to fuck you to make you feel better, he didn’t need to fuck you at all— not with his girlfriend waiting for him outside. his face is stricken with guilt when he looks at you, but not for cheating on ochako, not for hurting her...but for you and your pouty lips and your bambi eyes that reel him back in and remind him that you could never be second place. not to ochako, not to anyone. “should be gettin’ back to her, think we’ve gone too far here.”

hearing her name fall from his lips after the little show you’d put on for katsuki fills you with rage, tingling from the top of your head right down to your toes and you huff like a petulant child, smaller-than-his hand shooting out to grab him by his growing erection before he can leave. “but you should be with me!” you whinge, squeezing katsuki’s bulge from over his pants, fighting the genuine tears in your eyes, unable to believe that his stupid girlfriend has the one up on you. “she’s been so mean to me and you let her, katsuki! you should be here, making it up to me,”

“but angel—”

you shake your head, furiously working your way through bakugou’s jeans and boxers as you sniff away saltine tears. “but no!” a small smirk crossing your lips at the hiss your best friend lets out when your soft palm comes into contact with his half-hard erection. “you’re mine, you’re my best friend and i’m supposed to be your favourite! ‘m not letting her take you away from me.”

a response lays meekly on bakugou’s lips as he spreads his tongue across them, he should try harder to fight you off and snap you out of your senses, tell you that you can’t do this—that he can’t do this but he’s already revelling in the way you start to palm him as you tug him free from his clothes. your hand is cushioned as it runs from the base of his dick to his achy tip, milky white cascading down katsuki’s length and catching on his throbbing veins that stand at attention— and fuck you’re so good at this, using your fingers to swipe at the precum beading from your best friend’s slit, pushing your thumb into it just to see his body come alive with shivers. your eyes stay trained on his face, memorising every twitch and parting of his lips from how good you make him feel whenever you squeeze him or speed up the pace of your hand.

you’re so fucking good, so good that he starts to forget all about her.

soon enough, katsuki’s body melts into yours and he’s tugging you further into his lap by the ass as if it’s second nature— it feels right to have you straddling his thick thighs as he man-spreads them wide , even better to pull you close by the back of your neck and let his strawberry tongue roll over the seams of your cherry lips to taste the gloss there and he grows eager to taste more of you, have all of you— hungrier for your touch more than he ever was for ochako’s. you can feel your sense of desire growing too—the speed of your hand that pumps katsuki getting faster and faster until lewd and wet noises twist within the heavy, lustful air between you both, his cock dribbling endless amounts of his essence and painting your knuckles with shades of his incoming release.

bakugou’s world becomes centred around you, your name heavy on his tongue—viscous and filling his mouth like honey until he’s drowning in a pool of ecstasy and dragging you down with him. “the way ya touch my cock, fuck angel. just like fuckin’ that, you’re doin’ so good you might just make me cum…you want that? want my fuckin’ cum?” the words slip out before his brain can register what he’s saying or who he’s saying it to, letting you take control of his pleasure as your tiny hands squeeze at his heavy balls— the pair of them working his angry shaft, bright red and fiery at the tip. in fact, bakugou doesn’t care that he’s dirty talking you instead of his girlfriend, at least not in the moment— thrusting himself into the slick warmth of your hands and pathetically using them as his own personal fleshlight, leaking onto the couch beneath your clammy bodies he doesn’t fucking care.

because ochako has never been as bold in the bedroom as you have on this very night, ochako has never made him feel this good.

“i want you to cum for me so badly, suki! i’ve always dreamed of what it was like,” you coo sweetly against his lips, pressing your body flush against bakugou’s so he can feel every bounce of your tits against his naked chest from where his erratic thrusts into your gentle grip make you jolt up and down— your nipples brushing against his to make him hiss. “always wondered about how you might taste,” your voice is breathy while you slot your mouth against his, humming as they fit together perfectly, swapping spit messily while katsuki tugs on your waist and your hair to manhandle you into the perfect position, just the way he wants. “how it might feel to be covered in all your cum,”

“shit, yer fuckin’ filthy, ‘chako would never say nasty shit like that,” bakugou let’s out a colourful stream of curses when you pull away, connected by strings of your exchanged spit— cupids’ bows wet from your searing kisses. “makes me wanna ruin ya, makes me wanna fuck you s’bad,” your heart flutters with pride at how willing your best friend is to give into the sin and adultery you’ve offered up for him despite the fact that the handjob you’re giving him is a one way ticket to the gates of heaven— that’s just how good you feel. you relish the yelp of surprise katsuki let’s out when you dribble your shared saliva down into his painfully hard shaft, letting it mix with his constant flow of thick precum. he groans from deep within the pits of his chest, the seed of arousal sprouting and wrapping its vines around his rib cage until filthy praises blossom in your best friend’s mouth, whispers of ‘just like that,’ and ‘fuck angel, so fuckin’ good to me,’ and ‘ain’t never had it like this,’ laid out across your skin from where he’s buried his face into your neck.

if it weren’t for your bodies being so close, you might not have heard his praise over the raunchy, damp sounds of his balls hitting your closed fist— katsuki fucking your hand as if it were your pretty cunt, languidly thrusting into your grip and chasing his own release. his world his hazy, blurry, with you as his only grounding focus, with you being the only thing on his fucking mind. he whimpers needily into your skin and only pulls back for air, the need written across his face in pink ink that’s flushed against his cheeks— the shade almost rivalling his blissful ruby orbs that flutter every time you fondle his balls.

you can’t help but grin, tilting katsuki’s chin up to kiss him again before you circle his blazing, sticky cockhead with your thumb. “i’m so much better than ochako, suki, i’m everythin’ you’ll ever need,” you say cutely and airily, grinning wider especially when katsuki nods his head eagerly, letting you guide him to his high. “isn’t that right, suki?”

his adam’s apple bobs, vermillion eyes watering and fuck he looks even prettier than you imagined— the sight of katsuki with his head thrown back against the couch and his mouth hanging open, saliva weighty on his tongue while sweat beads at his hairline and his hips jump up and up into your heavenly hand. “y’gonna make me cum angel, fuckin’ make me cum, make me cum,” he growls roughly into the hot air, the sweat running down his neck illuminated by the buzz of the LED lights. the sight creates a pleasant fizz in your brain, committed to memory as you tug on his fat cock harder, faster. “please, ‘m gonna cum, gonna cum so hard baby, don’cha want it?”

bakugou barely feels shameless for begging his best friend to cum, dopamine rattling around in his brain, heart thumping against his rib cage as you rub him off, spitting on his cock again and making every so much wetter, making it so much harder for him to hold off his orgasm.

“say it.” you seethe in his direction, never slowing down the speed of your hand. “tell me that i’m better than her and i’ll let you cum, kay?” you’re bold enough to reach down and slap his balls, coaxing your best friend towards his high, while his alluring and dangerously addictive moans shoot out into the air. bakugou’s head shakes along with the rest of his body, eyes screwing shut while his hips chase your teasing fingers that press down on the forked blue vein wrapped around his cock every time his hips pull back and out of the warmth of your hand. you can’t decide if his telling you no, or if he’s trying to fight his body’s instincts to chase it’s high, but you repeat the action, slapping down on his heavy balls again to make his entire frame jolt. “say it.”

katsuki pants, letting go of your hips to run a hand through his sex mussed locks as his eyes snap open to lock into yours. “you’re so much fuckin’ better than her, could never make me cum like this, only you angel, only fucking you. god, fuck—!” he babbles brainlessly, barely holding onto his last threads of sanity.

“cum f’me, katsuki,” you command the blonde gently, with one last squeeze of your messy hand to his pulsating dick as it pistons through your closed fist.

your whispered words are all bakugou needs before his entire body is overcome with a set of trembles and you don’t dare to stop the flick of your wrist around his cock as he tumbles through the rush of his high, struggling to keep up with you as colours run wild behind his crystallised red eyes. curse words and praises alike line his lips, katsuki moaning your name haughty and loud enough that you almost fear that people will hear you both from outside— his head drops to the back of the couch, chest heaving as his hips stumble and give out, releasing thick ropes of white hot cum onto your sex tainted knuckles and hand, only adding further to the sweaty glaze coating both of your bodies. the soft, incomplete whimpers that leave your best friend make you smile wickedly, evilly as he comes down from his mind-blowing high.

oh ochako ururaka, if only you could see your boyfriend now.

if only you could see what a real woman does to him.

“fuck baby, that was…” bakugou lifts his head, golden and scarred skin shining with sweat as he looks to you, only cutting himself off with a low groan to watch you suck the cum from your fingers before you lean over his twitching frame to spit his own release back into his mouth. the blonde swallows diligently, cupping the back of your head with a large hand before you can pull away and kissing you sloppily, forcing his tongue deep into your mouth so the both of you can share his taste, moaning at it in unison. “that was fuckin amazin’, you really are a filthy little minx aren’cha, angel?”

you nod bashfully, sidling further up katsuki’s lap until you’re positioned just over his sensitive cock— feeling the remains of his orgasm against your needy cunt that’s already dripping wet from pleasuring him. “s’all for you katsuki, s’always been for you,” you tell him, looking down at the blonde with hooded eyes while experimentally grinding your soft mound over his softening dick, waiting for a reaction or for him to push you off. “been saving myself for you, for years, wanted you to have all of me my first time, suki.” you add earnestly while his rough fingers draw contrastingly soft shapes into the soft swell of your doughy thigh.

you’re met with the complete opposite of what you expected, instead of shoving you away and telling you ‘enough was enough,’ bakugou suddenly grips the meat of your thighs to keep you hooked over his lap— looking at you with a new and lustful fire burning between the flecks of his eyes. “yer…yer a virgin?” he asks quietly, the both of you sucking in a breath as his sticky, cum-stained length twitches to life beneath your awaiting pussy.

you nod again, head tilting back when katsuki begins to grind up into you slowly. “o-ochako said i wasn’t…w-wasn’t woman enough for…for you,” you swallow thickly, the blonde’s tip bumping your clit as blood starts to rush to it and your pussy blossoms for him like a flower. “wanted you to make me one…”

“fuck,” he rasps, gaze dropping to watch the show beneath your shaking bodies, hardening cock pushing through your puffy folds and milky cockhead rutting against your fluttering hole. katsuki’s finger’s reach between the sweltering heat between you both, using two of his digits to keep his dick in line with honey glazed folds, shining with the reminisce of your last orgasm. using your wetness, bakugou is able to slide through your sex easily, shaking moans tumbling from between his bitten lips every time he hits your clit, desperately gripping his cock every time he shoots up too far and his tip nudges your soft tummy, smearing it with opaque white. “we should wait...we... we should talk ‘bout this,”

you grind back down on him, keeping the blonde nestled between swollen and pink folds, a pout forming on your lips. “don’t wanna,”

“neither do fuckin’ i,” comes bakugou’s gruff response, it’s whispered against your blemished shoulder, tainted with light scars from your childhood days and beauty marks alike as his buff arms wrap around your middle to keep you pinned down to him. both of you are seconds away from the tipping point, well past the boundary of what separates best friends from lovers— either of your minds growing murky and foggy, while your breathing tingles at each other’s lips while you sloppily grind against each other. you can feel his hips jumping beneath yours, dying to push his cock past your soaking entrance in one swift movement, but katsuki attempts to slow his roll, wanting your first time to be special. ochako is no longer a thought in his mind, replacing all visions of her with thoughts of you— wanting to fuck you, to be tucked away into your tight heat. “god, angel, wanna fuck you so bad,”

your eyes sparkle with a certain sense of triumph at bakugou’s words…you’ve won him over, got him bending over backwards from the slightest bump of his tip against your resisting entrance— barely prepared to take him and the thickness of his shaft. “please ‘suki, need you...want you,” you murmur against the blonde’s hairline, relishing in the way he pulls back ever so slightly to tap his weighty girth against your awaiting and fluttering slit.

slowly but surely, bakugou starts to push his cock into you, gritting his teeth as he huffs into the junction between your shoulder and neck— holding back his whimpers and urge to thrust as he slides into your warmth, not wanting to cause you anymore pain. “‘m sorry baby, ‘m sorry, you know don’t like hurtin’ya,” he mumbles apologies into your skin, hating the way you his at his intrusion, quickly filling you up like you’ve never been before. it’s like his own personal hell, being stuffed inside your cute virgin cunt, walls pulsing around him rhythmically and slowly sucking down every inch of katsuki’s swollen and aching cock— you take him so well despite the pain, making it harder to resist the urge to pound into you.

you’re so pretty on top of him, so cute with your pouty lips and teary eyes and bakugou suddenly finds himself wondering why he didn’t do this sooner, why he settled for anything less than you.

“move, please move,” you pull katsuki back by the air, cupping his face soon after to pull his bottom lip down with your thumb— the hot air between your bodies is teaming with lust and years worth of desire finally being unleashed, your cunt readily accepting your best friend’s dick as it oozes against your insides and spreads the flame of desire through your sweet cunt. “you feel so much better t-than all my toys ka’suki, always thought of you when i used them on myself,” you confess dreamily, tight hole growing slippery with your heightening arousal, letting bakugou press on until he’s reached the hilt inside of you. “you can fuck me, i want you.. l-love you—!”

the tail end of your words because hushed and breathless when katsuki jolts up and deeper into your cunt at your words— scratching the itch in your gummy walls that only he can reach. you love him and he loves the way your squishy, precious pussy wraps around him so perfectly, barely letting bakugou pull out enough to start a proper pacing to his hips. “love you baby, y’my best friend...fuckin’ love you angel,” he babbles to you, looking up at you with hormone raging red eyes as you toy with his lips, pulling it back again as you lean close making you chest to chest. “fuck, y’so fuckin’ tight, so fuckin tight…” forehead’s pressed, bakugou’s eyes flutter shut expecting you to kiss him but instead is met with the gift of saliva to let drip onto his tongue from your own mouth. his entire body shudders violently, swallowing your glob of spit quickly before he leans up to slot your lips together— using this moment of distraction to pull back his hips and sharply thrust into you. “‘m gonna fuck you baby, make this pussy my own. carve my name into it, gonna fuckin’ claim you,”

your best friend barely knows what he’s saying, barely knows the person your pussy’s turned him into— any traces of his girlfriend ochako flushed out of his system by hormones like dopamine as his large hands roam your skin and map out your stretch marks and dips and scars, committing them to memory before sinking into the fat of your hips to keep you steady in his lap. “i-i’m yours, you have me just— move!” if only he knew how much ownership he had of your mind and body already, how much he’d staked his claim over you throughout the years— tonight he would see that, and hopefully realise how much of him you owned as well.

tongues twirling against one another, bakugou pulls away, licking up the string of drool that connected you. he grips your ass next, smacking a rough palm over the peachy flesh to make you squeal and take away some of the pain as he sets a tune to his hips while they begin to plough into you. “‘m gonna make you feel so good, make a woman outta you just like you and this sweet lil virgin thing wanted, yeah?” katsuki’s gaze drops to the mess between your thighs as if he’s gesturing to your cunt, pumping his cock into your creamy, puffy mound nice and deep— making you cry out for him and clamp down hard. “promised to wreck this sweet hole, make my angel forget all the mean things ‘chako said about you… have i ever— fuck, have ii ever broken a promise?”

bakugou struggles to leave the warmth of your pussy, not caring whether that's down to how addicting your tightness is or you keeping him selfishly locked against your soaked and ribbed walls. however, you manage to shake your head no, despite the way you writhe in his lap as he rocks his hips into yours, bulbous cock head battering up your squishy insides. “n-never, my ka’suki’s so good t’me!” you moan possessively, selfishly but it sounds like nothing but angel’s calls to your best friend, only driving him to rut into you harder, deeper.

“that’s fuckin’ right angel, never gonna let’cha down,” he growls, shoving his face into your neck yet again as if he doesn’t trust himself not to cum if he looks at your awe striken face any longer— large and gritty palms pulling you by your ass back and forth on his throbbing, leaky and fat dick to match the pace of him pounding your pathetically juicy slit, writing his name in milky white precum against every ridge inside of you. no matter how far katsuki’s cock pulls out of you, your hips always chase him, forcing them down with your body weight to keep him tucked inside of you— following your pleasure until your cunt is pushing against him, dripping down his balls that spurt equally as much precum inside of you. “don’cha cry angel, thought this was what’cha wanted, what was gonna make you feel better?” he coos, licking a stripe along your collarbones to taste you and to keep himself grounded.

you wrap your arms around bakugou’s neck, hugging him to your chest while he grunts against it needily and it’s not long before your bodies are bodies become coated coated in a sheen of sweat, drops of it pearling against his hairline and extenuating the sticky clap of you skin against each other— creating a harmonious tone that lingers in the air along with your moans and the scent of sex. “it is what i want, you’re what i want!” you squeal as your best friend bares down on pleasure spots your toys could only dream of reaching, only serving to add squelching sounds to the lewd soundtrack you both have going. “but i wanna be your favourite, wanna be yours,” you beg him wetly, delirious and dumb on his cock, filled with devoir and a sense of need for him and only him.

“‘course yer my fuckin’ favourite, look at how much y’love me, how much this pussy loves me— shit angel,” bakugou curses, his tone deep and rumbling throughout his chest. his words make you dizzy, the sight of him makes you dizzy. as he looks up at you, dazed and with rose tinted cheeks you take your view of him— the shine sweat adds to him, highlighting the sharpness to bakugpu’s jaw and the new maturity of his face, the flex of his arms as he lifts you up and down in his lap along with the way his washboard and honey glazed abs contract with exertion every time he thrusts into you. katsuki is like a taste of heaven and it almost makes you mad to know that before you, ochako was the only person who got to see him like this— but your burning rage and murderous impulse is quickly replaced by the ecstasy bakugou makes you feel by bruising up your insides, balls heavily slapping against your ass.

you grin to yourself inwardly, knowing that after tonight ochako will never get to see the beauty of katsuki bakugou like this, ever again.

bakugou may be the one fucking you, but you’re the one who’s in control of his heart tonight— you’ve sunk your claws into him, captured him as your prey and held him hostage. not that he minds, not that he cares, his only wish being that you’d done it sooner...fucking you like this, balls deep in your virgin pussy withh you tight and snug around him drives bakugou insane and makes him realise that you’re the only one he wants. not her, not his own fucking girlfriend.

no.

it’s always been you.

no other girl could get him drunk on cunt like this, vermillion eyes honing in on the way you gently start to lift your hips up and down, following the current of his thrusts as he pounds away at that tight little hole you’ve saved all for fucking him. no other girl could get katsuki to whimper and whine so loud before, you’re special, you’re something else. you’re his best friend. “god, this is the kinda pussy you only get to fuck in dreams, baby,” bakugou slurs with a perverted grin, changing the stroke of his hips to follow the pattern of circles instead of just driving his hips upward. “you my dream girl, angel? y’got the cute lil pussy i’ve only ever dreamed of pourin’ my cum into, yeah? always wanted t’fuck you, thought about it forever, now here i fuckin’ am…”

“did you think of me more than her?”

yes. katsuki would have been a fool not to notice the way you’d grown up s prettily over the years, body filling out into beautiful curves carved with dips and moles and freckles and scars all created by athena herself, the swell of your chest, fruit stained shade of your lips were things that didn’t go unnoticed by your best friend either. so yes, of course he’d thought about you in the depths of the night—his dirty hollywood dreams starring only the girl of his dreams, only its you instead of his girlfriend ochako, you and your name that tumbles from his lips only to be swallowed by the fabric of his sheets. its you who bakugou pictures beneath him when he folds his pillow into the shape of pussy, fucking it like he means it...like his life depends on it.

really, it’s always been you.

the blonde nuzzles at your shoulder with his sweaty forehead, shaking it against your equally sweaty skin. “mnhh, baby...yn,”

“answer me katsuki...a-answer me, please…” lazily, you run a hand through his mussed locks, making it worse

katsuki gasps softly, binding his lowly lip and screwing his eyes shut as he immerses himself in the passionate dance of your bodies; the slow and alluring bump and grind of his dick and your sweet pussy, tip jamming repeatedly and atrociously into your cervix— bullying your insides until you animalistically howl his name like a wolf calling to the moon. “more than her,” bakugou keens into your hands that claw down his bare back, scratching red tracks in the shape of your nails against his scarred skin and he lets his head drop to your neck, sinking the sharp edge of his canine teeth into your flesh and rolling his saliva soaked strawberry tongue over the assaulted area. “fuck— you feel like heaven, angel, c’mon, ride me...just like that, just like that…”

one hand braced on his shoulder, the other pats along the cushioned couch in search of katsuki’s phone. your birthday is his password—skillfully unlocked by you even while you clench down on the man in reward and he doesn’t hesitate to buck his hips back into you with the same level of feverishness, sloppily sliding your bodies against one another as you breathe, temperate and heavy and shakily into one another’s bruised lips. you tingle with joy, knowing yet another thing as simple as unlocking his phone boils down to just you—he’s obsessed with you, he loves you just as much as you love him. fumbling with katsuki’s phone and aim for the camera, a fresh wave of tears brew in your eyes and tangle with your lower lash line because he makes you see stars, gives you what you’ve been chasing after blindly for your whole life—the thickness of his shaft inside you as it stretches your virgin hole, the wet and impassioned snap of his hips into you, the sticky slap of his balls against your bare ass.

you’ve been dreaming of this for years and now you finally have him, all of katsuki bakugou to yourself. a selfish feeling wraps around your heart as you ride him, slow rolls of your hips taking is cock deeper into your squishy cunt, prrecum bleeding along your sensitive walls, and suddenly you feel the impulse to hit record— needing evidence of your night, something to show ochako that you’ve finally won.

the footage is blurry, the flash almost blinding you both as you turn on the camera and flip it to katsuki’s face, capturing every detail of his open mouth, tongue connected to the roof of his mouth by thick strings of spit—best visible when his head is thrown back in pure ecstasy. “the fuck are ya’doin’?” bakugou slurs, struggling to manage his words with the amount of saliva in his mouth. “you recordin’ me dirty girl? fuck, you wanna show the camera what a mess y’are f’me?” your tummy twists in delightful knots as katsuki plays himself up for the camera as soon as it turns on, giving it a toothy grin. essence pools between your raw folds, slicking up his cock as it dives into your plush folds, sliding perfectly against the soft velvet and you find yourself growing hornier from bakugou’s waves of intensity as they crash over you.

“uhuh, wan’...want keep a memo of how good you make me feel,” you tell him earnestly, almost losing your grip on the silver device you hold between your fingers— practically losing your mind when your best friend leans forward, letting all his excess spit drip down onto your joined sexes, lubing you up and making everything even more dissolute, nastier and creamier. it’s so obscene, the way his bubbles of white spit add a soft gleam to your tummy and pelvis as you both smash your sexes together—peeling back your hips from one anothers, the action only accompanied by a sticky sound. “‘hmygod, ka’suki!” the video picks up everything, especially the lewd and covetous cry you let out when bakugou grips your hips to grind you down against the wet mix he’s created, spit, his cum, your cum all coming together against your pussy.

the clip ends there and somehow you manage to spitefully forward it onto your best friend’s girlfriend. you can’t help the greedy clench of your cunt around katsuki’s pretty dick, feeling his veins sear their marks into your walls— the blonde doesn’t miss it either. it drives you wild, a frenzied blur of sex and hormones as you think of poor innocent ochako out at the party having the time of her life—it makes fat drops of your saccharine nectar to ooze from your ravaged hole just to imagine her face as the video of you fucking her boyfriend finally lights up her phone.

oh how turned on her ruined night makes you.

“you liked that, huh?” bakugou coos to you, capturing your raptured woozy stare with his ruby framed eyes that dance with lust as he pierces you on his cock over and over again. “‘course y’fuckin did, can feel it with how hard yer clampin’ dwon on me, angel,” he’s getting cocky— doped up on the way you suck him in and bounce away on him as if you’d done this before, his sweet virgin girl claiming what's rightfully hers. you need to put him back in his place, fuck your best friend hard enough to remind him who’s the rightful owner of the dick thats making you feel good for the very first time, you do everything your power to make the night last longer so you can torture the brunette bitch he’s dating even more—pushing back down on katsuki every time he thrusts up so that he can never leave the warmth of your soaked mound. the blonde leans back, watching you work yourself above him, dangerous and fiery eyes taking in the view, “so fuckin’ beauttiful when yer on’toppa me, takin’ this cock so good on your firsty try. s-shit, why didn’t i fuck you sooner, hah? got this perfect little pussy ‘n everythin’, the best i’ve ever had,”

katsuki’s praise shoots straight to your throbbing mound and has you jumping even as he slaps a rough palm over your puffy clit. “didn’t fuck me sooner , ‘cause you were to busy with her,” you snarl hotly, circling your hips over the blondes, driving his bright red tip into your g-spot, chasing your own pleasure as it bubbles in your lower tummy. “balls deep in her instead of me. shoulda been fuckin’ your favourite girl but instead...you were with ochako. why not me, suki? ‘m i not your favourite anymore?”

you reach for the phone again, pulling up the camera ready to record bakugou’s hazy response as you move to grip him by the roots of his hair, forcing him back against the couch while you bounce away in a frenzy on top of him— your unified groans slipping through the night air. “you’ve always been my favourite, she couldn’t even fuckin’ compare,” he mumbles to you, eyes glinting with mischief as you hit the record button once again. taking control, you lean forward again, spitting onto katsuki’s chest, pinching and teasing his nipples until they’re sore and he’s practically screaming your name, watching as the viscous glob rolls down between his fat pecs, “you sendin’ that shit to her, yeah? what a naughty fuckin’ girl, angel. tell ‘er whatcha gonna do to this cock, tell her whatcha gonna fuckin’ do to this cock. show her,” he sneers into the camera, dragging it down to show where your bodies join and cream froths at his base, dripping in white down his balls. “claim me for the fuckin’ camera, yeah, that’s right. fuckin’ claim me.”

hearing him breaking beneath you, desperate to keep your pussy locked onto his cock and you think; she must not be fucking him enough, not giving him enough juicy cunt to keep poor katsuki satisfied. she deserves to see what a mess your body’s made him, deserves to have her night destroyed and shattered to a million pieces by the sight of your swollen, tight, perfect pussy taking him in so nicely, and so you send off a second video to her, “you’re mine katsuki, mine forever. never hers, k-kay?” your voice is hushed as you take his lower lip between your teeth, making the pair of you an even greater mess while you guide bakugou into yet another raunchy kiss, sucking his tongue into your mouth before twirling the two pink muscles together. you claim every inch of him, with hands and tongue and your puckered hole alike—writing your name sinfully across his body so that katsuki really knows that he’s yours.

“‘m fuckin yours baby, belong to you,” the blonde says to you, his words woven with the sweetness of candy, shaky from feeling you pulse around him—heartbeat in your pussy. “don’ want anyone else to have me, show that camera how good you take me...how you make me yours,” hot on his tongue, katsuki speaks in heated phrases before he spits onto his fingers, shoving the soiled digits against your swollen clit, blooming from the blood rush as he rubs it in tight circles, coating your sex in a crude mix of your juices and saliva—pushing it into you. the camera on the back of his phone catches it all, feeding it straight into ochako’s phone.

you pull your hips up, caught mid thrust by one of katsuki’s large hands holding your waist. you whimper at the feeling of being empty, no longer having the pressure of your best friend’s dick deep in your tummy, constantly bearing down on your g-spot hard. his cock is all the way out of you and only his tip is brushing against your clit, sticky and smeared with opaque white when bakugou makes you rut against it, stimulating yourself to your heart’s content—his bright red cockhead gliding easily between your creamy folds. he feels so good against you that you drop your grip on the phone that you miss the banging on the door outside, ignoring the sound and choosing instead to wrap your arms around bakugou’s muscled neck...stabilizing yourself while he takes ahold of the fleshy ass, kneading the flesh between calloused fingers and watching you get yourself off on him. “mmgod, fuck katsuki! lemme back on your cock, please...give it t’me, give it. please.” you squeal breathlessly, tongue rolling out of your mouth while you impatiently thrust your hips down, trying to coax the blonde back into your cute little cunt. you spit into your own hand, lubing it up before you grip his throbbing and achy shaft, jerking bakugou off until streams of foul language coat his lips and tattoo themselves against your skin. you even thumb the rim of his tip a little, knowing that he likes that.

“fuck! bakugou, i know you’re in there with that whore!” the banging on the door resumes, and you moan bakugou’s name louder, just to spitethe bitch who you know is just outside.

“angel, fuck...love you, love you like this, love you on top of me, takin’ this cock as your own,” bakugou curses, flopping back against he couch and smoothing his rough hands over your body. he eventually settles them where your breasts ( as they bounce ) meet your ribcage, rubbing the area and sending goosebumps rising across your sweaty, honeyed skin. “this dick is yours, this dick s’the only one that can fuck you, this dick only goes inside this fuckin’ pussy.”

‘katsuki! open up! katsuki!’

the words are muffled by the wooden door between the outside world and the bubble you’ve made with bakugou—blood rushing through your ears, carrying lust amongst many other things. “k-katsuki, please...feels so fuckin’ good, d-don’t stop, don’t stop! you’re so good, s-so good!” you babble, losing your mind and your focus, letting everything that is katsuki bakugou overwhelm you. “i-i’m your girl, your favourite, no one else c-can have you!”

ochako’s piercing voice yells again from outside, fighting the locked door while bakugou manhandles you into a position he likes to chase the ebb of your highs as they begin to set fire to your insides. with every sharp pounding of his cock into your cunt, you both take feverish steps towards your orgasms, the blistering heat of them sneaking up on you. “‘m never gonna stop baby, not for anyone...gonna fuck you as long as you want me to, yeah? promise you. ‘m yours,” your best friend whispers, turning you around in his lap until your back is to his sticky chest. he pushes you forward by the curve of your spine, almost bending you in half as your face reaches the floor. “t-thats fuckin’ it angel, turn around around ‘n lemme see your ass bounce on me, just like that,”

“keep fuckin’ me just like that, fuckin’ ochako wishes she could be you, my favourite fuckin’ girl—ah shit!” he adds, sending a tremor of pleasure down your spine as dopamine sizzles at your nerve endings.

so you do as bakugou says, even though your thighs burn with how much you bounce up and down on him, throwing your ass back onto him to pull more of his dirty moans from his filthy mouth. your name is the only thing bakugou can say— chanting it like a prayer, as if his brain has been wiped of all other thoughts accept for you and the way you sink down on him, right to the creamy base of his dick as if it wasn’t even a problem eyes rolling, your toes curl, clamping down greedily on bakugou until his breath stutters and his dick, swollen with the load he’s holding back, has no room to breathe.

you don’t even stop fucking like animals when the door bursts open, a teary eyed ochako throwing herself into the room to the sight of her boyfriend fucking the girl she’d always been so worried about. to see him fucking you. “o-oh my god! katsuki bakugou wh-what the fuck are you doing? with her?” his girlfriend screams, but he can’t even look at her, obsessed with the way your body feels moving along with his. “you’re both fucking sick!”

“‘m gonna cum, katsuki,” you say airly, a smirk tugging at your lips as your eyes lock with shaky brown orbs—you can’t hold back at this point, your body craving to touch the white light of your release, the knots twisted in your stomach beginning to come undone as the pace of bakugou’s hips start to falter and grow impatient, churning up your insides as his sensitive tip drags along your spongy walls and pushes up against your squishy g-spot. it hurts so good to hold back, but it feels even better to watch ochako cry and scream and beg for her boyfriend to stop fucking you.

but bakugou isn’t doing any better than you are, beneath you, his muscled thighs tremble and his the stroke of his hips become sloppy and languid. “c’mon angel, cum f’me, paint this cock...let it all out f’me,” he mumbles strainedly into your shoulder, tweaking your nipples and barely acknowledging the presence of his girlfriend ( or ex, at this point ) while his calloused fingers dance down the softness of your tummy to toy with your clit once again, dragging you by the ankle towards both of your highs. “c-can’t hold it anymore baby, gonna...gonna—! fuck!”

“stop it, kastuki!”

the lewd cross of your eyes as you finally cum with katsuki is what drives uraraka off of the edge, breaking into full on sobs when your dam bursts—colours in brand new shades flashing behind your eyes, bakugou’s hips fail to slow as he guides you through your orgasm, sending you into a series of shivers and your mouth hangs open in a silent scream that makes your throat hoarse. you cum so hard that the world around you seems to fall away, throwing an arm behind you to grip the blonde locks of your best friend’s hair to ground yourself. your release splashes out against the floor, cunt fluttering rhythmically as it paints both yours and katsuki’s thighs before triggering his own high.

“f-fuck, fuck! ‘m cummin’, ‘m cummin. gonna fill you up baby...can ya take it? take my cum?” he gripes needily into the shell of your ear, high pitched and whiney. the blonde’s voice fades to static, hips bucking up into your soiled pussy with one last surge of power before he’ss spilling white hot seed into your spasming hole. there’s so much of it, bakugou’s cum bleeding out of you slipping down between your ass cheeks— your tummy practically swells form how much of his own release he’s given you and eventually, katsuki’s cantering hips slow down until they reach a grind, cock slipping out of you and spewing the last of his cum against your inner thighs and soft tummy. “holy fuckin’ shit baby, fuck.”

bakugou collapses into the couch as he comes down from the high heavens, near passing out and leaving you to deal with his gobsmacked girlfriend. “take a picture ochako, it’ll last longer!” you coo, sickly sweet, making the brunette stomp her foot like a petulant child and flee the scene.

after she’s gone, katsuki seems to stir awake with an amused laugh, pressing lazy kisses to your shoulder. “y’fuckin’ crazy angel, i love you.”

“d’ya mean that, suki?” you ask him with amused eyes as you turn around in his lap—drawing shapes over his heartbeat as you revel in the victory of your plan. “do you really love me?”

bakugou nods, rubbing his hand over the curve of your spine, kissing your nose as he slips in and out of consciousness. “always fuckin’ have, it’ll always be you, kay angel?” he tells you softly.

you barely have a chance to respond to bakugou, for he’s already passed out from how much you’d worn him out. you’d have a lot to talk about when the party was over and he'd woken up again, but for now you curl up against him contentedly— smiling at the knowledge that you’d always be his favourite girl.

networks: @planetonet, @treehouse-network.

[yyh4ever]

Yu Yu Hakusho 2009 Blu-Ray Booklet 

Part II (pp.18-35): Characters Profiles, Spirit World Dictionary, Interview with the Anime Staff and Episode List.

Part I (pp.1-17): Messages from Togashi and the Voice Actors

This is the second part of the 35-page booklet that comes with the 2009 Blu-Ray Edition. It’s a long post, I’m sorry, but the information is really cool!

1. Interview with the animation staff

Note: some of the topics discussed in this interview were rediscussed in the Special Talk with Noriyuki Abe (Director) x Mari Kitayama (Character Designer) in 2018 for the release of the 25th anniversary Blu-Ray. Both interviews are long, but worth reading. It’s like going back in time and breath Yu Yu Hakusho in real time.

Special ☆ Extra ☆ Talk

Ken Hagino (Producer) x Noriyuki Abe (Director) x Mari Kitayama (Character Design)

"It  was tough but fun. It's my masterpiece." (Hagino)

"I was fortunate that "Yu☆Yu☆Hakusho"  was my first work as a director.” (Abe)

"I was watching it as a fan. I was looking forward to watching it every Saturday."(Kitayama)

- First of all, please tell us how Mr. Abe and Ms. Kitayama joined the project.

Abe: It had been about 2-3 years since I was entrusted with directing at Pierrot, and it was a time when I wanted to do more works. One day, I heard that a new series was going to start and asked "Can I be included in that work?" and I was given a tankobon and was told "Well, read this”. At the time, I thought I was going to be an episode director, but I was surprised to find out that I was actually the director (laughs). In those days, there were a lot of directors of the older generation at Pierrot, but it seems that Mr.Hagino wanted to supervise someone younger.

Hagino: Of course, I had the idea of asking a veteran to direct it, but I wanted to let a young person do this work. I was prepared to face opposition from the people around me because I was entrusting it to someone who had no experience as a director. However, the decision was surprisingly easy. I'm sure it was because of the director's good looks (laughs). He was famous as a director who cherishes the original work.

Kitayama: I originally joined Pierrot as an in-between animator, but I quit because I didn't have the talent (bitter smile). After that, I drew copyright illustrations for products. However, that department was closed and I got a job to pick up the phone in the president's office (laughs). Then, in the meantime, I drew a "Yu Yu Hakusho", which had been decided to be animated, illustration for a Morinaga & Co. product...

Hagino: It was very well received by the editors and they said “make sure to use this drawing for the animation”. So, I entrusted her with the characters.

Kitayama: Thanks to you, I have been drawing copyright illustrations until today. Thank you very much.

Hagino: Kitayama has no track record as an animator, but she had the talent to draw illustrations. She has been drawing dust jackets illustrations not only for "Yu Yu Hakusho", but for other works as well, and she is excellent on visual presentation of the characters and layout design. However, she can’t draw female characters in a sexy way!

- What were your impressions when you read the original story?

Hagino: As expected, it’s interesting. So I asked myself "Are you really sure you’re going to do this work?”, there was also fear. It was a difficult start and we were constantly repeating trial and error.

Kitayama: In fact, I've liked "YuYu Hakusho" since the beginning of the series, and after reading the JUMP magazine on Monday mornings*, I was deeply moved before going to work. That's how I used to live my life (laughs). However, halfway through the series, it started to focus on battles and I didn't like that at the time, so I stopped reading JUMP. After that, when I heard that the anime planning was in progress within the company, I had mixed feelings. However, the president told me “buy the book”, and when I read it again, I found it interesting. At that time, I thought “the development of the story was correct” (laughs).

(*) Note: The Weekly Shounen Jump magazine, with some exceptions, comes out on Mondays.

Abe: I was given the second volume of the tankobon to read first. After that, the story certainly continued with the subsequent battle-centered development, right?

Hagino: Some important episodes of the Spirit World Detective Arc were omitted on TV, but all the staff agreed on this decision. Of course, there were many scolding from fans who said: "Why don’t you do that story!?". However, there are some viewers who do not know the original story, so it is effective to focus on battles in order to attract a wide range of viewers. It was a decision made by the TV media. However, the more popular it became, the letters from the readers asking "Why not do it!?" also increased (bitter smile).

- Any orders from the original author or TV station?

Hagino: Togashi-sensei seemed to think that the animation and the original work were different things, so we were free to do as pleased with the story. However, we cared about the way the characters were presented. It wasn't a question of whether or not the story was similar, but whether the atmosphere of the original was preserved. At first, another person was in charge of character design, but I had Kitayama take over from the middle. It's not about the predecessor, but the direction of the drawing and its compatibility with the work.

Abe: The producers and advertising agency said: "Kurama and Hiei are so popular that you should release them earlier”. At that time, the intentions of TV stations and agencies were reflected in the work. It's a feeling it’s hard to imagine in today's animation industry.

Hagino: Mr. Kenji Shimizu from Fuji TV. He was the producer who created the subtitle for the first episode, but at the time, I didn't understand why that title was good. After that, I finally realized it when the story progressed for a while. Back then, I thought: "Surprised to be Dead!"...“What are you saying?”. We had to make it stand out in order for the viewers to watch it (laughs). Also, the director (Abe) initially hated the color scheme of the school uniforms (laughs).

Abe: It was decided with reference to the original work, but I don't think I would use those colors now (laughs).

Hagino: Children remember the characters by their colors, so we needed to make them stand out. If you had made everyone black with an emphasis on realism, it would have looked pictorially simple. The editorial team's intention was "Let's go with colors".

- How did you decide on the casting?

Hagino: Auditions. We usually choose "skillful people”, but when I think about it now, she was a splendid participant. At the time, Ms. Megumi Ogata, who played Kurama, was unknown, but I felt her immeasurable charm as experience points and cast her. That's how shiny she was.

Abe: The four regulars characters are all male, so I wanted one of the voice actors to be a woman. I was thinking of either Kurama or Hiei.

Hagino: At the time, the fans started a signature campaign. A great number of protests were sent to the TV station, Pierrot and the editorial department of JUMP, saying: "It's strange that the voice of Kurama is a woman”.

Abe: It must have been a lot of pressure on Ogata-san. However, as the show went on, the actors' charms were brought out and more fans were born rather those who disliked it. Kurama was originally a Takarazuka-like character.

- It was a long-term broadcast schedule of 112 episodes in 2 years and 3 months.

Hagino: We didn't plan for two years and three months from the beginning. Most of the works work in a span of one year. The fact that it was extended to 112 episodes is a result of its popularity.

Abe: The audience rating was good, the numbers can not be compared with the current animations.

- The initial episodes were almost exactly the same as the original story, but the last arc complemented the confrontation scenes that were not depicted in the manga and ended when Yusuke returns.

Hagino: Initially, the story was developed according to the original work, but sometimes the dialogues and expressions were changed. Most of the current animes are written according to the original story, but at that time it was not so strict. However, regarding the arrangements, we took care not to change the worldview of the original manga. Also, the direction of the series finale was a proposal from the director (Abe).

Abe: Since Togashi-sensei himself was looking for a way to finish the final arc, we decided it would be difficult to develop it in the same way as the original work. There were also restrictions on the number of episodes.

Hagino: I think it was a great result. Of course, there was a plan to make the last arc itself an original screenplay, but, in terms of time, we couldn't structure a story in such a way that it would rival the original work. To tell the truth, from a TV perspective, I wanted to continue. However, I didn't want the content to be unsightly.

- If you have any memories of your time at the site, please let us know.

Abe: In the beginning, the drawing staff couldn't get over the influence of the previous work ("Marude Dameo"), and the characters’ bodies proportions tended to be shorter. At the site, I was looking at the outside staff's drawings while correcting the deviations. I also tried to make this work as flashy as possible. I made use of transmitted light without hesitation. In the film era, it was difficult to use transmitted light. Now that we are using digital technology, it's simple to apply it. It caused a lot of trouble to the staff, but thanks to that, it became a hot topic at that time as a flashy work.

Kitayama: I really love the original work, so it was hard for me when I couldn't draw a character. It was frustrating and stressful to not be able to draw them. As soon as I was in charge of the character design, I lost 5 kg (laughs). Also, I was nervous because it was the first time for me to suddenly draw on a white paper. Until then, I had been working on video, it was a process of putting the paper on top of the original drawing and clean it up. But, I didn't participate in the drawing of frames for the main story. I drew a photo-style illustration for the ending ("When the Sun Shines Again").

Hagino: Kitayama has a background in video, but she has very little experience as an animator and couldn't even attach a sheet (*time-sheet and instructions for shooting) (laughs).

Note: *time-sheet is like an instruction sheet in animation production. By writing instructions and annotations on it, the next person to work can make an animation if they follow the instructions.

Kitayama: It was also impressive that I went to a dubbing tour. I used my staff privileges (laughs). From the production's point of view, post-recording is just an everyday thing, but from the anime fans' point of view, it is like a magical world. Up until then, I had only heard the on-air version of the voices, so after the voice actors practiced whispering, they spoke their lines again in front of the microphone. I was very impressed when I saw the sequence of the events. 

Abe: In the film era, it was hard not to work until the last minute. Now that we've gone digital, no one is impatient, on the contrary, they do things that were unthinkable back then. It's unreasonable that if people from the film era were to see this, they would be overwhelmed (laughs). Anyway, it was always a difficult situation. In fact, the know-how was not very sophisticated. For example, there were scenes where banks (reuse of film) could be used and yet I didn’t use it. At that time, I was ordering a video from Seoul and they got angry about the audience's mob scene. I use large cells for large-scale scenes, but it's difficult to draw a large number of people in a huge cell. Of course, it's hard to paint. However, it's easy to draw with conté, so I drew it nonchalantly. That caused a fuss later.

Hagino: I had a staff member in Seoul yell to my face, "We are human beings!”. I've never experienced anything like that before (bitter smile).

- Do you have any memorable characters?

Hagino: Sensui. I think that character is the essence of what Togashi-sensei wanted to depict. As if what he wanted to do with "Level E" was reflected in "HUNTER x HUNTER". I think the teacher likes that kind of worldview. I thought that no one else could have come up with the idea of the territory setting.

Abe: A real-life girl. She often played with directing. Also, Jorge Saotome. In those days, actors often gave names to their roles, a phenomenon that often happens in long-lasting productions.

(T/N: Director Abe is talking about how Jorge Saotome was named by the voice actors. When the character was conceived by the animation staff he was only known as “the blue ogre” or Koenma’s assistant”.)

Kitayama: I started with Hiei. In the original work, Yusuke was very cool, and in the anime, I liked Koenma because of Mayumi Tanaka's wonderful voice. However, Kurama is a bit scary. I have a friend who says "I want to be friends with Kurama!", but if you become friends with him, you never know what he might say to you. He might chop you from behind (laughs). I feel like he's hard to approach.

- How do you feel about the work "Yu Yu Hakusho" when you look back on it?

Kitayama: I enjoyed it normally as a fan. I made sure to never saw the motion picture before airing and I was looking forward to watching it every Saturday. The way the pictures changed depending on the animation director, compared to now, they had a lot more freedom. 

Hagino: That's the bad part of our company. However, it was a characteristic feature of ours (laughs).

Abe: Since it was my first work as a director, I am very attached to it. I gained confidence because my first work was well-received and it led me to my future works. In that sense, I was fortunate to be able to meet “Yu Yu Hakusho”. I learned a lot from this work and the experience I gained at that time has been put to good use in making later works. Also, many of the staff at the time were of the same generation, it was fun to be able to work while bumping into them.

Hagino: It's all tough memories. But even though it was hard, it was fun. Because I made this work, I was led to other titles later. I've been involved in many works so far, but if I had to nominate a masterpiece it would be "Yu Yu Hakusho". It is a work that I am very attached to.

- Finally, do you have a message for the fans?

Hagino: People who were watching TV back then are now buying the Blu-ray. I'm really grateful. I worked very hard on this work. At the time, I thought I was really undergoing great hardships. Please take good care of it.

Kitayama: It’s a work made more than 15 years ago, but the picture is still beautiful even now. I hope you enjoy it.

Abe: When I told young voice actors that the Blu-ray of "Yu Yu Hakusho" was coming out, many of them said "I watched it when I was a kid" or "I watched it when I was trying to become a voice actor”. Even though it was a time when there were fewer animated works than now, I was still happy to be involved in a highly recognized title. To tell the truth, I never watch my own works after they have been aired. It's embarrassing (laughs). However, this time I reviewed the Blu-ray to check the colors. Then, it turned out to be better than I had expected. Of course, there are parts that are not so good. But it was the result of my hard work during that time, so it became a work of good memories including that.

Profiles:

Ken Hagino (萩野 賢)

Born on December 17th, in Saitama Prefecture.

Affiliated to Pierrot. He was the produce assistant of " Heisei Tensai Bakabon" (1990) and the producer of the  successor program "Ore wa Chokkaku" (1991). He has worked on "Marude Dameo" (1991), "Yu Yu Hakusho" (1992), "NINKU" (1995), "Green Makibao" (1996), "Flame of Recca" (involved in 1997). He has also worked on "GTO" (1999), "BLEACH" (2004) and "Theatrical Version of BLEACH".

Noriyuki Abe (阿部記之)

Born on July 19th, in Tokyo.

He joined Studio Pierrot (currently Pierrot) in 1986 and became a freelancer in 1990, making his directorial debut with this work (Yu Yu Hakusho). Major directorial works are "NINKU" (1995), "Midori no Makibao" (1996), "Flame of Recca" (1997), " The Small Giant, Microman", "GTO" (1999), " Gakkou no Kaidan (Ghost Stories)" (2000), "Tokyo Mew Mew" (2002) "Detective School Q" (2003), "BLEACH" (2004) and "Theatrical Version of BLEACH". Since "Flame of Recca", he is also active as a recording director.

Mari Kitayama (北山真理)

Born on May 12th, in Kumamoto Prefecture.

In charge of character design for Pierrot's "NINKU" (1995), "Flame of Recca" (1997), "Dokkiri Doctor" (1998), "Tokyo Mew Mew" (2002). She has also done copyright illustrations for "Fushigi Yugi" (1995), "Akachan to I (Baby and Me)" (1996), "Saiyuki” (2000), "Ghost Stories" (2000), "Saiyuki RELOAD” (2003), "Saiyuki RELOAD GUNLOCK" (2001), "BLEACH" (2001) and others. In this work (Yu Yu Hakusho), she is in charge of character design for the main characters.

2. Yu Yu Hakusho Broadcast List

This same table was published in the “Yu Yu Hakusho Perfect Files” back in 1995. Besides the original airdates and titles, you can also check the persons in charge of the screenplay, storyboard, directing and animation director of each episode. As Mari Kitayama mentioned in the above interview, the art and pictures from the episodes changed a lot depending on the animation director. I guess you all notice that watching the anime as well.

I’m not translating the whole table, but it may be interesting to check when an episode was broadcasted for the first time on the Japanese television (Fuji TV). The first episode “Surprised to be Dead” aired on October 10th, 1992 and the last one "Forever Yu Yu Hakusho!” on January 7th, 1995. They aired every Saturday and it’s also funny that the dates when the anime was suspended due to special programs are mentioned.

3. Spirit World Dictionary: it’s a selection of important words from the four seasons of the series. A similar but more detailed index can also be found in the “Yu Yu Hakusho Official Character Book Reikai Shinshiroku” (2005). Since this post is already too long, I translated it here. But there’s no new information, just brief descriptions.

For example:

- “Mobile Fortress Mukade”: Mukuro’s residence. After the end of the Tournament, it was used for patrols to protect humans who wandered in the Demon World.

[shianhygge-imagines]

Sundown 勿忘草 [Reno/Reader]{Final Fantasy VII} Episode 2

AN: Here’s the next part of Sundown Wasurenagusa! I’m sorry that I’ve been slow on posting any new story material! I had a bit of a writers’ block, and I’m still trying to work through it!

I had intended for this to be much longer, but I felt like this part was a good length to post. The first part of this ‘episode’ is going to be formatted weird because I can’t get Tumblr to format a text conversation in the way that I want.

If you like the content I create, please consider donating to my Ko-fi! Please help me feed my tea addiction!

|Masterlist Link|

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

December 12

Reno {07:10}

[Good morning, sleeping beauty]

Me {08:30}

[Morning]

[Do you not need sleep?]

[You probably went to bed late last night]

[And while it truly does make my day to hear from you]

[Why? It’s so early ;.;]

Reno {08:40}

[Can you blame a guy for being eager to talk to you?]

[Lol, Sorry. I didn’t disturb you, did I?]

Me {08:59}

[>///<]

[No, you’re good. I gotta get up to get ready anyways.]

[Flatterer]

Reno {09:34}

[I mean, can you blame me? ;) ]

[So, I was thinking about taking you on a date outside of Midgar, but I realized that I should probably get your opinion on it first]

Me {10:01}

[I mean, that depends? How early do I have to get up on my day off? And how long will it take to get there?]

Reno {10:05}

[Um… well, it’s getting pretty chilly in Midgar, so I was thinking about taking you to Costa del Sol… beach date :P]

Me {10:30}

[…]

[Costa del Sol is pretty far, Reno…]

Reno {10:31}

[And?]

[I’ve got a way]

[Don’t sweat the details]

Me {10:32}

[You’re taking a company helicopter, aren’t you  -.-]

Reno {10:33}

[Ack! You’ve figured out my master plan!]

Me {10:34}

[Are Turks even allowed to take company assets out for joy rides?]

Reno {10:35}

[ TT^TT I told you not to sweat the details!]

Me {10:40}

[I just don’t want you to get into any trouble.]

Reno {10:50}

[Awww, don’t worry about me.]

[You have a party to attend later, so do me a favor and have fun, okay?]

Me {11:03}

[That reminds me…]

Reno {11:05}

[??]

Me {11:11}

[bluedress.jpg sent]

(The image is of you in a sapphire blue dress, the sleeves long and neck high. The dress itself ends just below your knees)

[This dress?]

[reddress.jpg sent]

(The second image is of you in a backless ruby dress that ends just above the knee. There are no sleeves to this dress despite the fact that it has a high neck)

[Or this dress?]

Reno {11:13}

[…]

[Y/N]

Me {11:15}

[Reno]

[???]

Me {12:01}

[If I don’t look good in either of them, just be honest ;.;]

Reno {13:05}

[Gah! Sorry, I got pulled away for something]

[The red one. For sure]

Me {13:06}

[Just because red’s your color… >.>]

[I hope you’re okay, Reno ;.;]

Reno {13:15}

[Hey, first of all, remember what I said about red being your color?]

[I don’t lie, k?]

[But also, yeah. Also because it’s my color, you should wear it ;)]

[Do you have a sixth sense or something?]

[image.jpg]

(Opening up the image file gifts you with a selfie of Reno, looking minorly roughed up and being supported by an infrantryman. He looks like he’s by the old church that Aerith likes to visit. Despite needing to be supported by the infantryman, the red headed Turk’s winking and holding up a peace sign)

[Just a few minor bruises ;P I’ll be fine]

[Unless….]

[You want to kiss me better? ;)]

Me {13:30}

[… Well. I’m sorry for worrying (¬_¬) ]

Reno {13:45}

[Joking, joking! :D]

[All patched up]

Reno {14:07}

[Y/N?]

(´༎ຶོρ༎ຶོ`)

[I’m sorry.]

[Please talk to meeeeeee]

Me {14:00}

[image.jpg]

(It’s a picture of you in the red dress. Your hair is done up with an attractive amount of make up. You’re wearing a sensible set of black flats.)

[The party starts in an hour, so I might be answering my phone too often.]

[And Costa del Sol sounds perfect for tomorrow ;) I’ve got my outfit all picked out]

Reno {14:15}

[Uh, yeah, that’s gonna be your new contact photo]

[I’m picking you up earlier than we agreed so that we can have more time to relax in the sun]

[Duty calls. Have fun tonight, okay?]

Me {14:20}

[And what? My contact photo for you is going to be this?]

[screenshot.jpg]

(It’s a screenshot of your mobile phone screen. There’s an edit with a red arrow pointing directly at the photo icon for Reno’s contact…it’s the photo that he sent earlier except you’ve photoshopped cartoon ‘uwu’ eyes and added pink anime blush to his cheeks)

[And don’t worry, I’ll probably have enough fun for the both of us.]

[We’ll have fun tomorrow, be safe, okay?]

Reno {14:30}

[I’ll try ;) But if not, I’ll have you to take care of me.]

[Also? That picture?]

[P.E.R.F.E.C.T]

Me {18:30}

[Hope you’re safe!]

[Message me after work to let me know you’re okay!]

[image-2.jpg]

(It’s a group photo of you and your friends in silly poses)

Me {19:21}

[image-3.jpg]

(It’s a close up shot of a delicious plate of food)

[I should have brought you with me ;.;]

|You called Reno| 20:58

[Unable to leave voicemail]

December 13 - 08:21

The morning after the confrontation with AVALANCHE at the Sector 7 Pillar, one would expect the medical bay in Shinra HQ to be jam packed full of patients. There should have been a horde of doctors and nurses, running around to treat the injured infantryman and civilian survivors. But there were only two individuals in the med bay, Reno and Rude. When the plate fell, only a handful of infantryman were able to escape the chaos. Many were left behind to fend for themselves.

Despite surviving a helicopter crash and the brawl with Tifa, Barret, and Cloud, Rude only sustained a few bruises and minor bone fractures. He had been assigned bedrest after being treated by the doctors, but the weight of what he and his partner had been tasked to do twelve hours ago felt like an overwhelming burden. Needing something to keep his mind occupied, the taller of the iconic Turk duo simply engrossed himself in a novel that Elena had brought over during her visit.

On the bed beside Rude’s, Reno groaned in pain as he sat up, eyes still not open and alert as he raised a hand to press against his pounding head. “Gah, what the hell.” Reno’s face stung at the cheeks when his face scrunched up at the pain that seemed to come from every part of him. Even the act of sitting up proved too painful due to his newly broken ribs.

Rude watched his partner sink back into the sheets from his own medical bed, sunglasses on as was usual of him. He wondered how long it would take Reno to realize that it had been nearly twelve hours since they had dropped the plate. He also wondered when his sassy partner in crime would realize that he had a date this morning. Of course, Rude didn’t think you’d get angry at Reno for missing a date when he was hospitalized, but the taller of the iconic Turk pair knew that Reno would never forgive himself for skipping out on you.

While Rude watched, Reno allowed his body to collapse back into bed, an exhausted and pained groan escaping his lips as he want, arms flopping onto the bed as he fought to remember what had happened to land him in such a pitiful state.

Oh yeah…Rude and I went to Sector 7’s plate… and we fought blondie’s group of self righteous freedom fighters… and then…I blacked out. Cracking both eyes open, Reno furrowed his brows and turned his head to examine his surroundings. Med bay back at HQ… The red head swiveled in place to stare at Rude, “The mission….” He trailed off with a questioning tone.

His partner merely grunted, “We finished it and escaped.” Lacking in detail, but still straight to the point.

Sighing in relief that his work track record wouldn’t have a stain on it, Reno flopped back down, “Whooo…” The red head cheered sarcastically, pumping a fist without any energy or cheer behind it. Gah, and I promised Y/N that I’d be safe… Reno’s eyes snapped open and he bolted to a seating position with an alarmed cry, “Crap! Y/N! What time is it?” Shit, I gotta message her to let her know that I’m going to be running late! The Turk second in command thought as he pat down his person for his cell phone.

When he couldn’t find it, Reno turned to his partner, who gestured towards the bedside table. “It was damaged during our fight with AVALANCHE, but it should still be working.”

Not paying any attention to the fact that he was now bleeding through the bandages wrapped around his abdomen, Reno grinned, “Whooo boy! Partner, you’re a life saver!”

The sheer amount of relief within Reno voice made Rude stop and stare at his partner. Hmm… maybe Reno’s serious about her after all.

Meanwhile, Reno quickly unlocked his phone screen, ignoring the fact that the glass display seemed shattered beyond repair. When he pulled up the chat room that he shared with Y/N, Reno cursed, “Five missed messages and one missed call.” Quickly reading through the text messages, and smiling at how much fun you were having at the party, Reno tapped out a quick message in reply to you before listening to the voicemail that you had left.

Yesterday

Y/N {19:21}

[image-3.jpg]

(Reno’s mouth watered at the sight of the food in the picture)

[I should have brought you with me ;.;]

|Missed call from Y/N| 20:58

[Click to listen to voicemail]

Today - December 13

Me {08:43}

[Gah, sorry Y/N, I may have bit off more than I could chew yesterday.]

[I just woke up in the med bay at HQ]

[I’m going to be a little late picking you up]

[And I’m a little roughed up]

[But nothing is stopping me from taking you on our date!]

[See you in an hour?]

When Reno lifted his damaged cell phone to listen to the voicemail that you had left him, the only sound that reached his ears was an error notification that the voice recording app had failed. “I’m sorry, but the voicemail recording that you wish to listen to failed to load properly. Please quite all applications before trying again. If the problem still persists, please contact Shinra Mobile’s technical support service to resolve this issue.” The phone recording informed Reno, pleasantly.

Knowing from experience that getting through to technical support at the current hour was next to impossible, Reno merely tapped out another message.

Me {08:47}

[Hey, the voicemail that you sent to me didn’t go through.]

[What was it about?]

Satisfied with the messages that he’d sent out, Reno shifted to get out of bed, an excited grin on his lips. “Welp! Time to get going! Got a wonderful day off with a gorgeous gal!”

Sighing, Rude lowered the novel to look in his partner’s direction. “Your date with Y/N?” When Reno only gave a sassy shrug in reply, Rude shook his head, “Just remember, you’re still injured.”

“Will do, partner!” Reno saluted the older man before dashing out of the med bay, dodging the nurses swiftly as he made his way to the elevators, itching to get back to the Turk dorms to change into something that would help him blend into the slum crowds of Sector 5. On his way to his room, the red headed Turk would raise his phone to check for any new messages, lowering it in disappointment every time there was no response.

“That’s weird, normally she responds by now.” Reno mused, sending out another quick text once he’d changed into dark jeans, a red hoodie, and a dark beige trucker jacket.

Me {09:12}

[I’m on my way to your place now.]

[Are you awake?]

Around twenty minutes later, on the helicopter ride down to the Sector 5 slums, Reno furrowed his brows and bit the inside of his lip when you didn’t respond again.

Me {09:32}

[Y/N?]

[Please answer.]

[I’m on a helicopter down now]

[Message back. I’m getting worried.]

When there is still no response, Reno taps on your contact and brings the phone up to his ear, trying to call you.

“Hey, this is Y/N. I’m probably away from the phone right now, so leave a message, and I’ll call you back as soon as possible.”

Straight to voicemail.

Something wasn’t right, and Reno could feel it in his bones.

When the helicopter started to land in the Shinra barracks, Reno didn’t even wait for the helicopter to fully land before jumping out of the aerial vehicle, landing solidly before taking off in a sprint towards your apartment.

She’s not answer any of the text messages… Did she lose her phone last night? Did she accidentally break it?… Did she find out what I did yesterday? Is she ignoring me?

The worries and thoughts that raced through Reno’s mind became more and more self-depricating as he neared entered the main town area and brushed past the crowds of people gathered in the streets. I know I said it was too late to grow a conscious, but damn it, please don’t let this be the reason she decides that she doesn’t want me around.

All but flying up the metal steps to your apartment, Reno starts to bang on your front door, calling your name in the meanwhile. “Y/N!” Bang bang bang “It’s Reno!” Bang bang bang “You weren’t answering your phone. Are you ready to go?” It took another few minutes of knocking before Reno head a door open below and slow footsteps ascend the metal stairwell.

Turning and expecting to see you standing there, Reno’s shoulders visibly slumped when he came face to face with a tiny old lady. “Oh, uh. Sorry for causing a disturbance.”

“Are you looking for Y/N, young man?” The old woman inquired, tilting her head to look up at Reno through friendly old eyes.

Feeling as if he was being judged by the elderly woman, Reno stood ramrod straight and nodded, clearing his throat, “Uh, yeah. We had plans for today.”

The old woman nodded sagely, “I see, I see. Ah, to be young again. I’m sorry to disappoint you, young man, but Y/N hasn’t been home since yesterday afternoon. I think she’s still at her friend’s home.”

The first traces of alarm flashed through Reno’s head, and suddenly his Turk persona was back, “Do you happen to know where her friend lives, ma’am?”

The old woman shook her head, “I only know that dear Selene doesn’t live in Sector 5. I’m sorry, young man.”

Suddenly jittery, Reno only nods and descends the metal staircase again, “Thanks for the help. I should get going.”

Reno doesn’t hear the old woman’s reply because he’s sprinting back towards the Shinra barracks, ears ringing and vision narrowed as he contacts a friend in Shinra’s tech department for help tracking down your cell phone’s location and retrieving the voicemail you’d left him. And while his friend works on it, Reno decided to change into a clean set of his uniform, mind suddenly kicked into overdrive as he tries to recall where you said your friend’s party was.

Gah, Reno… you pay attention to everything else she says, but you can’t figure out where her friend Selene lives? Some Turk you are! Reno scolds himself as he paces back and forth in Y/N’s office, somehow trying to find comfort in familiar surroundings. Damnit, think! What has she mentioned in the past about her friends. I only remember her talking about living in Sector 7 for a whi- Reno pauses in his steps as dread begins to pool in his stomach. “No.” He doesn’t want to entertain the possibility that you had gone to a party at your childhood sector the same night that he was tasked with dropping the plate on top of hundreds. But the more that Reno thinks about it, the more likely the possibility is, and he sinks to his knees in the middle of your office, eyes wide with horror and denial. “No… I refuse to believe it. Gotta wait for-”

His phone chimes with a notification.

Pulling out his phone as fast as possible without fumbling the already hazardously damaged device, Reno unlocks the screen, only to see that a voice file had been sent to him along with tracking coordinates.

Clicking on the voicemail and tracker, Reno’s frown deepens and his face pales as he stares at the map of Sector 7 Slums with a red dot in the center of it, the sounds of your final message to him playing in the background.

No.

The voice recording loops until Reno regains his bearings, body shaking and eyes burning as his ears pick up the sounds of explosions in the background, of your sobs as you fought to leave a last message for the man who had thoughtlessly killed you, and of your fear and acceptance that you wouldn’t live past that moment. The phone slips from his hands and clatters to the floor as Reno’s fingers go slack. “No… I didn’t… Y/N…” A strangled sob escapes Reno’s lips as he raises a hand to grip onto his hair, trying to maintain his composure, “I didn’t mean to… If I’d known, I would have…” The Turk second in command paused and hunched in on himself, not caring if anyone could see him through the glass walls of your office.

M-maybe she left her phone behind when she ran? But… if she’s not there, then where would she have gone if not home?

There weren’t any excuses or any other reason he could come up with. Reno knew that. If he had known beforehand that you would be in Sector 7 Slums, he would have warned you, but you would have tried to evacuate as many people as possible from that sector, and AVALANCHE might have managed to leave, therefore ending in a failed mission. He would have done everything he could to make sure you stayed away from Sector 7, but in the end, he’d still go through with the mission.

“I killed her.” Reno sobbed in realization, biting his bottom lip so hard that he tasted copper, “Just like I killed all those people.” Shaking his head, inconsolable, Reno could only mourn quietly. “I’m just the worst. This is karma for all the shit things I did in life, isn’t it?”

Eyes dulled and slightly puffy, Reno hastily wiped at his face and sat down with his back against your desk, his phone ringing with notifications as Tseng and Rude sent him requests for ‘status’ updates. And the Turk second in command ignored his colleagues, eyes staring into nothingness as he wreaked his brain for what to do next.

I really was looking forward to the date. Reno’s thoughts trailed off, It’s sappy as hell, but I wanted to ask her to be my girlfriend. Tseng said that relationships for Turks never ended well, citing Veld as an example, but… gah! This is the worst situation for Tseng to be right!

It was only the early afternoon… maybe he could start a search party for survivors… it was probably too late, but Reno knew that he had to do something to look for you. With renewed purpose, Reno got to his feet and marched out of your office, blue eyes burning with fiery determination as he hung onto the faint hope that you might have survived.

December 13 - 12:13

You groaned in pain and shifted your body, eyes cracking open to be met with blinding industrial lights. The pain from the glaring lights startled you into closing your eyes again, turning until your body was facing away from them. For a moment, you wondered why you were laying on some sort of weird metallic floor instead of your soft bed, and then the memories of a falling sky sent your eyes flying back open as you took in your surroundings.

The floor was indeed cold and metallic because it looked as if you’d woken up in a maintenance passage. Despite most maintenance passages usually being dimly lit, the one you found yourself lying in was lit from both of the walls. The ceiling above your face had a hole in it, though it was covered with metal and concrete chunks. You assumed, as you clambered to your feet, that you’d fallen through that hole and rolled a few feet away due to the pile of rubble directly beneath the hole. Wincing slightly, you poked and prodded your person for bruises, broken bones, or fractures. Slightly satisfied with just a few small skin lesions, bruises, and maybe a fractured rib, you patted yourself down for your mobile phone, hoping to call for help. Frowning, you found that you did not have your cell phone on you, nor was it anywhere on the floor near you.

Since you hadn’t expected to live through a plate falling on top of you, you could only look on the bright side of things, turning to walk down the metal tunnel with determination set on your face. I didn’t almost die from a plate falling just to give up in an empty tunnel. Plus, a fond smile appeared on your face, I have a date waiting for me when I get back topside.

It seemed pretty simple to you. You’d falling who knows how far down, but you knew for sure that the way out was up. So the only thing to do was to keep walking until you found a passage up. Easy peasy.

December 13 - 15:35

There’s a fierce snarl on Reno’s face as he stands by several parked helicopters. All around him, emergency responders and Shinra infantrymen scrambled to load up supplies and equipment. The dark look on the normally sassy, easy-going Turk’s face seemed like a literal beacon for anyone not bearing good news to stay the away. Though, if some of the troops were to be honest, Reno had very good reason to be irate. The Turk second in command had called in an emergency rescue operation for survivors trapped among the plate wreckage nearly three and a half hours ago, and they were only just beginning to start the rescue operation.

After Tseng, the Turk commander, had authorized the mission to rescue anyone buried under the rubble, the mission had quickly been side-tracked by Shinra executives Scarlet and Heideggar. Scarlet had protested against the operation simply because of the notion that dogs living in the slums were of no use to Shinra, and therefore, the mission was a waste of resources. Heideggar, meanwhile, had agreed that while in times of disaster, Shinra’s army bore the responsibility of launching operations to rescue civilians affected, the members of AVALANCHE were widely unknown and could easily disguise themselves as regular civilians.

It took nearly two hours of careful negotiations and subtle ego inflating by Tseng and Reeve, before both executives agreed to support the relief effort. Viewing it as a strategic move to improve public opinion of the Shinra Company, President Shinra gave little to no resistance when Tseng forwarded the mission brief to be sanctioned.

Now, an hour after the mission was sanctioned, Reno felt the beginnings of a headache forming as he directed the flow of supplies to each helicopter before making sure that there were rotations of supplies and emergency responders that would journey to and from the wreckage of Sector 7 once he landed with the first round of helicopters.

When he had deemed all in good order to head out, Reno sighed and hopped into the helicopter cockpit, buckling himself in to the pilot’s seat. Plopping the headset on while he waited for the rest of the crew to load up into the helicopter, Reno busied himself with flipping switches to make sure that pre-flight and the ride down to Sector 7 would be as smooth as possible. When his co-pilot buckled himself in and gave Reno the thumbs up, the red headed Turk spoke as clearly and seriously as he could into the mic. “Alright guys and gals in all active units, hope you’re all buckled up with headsets on because I sure as hell will not be repeating this briefing.” After a brief pause, Reno continued to speak while directing the helicopter off the platform. “You all probably heard about what happened yesterday. The official reports from HQ state that AVALANCHE launched an attack to compromise Sector 7’s plate pillar. Despite all efforts directed to stop the terrorist attack, the plate still fell. Our job is to go down to the disaster zone to provide relief to all affected civilians. We will also be launching search and rescue operations for survivors.” Reno paused once more as helicopter gained enough air to safely fly out of the landing zone. “I’m gonna be real with you all. Someone important to me was in Sector 7’s Slums when the plate fell and I’m going to try my damnest to look for her. So if any of you fuck this up… not gonna lie, I’m gonna be pissed.” Nobody replied to Reno’s admittance… not that he really expected much of a reply after he dropped that bomb on them. Having enough of the silence, Reno exhaled, “Alright… good talk.”

December 13 - 16:03

It wasn’t easy peasy. Definitely fucking not.

The chrome walkways and exposed piping-lined maintenance passage that you had fallen into hadn’t been a simple few meters under the surface as you thought. No. It’s was more like several meters down with a layer of minor blocked off passageways right above. And, as if that weren’t terrible already? The maze of pathways that made up the layer above seemed to take joy in bringing you up a level, just to drop you back down a level because some asshole decided to seal off the passages at various points.

Your eye twitched in annoyance when you walked down a metal walkway only to be face to face with another fenced off passage lined with reinforced plating. To your surprise, you could see a man stumble around the corner of the opposite side. When you saw one another, your eyes widened. “Holy shit!” The man gasped, stumbling forward with a noticeable limp and sliced up arm. “I didn’t think there’d be another person down here!”

“This place is like a maze, so I’m not surprised that any survivors had yet to meet up. A-are… are you okay?” The blood leaking from the deep scratches in his left arm seemed to ooze a poisonous purple color.

The stranger bit his bottom lip as he hastily hid his injury, “Yeah… I’ll be fine. Listen, girl, you should watch out while down here. I think the rumors about the underground lab were true after all. There are monsters running around everywhere.” Your expression must have been one of utter dismay and despair because the man coughed and reached into his pocket to roll two materia under the fence. “Uh. Shit. Well, it looks like you could use these then. It’s a Cura and a Fira. Hopefully you won’t need it, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Anyways, I hope you make it out of here, girl. I gotta keep looking for other AVALANCHE survivors.”

When the man made to jog away, you called out to him, “Wait! You said that you’re looking for AVALANCHE members? Are you one of them? Do you know what happened?” You pressed yourself against the fence in order to see the stranger from around the corner.

The stranger turned around to stare at you with a grim expression. “Whatever you’re thinking, AVALANCHE didn’t cause this, okay? We were framed by Shinra.” At your confused expression, the man scoffed, “C’mon, you really think that Shinra was going to let civilians protest and riot against them? They couldn’t figure out who was a member and who wasn’t, so they figured they’d drop the entire plate on top of us to get rid of us all.”

“But that’s such a drastic move!” You protested, wanting to believe that your employers wouldn’t have such blatant disregard for human life. “They wouldn’t just sacrifice thousands to eliminate AVALANCHE!”

“Believe what you want, girl. But the reality is that my friends and I all went to the pillar to stop Shinra from dropping the plate, and it dropped anyways because two Turks were sent to finish the job.” The stranger didn’t allow you to retort as he limped away. Not that you would have responded anyways with how the stranger had said that two Turks had arrived to help ensure that the Sector 7 plate dropped.

Pulling away from the fence, you knelt down to pick up the two orbs of materia, the color of your skin taking on a sickly pale pallor. Two Turks were sent to the pillar to drop the plate on top of all of us. Your mind instantly supplied the first Turk pair that you could think of and you felt like you were going to dry heave. I don’t know Rude too well, but from what I know, he and Reno wouldn’t do something so horrendous. Surely, there must have been another pair of Turks who were sent to do it. But you did work in a different department as them, how did you know that there were more members of the Turks? And with Reno’s position within the group… He could have known what was happening…

You told Reno that you would be hanging out with your best friend… that you guys were having a party. He’s smart enough to deduce that your friends still lived in Sector 7… Did he forget? Or… Your stomach churned violently as you sank to your knees on the cold metal walkway. Did Reno just decide he didn’t care if I survived or not?

The edge of your vision burned with tears threatening to spill down your cheeks. A simple blink sent them trailing down your cheeks as you stood upon shaky legs. “Can’t worry about that now.” You muttered, eyes filled with determination as you gathered the excess fabric of your dress to gird up your loins. “I need to find a way out of here. The tunnels might not be able to hold for long.”

Lifting your arm, you pressed one of the materia into your forearm, like you’d seen a few SOLDIERs do before, marveling at how the orb of power sank into the flesh of your arm. Smiling at how seamless it was to merge flesh with Materia, you pressed the other faintly glowing orb into your other forearm, concentrating for a bit before casting Cura upon yourself.

Newly rejuvenated, you back tracked through the metal corridor to find the ladder leading down. “Welp, there’s no time like the present,” you mumbled to yourself as you descended further into the tunnels below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[johnchiarello]

Sunday sermon

2nd Kings 1-3 [Sunday sermon]

Psalm 50:23 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.

2nd Kings 1-3 video’s

https://youtu.be/gsNk5YO93fg

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMiw6l4eqdds95bcAC

https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5/videos/10205565806902731/

Note- Later today- 4-28-19- I might speak on 1st John 2-3, being I already talked about chapter 1 the other day. If so- I will try and post the video today to Youtube- facebook and my Blog. I started a few new sites recently [ https://ok.ru/profile/589985645111

https://vk.com/id533663718 ] and want to say hi to any new friends I made on the sites. I realize when people see a new site- often times if it’s ‘Christian’ they expect to be asked for money. I take no money for anything and do not send ‘special appeals’ thru messages or any other way. So greetings to my new Friends and hopefully over time you will benefit in some way from the teachings- God bless you all- John

Update- I made the video yesterday- here are the links-

1st John 2- Friends and teaching

https://youtu.be/SvGsGwXD8oM

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMixDNu8W-_LWBLywi

https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5/videos/10205590194232399/

  ON VIDEO

.The Day before Easter

.Motorcycles and scars

.Then came the Psalm

.Elijah and Elisha

.The fire comes down

.How are Enoch and Elijah alike?

.And how is this connected to the oldest man recorded in the bible?

.The anointing makes you efficient- not just ‘talented’ [gifted]

.The 3 kings- the ditches and the blood- a type of Redemption

.Obey the Word of God- even if it seems insignificant at the time

.The Divine act of God

[The verses scattered thru out the post- as well as those at the bottom of each post are the scriptures I either quoted or talked about on the video]

2 Peter 1:15

Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

 Blog- www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

Site- https://ccoutreach87.com/

Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5?ref=bookmarks

Youtube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4GsqTEVWRm0HxQTLsifvg?view_as=subscriber

Other sites- https://ccoutreach87.com/links-to-my-sites-updated-10-2018/  

Cloud links- https://ccoutreach87.com/cloud-links-12-2018/

Youtube Playlist- https://ccoutreach87.com/youtube-playlist/

[Links to all my sites at the bottom of this post]

NOTE- Every so often some of my sites think I am Spam- or a Bot- I am not. My name is John Chiarello and I post original content [all videos and text are by me]. I do share my past posts from my other sites- but it is not spam- Thank you- John.

13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.

14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.

Matt.11

 OTHER VIDEOS [These are the videos I upload nightly to my various sites- PAST POSTS below]

Does God exist [1] https://youtu.be/qHUf9YCSy58

Kings 18  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMgRSBmzdqmqC_eM0J

Jonah 2-3  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QRBVRv7LsXyJ_Q9cRuOSs4IkNpgXvLaw/view?usp=sharing

Samuel 22 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QRBVRv7LsXyJ_Q9cRuOSs4IkNpgXvLaw/view?usp=sharing

Acts 19  https://mega.nz/#!2Cx2UCLK!HxAMy7G4YRsmMYNy-lLf63dXOk85oyoIbX-CLGhE35E

Ephesians 5  https://icedrive.net/0/2064PiZGTc

2-4-18 Sunday sermon  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMgRDXJSgwCV4uxqDs

12-10-17  Sunday sermon https://www.dropbox.com/s/tf1saous3236lox/12-10-17%20Sunday%20sermon.mp4?dl=0

Friends- teaching  https://youtu.be/htO6KyOb954

2nd Samuel 16  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMgRKFgV_NRuuIJTQz

Boys of Sudan  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vbt45MTfMdSck_eh662-Oi9Ywt9dAkd7/view?usp=sharing

Acts 4  https://www.dropbox.com/s/mbpzi567ay7iebq/2-2-17%20Acts%204.mp4?dl=0

I thought you were 1 of us  https://dai.ly/x74ycp3

Samuel 17  https://flic.kr/p/2fyQ1dc

The real Moses  https://www.instagram.com/tv/BvtoVxunpSj/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

12-17-17 Sunday sermon https://www.dropbox.com/s/r7rubte771w2eq7/12-17-17%20Sunday%20sermon.mp4?dl=0

Ephesians 4  https://youtu.be/uxqSLovL8xk

2-4-18  Sunday sermon  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMgRDXJSgwCV4uxqDs

Samuel- john- Hebrews  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCoDFJ4bq8sAqhkRWtCpvkjqDpyb-xH_/view?usp=sharing

Gate shut  https://www.dropbox.com/s/anmthwuyqmk2n9o/2-21-16%20Gate%20shut.mp4?dl=0

Acts 21  https://flic.kr/p/2fr7J1B

12-24-17  Sunday sermon  https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj102x58aquol5q/12-24-17%20Sunday%20Sermon.mp4?dl=0

Christianity- Philosophy  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMgRGF7dZ2KS_846aE

David- Jude- Pops  https://dai.ly/x74v8bj

Teaching with friends https://youtu.be/e_ZBxB3V3-Y

Revolution  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMhRdk8dNfsdLaaKu2

Samuel 15  https://drive.google.com/file/d/161v3Fyvr0YsUVBbxEWVS7J5c4R8El9FP/view?usp=sharing

12-3-17  Sunday sermon  https://www.dropbox.com/s/penks9kq7i7oqd4/12-3-17%20Sunday%20Sermon.mp4?dl=0

8-26-18  Sunday sermon  https://flic.kr/p/2fA1HuK

Acts 9  https://dai.ly/x74v8bk

Real time teaching-  Furman  https://d.tube/v/ccoutreach/xy1b0096

Houston take off  https://www.instagram.com/tv/BvopXfZFrzV/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

   The Cross- 2-   https://youtu.be/u3Sne2TFlmw https://youtu.be/uWcGl9nPYsE

Galatians 5 https://youtu.be/u3Sne2TFlmw

Mercy seat  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMhRMMrXS_38blTcN7

12-31-17  Sunday sermon  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fjLN7yeCTXMfc3aTF2GOzNMZFOVwJYVG/view?usp=sharing

Kings 12  https://mega.nz/#!jPhW1QzB!GY05QdaW0KaG19lrXdsIDW_4A6jNnd-WgmEqUQhN5tg

Ephesians 4  https://icedrive.net/0/b46XJFObzB

Video-  Romans 1-3  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMhRWSt6Bar8L1ZhQn

2nd Samuel 21- New York City  https://www.dropbox.com/s/jt2dvbku9roav3e/2-20-17%202nd%20Sam.%2021%20%5BNYC%20view%5D.mp4?dl=0

4-22-19 Friends- Cops- Teaching [Timons] https://youtu.be/qZ-3CuEF9xI

https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5/videos/10205573371691846/

To God be the glory  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMhQ2LmE36snAtrbc_

John 12  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JUArFeVhUFggwIWcz9W-Pex5nf0vhdnn/view?usp=sharing

2-18-18  Sunday sermon  https://www.dropbox.com/s/qdsy8ekouky1wxa/2-18-18%20Sunday%20sermon.mp4?dl=0

Acts 18  https://mega.nz/#!fDQlQQ7a!YmJ2-d2TAHwPXEibVTk4CA4Vxs5KV2REvexlHp9ClHc

Samuel 12-13  https://icedrive.net/0/0eiPCBXomF

Pop’s candle  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMhRDTeN_m5z06s3Nr

12-31-17  Sunday sermon  https://www.dropbox.com/s/ku0cfw0jdr1xc35/12-31-17%20Sunday%20sermon.mp4?dl=0

Revolution  https://youtu.be/p1RAPGm1TFE

Romans 8-10  https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMhQ7PRpqfnBJYBCRc

2-25-18  Sunday sermon  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NKM1v9knKYSYr85xqZEYSX3ehs3c8O2n/view?usp=sharing

QM  https://www.dropbox.com/s/839jeakmwkbm24a/2-18-16%20Quantum%20Mechanics.mp4?dl=0

The door of heaven  https://dai.ly/x74tn5w

Friends  https://flic.kr/p/2ekMZ7C

Furman- Teaching https://d.tube/v/ccoutreach/xy1b0096

2-18-18  Sunday sermon   https://www.dropbox.com/s/qdsy8ekouky1wxa/2-18-18%20Sunday%20sermon.mp4?dl=0

  54 And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?

55 But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.

56 For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

Luke 9

  PAST POSTS [These are links and parts of my past teachings that relate in some way to today’s post- Verses below]

https://ccoutreach87.com/1st-2nd-kings/

https://ccoutreach87.com/kings-links/

https://ccoutreach87.com/hebrews-links-updated-10-2018/

https://ccoutreach87.com/hebrews-updated-2015/

2nd KINGS 1- The king of Israel is on his roof in Samaria and falls thru. He sends his men to inquire from a pagan god whether or not he will get healed. On the way Elijah meets them and tells them because he sought information from a forbidden source, he will die. They go back and the king realizes it was Elijah. So he sends 50 men to tell Elijah to come and see the king; Elijah calls down fire from heaven and they get ‘sacrificed’. This happens with the second group of 50 as well. The third group comes and says ‘please, we don’t want to die like the rest, just come and see the king for heavens sake’. Elijah goes. He tells the king that he will die because he sought foreign gods and rejected the true God. In Luke 9 the disciples ask Jesus ‘do you want us to call down fire from heaven and burn them up, like Elijah did’? They treated the story as literal. Why did the disciples ask this? Jesus was going to Jerusalem and he sent two men to Samaria, the same city where the king of Israel was associating himself with. The people did not welcome him because he had his mind already set on Jerusalem. The whole history of Israel and Judah [northern and southern tribes] involved a debate over where true worship occurred. Samaria was considered a low class place; the people had little respect in the eyes of the pure Jew. Jesus disciples saw nothing wrong with the death of these Samaritans. Jesus told them that his kingdom was not about getting rid of the ‘heretics’ but redeeming them. It seems strange that the disciples would even contemplate the death of these ‘illegals’, after all Jesus is going around healing and helping people who are considered low class. He is trying to instill this mindset into his men, but yet somehow on the road to the Kingdom they see no contradiction in thinking that part of the process would include the destruction of a whole society of people. Many sincere Christians/preachers seem to make this same mistake in their treatment of Muslims/Arabs. No matter how theologically wrong a certain class of people are, yet their destruction is not part of the plan. Let me also mention the error that many well meaning Catholics have fallen into in my part of the world. Over the years I have had the privilege of working with lots of brothers who have come from strong Mexican/Catholic backgrounds. Often times they would see nothing wrong with going to a ‘Catholic fortune teller’ or hiring someone to place a curse on an enemy. The Catholic Church expressly teaches against this. There are many differences between Catholics and Protestants; one of them is the teaching of asking the saints who have died to intercede for us. The Catholic Church does not teach ‘praying to the saints’ in the sense of praying to God for prayer to be answered. Many Catholics and Protestants are confused about this, many do think that praying to the saints is like asking God to answer a prayer. The official Catholic doctrine is you can ‘pray’ in the sense that you are asking a believer who has died to ‘pray for you’. In essence the doctrine teaches you can ask a believer who has died to pray for you, because in reality they are still alive. Okay, I personally don’t go for this, but I get the difference. Here close to Mexico there is a superstitious mixing of saints with actual occult practices [Santeria]. Many Catholics have a misguided understanding of seeking these practices and thinking they are Catholic in nature. They are not. So in this chapter we see that seeking wisdom from a pagan/occult source brought death upon the king. I want to warn all of our readers [both Catholic and Protestant] that the official teaching of both churches condemns doing this, don’t do it!

 (1241) 2nd KINGS 2- Elijah is going to be taken up into heaven and Elisha follows him, Elijah tells him to leave but Elisha requests a double portion of the Spirit that anointed Elijah. He tells Elisha that if he witnesses his translation into heaven he will get it. As Elisha follows Elijah to the various towns [Bethel, Jericho, etc.] he runs into the ‘sons of the prophets’ who independently tell Elisha that Elijah will be taken this day. These sons of the prophets are the same group from the ‘school of the prophets’ under Samuel. They lived a communal lifestyle, were provided for by offerings from the community and were recognized as a legitimate group sent from God. Over the years I have had both ‘prophetic’ type experiences as well as learning and growing in Christian truth. Often time’s believers will live their whole lives only experiencing and learning Christianity from their particular group. While many of these various denominations are fine groups, they are only a limited picture of the church. The problem comes in when one group sees itself as ‘the group’ to the exclusion of the other groups. There are ‘prophetic groups’ who operate in these gifts, these gifts do exist and function in the church today. Many of these groups have cut themselves off from the ‘intellectual’ branch of the church. Some seem to regulate their entire Christian experience around the gift. Often times it is next to impossible to correct them doctrinally, because they believe that the fact that they do experience real prophetic gifts justifies all their beliefs. Often times they are wrong. Many times the young believers who follow these gifted men/movements become infatuated with the gift and never truly grow in the things of God. Having said all this, we also need to be open to the miraculous gifts of the Spirit that the bible speaks about. The majority view of Christianity [Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestants] do believe in the charismatic gifts of the Spirit. There are those who try and make a case for their cessation [cessationists!] but for the most part these gifts do and have functioned since the early days of Christianity. I can personally give you many examples from my own story; let me share a recent one. A few weeks ago I had some of my homeless friends over for a fellowship time. We had communion and shared the word in my yard. This spot is the same spot where I pray over the communities of people that we relate to. I have a habit of ‘anointing’ myself with oil while praying for the brothers. I will actually put anointing oil on my head and pray ‘just like this oil is on me, Lord anoint all those we are reaching out to’. One of the homeless guys is very gifted and he does function in the gift of Prophecy, he will often make off the cuff comments and he does not realize that he is actually prophesying. So any way as we were all sitting in my yard he keeps telling me ‘you know brother, I keep thinking of the verse in the bible where the oil was on Aarons head and it ran down to the rest of his body’. This is a verse in Psalms that coincides with the exact type of prayer thing that I regularly do over the guys in this exact spot. So it’s stuff like this that shows me that prophetic people and gifts are not all fakes. Now Elijah does a few prophetic things before the chariots from heaven come and take him; he strikes the Jordan with his mantle [coat] and it dries up for him to cross. After Elisha witnesses Elijah’s ascension he does receive the ‘double portion’ and on his way back into town he does the same thing. The sons of the prophets recognize that the mantle [gift] passed from Elijah to Elisha. A few things; in this chapter we see that those who witness the ascension of ‘the prophet’ receive a greater anointing. Of course this reminds us of the early church, they were the group that saw Jesus ascend and did receive the Spirit. Some say that Elisha does twice the miracles as Elijah [the double portion]. I underlined all the miracles once and think they might be off one or two miracles, but they do come close [Elijah 7, Elisha 13 or 14]. Jesus said we would do greater miracles than he did [in number we would do greater works as the family of God]. And of course the miracles surrounding the Jordan and Elisha pouring salt in the fountain of water to ‘heal the waters’, all these images speak of the ministry of Jesus and John and the significance of baptism and how Jesus would ‘heal the waters’ i.e.; he would unite with us in the waters of the Jordan and we would meet with him thru the ordinance of baptism, in essence Jesus ‘healed the waters’ by his pure life, his ‘saltiness’ [preservation power]. Jesus said we were the salt of the earth. So there are some good prophetic pictures from a prophetic chapter. All in all we as believers are to be grounded in the word, have a grasp on all the various groups/movements that constitute Christianity, and be open to the miraculous. God has given us his Spirit and we do have the ability as Gods people to function in these gifts. But at the end of the day our assurance is in the Lord, not in our gifts.

 (1243) 2ND KINGS 3- Jehoram, king of Israel, goes after the king of Moab because he stopped paying him the taxes/extortion fees after his father died. Ahab, Jehoram’s father was feared [because of his wife Jezebel] and the king of Moab figured ‘heck, we were scared of the other president, but this new young buck doesn’t instill the same fear’ [sound familiar?]. Never the less the ‘young buck’ forms an alliance with two other kings [France, Germany? Or Britain, you pick] and he goes after Moab. They go on this 7 day journey to attack Moab, and lo and behold they realize that they don’t have the resources to finish the job [Afghanistan?]. They never took into account the actual problems they would run into with the terrain; they found no water sources for their troops or the animals. Now, Moab probably knew about the land situation, he knew it would turn to their benefit [Taliban]. So the 3 kings- Jehoram king of Israel, Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and the king of Edom are facing a dilemma. They have all their troops already in the field [their committed] and yet they don’t have the proper resources to finish [oh let’s say they need 40 thousand more]. So the King of Judah asks Jehoram if there is a prophet in the land who can help. Enter Elisha. They go to the prophet and he rebukes them, but for the sake of the king of Judah he seeks God and gives them a word from the Lord. He tells them to dig holes thru out the area and God will supernaturally fill them. I don’t know how God did it, but the chapter says he brought the water over the land, possibly some regional flood? The point is that what they saw as a major obstacle, lack of resources, turned out to be a key element of their victory. The fact that the king of Moab knew there was no water in the land, this led him to believe that what he saw in the morning was blood from the slain army. He looked out over the land and the reflection of the water looked like blood to him. So he mounts an attack and gets defeated. God often times allows our perceived weaknesses to become the key to our victory. Paul said he gloried in his faults and weaknesses, because it was thru these things that God’s power rested upon him. At the end of the battle the king of Moab realizes that he is in over his head and makes one valiant attempt to at least take the king of Edom down with him. He must be thinking ‘geez, I’m fixin to get wiped out, might as well make one last ditch effort to take out this punk’ he takes 700 men and makes a charge, he can’t break thru. So he offers his son on the wall as a sacrifice to his god. Moab would have been better off if they simply kept paying the taxes. Okay, I really don’t want to draw too much of a comparison with president Obama and the present situation, but there are some common themes. He does seem to have less ‘fear/respect’ in the area of military might than his predecessor. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it could turn out to be bad. Our situation in Afghanistan is not good; we do not presently have the troops in there to do whatever the heck we are trying to do. It looks like we are going to change strategy and downsize. And last but not least, we need to be more careful when making decisions that adversely affect our allies. The decision to drop plans to place a ground based missile defense system on the border of Poland and Russia was probably a good strategic move. But politically it did hurt some allies. The day Obama made the decision not to go ahead with the Bush agenda was the anniversary of a previous invasion of Poland by Russia, not a smart decision to say the least. All in all the king of Israel made some decisions, he got in over his head but thanks to some allies and a word from the Lord, things turned out for the better. I think we can all learn some lessons from this chapter.

Hebrews 11

CHAPTER 11: [see commentary on Acts 21] END NOTES- JUSTIFIED BY FAITH. TORTURED- BY FAITH? REJECTED MONEY- BY FAITH? THEY ALL WAITED FOR THE CITY- THE CHURCH.     ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, FOR BY IT THE ELDERS OBTAINED A GOOD REPORT [JUSTIFIED]’ This is the key verse to the chapter. Paul will go on to prove that all the Old Testament figures that ‘pleased God’ did it by faith, and not by works! ‘Through faith WE UNDERSTAND that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear’ Faith is not ‘blind’. It informs and gives understanding. This understanding is real! Let me show you what I mean. All of the universe and creation had a beginning point. Science did not always know or believe this. Today science teaches this. It is called ‘the point of singularity/density’. Science has traced back the origins of all things and has found scientific evidence to prove that all things had a ‘beginning point’. Now if you were to ask science ‘what did you have right before the beginning point’? They are stumped. Some of course believe in God and will boldly proclaim him at this point. To the others they can not answer this question. Why? Because they realize, thru science, that matter is not infinite.   Some have theorized that either all things always existed [which science has now disproved] or that at one point nothing existed [which science also teaches that if this were true then you would have nothing today. You can not get something from nothing!] So all true science has gone back to this ‘point of singularity’ and can not see what is right before ‘the point’. The Christian ‘sees’ God at this point! He ‘understands’ that by necessity there has to have been something that existed before creation, science teaches this. This something can not have been created also, because then where did the ‘being’ who created ‘it’ come from? So science teaches us that whoever got the ball rolling [Saint Thomas Aquinas calls this the ‘prime mover’] had to have been preexistent/ self existent in order to have done it. And we know that creation couldn’t have done it by itself, so therefore all reasoning and understanding leave us at the philosophical point of ‘there had to have been something/someone who existed forever  in order for anything to be today’. So now you see how ‘by faith we understand that all things that now exist were brought into existence by someone who we can not see’. FAITH UNDERSTANDS!   As we go thru the rest of this chapter I want you to focus in on all the references of justification by faith. You will be surprised [I think?] on how many examples Paul gives to Israel from their own history [his too!] on God justifying people by faith. I will also try and show you [if I remember] how this chapter links the division between Paul’s epistles to the gentiles [Romans, Galatians] with James letter to the Jews. James was one of the lead Apostles at Jerusalem [Acts 15] and the Judaizers who were always accusing Paul of preaching grace in a way that justified sin, they came out of Jerusalem. James and Paul were rivals in a sense. James had the difficult job of overseeing the Church at Jerusalem, who had all the Pharisees who believed, while Paul was preaching this radical message of grace. This is why James’s letter [book of James] focused so much on faith and works. James was seeing the Genesis 22 account of Abraham’s justification when he offered Isaac on the altar. James will say ‘see how Abraham was justified by his works’. While in Paul’s letters he focuses on the Genesis 15 account of Abraham believing God and being made righteous. James was not contradicting Paul; he was showing the actual outcome of the life of a person who was previously justified by faith. James was saying ‘When God made Abraham righteous [Gen 15] he later actually became what God made him!’ [Gen. 22].   Now when Abraham would later do righteous things, he only did them because he previously had faith in Gods promise. But the fact still remains that when Abraham did a righteous act, God still justified him [in a sense, God has the prerogative to say ‘good job son, I am pleased with you’ so this can be described as an act/function of justification]. Well, now that I already showed you all this, I guess I wont have to remember telling it to you later. The point is in this chapter Paul will go down and show all these examples of Jewish leaders acting by faith and doing righteous deeds. This sort of bridges the gap between the strong emphasis on faith in Paul’s letters, with the strong emphasis on works in James letter. Paul is telling Israel ‘yes, all the old saints did do good works that pleased God, but they did them by faith!’ ‘Faith without works is dead’ [James]. So in a sense this single chapter bridges one of the key divisions in the early church between Jerusalem and Antioch [Acts 13 and 15]. Note; I believe all the chapter references above are correct, I write all this from memory so you might want to go back and double check the references. I know all the stories are right.   ‘By FAITH Able offered …by which he obtained witness that he was RIGHTEOUS…by FAITH Enoch was translated…he had this testimony that he PLEASED GOD…without FAITH it is impossible to PLEASE HIM [all these ‘please him’ references are like saying ‘being justified’ when a person is justified by God, God sees him as acceptable, pleasing. ‘Thou art my beloved son in whom I am well PLEASED’ God to Jesus!] By faith Noah… prepared an ark to the SAVING of his house…and became heir to the RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH IS BY FAITH [wow, he makes this one real plain] By faith Abraham…went out into a strange land…and sojourned’ interesting, both the aspect of ‘going out to a new land’ and ‘staying in it when you get there’ are both functions of faith. Let me throw in some practical stuff here. Over the years of ‘doing ministry’ I have seen and been a partaker of both of these experiences. Sometimes it takes an act of faith to uproot us from familiar territory and move on to the next level. And do you know what can happen next? The enemy will try to intimidate you once you get in the land of promise, and tell you ‘you cant stay here, look at all the people who hate you. Look at all the mistakes you made’ and it often takes an act of faith to STAY IN THE LAND. Don’t leave the land of your destiny; all true leaders will go thru both of these dealings.   ‘For he looked for a city which hath foundations [Jesus is the foundation of this city!] whose builder and maker is God’ All of these great heroes of the faith were looking forward towards a future promise of being in Gods true church, the ‘City of God’ the Bride, the Lambs wife. Paul shows Israel that this 1st century appearing of Messiah was for the purpose of Israel coming into the ‘new land’ the Body of Christ. It is important to see this. There are many preachers today who are treating natural Israel as in if everything is just fine. It isn’t! They need Christ as much as the Muslim does. God was telling Israel ‘come into this new city’ [New Jerusalem versus Old Jerusalem] he wasn’t appealing for them to stay in ‘old Jerusalem’ and be a ‘completed Jew’. [I know this sounds harsh, but I want to emphasize to all my evangelical friends that Jews need Jesus, they play a special role in Gods plan, but ultimately they need Christ!]   ‘Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed’ it takes faith to produce spiritual offspring! It might look impossible, but with God all things are possible. ‘Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky and the sand by the shore’ sometimes God will allow you to bring forth one ‘seed’ [person or act of ministry] and you will be surprised how much fruit can come forth from this singular effort. This is why it’s so important to simply hear and obey God. Often times in ministry we do tons of ‘leg work’ which is OK. But when God gives you an idea or mode of function that you weren’t even thinking of, go with it. These are usually the ‘little seeds’ that produce the great harvest! ‘THESE ALL DIED IN FAITH, NOT HAVING RECEIVED THE PROMISES’ I want to emphasize here that it is possible to live your whole life in faith without actually seeing the fulfillment of all that God has told you.   Now faith does obtain promises [verse 33] but sometimes we also see things many years down the road and we must realize that the measurement of faith is not whether or not you are currently getting the actual promise. In the above [and below] verse’s we see Abraham and Sara being told that their offspring would number in the millions. They believed these promises, but it is obvious that they didn’t live to see it fulfilled, but they sure knew that after they were gone it would come to pass. So I want to exhort you to believe to see certain things fulfilled in your life time, but have some greater goals that you initiate while here on earth, knowing that after you depart they will be fulfilled. ‘And truly if they had been MINDFUL of the country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned’ what is Paul saying here? The greatest threat to the gospel taking root in the Hebrew community was the desire to go back to old law and culture. How many believers ‘revert’ back to an older form of church simply because they missed the old culture and ‘feelings’ that they had when they were younger? Many of the Jews would not go all the way with the gospel because they were ‘mindful’ of the good old days of law and sacrifice.   I just watched a show the other day that told how even some gentile believers began celebrating certain feasts of Israel with their Jewish neighbors. While it is good to understand and see the significance of the feasts, yet we know Paul wrote the early believers and said ‘you observe days and times and feasts, and I am concerned about it’. So when we [or 1st century Israel] are ‘mindful’ of the ‘good old days’ then there is always a danger of going back! ‘By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac…of whom it was said in Isaac shall thy seed be called. Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure’ Abraham exhibited characteristics of the Father [God] as well as Isaac being a type of the Son [Jesus]. It’s interesting that these verses show that Abraham knew for a fact that God was going to give Isaac millions of children, Abraham also knew the voice of God so well that when he ‘thought’ he heard God say ‘offer up this boy’ that in the mind of Abraham, the only way these 2 things could be reconciled, is he came to the conclusion ‘I guess God will have to raise him up, being he has told me this boy will have millions of children, plus he is telling me to kill him’. Most of us would not have come to this conclusion! We would have doubted either the original promise, or said ‘surely this can’t be God telling me to offer Isaac’ [most likely we would have doubted the latter!].   There is a real important reason for Abraham to have been a real man of faith. God wanted this ‘picture’ of the offering up of Isaac for a type of the Cross and Resurrection. The only way he could have shown this example was to have had someone so radically filled with faith, that he would have come to this conclusion of ‘well, I guess God will just raise him’. It was necessary for the figure to have been truly fulfilled. It took Abraham many years of hearing and believing God before he would get to this stage. The part of Abraham’s mind that said ‘God will just have to raise him up’ was important for the figure to truly work. God knew he could only bring someone to this conclusion by arranging the whole scenario around a person of faith. It truly took a real person of faith to have come to the conclusion of resurrection as being inevitable! [For Abraham to fulfill the type of God, he had to have been convinced beyond all doubt that after he offered up his son, that he would be raised again. This is exactly what the Father [God] believed and knew about his own Sons death. So not only did Isaac fulfill the type of Jesus in this story, but Abraham also fulfilled a type of God!] [NOTE; Today is September 22, 2007. Israel’s Day of Atonement. I just heard a brother preach on the feasts of the Lord [I have done this also] but he preached it in a way that said ‘because God said you were to observe these feasts perpetually, therefore all gentile believers need to start observing these days’ he added ‘I know Paul taught the law passed and all, but these feasts are supposed to be forever because God said so’.   How are the feasts ‘perpetual’? Thru the fulfilling of them in Christ! Paul makes this plain all thru the New Testament [as well as this letter!] I was surprised to hear the brother preach that the first 2 feasts [out of the 3 main ones] were fulfilled and memorialized, but the 3rd one [Atonement/tabernacles] has yet to be fulfilled! What? Jesus fulfilled Passover and Pentecost for sure, and they are still being ‘fulfilled’ God is still bringing people in thru the blood of Christ and the Spirit is continually being poured out on people, and of course the ultimate reality of our atonement thru our high priest is a daily reality [he ever lives to make intercession] that is ‘fulfilled’ all the time[ I understand what the brother meant, that both Passover and Pentecost were fulfilled at the Cross and the day of Pentecost, and Tabernacles still has a future fulfillment. That Jesus will ‘ingather’ all peoples to himself at the end. The way he said it was in a way that he said Atonement, the beginning of Tabernacles/booths, still has to be fulfilled. It really came out badly!] I just thought it worth noting that today is natural Israel’s feast day, and we hold this feast in reality 24/7!]   ‘By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of pharaohs daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, then to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward…by faith the harlot Rahab perished not…’ I want you to see that faith in Moses situation caused him to forsake great riches and leave a successful future. This is in keeping with all the times Jesus called people in the Gospels ‘forsake all and follow me’ mentality. We too often equate the ‘treasures of Egypt’ with following Jesus; the scripture puts a different spin on it! Also Rahab ‘perished not’ because she ‘believed’. Paul teaches in Corinthians that those who believe are ‘being saved’ and those who don’t believe are ‘perishing’. I want you to see that Paul is really making a theological argument for ‘being saved by faith’ in this chapter. Even a harlot can be saved! Wow. The law seemed to have no mercy on someone like that!   ‘Who thru faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions…women received their dead raised to life…others were TORTURED not accepting deliverance…others had mocking and scourging and bonds and imprisonment, they were stoned, cut in half, were slain with the sword… being destitute, afflicted, tormented…they wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth, ALL THESE [both the ones who shut the mouths of lions as well as the one’s who were tortured without deliverance] OBTAINED A GOOD REPORT THRU FAITH, AND RECEIVED NOT THE PROMISE’ Faith does not always cause you to be better off in this life. I am very familiar with all the verses of God blessing us and providing for us ‘the blessing of the Lord it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow to it’. I believe and claim these verses just like the next guy. I also don’t want to tell people ‘give your life to Christ and all will go well’ did it go well for the ones who were tortured not getting delivered? Sure did. It went well the moment they saw the face of God. The same for those who were cut in half. It also went well for the women who received their dead raised to life. The point is ‘going well’ is not always defined by your outward circumstance.   We must see the overall biblical worldview of all things here being temporary, while all true spiritual riches are eternal. Moses actually was ‘less rich’ by the choice to follow Christ. But he was ‘more rich’ in that he fulfilled Gods purpose. It is important to see that many of these great heroes of the faith died without fully seeing the promise in this life. Now the last verse does say ‘that they without us should not be made perfect’ and this does show that the promise is now fulfilled thru Christ. We have all become recipients of eternal salvation thru Christ. The Old Testament patriarchs have ‘found that city’ in that we are all now members of the great ‘City that comes down from God out of heaven’ we are all in Christ today, even our Old Testament brothers who had faith. The point is don’t always measure a persons faith by their outward wealth and condition. James rebuked this idea in his epistle, he taught us not to show partiality to people who were rich while despising the poor.   When believers see faith only from the standpoint of outward things, they are missing the true riches. Jesus taught that all these outward things were not the true riches; I am surprised how many believers spend so much time hoarding and storing things that will all pass away some day. Let’s close this chapter on a good note. Paul has offered Israel all of their Old Testament heroes as an example of being justified by faith. He is saying ‘look, all the great fathers of the faith pleased God, just like you have said and taught for ages. I am declaring unto you they were all ‘justified/pleasing to God’ by faith, not law’. Therefore if you want to follow the example of Abraham and Moses and all the other wonderful fathers, then you too MUST BELIEVE! END NOTES- JUSTIFIED BY FAITH. TORTURED- BY FAITH? REJECTED MONEY- BY FAITH? THEY ALL WAITED FOR THE CITY- THE CHURCH. This chapter is loaded with the history of the Jewish people- I could teach on each story- but that would be a bit much- So I pasted the verses below to show that the writer is saying ‘see- all of our forefathers were justified- received a GOOD REPORT- by faith’. Wait a minute- they DID THINGS- in these stories- Isn’t that WORKS? If you read the letter of James- and the letters of Paul- some scholars says there is a disagreement- Paul says a man is justified by faith- and not by works. James says ‘see how a man is justified by works- and not faith only’. If this letter [Hebrews] was written by Paul- then it’s a true masterpiece- because he is combining the examples that James uses [Rahab- and Abrahams Genesis 22 experience- which James uses to say ‘see how works justifies’]. So- to me- Paul would be saying ‘no- I’m not contradicting James- we both believe/teach the same thing’. If the letter was written by Barnabus- then it also is a masterpiece- because Barnabus might be trying to bridge the gap between Paul and James. We read about this tension in Acts chapters 13 and 15. This chapter is certainly not showing us how to obtain stuff [money- etc.] thru faith- because look at the examples- ‘Moses chose to suffer- and reject the wealth of Egypt- BY FAITH’- ‘SOME WERE TORTURED- SUFFERED- CUT IN HALF- by faith’- ‘CHOOSING TO not be delivered- because they had faith’. We also see the heavenly city- as the goal of the patriarchs- they were all waiting for THE CHURCH- the city that the apostle John spoke about in the book of revelation. The writer says ‘if they were mindful of the city they came out of [a reference to the law covenant- meaning if the Jews kept clinging to the law- the ‘city they came out from’- they will have a hard time moving on- into the New Covenant revelation of Messiah]. I didn’t quote verse 2- but we could teach modern physics from that one [the bible says all things were made from something invisible- modern physics has come to that reality in the 20th century- yet this verse was penned 2 millennia ago]! By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. So yeah- lots of good stuff in this chapter- but the main point is these ancients were justified by faith- the example of Noah and Abraham actually use that very language- salvation/righteousness [it’s a bit clearer in the King James Version- the above verses are from the NIV]. Yes- the writer is saying ‘everything is based on faith- and even our ancestors were justified by faith- they did all these things because they believed God- and God saw their faith- in action- and they too were made righteous- by faith’. By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead. By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were put to death by stoning;[e] they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40 since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

 2ND KINGS 5- A Syrian army commander has leprosy, he hears about Elisha the prophet and goes to get healed. He is carrying a letter from the king of Syria that requests that the king of Israel heal him. The king of Israel is distraught ‘who does he think I am? Am I God?’ Elisha hears about the matter and says ‘send him to me, after I get thru with him he will know that there is a prophet in the land’. As Naaman arrives at the door of Elisha, Elisha sends out a servant to give him a message ‘go, dip yourself 7 times in the Jordan and you will get healed’. Naaman is upset, he says ‘I thought he would at least come out and make a big show and do some great healing! Are not the waters of Syria better than this stinking Jordan!’ He storms off. His men tell him ‘look, if he told you to do some great act, wouldn’t you have done it? So why not give it a shot and go get wet’. He dips in the Jordan and gets healed. He is elated! He goes back to the prophet and wants to give him an offering, Elisha refuses to take it. On his way back home Elisha’s servant stops him and says ‘my master changed his mind, 2 prophets just stopped by and he now will accept the money/gift’. He lied. As the servant arrives back at Elisha’s house, Elisha confronts him ‘hey Gehazi, where did you go’ he tells him nowhere. Elisha tells him ‘did not my heart go with you when the chariot turned’ he knew he was caught. Elisha rebukes him strongly over wanting to make material gain at this time ‘is this a time to build wealth! To gain land and servants and stuff’ he curses him and puts the leprosy of Naaman on him. Okay, let’s do a little stuff; first, the king of Israel felt like the expectations of the other ‘middle eastern’ Arab countries were too high. The king of Syria flat out treated him like he was God! Oh I don’t know, have there been any leaders recently that have been given the title ‘messiah’ [they gave it mockingly, but the expectations were very high]. And we must not overlook the strong rebuke of Gehazi, and Elisha’s unwillingness to take an offering. We often read all of these stories and only see the parts where God provided for someone, or reduced their debt [the woman with the oil]. We read and preach on the ‘wealth verses’ to the degree where we don’t even see the ‘rebuking of wealth’ verses. Then after many years we develop a wealth mentality in the people of God to the point where they never see the warnings. Without going too far down this road, remember Jesus told his men ‘freely you have received, freely give’. In context he was speaking of the divine gifts of the Spirit that they were given. He was sending them out to heal and cast out demons, he was telling them don’t turn this thing into a money making enterprise! And let’s end with some practical stuff- as I continue to read thru Brian McLaren’s ‘everything must change’ I appreciate his emphasis on helping the poor and reaching out to the outcasts of the world. I also understand his view of changing the way we see things, the language used is ‘framing story- narrative’. But I see a problem with overdoing the concept of ‘framing stories’. For instance some Emergent’s believe that the classic expressions of the gospel are no longer valid. That Jesus really didn’t come to call people to repent and believe in the way we think [Brian quotes N.T. Wright and supposes that the term ‘repent and believe’ was more of a popular saying that military commanders used to simply tell people to surrender over to the new empire. He uses an example from Josephus. I get the point, but believe that this association is rather week. Jesus very much did call people to repent and believe in the classic way we understand it]. Anyway to ‘re-frame’ the gospel in a way that says the real message/purpose of Jesus was to simply change the pictures we use in ‘our story’ is too simple. The best example I can think of would be Jesus conversation with Nicodemus in John’s gospel. Jesus is speaking from the ‘narrative’ of Gods kingdom, Nicodemus is hearing from his own religious frame work. No matter how hard Jesus uses the new framework, or how hard Nicodemus tries to see this new story, he can’t. Jesus tells him it’s impossible to change his ‘framing story’ without changing him! ‘Unless a man is born again, HE CAN NOT SEE THIS KINGDOM’ so I think we can go too far in restating the classic gospel. Yes, believers should be challenged to see things from new/fresh perspectives. But these new perspectives can only be truly seen when we experience personal conversion. Jesus very much wants us to see the story from his perspective, but realistically he knows unless we are born again, we will never truly see it.

 CORINTHIANS 15:1-19 Paul will deal with the greatest threat yet to the Corinthian church, their doubt over the physical resurrection of the body. Various ‘Christian’ groups over the years have doubted the physical resurrection. Now, some have done this out of a sincere attempt at trying to defend the faith! [their view of it] In the 1900’s you had one of the most popular theologians by the name of Rudolf Bultman [most of his career was spent at the University of Marburg, Germany. Much of the higher criticism of the day originated from Germany] He wrote a book called ‘Kerygma and Myth’. What he tried to say was that any modern man living in the 20th century, with all the breakthroughs in science and knowledge, could not ‘literally’ believe the miraculous stories in scripture. Or even the way scripture spoke of heaven and hell and used limited terms to describe spiritual truths. He used the bibles terminology on Cosmology as an example. How could man believe in a Cosmos where ‘heaven is up there, with the stars and all’ and he felt that enlightened man needed to ‘re-tool’ the bible and cleanse it from all these mythical images, but yet keep the spiritual aspects of it. The moral teachings of Christ and stuff like that. So you have had sincere men doubt the truth claims of scripture. The problem with this attempt [higher criticism] is it throws out the baby with the bathwater. The resurrection of Jesus is presented by the apostles as a real event. The fact of this resurrection can also be attested to by examining the historical events of the day. Simply put, there is a ton of proof for the real resurrection of Christ. Bultman and others meant well, but some of the ‘facts’ that they were using were later  proven to be false. Bultman used a model of cosmology that would later be rejected by science. Yet the testimony from scripture would remain sure. Paul told the Corinthian’s that they needed to reject any attempts at spiritualizing the resurrection of Christ. Sometimes believers grasp hold of limited proof’s for certain doctrines. For instance, the New Testament does speak of a spiritual resurrection. In Ephesians Paul says we are presently raised with Christ. In Romans chapter 6 we have all ready been raised with Jesus. This reality does not mean there will be no future resurrection of the saints. In Johns gospel Jesus speaks of the resurrection as being a future real event, as well as a present reality. Those in the graves will hear his voice and be raised from the dead. And those who were presently ‘dead in sins’ would ‘come alive’ [spiritually] when they heard and believed the testimony of Jesus. It is important for the believer to be familiar with the various theories and ideas that theologians and believers have grasped over the years. It is a mistake to simply see all higher learning as ‘liberalism’. There are some very important things that we have learned thru the great intellectuals of the church. But we also need to stick with the ancient traditions as seen in the creeds, as well as the plain testimony of scripture. If Christ ‘be not raised from the dead, then we are of all men most miserable’.

 (1011)CORINTHIANS 15:20-28 here we see the guarantee of mans resurrection based on Christ’s resurrection. ‘As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall ALL be made alive’. Is Paul teaching a form of universalism [all being saved]? He is showing us that all men will someday be raised from the dead. Now, does Paul leave room here for a type of Pre-millennial resurrection? A ‘raising’ of the dead prior to a thousand year literal reign of Jesus. Then another resurrection at the end? Yes he does. If you read Revelation you will see this type of scenario play out. Also Jesus speaks of the resurrection of the just and the unjust. Historically the church has held 3 basic views on this. Pre-millennialism says Jesus returns first [pre] before the literal thousand year rule occurs. ‘Post’ says the thousand year rule is literal, and after that Jesus comes back. Those who held to this view were excited at the turn of the first millennium [1000 ad] they thought it possible for Jesus to have returned after the first thousand years since his death and resurrection. And then you have A-millennial, they spiritualize the thousand year reign spoken of in the book of Revelation as being a symbol of Christ’s present rule and kingdom. Now, today’s most popular form of Pre-millennialism is not historic, it dates back to the 19th century. Today’s form is called ‘Pre-tribulational, Pre-millennial’ this teaching [dispensationalism] says Jesus comes back 2 more times. One is called ‘the rapture’ the other is the second coming [revealing]. The proponents of this form find little [or no] early Christians who believed this. There is one early writing by a Syrian brother who speaks very clearly about a rapture type event. Some think he speaks a little too clearly! The writing is believed to have been a fake. Either way we do have Paul teaching stages involved with the coming of the Lord and the kingdom. It is possible to have 2 future resurrections, this would not mean you need two future ‘second comings’. The first resurrection takes place at Christ’s return. He rules a literal thousand years and ‘the dead are raised again’ at the end of the literal rule on earth [ a literal reading of Revelation]. Also Paul does use the language of Jesus submitting to the Father at the end so ‘God will be all in all’. I feel believers have been confused and at times contradictory while trying to explain the nature of God and the Trinity. I recently read a teaching on the Trinity that tried to compare the Trinity to the nature of the organic church. It seemed confusing to me, they tried to say that just like in the Trinity you have no one ‘being’ having authority over the other, but instead you see all three persons equally submitting to one another [Father, Son and Spirit] so in the church you have equality. Now, I do believe that there is equality in the church, but I felt the example was way off. The New Testament clearly teaches the willful ‘submission’ of the Son to the Father. God [the father] is clearly the one ‘in charge’. Now, I admit it’s difficult and brothers have spent years trying to explain all the ins and outs of this. Here Paul shows us that the Son has willingly submitted to the Father so the father can put all things under him. Then once again at the culmination of the kingdom the Son submits to the father and God receives the glory. We will praise and worship Jesus thru out all eternity, it is his willful submission to the father’s plan that makes this happen. NOTE- Some believers spiritualize the first resurrection spoken of in Revelation, they relate it to those who have been ‘born again’ spiritually. Modern ‘Preterism’ holds to this view.

 (1013)CORINTHIANS 15:29-49 the resurrection body is a real ‘spiritual’ body. Paul describes the natural body [us now] as fleshly and like Adams body. He then describes the promised resurrection body as being like Jesus in his raised state. These verses can be a little confusing. When Paul says the resurrection body is ‘spiritual’ as compared to earthy, is he saying it is not real? No. But you can see how some early sects could use these verses and teach a ‘phantom’ type resurrection [Gnostic, Docetist type groups]. I was once asked by a Catholic believer if the church taught the physical resurrection. I assured the person that both Catholic and Protestant [and Orthodox] expressions of Christianity embrace the real future resurrection of the body. Now, is it the same body? Well, the way Paul describes it is by comparing the planting of seeds. When you plant a seed you don’t simply get a bigger seed! But you get various types of growth, whether it’s a tree or plant or whatever. So Paul says our future bodies will be new and glorious in this way, but if it weren’t really you, then it wouldn’t be a resurrection! So you will come back, but it will be a ‘new you’. Over the years I have studied various theologians [Christian ones] and I have seen the penchant for various groups to focus in on a certain doctrine and to stray somewhat from the faith. Now, they aren’t always cults, some of them are highly knowledgeable Christians who seem to be testing the boundaries of orthodoxy. I like N.T. Wright, the famous Bishop of Durham [Church of England] but you need to be grounded in what you believe before you can really read him. I feel at times he is helpful in bringing new perspectives to things, I have seen some of the things he teaches myself. But there is also a danger of ‘re-thinking’ stuff a little too much. By the way Wright has written on the resurrection and has done a great job at defending the historic churches position. He’s in somewhat of a theological controversy at the moment, some of the strong reformed brothers have come out and challenged his view on Justification. Wright teaches that the historic reformers kind of missed what Paul was saying. Wright ‘extends’ the doctrine to mean ‘a sign/badge of those who are already in Gods covenant community’. The historic reformers taught a more forensic meaning of the doctrine. That justification is primarily saying that God imputes the righteousness of Jesus to the believer. That Jesus took our sins, and we get his righteousness. Now, I feel there is some truth to Wrights view. But I would be careful to throw out the reformed view all together. There certainly is much truth to the reformed view. John Piper [a reformed Baptist] just released a book on the reformed view, Wright has one coming out pretty soon [Wrights is already published overseas, but the states wont get it for a few months]. So, the point is I believe the historic church and the ancient creeds ‘got it right’ on the resurrection. It is real, it will happen to all people some day. Those who have ‘done good’ [wow- these are Jesus actual words when describing the final judgment!] will be ‘raised to life’. Those who have done evil will be raised to face judgment. We can all escape the coming judgment, Jesus died for us. If we believe and accept his death, burial and resurrection, then we will be raised to a new life some day. 378- (I stuck this entry in here because it deals with the ‘baptism for the dead’, I didn’t want you to think that I just skipped over the verse) Let me give a little example of the ‘overriding act of redemption’ trumping any little verse or experience. Paul actually tells the Corinthians ‘if the dead are not raised, then why are you baptizing people in ‘proxy’ for the dead?’ This is tough stuff. Let me give you one way to see this. The ‘baptism for the dead’ seems to have been a real cultural thing that took place in a specific time and setting [like the slavery verses I mentioned earlier]. There seems to have been a concern specifically to the 1st century church that said ‘this new doctrine of Jesus is great, but being its only been around a few years, and you are telling us [Paul] that you must embrace it to be saved. Then we have a problem. A lot of our loved ones never got a chance to hear. How do you expect us to quell these concerns?’ And it’s possible that the ‘baptism’ by proxy [like a father or son getting baptized in the place of the loved one who died] was a 1stcentury cultural thing that grew out of this. The fact that they were doing this does not mean that Paul the Apostle was condoning it. Paul was simply saying ‘if you guys really don’t believe in life after death, then why are you bothering with this rite?’ Its like Paul was using their own cultural thing to show them the inconsistency of their thinking. He wasn’t really teaching the baptism for the dead. [This is my view, Mormons believe different. They do practice this today and they use this verse as justification].

 (1014)CORINTHIANS 15:50-58 Okay, let’s wrap up this chapter. ‘Flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom’ Paul speaks a little on the nature of the resurrected body. It is real, but not mortal [flesh and blood] without getting lost in the technical aspects of the actual body, Paul does make a distinction between the natural life of man [blood gives life to the mortal man] and the supernatural life of the resurrected body [spiritual life]. Then Paul shows us a mystery [something that was hidden up until the time God reveals it- here thru Paul!] that ‘we shall not all experience death, but we shall all get new bodies’. Paul teaches that some believers will not face natural death, they will be the generation that is alive at Christ’s coming. Paul says this happens at the ‘last trumpet’. For those of you not familiar with some of the silly stuff that passes under the heading of ‘theology’, let me explain some stuff. In the world of ‘dispensationalism’ there is an entire body of teaching that deals with the trumpets in scripture. Basically if Paul is teaching that this event, getting raised from the dead and being transformed, if this takes place at ‘the last trump’ then it is pretty clear that this event is not some type of rapture that takes place 7 years prior to Gods ‘last trump’ [last day, when God wraps things up]. But if you read the portions of scripture that speak about Christ’s return and the resurrection [Thessalonians 4, John 14, Matthew 25] you will see that all these scriptures teach that the resurrection takes place at the end, when Christ returns. So anyway a whole lotta time is spent by the rapture guys to explain that when you are in school, you might say ‘hey, that’s the last bell [trump] before class starts’ and that ‘last bell’ doesn’t mean ‘last bell’, but it means the ‘last bell for now’. It’s kind of silly stuff that preachers do in order to back up their theories. If scriptures ‘last trump’ isn’t really the ‘last trump’ then you can fit the rapture in as a separate event from the second coming. I think doing doctrine like this is silly and hairsplitting. The first century believers who were reading these letters [not all at once, but as they were slowly being penned and sent] simply saw all of the references on the second coming as one event. It’s silly to try and make two separate lists of the New testament verses on Christ’s coming and then place some verses under a rapture heading, and others under a ‘second coming’ heading, especially when the rapture brothers themselves cant agree on which ones belong to which list! Well any way we have a glorious promise of a future resurrection body, the last enemy that Jesus destroys is death. Revelation says ‘death and hell are cast into the lake of fire’ Jesus has power over death, hell and the grave. He will totally eradicate all death some day, Jesus tasted death for every man [Hebrews] so that man does not have to be in bondage under its fear any more.

    VERSES [These are the verses I either quoted or taught from on today’s post]

2Kings 1:1 Then Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab.

2Kings 1:2 And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover of this disease.

2Kings 1:3 But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron?

2Kings 1:4 Now therefore thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. And Elijah departed.

2Kings 1:5 And when the messengers turned back unto him, he said unto them, Why are ye now turned back?

2Kings 1:6 And they said unto him, There came a man up to meet us, and said unto us, Go, turn again unto the king that sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that thou sendest to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.

2Kings 1:7 And he said unto them, What manner of man was he which came up to meet you, and told you these words?

2Kings 1:8 And they answered him, He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And he said, It is Elijah the Tishbite.

2Kings 1:9 Then the king sent unto him a captain of fifty with his fifty. And he went up to him: and, behold, he sat on the top of an hill. And he spake unto him, Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down.

2Kings 1:10 And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

2Kings 1:11 Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his fifty. And he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king said, Come down quickly.

2Kings 1:12 And Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

2Kings 1:13 And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight.

2Kings 1:14 Behold, there came fire down from heaven, and burnt up the two captains of the former fifties with their fifties: therefore let my life now be precious in thy sight.

2Kings 1:15 And the angel of the LORD said unto Elijah, Go down with him: be not afraid of him. And he arose, and went down with him unto the king.

2Kings 1:16 And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast sent messengers to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron, is it not because there is no God in Israel to enquire of his word? therefore thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.

2Kings 1:17 So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. And Jehoram reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son.

2Kings 1:18 Now the rest of the acts of Ahaziah which he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

 2Kings 2:1 And it came to pass, when the LORD would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.

2Kings 2:2 And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for the LORD hath sent me to Bethel. And Elisha said unto him, As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they went down to Bethel.

2Kings 2:3 And the sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the LORD will take away thy master from thy head to day? And he said, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.

2Kings 2:4 And Elijah said unto him, Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for the LORD hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they came to Jericho.

2Kings 2:5 And the sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the LORD will take away thy master from thy head to day? And he answered, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.

2Kings 2:6 And Elijah said unto him, Tarry, I pray thee, here; for the LORD hath sent me to Jordan. And he said, As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. And they two went on.

2Kings 2:7 And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went, and stood to view afar off: and they two stood by Jordan.

2Kings 2:8 And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground.

2Kings 2:9 And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.

2Kings 2:10 And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.

2Kings 2:11 And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

2Kings 2:12 And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.

2Kings 2:13 He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan;

2Kings 2:14 And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the LORD God of Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over.

2Kings 2:15 And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.

2Kings 2:16 And they said unto him, Behold now, there be with thy servants fifty strong men; let them go, we pray thee, and seek thy master: lest peradventure the Spirit of the LORD hath taken him up, and cast him upon some mountain, or into some valley. And he said, Ye shall not send.

2Kings 2:17 And when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, Send. They sent therefore fifty men; and they sought three days, but found him not.

2Kings 2:18 And when they came again to him, (for he tarried at Jericho,) he said unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not?

2Kings 2:19 And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren.

2Kings 2:20 And he said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him.

2Kings 2:21 And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the LORD, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.

2Kings 2:22 So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.

2Kings 2:23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

2Kings 2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

2Kings 2:25 And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria.

 2Kings 3:1 Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned twelve years.

2Kings 3:2 And he wrought evil in the sight of the LORD; but not like his father, and like his mother: for he put away the image of Baal that his father had made.

2Kings 3:3 Nevertheless he cleaved unto the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin; he departed not therefrom.

2Kings 3:4 And Mesha king of Moab was a sheepmaster, and rendered unto the king of Israel an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams, with the wool.

2Kings 3:5 But it came to pass, when Ahab was dead, that the king of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel.

2Kings 3:6 And king Jehoram went out of Samaria the same time, and numbered all Israel.

2Kings 3:7 And he went and sent to Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, saying, The king of Moab hath rebelled against me: wilt thou go with me against Moab to battle? And he said, I will go up: I am as thou art, my people as thy people, and my horses as thy horses.

2Kings 3:8 And he said, Which way shall we go up? And he answered, The way through the wilderness of Edom.

2Kings 3:9 So the king of Israel went, and the king of Judah, and the king of Edom: and they fetched a compass of seven days' journey: and there was no water for the host, and for the cattle that followed them.

2Kings 3:10 And the king of Israel said, Alas! that the LORD hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab!

2Kings 3:11 But Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the LORD, that we may enquire of the LORD by him? And one of the king of Israel's servants answered and said, Here is Elisha the son of Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah.

2Kings 3:12 And Jehoshaphat said, The word of the LORD is with him. So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him.

2Kings 3:13 And Elisha said unto the king of Israel, What have I to do with thee? get thee to the prophets of thy father, and to the prophets of thy mother. And the king of Israel said unto him, Nay: for the LORD hath called these three kings together, to deliver them into the hand of Moab.

2Kings 3:14 And Elisha said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee.

2Kings 3:15 But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the LORD came upon him.

2Kings 3:16 And he said, Thus saith the LORD, Make this valley full of ditches.

2Kings 3:17 For thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and your cattle, and your beasts.

2Kings 3:18 And this is but a light thing in the sight of the LORD: he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand.

2Kings 3:19 And ye shall smite every fenced city, and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree, and stop all wells of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones.

2Kings 3:20 And it came to pass in the morning, when the meat offering was offered, that, behold, there came water by the way of Edom, and the country was filled with water.

2Kings 3:21 And when all the Moabites heard that the kings were come up to fight against them, they gathered all that were able to put on armour, and upward, and stood in the border.

2Kings 3:22 And they rose up early in the morning, and the sun shone upon the water, and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood:

2Kings 3:23 And they said, This is blood: the kings are surely slain, and they have smitten one another: now therefore, Moab, to the spoil.

2Kings 3:24 And when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and smote the Moabites, so that they fled before them: but they went forward smiting the Moabites, even in their country.

2Kings 3:25 And they beat down the cities, and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the wells of water, and felled all the good trees: only in Kirharaseth left they the stones thereof; howbeit the slingers went about it, and smote it.

2Kings 3:26 And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew swords, to break through even unto the king of Edom: but they could not.

2Kings 3:27 Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.

Psalm 50:16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?

Psalm 50:17 Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind thee.

Psalm 50:18 When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.

Psalm 50:19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.

Psalm 50:20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son.

Psalm 50:21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

Psalm 50:22 Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.

Psalm 50:23 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.

9 But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.

10 For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.

14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.

15 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Matt. 11

[Here are more verses on John/Elijah from the gospels- I mentioned this on the video for this post]

Matthew 11:14

And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Matthew 16:14

And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Matthew 17:3

And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Matthew 17:4

Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Matthew 17:10

And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Matthew 17:11

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Matthew 17:12

But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

51 And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,

52 And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him.

53 And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.

54 And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?

55 But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.

56 For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

Lk. 9

Genesis 5:24 [Full Chapter]

And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.

Genesis 5:21

And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Genesis 5:22

And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?

32 Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace.

33 So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

Lk. 14

2 Kings 5

 King James Version (KJV)

5 Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper.

2 And the Syrians had gone out by companies, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid; and she waited on Naaman's wife.

3 And she said unto her mistress, Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy.

4 And one went in, and told his lord, saying, Thus and thus said the maid that is of the land of Israel.

5 And the king of Syria said, Go to, go, and I will send a letter unto the king of Israel. And he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment.

6 And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, Now when this letter is come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy.

7 And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me.

8 And it was so, when Elisha the man of God had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.

9 So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.

10 And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.

11 But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.

12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.

13 And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?

14 Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

15 And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant.

16 But he said, As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it; but he refused.

17 And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord.

18 In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing.

19 And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a little way.

20 But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, Behold, my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at his hands that which he brought: but, as the Lord liveth, I will run after him, and take somewhat of him.

21 So Gehazi followed after Naaman. And when Naaman saw him running after him, he lighted down from the chariot to meet him, and said, Is all well?

22 And he said, All is well. My master hath sent me, saying, Behold, even now there be come to me from mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets: give them, I pray thee, a talent of silver, and two changes of garments.

23 And Naaman said, Be content, take two talents. And he urged him, and bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of garments, and laid them upon two of his servants; and they bare them before him.

24 And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand, and bestowed them in the house: and he let the men go, and they departed.

25 But he went in, and stood before his master. And Elisha said unto him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi? And he said, Thy servant went no whither.

26 And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee, when the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards, and sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants?

27 The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.

2nd Kings 5

1 John 5:6

This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

1 John 5:8

And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Isaiah 53:1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?

Isaiah 53:2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

Isaiah 53:3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Isaiah 53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

Isaiah 53:8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

Isaiah 53:9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Isaiah 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

Isaiah 53:11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Isaiah 53:12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

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[bluewatsons]

William Cheng, Taking Back the Laugh: Comedic Alibis, Funny Fails, 43 Critical Inquiry 528 (2017)

Eighteen days after 11 September 2001, a new season of Saturday Night Live premiered on schedule, making big headlines given how most other television programs were getting replaced by round-the-clock news coverage. The NFL and MLB called off games, the Emmys were doubly postponed, Rockstar delayed the release of Grand Theft Auto III (set in a fictionalized New York City), and Disney’s parks closed their doors.1 Entertainment across the United States—sitcoms, sports, rollercoasters—screeched to a halt, ground to zero. For SNL producer Lorne Michaels to reboot his laugh factory was saying something.2

Specifically, Michaels wanted the host Reese Witherspoon to say “fucking.”3 He told her to work the word into the opening monologue’s punchline, declaring he would happily pay whatever Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fines came their way. Although Witherspoon chickened out at the last minute (replacing the teleprompter’s fucking with the word balls for her joke, leaving the audience none the wiser), Michaels’s original plea conveyed how the arbitrary taboo of an F-bomb could feel ridiculously immaterial compared to the fire and brimstone a few miles away. With the world crashing down, a little uncensored fucking—scandalizing everyone but, really, no one—would have rhetorically embodied what all of the talking heads were claiming anyway: the country had been forever changed, no going back, no take-backs. After abundant media jabber about the death of irony, Michaels wished to send the message that, for at least one night, all bets were off and all laughs fair game.4 

Fast-forward to 18 June 2015, the night Jon Stewart ran out of jokes on The Daily Show.5As Stewart told a stunned audience, he couldn’t bring himself to write funny material in the wake of the previous afternoon’s massacre of nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Stewart’s silent treatment made loud news. The moratorium on comedy flashed across the internet as sagacious testament to the stupefying effects of tragedy.

At the time, the respective acts of foreign and domestic terrorism sent shocks through the citizenry’s collective funny bone, exploding entertainment’s permissions and proclivities. SNL dared to make ‘em laugh; The Daily Show dared to desist. Lorne Michaels wanted to take back laughter (to retrieve it and return it to the nation’s viewers); Jon Stewart sought to take out laughter (solemnly hushing the audience and flipping the studio soundscape on its head). Opposite tacks, yet both got away with it, snatching praise and publicity for good measure … funnily enough.

Laughing out of Court

Remember the last time someone told you to lighten up? It’s a gut punch, a low blow. Accusations of “why so serious?” feel like serious attacks, striking at a core failure of character in societies ruled by laugh tracks, witty tweets, and punny headlines.6 Even (or especially) in times of strife, humor should presumably serve as fantastic armor against no-good realities. But this armor is not so much iron as it is ironic; for within neoliberal logics, people who endure systemic oppression (blacks, queers, crips)—who might have the leastreason to lighten up arbitrarily—tend to be the ones who are most exhorted to gain a sense of humor, to take a joke, and to laugh things off. A quotidian illustration involves men who goad women to smile, as if an unhumored female countenance (Resting Bitch Face) were an affront to physiognomic aesthetics and social mores.7

Yet when disenfranchised people do appear overpeppy or do laugh out loud, they can get slammed anyway. On 22 August 2015, eleven women (ten black, one white), part of a book club called Sistahs on the Reading Edge, were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train because they allegedly made too much noise while celebrating a member’s birthday. For the record, when the laughers asked the maître d’ whether passengers had voiced complaints, he replied: “Well, people’s faces are uncomfortable.”8 In other (or no) words, the maître d’ addressed the noise violation by reading into the passengers’ silent expressions. The incident birthed the hashtag #LaughingwhileBlack, a spin on #DrivingwhileBlack. For a persecuted population to laugh, this meme suggests, risks circumstantial vulnerability and sanctions. Because minoritized individuals bear higher evidentiary loads for propriety, mirthful outbursts can sound amplified to suspicious or envious ears. Laughter may be damning not only for the chronically marginalized but also for anyone in temporary hot water—a child being lectured by parents, a student in detention, or a defendant on trial.

Consider the 1988 appellate proceedings of State v. Parker, in which the court found the defendant unremorseful based on his laughter during the prosecutor’s statements. Although laughter can bubble up from all kinds of feelings and conditions—nervousness, despair, incomprehension—this court’s litigious hearing of the defendant’s laughter pegged the act as evidence of impenitence or even evil.9

Alternatively, take the case of Sgt. Robert Bales, currently serving a life sentence for murdering sixteen Afghan civilians in 2012. During the trial, prosecutors played a phone recording of Bales and his wife laughing as they discussed the case—again, a putative blow to claims of remorse.10

In these instances, courts assumed that laughter spills secrets, always saying something. To extrapolate from Miranda warnings, anything you say—and any laugh let loose—may indeed be used against you in court. Most recently, the public doubled down on its vilification of former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli, who, when testifying before Congress in February 2016 (on charges of price-gouging drugs), repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment while smirking and looking “as if he were about to burst out laughing.”11

Here, just the look of suppressed laughter—no less so than any sound of laughter—sufficed to cement Shkreli’s reputation as “the most hated man in America,” racking up accusations of immaturity and douchery to boot (fig. 1).12

Figure 1. Martin Shkreli testifying before Congress.

Or rewind to the biblical story about the birth of Isaac. God tells Abram and Sarai, who are one hundred and ninety years young respectively, that they will bear a child. Incredulous, Abram falls facedown and laughs, enacting the first ROFL in Hebrew scripture. Later, when God repeats this prophecy, Sarai laughs to herself. God asks her (rhetorically, since He obviously knows the answer), “Is anything impossible for the LORD?”

“I did not laugh,” says the fearful Sarai.“Yes, you did laugh,” God replies.[Genesis 18:14–15]

It’s a classic case of He said, she said, except there’s little room for negotiation here; the He in this case is the final Word, the divine rule of law. Although Sarai tries to retract her laugh, God operates under the schoolyard principle of no take-backs. “Once laughed, a laugh persists,” points out Anca Parvulescu in her reading of this Bible passage. “God would not hear of it.”13 (Or, rather, God would not not hear of it.) Notably, both Abram and Sarai laughed, but God gave the latter a harder time. Gender politics aside, this discrepancy may owe to how Sarai laughed quietly (whereas Abram LOL-ed), as if attempting to get away with it. And if there’s one thing God can’t stand, as the Old Testament certifies, it’s people who underestimate his omniscience.

Such stories about laughter’s liabilities run counter to more common portrayals of laughter and humor as subversive, free, and empowering.14 Comedians and laughers, after all, often demand get-out-of-jail-free cards by professing something to be just a joke.15 The just in just a joke serves double duty, meaning not only only, but also fair, as in “all’s fair in love” and comedy. A homophobic punchline or an act of sexual harassment might dodge censure if the case can be made that it was performed in good fun.16 This is comedy’s signature alibi. Alibi hails from Latin’s alius and ibi, roughly meaning “someplace else.” With a license to kill, comedians are expected to boast, “Oh yes, I went there!”—there, meaning “someplace else,” out of bounds and beyond the pale. Comedy’s anything-goes exemptions conjure the Bakhtinian carnivalesque, a state of upheaval where “serious matters are suspended, things do not count, absolution is offered ex ante.”17 Comedic alibis can be so powerful that they drag errors and faux pas into the realm of respectability, enabling even the most egregious ethical or aesthetic failing to pass for … well, passing.18 Given how critical alchemy can turn just about any catastrophe into comic gold, the arena of risibility in today’s media appears virtually boundless.

For how many of us can claim immunity to comedy’s exculpatory rationales? Even Christie Davies, who has spent decades researching jokes and humor (in effect, studying why jokes matter), peppers his work with disclaimers concerning how jokes might not matter, noting that they do not “have any significant social consequences or express profound moral or existential truths.”19 Against the familiar notion of rapier wits, Davies insists that most jokes neither embody nor engender antipathy.20 A set-piece joke, he says, “cannot be used as a sword; it is merely decoration on the scabbard. Jokes are entertainment only, a mere laughing matter.”21 This said, excuses about levity don’t always succeed. Telling someone to “lighten up!” or “take a joke!” can fetch the killjoy retort that “you can’t joke your way out of this!” (an appeal against effectivity) or “you hurt my feelings!” (an appeal to affectivity). So while comedic alibis have potential to excuse failings of aesthetics and ethics, they might fail unto themselves—not least in the face of a hostile jury.

A familiar saying is that “against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand,” a Mark Twain gem uttered today in inspirational contexts (despite the lesser-known fact that it’s spoken by Satan in Twain’s novel).22 Beyond its advocacy of using mirth against malevolence, however, this quotation can be read another way: that when our bodies are assaulted by our own impulsive laughter, we show our cards and lose our moral credibility, leaving no leg—nothing—to stand on. If you snicker at a comedian’s racist joke, it becomes that much harder for you to scramble onto high ground because, listen, you laughed; the evidence is in the vibrations, right here (not someplace else, no alibi). Yes, you may argue after the joke that you were laughing cynically and knowingly at the structural racial injustices that fuel such cruel comedy, but by this point you’re necessarily on the defensive, carrying the burden of proof. In any case, having to say something was just a joke already implies that court is now in session, that some possible offense lies in need of retraction or explication. Complicating every aspect of the comedic alibi, furthermore, is the fact that people don’t always know (how to describe) why they laugh.23 And just as people hate explaining jokes, most loathe having to rationalize their laughter out loud.

In this article, I perform an acoustemology of comedy’s alibis in contemporary media. I listen for means by which laughter—its emission, contagion, suppression—can serve as audible barometers of how alibis either fly or bomb. A paradox emerges from the ways spontaneous-sounding laughter can simultaneously free us from societal scripts while shackling us within our own telltale, tittering bodies. A laugher’s accountability poses a moving target precisely because so much of comedy’s generic success relies on procedures of failure, impropriety, and breakage. Through three progressive cases, I delve into modern technologies of taking back laughter via the breaking and hacking of cultural texts. Each case features a do-it-yourself (DIY) phenomenon that exposes the stakes and choreographies of comedy’s consumer sovereignties: first, television fans who, through techniques of editing and recomposition, remove laugh tracks from comedies (The Big Bang Theory, Friends) or, inversely, add laugh tracks to dramas (Breaking Bad, The Wire), using the silence or surplus sound to break the show’s original mood; second, a YouTube game show that tries to make contestants break into smiles or laughter by presenting them with outrageous videos; and, third, Apollo Theater audience members who, through brash laughter and boos, use their collective judge-it-yourself authority to make or break the dreams of hopeful performers on amateur nights. All three of these examples hinge on the breakage of norms and the breaking in of new normals, embodying or eliciting laughter that may variously sound ambivalent, uncomfortable, or out of line. Lending a musicological ear to laughter’s stubborn materialities and technical hackability opens resonant perspectives into some of comedy’s funniest alibis. I conclude with a tribute to laughter’s Debbie Downer cousin: the groan.

Hacking Laughs: Big Bang Bombing

Bombing is the sonorous metaphor for the devastating silence that greets a floundering comedian. A maw of muteness engulfs the performer, turning an atmosphere of optimistic joybringing into cringe-worthy desperation. Just as bombs blast away landscapes, so bombing demolishes the ideal soundscapes of comedic call-and-response.

One domain of comedy where bombing remains virtually impossible is a television show with either a laugh track or a cued-to-laugh studio audience. So long as there’s no audio malfunction or audience reticence, every gag and punchline should fetch reliable, lively chuckles. But although producers have historically used laugh tracks to bestow this sense of liveliness and liveness, the tracks can strike a deadening tone. Slavoj Žižek says he experiences both catharsis and unease when he watches a show with canned laughter. “Even if I do not laugh,” he declares, “but simply stare at the screen, tired after a hard day’s work, I nevertheless feel relieved after the show …: my most intimate feelings can be radically externalized; I can literally ‘laugh and cry through another.’”24 Canned laughter—or, as Ron Rosenbaum calls it, “Mirth Muzak”—is as flat as funny gets.25 Ontologically, a recorded or synthesized laugh track is all surface, a veneer of jocund artifice; amplitudinally, decibels for canned chortles versus canned guffaws vary minimally, since television audio requires volume equalization according to the FCC, the European Broadcasting System, and comparable national broadcast-safe standards. Even at live tapings for sitcoms and stand-up comedy specials, audiences face flat-out restrictions in terms of how they’re supposed to sound. Audience members may be instructed to laugh and cheer as they normally would rather than in attention-grabbing ways. At a shooting for The Big Bang Theory, a producer told the audience, “Your mission is simple tonight—all you need to do is to sit back, relax; please do not identify your laughs.”26 This audience’s task was to mesh like a musical ensemble, to produce an orchestrated simulacrum of a laugh track (recorded, remixed, refined) for the benefit of home viewers, whose patronage remains, of course, what really matters in terms of ratings and revenue.

With either obedient studio audiences or synthesized sound files, a sitcom can opt for laughter as a formatted failsafe. No need for alibis, no risk of comic failure. But similar to Žižek, Jean Baudrillard has expressed bemusement at how “laughter on American television” resembles “the chorus in Greek tragedy,” such that “it is the screen that is laughing and having a good time.”27 For some critics, a laugh track already embodies affective alienation and failure. It epitomizes the potential falsities of laughter more generally, masking the fault lines of the homogenizing pleasure industry and its ransom promises of happiness. Technically, sounds of other people laughing in no way preclude ourselves from doing likewise. Yet this laughter, if heard as distracting or paternalistic or counterfeit, can seemingly yank the laughs out of our own mouths. Like a flat soda, a flat laugh track might leave a weird feeling on our tongues—all sugar and no pop, empty calories for the ingratiated body.

Although Žižek’s and Baudrillard’s hifalutin criticisms sound like familiar brands of Adornian spoilsport commentary, canned laughter has, since its inception, polarized popular audiences as well.28 One of the most picked-on sitcoms today is none other than The Big Bang Theory, which contains frequent and over-the-top laughs. Pushing against the show’s egregious laughter, fans (or hate-watchers) have lately experimented with taking out this laughter through basic sound editing and scene splicing. These tinkerers scrub out the laughter while leaving the visuals and narrative progression intact. The result of this DIY détournement is that characters’ japes crash into silences. A YouTube user named Sboss has released a series of such videos with the explanation: “Due to my hatred for the television show ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ I expose how unfunny the show actually is when you take out the laugh track.”29 According to Sboss (essentially a Big Bang truther), canned laughter is the shoddy alibi for the show’s comedic failings, both breeding and excusing unfunniness with a sonic smokescreen. Below is the transcript of a clip made by Sboss, a scene involving a drunk Raj on a horrendous first date with Lalita, an acquaintance from childhood.30

RAJ: [Smiles.] I can’t believe I’m sitting here next to little Lalita Gupta. [1 second of light laughter replaced by 1 second of silence, and so on.]

LALITA: [Smiles.] Well, you are.

R: [Smiles.] Little Lalita. That’s kind of fun to say. Little Lalita, little Lalita, little Lalita. [1 second of light laughter removed.] You should try it.

L: [Smiles.] No, it’s okay. [2.5 seconds of medium laughter removed.]

R: You have lost sooo much weight! [2 seconds of loud laughter removed.] It must have been difficult for you because you were so, so fat! [2.5 seconds of medium laughter removed.] Do you remember?

L: [Smiles.] Yes, I do.

R: [Smirks.] Of course you do. Who could forget being that fat? [1.5 seconds of medium laughter removed.]

L: [Smiles.] Well, I’ve been trying. [Half second of light laughter.]

R: So you’re a dental student. Are you aware that dentists have an extremely high suicide rate? [Half second of light laughter removed.] Not as high as, say, air traffic controllers, but then, there are far more dentists than air traffic controllers, so in pure numbers, you’re still winning! [Half second of light laughter removed.]

L: [Smiles.] Yay, me. [1 second of medium laughter removed.]

Especially for viewers who have seen the original episode, this minute-long segment’s omission of a laugh track can be earsplitting and mindbending. In total, thirteen seconds of laughter-turned-silence (almost a quarter of the clip’s runtime) blow a lot of dead air, a conversational vacuum made all the more awkward by Raj’s clueless giggles and Lalita’s politely rueful smiles. Without the noise of loyal laughers, Raj’s quips about obesity and suicide sound downright cruel. Barbs wither on the vine, and any imagined alibi of just joking! fails because no one is laughing. The gaping silences, however, cause the scene to fail so spectacularly that it stands to become funny on another level. No longer an aesthetically sensible text, the scene can tease laughter anew from the YouTube viewers who may find the metatextual manipulation absurd and subversive. Rather than laughing with the drunk Raj, we laugh at the laugh-deprived show. A taken-out laugh track enables viewers to take back their laughs, to reassert sovereignty over the choice of laughing and, moreover, to find humor in the bleak laughlessness.

On The Big Bang Theory and other laugh-heavy shows, part of what makes laughter sound fake is the rigidity with which it punctuates onscreen events: a character will say or do something funny, and laughter ensues (then stops); another character replies, and more laughter follows; and on it goes. Producers cannot afford to let laughter drown out the dialogue or excessively stall a scene’s pacing. Yet in real-life scenarios, people do not pause for laughter every five seconds, nor do laughers perfectly synchronize their outbursts. (Granted, if a friend tells a truly hilarious joke, it might cause everyone to crack up for a prolonged period of time, requiring people to catch their breaths; the point is, however, that these moments of dramatic hysterics are rare.) Tightly edited (or, with studio audiences, thoroughly instructed and choreographed), the laughter that erupts from sitcom one-liners boasts a sonic cleanliness in homogenized start-stop motions. At the same time, it is exactly these neat starts and stops that easily enable a sound-hacker to snip out the laughs without interfering with dialogue.

Even easier than removing a laugh track from a show is adding a laugh track using sound superimposition. One user did just this for the drama Breaking Bad. Besides interjecting laughter, the DIY video “Breaking Bad as a Sitcom” includes an upbeat musical intro, whooping cheers, a sentimental aww, genteel applause, and a cheery outro.31 The original scene is supposed to be unfunny, with Skyler White calling the cops on her estranged drug-dealing husband. Solely through sonic reframing, the affect short-circuits. Just a dash of well-timed laughter makes the scene funny. People have similarly added laugh tracks to shows and films such as The Wire and Schindler’s List (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993), as well as to touchy scenes in sitcoms: Laura Winslow finding a racist slur spray-painted on her school locker in Family Matters; Will Smith getting reabandoned by his father on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; and little Stephanie Tanner mourning her deceased mother on Full House (fig. 2).32

Figure 2. Serious moments overlaid with (and undercut by) laugh tracks on (left) Family Matters (season 2, episode 20) and (right) The Wire (season 4, episode 3).

Popular descriptions of laughter as a contagious force break down in instances where others’ laughter (canned tracks) make us less inclined to laugh or where we laugh largely in response to nonlaughter (redacted tracks). 33 Such affective flip-flop bears out in an episode of the dramedy Ally McBeal, when Ally goes on a first date with a man named Dennis, who, it turns out, has a low threshold for what he finds funny and, what’s worse, sports a massive braying laugh. In fact, during the date, he laughs and snorts so loudly that he draws the attention of nearby diners, who stop their conversations to stare. Ally, meanwhile, doesn’t laugh; she is embarrassed. The next day, Ally tells her friend Elaine, “I spent the rest of the date either talking about AIDS or the Holocaust or Linda Tripp, the most unfunny, horrible things I could think of: anything just to make him not laugh again.” 34 Ally, in sum, was trying to use her words to remove the laugh track—the overbearing sounds of Dennis’s inexplicable (and admittedly machinelike) vocalizations. Alas, she failed to mute or hack him. His automatonic mirth had no off switch. So later, in the company of Elaine and another coworker named Nelle, Ally finds Dennis and tries to do the next best thing—goad him into laughing so that her skeptical friends can at least hear firsthand how terrible he is. After the women tell several jokes—eliciting several fake outs along the way, leading Dennis to chuckle only lightly—he finally lets loose his obscene, gargantuan laugh. As Dennis howls, the three women are stunned into silence, albeit with mouths likewise agape (fig. 3). Dennis’s dramatic exhalations (laughs) and inhalations (snorts) suck up all the oxygen in the room, while Ally, Elaine, and Nelle remain motionless, breathless, speechless. The three women fail to stop his outburst once it starts, yet it is also this very failure that’s intended to tickle the show’s viewers, who stand to be moved, like Dennis, to laugh out loud.

Figure 3. Dennis, Nelle, and Elaine in Ally McBeal (left to right).

For Ally, Dennis’s laughter turns out to be a deal breaker—unsurprising given that he breaks with conventions of polite conduct, breaks up flows of conversations, and sounds broken when he’s guffawing. Canned laugh tracks are bad enough. But a walking, talking laugh track? Inexcusable.

Laughable Games

Ally disapproved of Dennis not because he happened to laugh at offensive or discriminatory jokes (a would-be moral flaw) but rather because he laughed offensively and indiscriminately (apparently a far worse crime in the games of courtship). Confronted with Dennis’s outbursts, Ally and her friends understood neither what he found so funny nor why he laughed so much. Laughter indeed doesn’t always reveal accurate or actionable information. Its alibis and liabilities depend on legibility. A “laughing face,” says Murray Pomerance, “can indicate not mirth or release but secrecy, darkness, surrender, derision, and improbability.”35 Yet the point remains that when people laugh, their sonic and physiognomic excess tends to draw attention and thus to invite scrutiny. Because laughter can be hard to stifle, its leakages purportedly speak volumes, gurgling with confessional authenticity. The assumption is that people who are laughing may do so despite themselves, unintentionally revealing something in the process.36 For even when someone appears about to laugh (say, Martin Shkreli testifying before Congress), we might presume to know what they’re all about. Imminence of laughter telegraphs immanence of character … or so believed the tweeters and YouTube commenters whose hatred for Shkreli intensified at the mere sign of his smirking face.

Leave it to none other than YouTube—Broadcast Yourself!—to popularize the recursive spectacles of stifling laughter. Fine Brothers Entertainment’s React Channel initiated a recent series of YouTube videos called Laughing Challenges, which task contestants with suppressing smiles and chuckles while watching trending clips on YouTube. The slightest grin or chortle gets you booted from the competition. The winner is whoever keeps a steely face against the onslaught of humorous prods. For each contest, the camera cuts between twelve contestants and keeps an inset display of the footage that they are required to watch. Although, for the sake of fairness, all contestants watch the same series of videos, they will sometimes defiantly shout, “That’s not fair!”

upon breaking into grins or laughter at an irresistibly (unfairly) uproarious video. In one challenge, the contestants are shown a YouTube clip of a young man shrieking with laughter; some contestants manage to maintain a stony expression, but others don’t last long. The off-camera producer coyly accuses a young contestant: “Sydney, you smiled!” And like the Bible’s defensive Sarai (responding to the likewise disembodied voice of authority), Sydney tries to get away with it, protesting: “No, I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t!”37 Pleading to no avail, she is removed from the competition (fig. 4).

Figure 4. We (YouTube viewers) are invited to laugh at Sydney trying not to laugh at an inset video of a man laughing. Besides the laugh factor, the mise-en-abyme operates medially and geometrically (rectangular screen within screen within screen).

The bankable purpose of these challenges is primarily to attract and to amuse YouTube viewers, who are encouraged to laugh at contestants attempting—and failing—to refrain from laughing. Watching someone aiming desperately to preserve a straight face can be a funny yet disquieting experience. As the Laughing Challenge contestants try to keep from smiling or laughing, they show bulging eyes, flaring nostrils, quivering cheeks, pursed lips, and other compensatory contortions (think of sci-fi scenes where an alien is about to burst out of someone’s face). The gestural excesses born of suppressed laughter end up visually sonifying this laughter anyway, as pressures that normally would escape from one’s throat find weird release from alternate orifices and pores. But for all of their funny fails, contestants may occasionally astonish us with how adeptly they succeed in curating a staid, blank expression. “I seem like a really cheerful person,” a winner named Becca declared darkly, “but when I want to, I can be dead inside.”38 If Becca took any aesthetic pleasure in the carousel of funny clips, she let nothing show.

In the age of YouTube, remarks Sianne Ngai, “what we might call Other People’s Aesthetic Pleasures have become folded into the heart of the artwork.”39 Affective responses refract and percolate through a palimpsest of spectators and spectacles. Ngai parses the case of the famous Double Rainbow video, in which the natural wonder of a double rainbow became upstaged by the effusive response of Paul Vasquez, who recorded it; Vasquez’s response was subsequently upstaged by millions of delighted YouTube viewers, parodists, and media commentators. “Aesthetic artifact and affective response,” Ngai points out, “were thus conflated in a way that ended up doubly short-circuiting the original object of aesthetic appreciation and leaving it behind.”40 Watching a Laughing Challenge, we likewise redistribute our attention and affects among a panoply of funny things. Were we to describe the laughing game with the stock preamble, “The funny thing about this is …,” we would fail to pin down a singular subject. But in this carnivalesque melting pot of recursive laughter, would we really care to explain why we’re laughing anyway? Or might we feel content to let this resonant laughter, like a good joke, stand on its own and speak for itself?

A Laughing Challenge on the React Channel appears to be just a game, just for laughs: safe spaces to frolic and fail in the name of entertainment. As contestants suppress laughter, or laugh at themselves for laughing, or make a YouTube viewer laugh at the laughability of nonlaughter, the spectacle of heavy-handed levity is both positively intense and intensely positive. But the chronic bright-sidedness of these games belies the possibility that the stakes can creep higher than their ludic façades. Predictably, many of the laughable videos shown to contestants involve, to riff on Ngai, Other People’s Epic Fails: falls, face-plants, notorious groin hits, and the sorts of obvious painful acts long featured on clip shows (America’s Funniest Home Videos), stunt shows (Jackass), game shows (Wipeout), and Tumblr blogs. These are physical injuries and sometimes near-death experiences. They are serious insofar as there might be visible evidence of maiming and trauma. In one Laughing Challenge that showed a montage of various people getting hit on the head, a young contestant named Anita proclaimed (while keeping her eyes obligatorily glued to the screen): “You know these people can die, right? I don’t laugh at that kind of stuff.” Now, maybe Anita truly found nothing funny about sadism. Or maybe she said this out loud in order to stymy her own impulse to laugh. (At the end of the challenge, after learning that she had won, Anita asked: “Can I laugh now?”—then undammed a huge guffaw.)41

What’s revealing here is that even when an epic fail does involve injury, its outrageous goals of knee-jerk amusement tend to stamp out a spectator’s long-term concerns. Viewers do not lose sleep wondering whether a crotch-smacked jackass has gone on to suffer permanent testicular damage or whether his health insurance will pick up medical fees. By subscribing to the comedic alibi that epic fails are all in good fun, viewers banish the inconvenient specter of killjoy consequence. In order to justify our externalized laughter at someone else’s expense, we may have to internalize—conjoining Lauren Berlant and Susan Sontag—a certain cruel optimism regarding the pain of others.42 Comedy’s alibis effectively make the very genre of epic fails possible.

Sure, we might feel mildly ashamed when laughing involuntarily at a video showing a skateboarder’s agonizing pratfall. We might even wish we could take back our laugh so as to disavow guilt over schadenfreude. Yet the advent of YouTube has complicated the power gradients in spectacles of harm and victimhood. Especially when a laughable injury goes viral, the viewers can plainly see its stratospheric page hits and up-votes, which convey not only that many other people must be laughing at the same thing (moral absolution via mass participation) but also that this epic fail has already become too big to fail (with the subject’s fifteen minutes of fame compensating for whatever damages enabled this lulz-mongering celebrity to begin with). Alibis of permissible laughter therefore become that much tighter when there’s safety in laughers’ numbers and when we assume, whether rightly or wrongly, that notorious butts are willing subjects who are handsomely paid for their troubles.

To nuance these assumptions, let’s eavesdrop on a Broadcast Yourself venue that preceded YouTube, an infamous stage where performers have sought fame, risked humiliation, and funnily bombed time and again: the Apollo Theater.

Judge-It-Yourself

In the Apollo Theater, Harlem’s house of boos, comedians and musicians perform for a jury of their peers. Marion J. Caffey, producer of Amateur Night at the Apollo, sets the scene:

We offer [audience members] what no one else offers them—the power of the boo…. When you watch little old ladies, Eurocentric ladies and African ladies and Asian ladies, man, power up their boo? And they’ve never booed a person in their lives? And the freedom that comes over them, when it’s like, “Is it OK?” To watch that transformation in the audience where, by the last person or second-to-the-last person, they feel like, “Hmmm … I’m gonna try this! Booo!” And it’s a timid boo! Yet, it is a boo from deep within.43

Caffey’s gleeful synopsis of the Apollo audience’s internal monologue makes the people sound akin to the metamorphosed participants of the Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram’s shocking tests. Apollonites’ boos burst forth as if exposing an impish, repressed drive to judge and condemn. On Amateur Nights, an audience’s prolonged razzes will summon the Executioner, the Apollo’s tap-dancing avatar who uses a shepherd’s crook or a broom to usher struggling performers off the stage.44

If you watch any video recording of the Apollo’s jubilant spectators booing an amateur performer, what you hear and see is, yes, booing (out of puckered lips and oval mouths). What you also see—yet cannot hear—is people laughing at this spectacle of humiliation. Funnily enough, an acoustemology here requires sharp eyes; the staccato laughter is visible but virtually mute, drowned out by the wall of sostenuto boos.Amateur Nights at the Apollo operate under the yays and nays of spectatorial DIY. With considerable sovereignty, audience members take adjudication into their own power-tripping hands and, if dissatisfied, use their vocal cords to terminate a performance and to hit Play Next on the night’s set list.45

But despite the garish sights and sounds of the Apollo’s apparent mob mentality, audience members do not always agree. A performance can sometimes split a jury, especially at the outset. A famous yet frequently mischaracterized example is the 1988 debut of a thirteen-year-old Lauryn Hill, who, on the televised Showtime at the Apollo (featuring amateur artists along with more established performers), sang “Who’s Lovin’ You,” the 1960 Motown standard by William “Smokey” Robinson. Most click-baity websites emphasize that Hill was booed, a delicious outrage given that she would go on to win eight Grammys. Few writers mention, however, that if you listen closely to the full performance, the audience’s response undergoes several changes over the course of just two minutes.

HOST: Well, come on, Lauryn, we’re going to love you! Sing for us! [The audience cheers and applauds; applause fades as Hill begins to sing.]

LAURYN HILL: [Singing.] When I had you, I treated you bad [audience boos immediately] and wrong my dear. And boy since you been away, [boos crescendo but are counteracted by a bit of applause] dontcha know I sit around with my head hangin’ down, and I wonder who’s lovin’ you. [Boos and applause mix and jostle; both die down by the end of the first verse, leaving only some isolated cheers and jeers. In the three beats of rest between the first and second verses, someone from the audience shouts, “Move up to the mic!” Hill heeds the advice and keeps singing.] I should have never, ever made you cry, and boy since you been gone, [smattering of boos and cheers; cheers grow louder as Hill takes mic off its stand] dontcha know I sit around with my head hangin’ down, and I wonder who’s lovin’ you. [Audience vocalizations begin to die down, replaced by people clapping along to the song’s second and fourth beats.] Life without love is oh so lonely. I don’t think I’m gonna make it. [Clapping continues; there are no more audible boos by this point.] Dontcha know I sit around with my head hangin’ down, and I wonder who’s lovin’ you. [With ritenuto in the song’s final line, the clapping stops, then turns into full-on applause and a standing ovation.]46

Although Hill persevered through her performance and won the audience over, she reportedly cried afterwards backstage.47 And who could blame her? Belated applause doesn’t erase the horrors of initial boos, which must have felt particularly traumatic for a thirteen-year-old. Simply from watching this video, you would also never know that an unofficial rule prohibits Apollonites from booing children.48 The rule shows a vague institutional acknowledgement that even comedy’s alibis and free passes should have limits. The fact that this rule isn’t enforced, however, implies the existence of certain limits to these limits.

Seeing as how the term amateur (amator in Latin) connotes a person doing something out of love rather than for monetary gain or fame, the boos and jeers during Amateur Night may come across gratuitously dissonant. But this gratuitousness is the point. Within the magic circle of the Apollo Theater, politesse has no place. Entering the Apollo is like entering a video game or a carnival, as players and performers acquiesce to an otherworldly domain that rewrites codes of conduct, rechoreographs bodies, and rehearses trials by fire. Granted, Amateur Nights resemble mock trials rather than real ones. Juries and judges (audience members) and executioners (the Executioner) exhibit high-and-mighty personas that, by virtue of their overblown kitsch, signal the relatively soft stakes of the performances at hand. This doesn’t mean that boos can’t sting; it means that, in a colosseum where boos are part of the game, the consequences can seem diminutive because they operate prima facie under the comedic alibi, a vindication predicated on the phenomenal pleasures of aesthetic judgment and the consensual funniness of a booed, bombing artist.

As with Laughing Challenges, epic fails, and quandaries of sadism, the comedic alibi draws strength from the assumption that if enough people are laughing—if something is sufficiently funny by consensus—then the burden of responsibility becomes diffuse, soothing moral qualms along the way. Beyond the Apollo Theater, audiences’ cheers and laughter have long resounded as beacons of populist metrics. A clap-o-meter on the 1950s game show Opportunity Knocks claimed to measure audience response, though the machine was operated by a hidden person who manually turned the dial according to his own estimate of applause volumes. On America’s Got Talent (now in its eleventh season), the audience can boo and flash thumbs-downs to encourage judges to terminate a contestant’s audition. Off the live stage, there’s the well-named example of Funny or Die, a comedy website (founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay) that shows humorous videos open to viewers’ votes. If a video receives ample votes, it is deemed “funny” and stays on the main site; if it receives insufficient votes, it “dies” and descends into the website’s Crypt.49Like Reddit and other judge-it-yourself sites (along with, more generally, any online content algorithmically curated by search engine optimization), the game here is natural selection, where nonspreadability means virtual death. On a site such as Funny or Die, the binary system of up-voting or down-voting comes with the added benefit of obviating the need for anyone to elaborate on why a video passes as funny. If a video lives or dies, it is because the people have spoken and, in turn, because the humorous intricacies of the video need not be spoken. Systemically, the humor goes unexplained—which is, of course, how good jokes are said to remain.

Even as consumers today vote with their laughs, majority opinions leave room for dissent. Boos! might bump against Bravos! in the Apollo Theater, while trolls make their obligatory clamor on comment threads of beloved viral artifacts. In comedy reception, there’s also a sound that, within itself, personifies ambivalence and contradiction—laughter’s abject countersign: the groan.

Coda: Fade to Groan

Midway through the documentary Saturday Night Live in the 2000s: Time and Again, we see clips of past SNL sketches that pushed the limits of political correctness. One sketch involved Ben Affleck yelling at a “mentally challenged guy” (Fred Armisen) to shut up; another featured Jon Hamm encountering a grown-up trick-or-treater (Will Forte) “dressed up” as a sex offender.50 Former cast member Horatio Sanz reflected on the studio audience’s mixed reactions to these edgy moments: “What it would take to offend us [the cast] is a lot higher than I think most people. So when we hear groans in the audience, we kind of like it. If the laughter stops, then we don’t like it. But a groan and a laugh is probably the best thing you could ever ask for!”51 Groans mixed into laughter is like spice added to something nice, signaling affective equilibrium or illusions thereof.

For all of the critical thought devoted to laughter, it’s funny that groans have received almost no consideration. Groans are a regular and vital component of audiences’ responses to stand-up comedy, SNL, and talk show monologues. Superficially, a groan voices moral or aesthetic disapproval, suggesting that the comic has stepped out of bounds or failed to land a punchline. But as with the Apollo audience’s reactions to Lauryn Hill, the time-lapse soundscape is complicated whenever groans are involved: typically, a foul joke or bad pun will draw sharp laughter, followed by some groans (from audience members realizing belatedly that such material might not merit laughter), then more groans (with recognition of faux pas catching on), and then finally yielding a reuptake of laughter at the situational humor of this very quandary.52 These reactions launch a boomerang of affective display, a graceful A-B-A ternary form that affirms the comedy’s success, after all. In short, the game of groans is long exposure. A groan can’t erase a prior laugh but demonstrates an effort to take back the laugh—that is, not through subtraction but through the addition of a neutralizing or mitigating agent. Short of being able to turn back time (or to snip out a laugh track with the click of a mouse), a groan is the next best thing.53

So that you have a sense of your own body, try this: force yourself to laugh (it will likely sound artificial), listening as you do so, and then attempt to stop abruptly. How did your body feel at the moment of cessation? Probably uncomfortable, even vaguely painful. Now laugh again, but this time, let it give way to a groan, as if you’ve just heard someone’s joke, chuckled instinctively, then realized a second later that the joke is misogynistic and that you better stifle your outburst lest nearby people judge you. Chances are you found this second routine far easier on your lungs, throat, and mind. Physiologically, this is because a laugh-turned-groan involves a guttural quick-change with respiratory continuity. (Groaning merely takes the pulsations out of laughter’s exhalations.) It’s an awkward yet manageable transition, an exercise in glottal backpedaling that oozes apology and ambivalence. Admittedly, no less funny than the feeling of a groan is how groans sound. We stylize groans as monotone; while the utterance fades from loud to soft, the pitch stays mostly the same. A person groaning can thus sound almost nonhuman, like a machine emitting an error tone (indicating uncertainty over how to process the input of a joke). Maybe, then, groans have flown under our critical sonar in part because they come off as literal noise, plain and simple. Unlike bubbly laughter (music to the ears), groans sound and feel flat.

Any time we laugh, boo, or groan—inappropriately, inopportunely, involuntarily—the utterance vibrates stubbornly in the air, admissible as exhibit A to all who care to judge. Like touchy speech acts or an embarrassing text message that you regret immediately upon hitting Send, take-backs are technically impossible. Life isn’t a courtroom. We can’t officially ask to strike a line or a laugh from the record. Yet in the wake of offensive jokes, injuries, or even national catastrophes, people have simultaneously found reasons to laugh and not to laugh (recall the contrasting cases of post-9/11 SNL and post-Charleston The Daily Show) because with laughter, reason isn’t necessarily the point. Not only can laughter signify generously, but its verdict is also rarely final. Appeals abound, for even though the echoes of a laugh cannot be materially retracted, its hermeneutic terminus remains a shifting target.

Laughter isn’t always overflowing with intense secrets. Anyone claiming that a joke is just a joke could likewise insist that a laugh is just a laugh—a syntactic tautology working double duty as moral alibi. Minding the sociopolitical stakes of laughing out loud means recognizing how different people shoulder differing burdens of sonic, gestural, and physiognomic propriety and, by extension, how people face variable charges and convictions amid the difficulties of taking back a laugh. Given how laughing bugs can infect any of us, we should know that we don’t always know why people laugh. Modern hackers of laughter are producing humorous artifacts and performances that make such uncertainties wilder than ever. If laughter both begs inquiry and calls for interpretative forfeit, then it perpetually pleads alibis through its own semantic promiscuity. From one moment to the next, auditors of laughter might be tasked with condemning or forgiving a laugher, choosing between austere suspicion and benefit of the doubt. Resonating in our collective chuckle huts may be the funny feeling that, when we opt to humor others’ laughable excuses, we stand to be humored in kind.

Notes

1. See Scott Weems, Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why (New York, 2014), p. 52; Chris A. Kramer, “An Existentialist Account of the Role of Humor against Oppression,” Humor 26 (Oct. 2013): 629–51; Trevor J. Blank, The Last Laugh: Folk Humor, Celebrity Culture, and Mass-Mediated Disasters in the Digital Age (Madison, Wis., 2013), pp. 38–56; and Bill Ellis, “Making a Big Apple Crumble: The Role of Humor in Constructing a Global Response to Disaster,” in Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture, ed. Peter Narváez (Logan, Utah, 2003), pp. 35–79.

2. A well-known portion of this SNL premiere was the appearance of Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, to whom Lorne Michaels posed the question: “Can we be funny?” Giuliani deadpanned: “Why start now?”

3. Witherspoon’s tame joke featured a baby polar bear repeatedly asking his mom whether he’s really a polar bear. When the mom inquires why he keeps wondering this, he replies, “Because I’m fucking freezing!”—or, as Witherspoon told it, “Because I’m freezing my balls off!” (“Reese Witherspoon / Alicia Keys,” Saturday Night Live, 29 Sept. 2011).

4. See Eric Randall, “The ‘Death of Irony,’ and Its Many Reincarnations,” The Wire, 9 Sept. 2011, www.thewire.com/national/2011/09/death-irony-and-its-many-reincarnations/42298

5. See Ed Mazza, “Jon Stewart Says He Can’t Tell Jokes after Charleston Church Shooting,” Huffington Post, 19 June 2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/18/jon-stewart-charleston-no-jokes_n_7618110.html

6. On stereotypes of the humorless feminist, see Mary Ann Doane, “Masquerade Reconsidered: Further Thoughts on the Female Spectator,” Discourse 11 (Fall–Winter 1988–89): 50. See also Judith Butler, “Feminism by Any Other Name,” interview by Rosi Braidotti, Differences 6 (1994): 27–61; Wendy Brown, “Resisting Left Melancholy,” Boundary 2 26 (1999): 19–27; and Sara Ahmed, “Feminist Killjoys (and Other Willful Subjects),” The Scholar and Feminist Online 8 (2010), sfonline.barnard.edu/polyphonic/print_ahmed.html

7. See Jessica Bennett, “I’m Not Mad. That’s Just My RBF,” New York Times, 1 Aug. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/fashion/im-not-mad-thats-just-my-resting-b-face.html?_r=0

8. Victoria Bond, “Dear White People, Laughing Is Not a Crime,” Al Jazeera America, 28 Aug. 2015, america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/8/dear-white-people-laughing-is-not-a-crime.html, emphasis added.

9. See Bryan H. Ward, “Sentencing without Remorse,” Loyola University Chicago Law Journal38 (Fall 2006): 151. The case was State v. Parker, 373 S.E.2d 558, 559 (N.C. Ct. App. 1988).

10. See Lewis Kamb, “Bales Faces Survivors of His Afghan Rampage,” Seattle Times, 20 Aug. 2013, www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/bales-faces-survivors-of-his-afghan-rampage

11. Linette Lopez, “Martin Shkreli Could Not Stop Laughing during His Testimony to Congress,” Business Insider, 4 Feb. 2016, www.businessinsider.com/live-martin-shkreli-the-ceo-of-valeant-and-others-face-congress-2016-2

12. Zoe Thomas and Tim Swift, “Who Is Martin Shkreli—’the Most Hated Man in America’?” BBC, 3 Sept. 2015, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34331761

13. Anca Parvulescu, Laughter: Notes on a Passion (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), p. 18.

14. Gaëtan Brulotte, for example, insists on laughter’s wholesale subversiveness in this grandiose manner: “With laughter, the social machine creaks, its herd-like unanimity falters, its habitual cohesion breaks up, and its mechanical reactions break down” (Gaëtan Brulotte, “Laughing at Power,” in Laughter and Power, ed. John Parkin and John Phillips [Oxford, 2006], p. 15).

15. See Anthony Julius, Transgressions: The Offenses of Art (London, 2002), pp. 25–26. Closely related is what I’ve termed the “ludic alibi,” the excuse used by offenders who claim that they’re just playing a game, just horsing around; see William Cheng, Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination (New York, 2014), pp. 6–8, 130–32.

16. See Julie A. Woodzicka et al., “It’s Just a (Sexist) Joke: Comparing Reactions to Sexist versus Racist Communications,” Humor 28 (May 2015): 289–309; Elise Kramer, “The Playful Is Political: The Metapragmatics of Internet Rape-Joke Arguments,” Language in Society 40 (Apr. 2011): 137–68; and Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Critique of Humour(London, 2005), pp. 1–6, 11–21.

17. F. H. Buckley, The Morality of Laughter (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2005), p. 35. See also Muhammad A. Badarneh, “Carnivalesque Politics: A Bakhtinian Case Study of Contemporary Arab Political Humor,” Humor 24 (Aug. 2011): 305–27, and Lisa Gabbert and Antonio Salud II, “On Slanderous Words and Bodies-out-of-Control: Hospital Humor and the Medical Carnivalesque,” in The Body in Medical Culture, ed. Elizabeth Klaver (Albany, N.Y., 2009), pp. 209–27.

18. See J. L. Austin, “A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57 (1956–1957): 1–30.

19. Christie Davies, Jokes and Targets (Indianapolis, 2011), p. 2.

20. See Egon Larsen, Wit as a Weapon: Political Joke in History (London, 1980), and Hans Speier, “Wit and Politics: An Essay on Power and Laughter” (1975), trans. and ed. Robert Jackall, American Journal of Sociology 103 (Mar. 1998): 1354.

21. Davies, Jokes and Targets, p. 267.

22. Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger (New York, 1916), p. 142. Immediately preceding this line, Satan says: “Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast” (ibid.).

23. See Peter Jelavich, “When Are Jewish Jokes No Longer Funny? Ethnic Humour in Imperial and Republican Berlin,” in The Politics of Humour: Laughter, Inclusion, and Exclusion in the Twentieth Century, ed. Martina Kessel and Patrick Merziger (Toronto, 2012), p. 24.

24. Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (London, 2008), p. 141.

25. Ron Rosenbaum, “Kanned Laffter,” in Media Culture: Television, Radio, Records, Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Movies, ed. James Monaco (New York, 1978), p. 137.

26. “The Big Bang Theory—Live Show Taping HD 720p,” YouTube, 1 Mar. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKm54STV2Q

27. Quoted in Mike Gane, “Baudrillard’s Sense of Humour,” Jean Baudrillard: Fatal Theories, ed. David B. Clarke et al. (1986; London, 2009), pp. 171, 172. See also Jacob Smith, Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media (Berkeley, 2008), pp. 15–49; Parvulescu, Laughter, pp. 146–48; and Darragh McManus, “No Laughing Matter: Silence Is Golden When It Comes to Comedy TV Shows,” The Guardian, 24 Mar. 2010, www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/mar/24/canned-laughter-track

28. See Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, (Stanford, Calif., 2002), p. 112, and Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory, and the Avant-garde(London, 2002), pp. 178–79.

29. “The Big Bang Theory—No Laugh Track 1 (Avoiding the Shamy),” YouTube, 2 Jan. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKS3MGriZcs

30. “The Big Bang Theory—No Laugh Track 2 (Raj Is a Dick),” YouTube, 4 Jan. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dffCCSb1JCo

31. See “Breaking Bad as a Sitcom,” YouTube, 12 Sept. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6v-ApehVbc

32. See “Inappropriate Laugh Track,” YouTube, 16 Apr. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZjP_IoxCHU, and “Inappropriate Laugh Track 2,” YouTube, 13 Nov. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSvkkTWrRGo

33. Various recent videos show everyday people transmitting laughter to one another, typically in enclosed and resonant spaces such as subway cars (effectively, viral videos about viral laughter); see the humorously titled “Contagious Laughter Is Contagious,” YouTube, 29 Nov. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM45JMTpkBU

34. “In Search of Pygmies,” 14 Feb. 2000, Ally McBeal.

35. Murray Pomerance, “Introduction: The Great Corrective,” in The Last Laugh: Strange Humors of Cinema, ed. Pomerance (Detroit, 2013), p. 1.

36. See Mikita Brottman, Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor(New York, 2004), p. 66.

37. “Try to Watch This without Laughing or Grinning #2,” YouTube, 23 Apr. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxjjhQcODUE.

38. “Try to Watch This without Laughing or Grinning #5,” YouTube, 16 July 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss39UktpXk0

39. Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), p. 28.

40. Ibid.

41. “Try to Watch This without Laughing or Grinning #16,” YouTube, 4 Feb. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed7BhyZrGaA&index=1&list=PL73YndQawY3PB6odG3R5ThUElhxBw8xaS

42. See Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, N.C., 2011), pp. 3–6, and Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London, 2004), pp. 95–103.

43. Quoted in Christopher R. Weingarten, “Amateur Night at the Apollo: Behind the Boos of America’s Toughest Crowd,” Rolling Stone, 11 Mar. 2015, www.rollingstone.com/music/features/amateur-night-at-the-apollo-behind-the-boos-of-americas-toughest-crowd-20150311

44. Earlier incarnations of the Executioner included the Porto Rico and the Sandman.

45. On the declines and renaissances of audience sovereignty, see Richard Butsch, The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750–1990 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 57–65; Danilyn Rutherford, Laughing at Leviathan: Sovereignty and Audience in West Papua (Chicago, 2012), pp. 10–22; and James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, 1996), pp. 228–35.

46. “Lauryn Hill at 13 Dings Who’s Lovin’ You (Amateur Night at the Apollo),” YouTube, 6 Feb. 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdwhGmvB7aA

47. See Touré, “The Mystery of Lauryn Hill,” Rolling Stone, 30 Oct. 2003, www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-mystery-of-lauryn-hill-20031030

48. See Robert Smith, “Harlem’s Apollo Theater Gets Its Own Show,” NPR, 13 Feb. 2011, www.npr.org/2011/02/13/133729700/Harlems-Apollo-Theatre-Gets-Its-Own-Show

49. “About Funny or Die,” Funny or Die, www.funnyordie.com/about?_cc=__d___&_ccid=lzz1fg.nvrnjz. If a video receives an exceptionally high number of “funny” votes, it attains the status of “immortal.”

50. Saturday Night Live in the 2000s: Time and Again (Kenneth Bowser, dir., 2010).

51. Ibid.

52. For an example of the laugh-groan-laugh boomerang, see Louis C. K.’s 2015 SNL monologue (first aired 16 May 2015), in which he made fun of child molesters.

53. Just as people have taken out and added laugh tracks to television clips, so someone has replaced all laughter with groans for an episode of Two and a Half Men (to portray disparagingly that perhaps the show’s jokes are more groan-worthy than laugh-worthy); see “Laugh Track from ‘Two and a Half Men’ Replaced with GROAN Track (Video),” Huffington Post, 25 May 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/19/laugh-track-from-two-and_n_469362.html

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WhatsApp for Blackberry

Found 14 file extension associations related to WhatsApp for Blackberry and 5 file formats developed specifically for use with WhatsApp for Blackberry.

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WhatsApp for Blackberry

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WhatsApp is a cross-platform smartphone messenger available for BlackBerry and 4 other major handsets. WhatsApp Messenger utilizes your existing internet data plan to help you stay in touch with friends, colleagues and family.

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[nicholasmeyler]

Some Essays

    Wolfy Said I Have a “Pedigree”

NICHOLAS MEYLER·SUNDAY, AUGUST 2, 2020·6 MINUTES

Based on my research, I have concluded that "Great Genius" is actually the name of a Breed, not so much as an accomplishment, or appellation received from making a lasting and brilliant contribution to Society. Rather, it is more like the term "Great Dane", used when referring to a specific breed of dog. There is nothing really great about Danes, although they are fine people, quite often, and I certainly don't want to sow any racist Anti-Danish sentiment on Facebook. Rather, I am simply clarifying the use of the term.

Scientists have concluded that Intelligence is basically hereditary, so I conducted my research on the genetics and genealogy of the matter. I was partly inspired by my familial relationship with the Nobel Peace Prizewinner, Norman Borlaug, who has been credited with saving one billion lives, due to his research in genetics and agricultural science.

My hypothesis, if you will, is simply that Genius runs in families; so I compiled a small family tree of 54,000+ individuals going back 4000 years to test this hypothesis. I realized that a typical example of the "Great Genius" breed might be Isaac Newton, whom I found myself related to along the Pendleton line.

Naturally, I also traced my lineage to Einstein, as well I could, and concluded that we might have shared a common direct ancestor some 500 years ago, since Einstein's family lived in an area also inhabited by my direct ancestors. Reasoning that Einstein himself had some 'clout' in that community, I thought he would be a fitting research subject. He, like Newton, was also known for some discoveries related to Physics.

Prior to that, I had already figured out my ancestral relationships to Lord Byron, Percival Bysse Shelley, John Dryden, and John Donne. Three of those (Byron, Donne, and Shelley) also experienced and wrote about Doppelganger phenomena (which I have repeatedly written about myself, based on the acoustic evidence of hearing my own name in music composed hundreds of years before my birth).

The very ancient surname of "Meyler" is cognate with the legendary wizard "Merlin" of Arthurian legend. Merlin, according to most accounts, was primarily famed for his extraordinary gift of Prophecy, and the fact that he aged in reverse. Today, we would refer to these phenomena as “Superluminal Information Transmission” (or “Reception”), and ‘Metabolic Time-travel’ (i.e. “reverse-aging”). I am involved in both of the fields, myself (the former as a World-leading researcher, and the latter as a professional recruiter).

‘Sir Thomas Mallory’ (one of three Knights with the same name alive at the same time in England) is also a relative of mine (17th great uncle), and the name "Mallory" itself is very similar to Meilyr, Maglorix, or Malleore (variants of Meyler spelling). Mallory was the English nobleman who recorded the epic “La Morte D’Arthur”, which is still revered as the greatest account of Arthur, Merlin, and Camelot in English literature. Before him, Giraldus Cambrensis was the second author in antiquity to write of the myth of Merlin (before Mallory and after Geoffrey of Monmouth) and identified him as a man named "Meilyr" who was able to find errors and lies in the previous text written about Merlin. Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) was my 1st cousin 25 times removed. Speaking of 17th great-uncles, Geoffrey Chaucer was the father of Thomas Chaucer (Parliament Speaker of the House of Commons) who was another 17th great-uncle of mine.

Contemporary with Giraldus Cambrensis was the writing of Gwalchmai ap Meilyr, one of the most revered great Welsh Bards of the 12th century. His works are still widely read, and considered 'immortal poetry'. His family was chosen to be the Royal Bards of Wales for a full century (three generations of Meilyrs). His poetry was frequently panegyric about my 25th great grandfather King Owain Gwynnedd. It is apparent that Gwalchmai, King Owain, and Giraldus Cambrensis were all quite well acquainted with one another. Gwalchmai, moreover, is also widely cited as being another great writer who amplified the Arthur/Merlin mythology extensively.

The one ancient Welsh Bard whose poetry is still most extant (e.g. preserved) is Daffyd ap Gwilym, who is my 18th great grandfather. This, again, is a sign of the hereditary nature of the true 'Great Genius" breed, which I can trace back before the Meilyr Bards to Owain ap Hywel (907-987 AD), my 29th great grandfather.

We cannot help what we are, yet we are still ennobled by the way scholars, for example, embrace the use of the term "Bard" when describing William Shakespeare (a mere in-law of mine, it appears). Shakespeare's daughter married into my family, while (since Shakespeare was the son of first cousins), he is also somehow an in-law via another path altogether (first cousin once removed of husband of first cousin fifteen times removed). Thus, the honorific “Bard” is sometimes even bestown on mere ‘wanna-be greats’ who marry into the right family.

On the purely academic side, and apart from any real ‘thought’ or ‘intellect’, at least I am a 3rd cousin of John Harvard (9x removed). John Harvard’s grandfather Thomas Rogers (my 10th great-grandfather) lived a couple of blocks away from William Shakespeare in Avon. My great-great-grandfather was the founder of UCLA (taking up the first collection to establish a State College in Los Angeles, back in the 1880’s). Another ancestor, a ninth great-grandfather, owned the mansion that became the very first permanent building on the Yale University campus. My great-grandfather on my father’s mother’s side, Albert Carlos Jones, Jr. was the first Opera Impresario in Los Angeles, and worked for the founder of USC.   He was also the youngest person ever to have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, at that time. With respect to another West-coast school, my other great grandfather J.J. Meyler, who designed the Los Angeles Harbor, trounced Leland Stanford in a famous public debate about where the harbor should be built.

Also, perhaps footnote-worthy is the fact that my direct ancestors founded both Oxford and Cambridge Universities. So, while academia tends to breed a more docile sort of mind, simpler, simpering, pandering for approval of outrageously liberal and ignorant professors and tending towards mediocrity -- being on the ‘Founder’ side is somewhat different -- more disruptive, more radical, more innovative.

Such research, as it stands, has convinced me that "Great Genius" breeds true, and that, like "Great Danes" we are a distinct breed and should simply use this term, however modestly, when describing ourselves. This acceptance of the term is not gratuitous, vain, or boastful. Rather, it is really self-effacing, and humble. We must conform to the standards of the breed, and recognize that nothing we do will ever change our status, whether or not we invent, discover, or create anything, or nothing. We are not responsible for ourselves.

Gwalchmai ap Meilyr’s most famous poem, by far, is “Gorhoffedd”, meaning “The Boast”. Still famous after 850+ years, this is a great example of transcendence of the temporal world. We simply are, and we are not boastful.

   'Wolfy'​ and the Pedigree: A Story of Superluminal Information Transmission

·         Published on May 18, 2017

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 Nicholas Meyler

 Leading Executive Recruiter/Headhunter with (nearly) 30,000 Connections @NicholasMeyler on Twitter

24 articles

I’m tired of the rather staid and implausible edict of “Science” which states that Information cannot be transferred or transmitted at Superluminal velocities… which is to say, sending a message from “Future” or “Present” to “Past” cannot be achieved. I offer merely one of my many own personal experiences herein, that dissolves this fantasy of Physicists by clear-cut example. Scientists have contended for a long while, in their efforts to interpret Albert Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity”, that even mere quantum ‘Information’ (or ‘signal’, or ‘meaning’, essentially) is not transmissible at velocities faster than “c”, the constant denoting the speed of light traveling in a vacuum. 

This numerical value is 186,282 miles per second, which is equal to 300,000 kilometers per second. These numbers as upper limits of claimed inviolability of ‘lightspeed’ are widely accepted, almost to the point of autocratic dictum. I believe that these claims are largely correct, but have exceptions. Notably, recent Scientific research has shown that light can actually be accelerated to speeds even hundreds of times faster than the conventional limit of “c”. 

Physicists like Ray Chiao of UC Berkeley, Guenter Nimtz of University of Cologne, and Lijun Wang of the NEC Institute for Advanced Studies have all demonstrated that pulses of light can actually be sent (in special conditions) at velocities much higher than the ‘known’ limit of speed. The conventional caveat, however, is that “Information” itself cannot be transferred or transmitted at superluminal rates, because what is actually being transmitted in these cases, is merely a portion or ‘front-end’ of what is called the ‘wave-packet’. 

Physicists disregard this achievement of superluminal velocity as an exception to the Einsteinian equations simply because only a portion of the light-wave really made it through to the receiver. Guenter Nimtz formulated the reply that even if only the ‘front-end’ of the intended signal actually is transmitted, it is still recognizable and does qualify as Information. I tend to agree with him. In his 1993 experiments, he was able to transmit the sound impulses of Mozart’s 40th Symphony in G minor at a rate of 4.3x lightspeed. In other words, the signals were actually transmitted (via quantum tunneling) before the process was even initiated. Still, physicists argue about whether these actually constitute ‘Information’/‘Signals’. 

This is not just a semantic debate, since Einstein’s Theory (and the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction equations) show that any object (including a photon, which has a rest-mass below 10^exp -27 electron-volts) with non-zero ‘rest-mass’ would have to acquire infinite mass, if it exceeded lightspeed. A rather clever way out of this (which reconciles ‘observation-data’ [i.e. facts] and theory [i.e. speculation]) is that a ‘signal’ might consist purely of vibrations, or “phonons”, which are really massless, and occur in ‘elastic’ structures. 

The great composer Iannis Xenakis compared “phonons” to ‘particles or granules’ of sound, in his textbook “Musiques Formelles”. In fact, he based his entire theory of musical composition on this concept of ‘granular sound’ and used his extreme knowledge of Chemical Physics and Mathematics to create music based on the idea of manipulation of ‘sound-masses’ and ‘sound-clouds’ via abstract mathematics, much of which was based on Ancient Greek thought.

Guenter Nimtz’ more recent work (2009) has been on the idea of “Superluminal” (i.e. “Virtual” as in the Physics of Richard Feynmann) ‘particles’ or ‘quanta’ of vibration, which is what sound is caused by – all sounds are merely vibrations that occur in some medium, whether it be air, the floor of a concert venue where music is much too loud for good health, etc. Given that the Einsteinian “Prohibition” on faster-than-lightspeed Information transfer is based entirely on the impossibility of accelerating objects (or quanta) which possess ‘non-zero rest mass’ – What prohibits the possibility of accelerating completely massless ‘quanta’ of vibration to superluminal rates – i.e. thereby sending ordered vibrations into the Past?_____________________________________________________________

It was in the year 1989, I believe, that I purchased a CD album of Wolfgang Mozart’s “Salzburg Symphonies”, composed when he was a youth below the age of 16. Despite his age, however, Mozart’s enormous precocity and intellect enabled him to compose music which is highly enduring, and permits many listenings. 

The simplicity of the Salzburg Symphonies is undeniable, but they remain as amazing testament to the genius of ‘Wolfy’, who could create immortal symphonies still beloved by many, centuries after his death. It is on track 19 of the album I have of Jaap Schroeder, Christopher Hogwood and The Academy of Ancient Music performing “The Symphonies Salzburg 1766-1772” that the untamed “Wolfy” (aka Mozart) launches into what I once thought was a slanderous diatribe against me, wherein he accused me of having a “pedigree”, which I naturally thought was quite offensive, given the context of someone with a nickname of “Wolfy” (which is highly suggestive of an undomesticated species of canine). 

Canines, to my knowledge (at that time) were the sorts of creatures who had ‘pedigrees’, and I incontestably took offence at Mozart’s apparent speech synthesis directed towards me. I was, generally speaking, rather appalled by the apparent slight, but tried to understand it in the context of the youthful, brash super-genius Mozart taunting a fan or admirer (me) from the distant future (over 200 years later). 

Please bear in mind that these thoughts first occurred to me, listening to this album/CD, around 1989, when I lived in Van Nuys, CA (at 14333 Haynes St.) in a fairly inexpensive apartment in a rather poor neighborhood – although it is true that I lived within a few blocks of a Tchaikovsky competition pianist, a drummer from ‘Iron Butterfly’ (who lived upstairs), and a successful composer named Alexandra Shapiro. Alex Shapiro was beautiful and very intelligent. I remember discussing Stephen Hawking with her, and how strongly she felt sympathy for his physical condition.

Apparently, I am not the only party who has had reason to contemplate the “pedigree” remarks of Mozart, since one need only Google “Mozart, pedigree” to find the following information: http://www.pedigreequery.com/mozart3. It would appear that others have, at least on some level, also connected the cognitively dissonant notes of “Wolfy” and “pedigree” rather clearly. My assumption of, and extreme irritation at, Wolfy’s unintended jape/jibe/jab at my ego, was erroneous, though. I learned some 23 years later, while trying to work out my Ancestry , that a “pedigree” is also something ascribed to humans; in particular, those who descend from long lines of ancestry and/or royalty. 

Although I had no knowledge of it, originally, I do actually have a ‘pedigree’ which extends back over a thousand years. Even without knowledge of having a ‘pedigree’, I did have a pedigree, it seems. What is remarkable about this, though, is that I perceived and ‘heard’ Mozart’s comments which seemed to be directed precisely towards me, in English language, with such vividness that I truly thought I was being personally insulted by the brilliant (but highly juvenile at the age of 14-16) Mozart even though his synthetic speech comments (assuming that they are real) were perhaps actually intended as a compliment. I utterly rejected the idea that I was “Mozart’s dog” and was being teased about my inferior intellect/good breeding, because I knew nothing of my ancient ancestry, and because I had no idea that a “pedigree” was even a term that could be applied to Humans, without condescension.

So, now that I have researched my family tree extensively, including with DNA comparisons of many other people, I know that I am related to royalty with lineage that perhaps goes (arguably or not) back to 2000 BC. I would suggest that this result, which I would have found anathematic in 1989, is an actual state of fact which was communicated to me, somehow, via speech synthesis using purely instrumental modalities in that 19th track of the album, composed by Wolfgang Mozart around 1770-1776.

This strikes me as very strong evidence of the reality of Superluminal Information Transmission (or Transfer), simply because: (1) the concept of being told by a record album performance of music written over 200 years ago that I (personally) have a ‘pedigree’ is highly odd; (2) the indisputability of that acoustic perception, on my part, is certain, because I have been able to describe the perceptions and thoughts I had as a consequence, in detail; (3) the odds against anyone having a ‘pedigree’ (or family tree) which contains 40,000 known individuals is fairly extreme, so there can be no mistaking the correctness of the assertion.

From this one example (and I have many others), it appears to me that the existence of Superluminal Information Transmission is a certain fact, despite many Physicists' claims that it violates “Relativity Theory”, and is therefore impossible.

Henceforth, let us abbreviate “Superluminal Information Transmission” as “S.I.T.” 

“SIT, Wolfy! SIT!” 

    Battle of The Majors: Engineering vs. Philosophy

·         Published on August 24, 2020

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 Nicholas Meyler

 Leading Executive Recruiter/Headhunter with (nearly) 30,000 Connections @NicholasMeyler on Twitter

24 articles

I just read a really interesting article by a clever writer named Kristina Grob, a Philosophy instructor at University of South Carolina Sumter. The article discussed the long-term benefits of a Philosophy degree in terms of paying ones’ bills and earning a living, as opposed to other majors like Engineering, which is obviously more geared towards practical applications and material success.

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/08/06/want-good-job-major-philosophy?fbclid=IwAR3mE_MT25ZboA7pdoquawknRH9AvhykYrLSTUW1ZLzUv2Vdobs38NXot-k

I read the article with particular interest because I majored in both fields, at separate schools, to obtain two Bachelor’s degrees. The first was in Philosophy at Princeton, and the second in Chemical Engineering at Cal State Northridge. Even though my family had been engineers for four generations before me, I was the rebellious one who wanted to have a broader mind and wanted to set out on a new path.

My father and grandfather both had Mechanical Engineering degrees from Cornell, and my grandfather was even a Cornell Instructor. My paternal great-grandfather was a Military Engineer from West Point (top in his class, except for the fellow-student he tutored). His name was James J. Meyler and he won perhaps the most important public debate of the early twentieth century vs. Leland Stanford, known as “The Free Harbor Contest”, and was responsible for picking the location and beginning the dredging and construction for the Los Angeles Harbor, which was the largest harbor ever built for many years. There was a street named after him in San Pedro, near the harbor. He also had Army ships named after him, and his portrait stood in the L.A. Army Headquarters for 50+ years.

Even his father, my great-great grandfather (also named Nickolas Meyler, like myself), who was an un-degreed Irish immigrant of the potato-famine, was a master carpenter who successfully filed his own patent for a roof-forming machine –- technology which I have been told by Construction professionals is still used on multi-million dollar mansions in Malibu today.

So, why would I study Philosophy instead?

I didn't want to conform to my family's expectations. And, probably because I badly wanted an education in the Humanities. In fact, I took 13 classes in Philosophy at Princeton (more than any other undergrad I knew) and another 6 in Comparative Literature. Philosophy was the highest-ranked department in the World at the time, so it appealed to me because of the challenge. The thought of earning a living never even occurred to me at the time, I was so impassioned to learn the truths of the Universe.

Towards the end of Senior year, I had some conversations with people about “the real world”. One friend who was a fellow Philosophy major in many of my classes was the grand-daughter of two Nobel winners on her mother’s side, while her father was President of Harvard. Even she, with a mother who was a Philosophy professor (and later a best-selling author), made remarks like “We Philosophy majors are the most worthless people out there.”

After I graduated, I began to realize that it might actually be hard to get a job when Philosophy hadn’t really exactly prepared me for one. I had heard of Philosophers in Europe putting up a shingle and charging $100 an hour for providing advice on Life, etc., but I didn’t think I could make that model work for me. I ended up taking the next year off and read 160 books. My parents were incredibly generous with me, very tolerant and understanding. They realized that I had been through an ‘existential crisis’, trying to find some sense of self-worth and meaning in Life. I also had a peculiar psychosomatic ailment which was attacks of hiccups that went on and on intermittently, for many months.

Finally, my parents insisted that I get a job. Since I was contemplating a possible career in Law, it seemed appropriate that I should take advantage of my family’s personal lawyer being the Executor for the J. Paul Getty Museum Estate. I got a job in the mail-room at a company called Musick, Peeler, and Garrett which entailed mailing enormous checks and documents to members of the Getty family.

I could read a book on the bus to the office, and had hundreds of attorneys to talk with and ask questions about Law. I learned a great deal, met some great people, and eventually began to understand that I was not the type of person who should be a lawyer. This was probably a good way to learn that I was not cut-out for that particular profession.

Eventually, family tradition began to influence me, and I resolved to study Chemical Engineering. I think there were several reasons for this, including my family’s predilection for Engineering, and the fact that I had always liked Chemistry. I also was fascinated with the music of Iannis Xenakis, a Composer/Architect who wrote music about Chemical Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics. I was led back into Engineering by way of the Humanities. I had always been especially good in Science and Math, so I thought it made a lot of sense; plus, it seemed pretty assured that I could manage to make a living at it.

So, a few years later, I did graduate with a Chemical Engineering degree and was able to find an entry-level Chemist job in the Electroplating industry. Here I was working with people who were shop-owners that made $500,000 per year… this was obviously something that made money. I also realized, though, that repeated exposure to toxic chemicals, cyanide, sulfuric acid, hydrofluoric acid, etc. was not really all that appealing.

For that reason, I eventually transitioned to a sales career-path – selling plating chemicals for an esoteric but fascinating process of auto-catalytic deposition of nickel phosphorus (i.e. “electroless nickel”). I learned that the communication and language skills I had acquired while studying Philosophy actually had value in terms of making it easier to explain concepts and make persuasive arguments. I was able to use reason and logic to achieve sales of product.

This was something I hadn’t really expected. All of the sudden, Philosophy actually had a practical application. I could use logic and reasoning to present rational reasons for customers to buy the products I was hawking, and could make them feel good about using them.

Eventually, of course, I transitioned into the career of Executive Search, where I have been for the past 30 years. I use my skills in Engineering and Philosophy both, on a daily basis. Philosophy is very helpful for strategic thinking, ethics, and selling of ‘intangibles’. Engineering, equally, is a passion that is fortuitous to have. Nothing is more exciting to me than cutting-edge Science and Technology being applied at the highest competitive levels to achieve commercial success and successful productization.

The truth, is, at least according to Kristen Grob, that Philosophy majors earn more than their counterpart majors, and maybe as much as Engineering majors. I was shocked with her statement, but it seems to have some facticity. I found it hard to believe that the pursuit of Non-material Wisdom could somehow equate with Science based on the nature of Matter (i.e. Chemistry).

In 30 years of placing Scientists and Engineers, I have only once encountered another person with Bachelor’s degrees in both Chemical Engineering and Philosophy. Only one other person, and I have about 30,000 resumes on file, with probably over 200,000 personal contacts over my career.

What do the facts really say? Since I work with Engineers and Scientists, of course I’m not so likely to see resumes of other Philosophy majors. That doesn’t mean they can’t make money. Some statistics say that the average Philosophy graduate makes $80,000 per year. Certainly, this is comparable to what Engineers earn.

Realistically speaking, would I be the Engineering Headhunter I am today, without having had a Philosophy degree? Probably not. I think that the communication skills alone that I learned were priceless. Having the ability to communicate well is not always common among Engineers. Both disciplines involve problem-solving, but only Philosophy focuses on persuading others of the correctness of one’s viewpoint. This element is neglected in most Engineering curricula. I do think that there should be more of a hybridization between the two fields. It can only help.

Meanwhile, I must also admit that I am the most-followed “Philosopher/Engineer” on Twitter in the World.

Is that worth any money?

Probably not. But it’s a whole lot more fun!

 Was Shakespeare Truly a Bard? A Headhunter's Opinion

·         Published on January 18, 2019

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 Nicholas Meyler

 Leading Executive Recruiter/Headhunter with (nearly) 30,000 Connections @NicholasMeyler on Twitter

24 articles

Popular wisdom says that ‘Bards’ are those great story-tellers whose tales are embraced by the audience, not only once, but over and over again, for generations. The idea of a Bard conjures up names like Homer, Shakespeare, and perhaps few others. Reality is quite a bit different, though.

Etymology of the word “Bard” shows that it is of Welsh origin, specifically referring to the great Poet/Singer/Musician/Warriors who were responsible for creating and retelling great ballads like the ancient epic 'Mabinogion', or the King Arthur legend, which is part of 'Mabinogion'.

Owing to unique circumstances, it was in ancient Wales that the Bardic tradition first arose. The culture of Wales was such that the early Princes sponsored official court poets (i.e. “Gogynfeirdd”) who shared many of the same privileges as royalty. In fact, in certain ways, Bards were actually viewed as being even superior to the Kings. Tradition had it that the greatest fear among Nobility was the ever-present possibility that they might be satirized for being unkind or ungenerous to the Bards ("Poet-Gods"). In at least one case, legend tells of a King who died of shame from being scorned by his Bard, Taliesin.

Perhaps the first great Bard was Taliesin. His 6th century poems still exist. The largest number of extant great poems by a Bard are those by Daffyd ap Gwilym (1320-1350), 170 of whose poems still exist. The preponderance of Daffyd’s poems were about Nature and Erotica, filled with a great sense of humor. Yet, it was the Meilyr family of Bards that were the most famous family of Bards that ever lived, being the official court poets of Wales for over a century, and three generations... Meilyr Bryddyd was the first of these, and his religious poems are still known. His son was Gwalchmai, who had at least two sons who were also official Bards of the Princes. Thus, the Meilyr dynasty in Wales established the greatest tradition of factual Bards in human history.

Common lore tells us that Shakespeare was a 'Bard', since author of 37 known still-revered plays and several poems and the set of sonnets. Mere casual reference to "The Bard" often elicits thoughts of William Shakespeare (or "Wm Choxpur" as he sometimes wrote, in addition to perhaps 10 other spellings, indicating a possible degree of illiteracy, by today's standards). "The Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon", or "The Bard of Avon", etc. are similar epithets which have frequently been used to describe both "Shaksper" and even Homer (author of "Illiad" and "Odyssey"), has been described as a ‘Bard’.

Yet, if we look to the actual definition of the word "Bard", we note readily that it is a word from Medieval Welsh. The actual meaning of the word "Bard" encompasses far more than merely being the author of a great text, or set of texts, which survive four, five, or twenty-five centuries. Bards were something altogether different from a mere playwright or author, actually. Much more like troubadours, perhaps. Singularly talented, and not merely limited to authorship, etc. Skilled in performance, battle, song, as well as writing.

I suggest that William Shakespeare is regarded as being the greatest English-speaking 'Bard-like author', largely because of his name, which connotes warrior-like characteristics, or acts (i.e. "shaking a spear"). Part of the tradition of the authentic Bards of Wales is that in addition to being poets, performers, singers, composers, scholars and genealogists for Royalty, they also were accomplished warriors who fought in many battles. So confident of his prowess in battle was Gwalchmai ap Meilyr (1130-1180), author of "Gorhoffedd" (i.e. "The Boast") that he actually wore gold jewelry (a torcque) into battle on behalf of his patron Owain Gwynedd (my 24th great-grandfather, by my calculations).

One might think that, as a Meyler, I would be more closely related to Gwalchmai, but he is actually only a 25th cousin 4 times removed. So, I speak with a degree of relative objectivity, here, being not merely partial to Welsh bards simply because of being related to several. In fact, the other best-known "Gorhoffedd" (a completely different poem) was written by Owain ap Hywel (907-987) who was actually my 29th great-grandfather, although I am much more fond of Gwalchmai's eloquent poem.

In any case, Thomas Rogers (1540-1611), was my 12th great-uncle, and lived 2 blocks away from William Shakespeare in Stratford. Thomas' grandson, was John Harvard, whose name is somewhat better recognized. I may not be related to Shakespeare, but I do deeply respect his incredible mastery of the English language, while, at the same time, being somewhat strict on the meaning of the word "Bard".

I hope I have been fair!

Clearly, William Shakespeare cannot be considered a Bard, unless, perhaps, the pen itself is somehow mightier than the sword. It turns out that not only did William Shakespeare NOT invent the sonnet, but that the sonnet form was actually invented by my 1st cousin 14x removed, Sir Henry Howard (1517-1547).  

 Semiotics and Nobel Peace

NICHOLAS MEYLER·SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2017·10 MINUTES

Semiotics and Nobel Peace: I was Six vs. “We Are Seven”

Having placed myself in the mildly challenging position of defending my claim (or interpretation, or theory, perhaps) that I won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of six, I thought it might be worth expounding upon that absurdity which I have previously termed (paraphrasing T.S. Eliot writing on John Milton or Edmund Spenser) an “[auditory] hypertrophy of the imagination” – pun intended. Simple inspection of the history of the Nobel tells us that only Sartre is openly acknowledged to have turned one down (in Literature), although some claim that George Bernard Shaw also declined it. Yet, there are some questions about the details of GBS’ refusal – the apparent truth being that he “accepted the honor,” but refused the money. Sartre, perhaps with greater integrity, refused the prize primarily because he wished not to set himself apart from the common man, eschewing distinctions in class and status as a reflection of the Socialist values he shared with Shaw. My own claim to have won the Prize in a clandestine fashion, in 1966, absurd as it must seem, has been bolstered by the recent actions of the Nobel committee; while they certainly haven’t been verbally expressive. According to the rules of the Nobel Trust, it is not allowed for the Nobel committee to release names of nominees for fifty years, and even then, only at their discretion.

My apparently outrageous contention is that I was awarded and then declined the Nobel Peace Prize in 1966, for contact with multiple alien intelligent beings; including many UFO landings in my backyard in Tarzana, California; and involving extensive faster-than-lightspeed travel (which Relativity Theory discloses to be equivalent to time-travel). In point of fact, I think it historically notable that my home (at 4608 Conchita Way, wherein I lived from 1965 to 1982) was purchased by the producer Stephen Deutsch, responsible for such time-travel epics as “Somewhere In Time” (starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour) and “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. Stephen clearly shares my interest and fascination with Time Travel and Metaphysics, although I tend to be inclined towards the academic side of the field; and I suspect that he bought the house because we had advertised it in the L.A. Times as a “UFO Landing Site”. I don’t have any evidence of this, although it should be possible to obtain through examination of microfilmed copies of real estate ads from the L.A. Times and possibly other publications from 1982. If anyone can produce this evidence, it would be of great interest… and, if this exists only in my imagination (or “hypertrophy” thereof), at least it is a “grand illusion”.

Given that there is circumstantial evidence that I may have been involved in time-travel and faster-than-light travel events, I continue to investigate. George Bernard Shaw’s most popular play is “Pygmalian” (the basis for “My Fair Lady”), whose hero is a phonetician – and it is through phonetics that I have accumulated the largest body of evidence of my own personal possible experiences of time-travel, since my name is found phonetically encrypted in some classic musical compositions, centuries before my birth. Examples I have previously given are Mozart’s 14th and 41st Symphonies, Bach’s 4th Brandenburg Concerto (which also references “Hefner” – another odd character appearing anachronistically as a model in music composed in 1725), Stockhausen’s “Ceylon/Bird of Passage” album, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, and so on. That the “happy few” who have refused the Nobel Prize should be able to find ways to metaphysically help each other (despite large separations in the realm of Time), somehow has a fundamental justice to it, at least.

My theory has been, for more than a decade, that there was a NASA mission to Alpha Centauri in 1966. What the CIA files show as “Alpha-66”, however, is merely an Anti-Castro mission conducted by 66 Cuban emigres… no mention is made in those files of any extraterrestrial affairs. Still, the phrase “Anti-Castro” shares initials with “Alpha Centauri”, and one may draw one’s own inferences… Any faster-than-lightspeed mission might encounter the problem of entering a completely different Universe where that faster-than-lightspeed travel had never occurred. Thus, the mission could have been widely publicized at the time, but have become almost completely forgotten, due to the phenomenon of “Information Loss” (described by Hawking in a well-known 1972 paper).

The belief that a six-year old survived a rocket ride (almost certainly propelled by "dark matter" procured perhaps from the Magellanic Clouds in a “cyclic acausal” manner), in 1966, and achieved contact with aliens (in addition to the landings in the backyard in Tarzana), is obviously a huge leap of faith for anyone to make. Any healthy skeptic should remain a skeptic, without evidence that such an event happened, and it clearly isn’t spelled out in the CIA’s declassified files to “Alpha 66”. However, what is interesting, in the light of the recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mohammed Yunus, is that he is a 66-year old, awarded the Peace Prize in 2006. The trifold occurrence of the digit ‘6’ is interesting. Based on my many requests to the Nobel committee to provide information about my suspicion of having been secretly awarded the Peace Prize in 1966, is this a sign or signification that there is something correct in my assertions? Also, whether a 6-year old won and refused the prize in 1966, or a 66-year old won and accepted the prize in 2006, does the presence of the number '666’ itself make any difference? Is the name “Yunus” in any way a harking back to “Unicef” (the recipient of the 1965 Peace Prize)?

The subliminal lyrics to Pink Floyd’s 1972 album “Dark Side of the Moon” make clear references to me (via phonetic speech synthesis with electronic instruments), and to the Nobel committee. The subliminal lyrics of albums by The Grateful Dead, on the other hand, appear to make reference to me being “Lucifer” (associated both with the'666’ numerology as well as the defamed Catholic Saint (examples of such albums would be “Live Dead” [the song “Dark Star”] and “Dead Set” [“Samson and Delilah”, and “Fire on the Mountain”, etc.]). Since Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End’ describes the end of humanity (as we know it) resulting from the arrival of an extraterrestrial named "Karellan,” revealed (halfway through the novel) to possess the same physiognomy as the legendary Satan with wings, a tail, and horns, it might well behoove me to ignore the negative Christian mythology associated with the number '666’ just as the Nobel committee appears to have. Beethoven, oddly enough, refers to me as both “Jesus” and “Savior” in different symphonies, possibly because he must have heard Mozart’s 41st Symphony, where I am modeled with Jody Savin (I am speculating that “Savin” was perceived/interpreted as “Saven” by Beethoven, for instance). The subliminal lyrics of “Dark Star” by The Grateful Dead also make reference to me and Jody (actually a minor relationship in the scheme of my life), with an odd discussion about sticking a crucifix into a Black Hole (perhaps with the goal in mind of stabilizing an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, or wormhole to another universe)….

In 1966 and 1967, two years during which the Nobel Peace Prize was not officially awarded, a most lethal war was waged, in denial of our country’s inability to win that war, and Peace was only a distant dream. In harmony and resonance with my mercurial claim of winning the Nobel at the age of six, I offer Wordsworth’s poem “We Are Seven" which focuses on a child’s denial of reality, insisting that her dead siblings are still with her:

We Are Seven by William Wordsworth.

–A Simple Child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?

I met a little cottage Girl: She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad: Her eyes were fair, and very fair; –Her beauty made me glad.

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?” “How many? Seven in all,” she said And wondering looked at me.

“And where are they? I pray you tell.” She answered, “Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the church-yard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the church-yard cottage, I Dwell near them with my mother.”

“You say that two at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven!–I pray you tell, Sweet Maid, how this may be.”

Then did the little Maid reply, “Seven boys and girls are we; Two of us in the church-yard lie, Beneath the church-yard tree.”

“You run about, my little Maid, Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the church-yard laid, Then ye are only five.”

“Their graves are green, they may be seen,” The little Maid replied, “Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door, And they are side by side.

"My stockings there I often knit, My kerchief there I hem; And there upon the ground I sit, And sing a song to them.

"And often after sunset, Sir, When it is light and fair, I take my little porringer, And eat my supper there.

"The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain; And then she went away.

"So in the church-yard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry, Together round her grave we played, My brother John and I.

"And when the ground was white with snow, And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go, And he lies by her side.”

“How many are you, then,” said I, “If they two are in heaven?” Quick was the little Maid’s reply, “O Master! we are seven.”

“But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!” 'Twas throwing words away; for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, “Nay, we are seven!”

Returning again to the topic of signification or semiotics and the Peace Prize; it clearly is unprecedented for the Nobel committee to award the prize (in consecutive years) to persons named “Mohammed”, and yet they have done so (to Mohamed El-Baradei and Muhammad Yunus). This seems to possibly express disenchantment with Christianity (and the mythology surrounding '666’), but it also is a gesture of offering an 'olive-branch’ to Islam, in the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Parenthetically, Muhammad Yunus was also the recipient of the World Food Prize, which was initiated by my distant cousin (a second- or third-cousin) Norman Borlaug in 1986. I find it odd that the media paid so little attention to Yunus as a candidate, given that fact. For most, he was a “dark horse” candidate, possibly because the media is lazy, prefers to disinform, or simply wants to keep information to itself… There is no accounting for an information failure like this, and it reminds me of Einstein’s famous remark that “Two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity, and I’m not so sure about the former.”

There are many other points worthy of semiotic analysis in the history of the Nobel prize, but my intention is not to be exhaustive. Rather, I would like to provoke a little bit of thought, and to offer desperately needed (possible) explanations where there have previously been none. Everything, for instance, resolves to “How does a modern person’s name [mine] encrypt itself into art from the 18th century, associated with the Nobel Peace Prize, which also didn’t even exist at that time? And, what is the significance of this bizarre phenomenon?"

To those questions, I hope that I have at least offered a partial answer, although it might seem equally that I am "a miner for truth and delusion,” as the Pink Floyd lyric goes. Still, having barely ever heard of many past winners like Elihu Root, Fredrik Bajer, Frederic Passy, George Pire, etc., I suppose the Nobel Committee might have seen fit to try to award the prize to someone like myself, whose name somehow transcendentally appears (associated with the Nobel Peace Prize) in some very antique classics (while I am still largely unknown, of course). I wonder if that “auditory hypertrophy” of my imagination will ever be fully understood, recognized and explained.

–Nicholas Meyler, November 26, 2006

  Exegesis of My Thoughts on Auditory Doppelgangers in Music

NICHOLAS MEYLER·FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2020·5 MINUTES

Apart from the instances I have previously pointed out in some detail (the passages in Grateful Dead's "Foolish Heart", Trent Reznor's "Closer", and Brandenburg Concerto #4 by J.S. Bach, Mozart’s 14th Symphony K#114 in A Major, etc.), one of the best examples of my auditory time-traveling doppelganger phenomenon I've ever heard is from Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Ceylon/Bird of Passage", which was composed when I was around 15. I'm pretty certain I didn't buy a copy until 1977 or 1978, at the earliest. I had never previously met Karlheinz Stockhausen, except on the UIA/CIA Mission with:

Felix Rodriguez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_Rodr%C3%ADguez_(soldier) in 1968, when we brought Stockhausen here from his native planet orbiting the star Sirius, as Karlheinz repeatedly stated.

Stockhausen was very intuitive, very psychic, and studied about or with Indian yogi Sri Aurobindo. He writes about some of his psychic experiences and how his compositions were sometimes based on dream-flights into the Cosmic Oversoul.

In 1975, when this album first came out on Chrysalis Records, I was 15, and I shared an Attorney with the J. Paul Getty Museum Estate, since my paternal grandfather was that attorney's first-ever client. He later also counseled Howard Hughes to some extent. Getty's son Gordon is actually the world's richest composer, to my knowledge. He once gave my Mom a couple of cassettes of his music ("Plump Jack" and "The White Election").

at 5:41 I hear "Borlaug" (My 2nd cousin twice removed on my Mom's side -- a Nobel Peace Prizewinner Agriculturalist credited with inventing wheat strains which saved one billion lives from starvation)

at 10:30 I hear "Getty Deep" emulated electronically (suggestive of the extreme depths at which oil is found). Stockhausen, as a composer, was remarkable for his Capitalistic instinct, being one of the very first artists to purchase the rights to all his music from Deutsche Grammophon recordings.

at 14:15 I hear "Tara, Claudia, Laura... Nick is Nazi, Billionaire Nazi" (which is odd, since I am actually a Republican and not exactly a Billionaire... however, part of the "Doppelganger" idea is that the Double is an 'evil twin', which might actually make a certain amount of sense, then, being someone who would act counter to my best interests. Tara, Claudia and Laura were all girlfriends I hadn't had yet, when I was between the ages of 16 and 24 [accurately predicted by Stockhausen] in reverse order).

at 14:29 "Uma" is clearly spoken by the composer... interesting because "Uma" is from Tibetan Buddhism, and means "the Goddess". Uma Thurman's father is one of the world's leading authorities on Tibetan Buddhism, and named her after the Buddhist Goddess. She was also in a movie with Ben Affleck about an invention that could predict the future accurately, with a "Paycheck" hidden under the newspaper of the bird-cage (reference to "Bird of Passage"?) in the form of a winning lottery ticket.

at 15:30 I hear "Furnix" which could also easily be "Phoenix", "Fur Nichts", "Fur Nicks", etc. Repeatedly spoken throughout the piece is the name "Garuda", which is a winged Hindu deity, also somewhat evocative of the legendary Phoenix which re-emerges from the flames after its own Pyrrhic death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garuda

at 17:55 I hear another synthetic voice reference to birds (i.e. "We're ducky!")

at 19:19 "Getty, pow-wow-wow" seems pretty clearly enunciated, harking back to the Billionaire theme

at 21:00 "Waiter" or "Waaaiiiiitttteerrr!!!" seems to be shouted pretty loudly... not sure what that is about, but it does bring to mind "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" by Douglas Adams, published 5 years later, in 1980. Haven't quite figured that out, yet.

at 22:05 "How, how, how?, etc."

at 22:43 "You're a Leader" (I assume this is a direct but oneiric reference to me...or maybe that Borlaug dude, which is followed by a remarkably clever doubting sentiment at 23:45 to 23:55 "Why??" = "Wwwwwwhhhhhhhhyyyyyy????". Obviously, if someone claims me to be a leader, I want to know why! It does make a nice pun on "lieder" (German for 'song', in this speech-synthesis rich composition).

at 24:10 "Overall"

at 24:42 Composition Ends

“Bird of Passage” (i.e. “How Did We Get Here?”)

At 24:50, the album's second entry begins with the very complex and difficult to comprehend phrase (especially since it is almost steganographically encrypted, muffled and disguised as pure instrumental music, with percussion dominating): "Doppelganger Princeton Peace"

If it were up to me, I would have left out the "Princeton" part, since I was not terribly thrilled with their idea of "Academia" (which mostly seemed to be based on their adamant refusal to read books and actually do research, while insisting on mocking those that actually had done “the homework”); but, in any case (as in Mozart's 14th Symphony, where Princeton is referred to as "a bedwet", it is also equated with "Nobel Peace", for some reason [i.e. that is another example of the time-traveling Doppelganger I have been discussing in some detail]).

at 30:20 "Doppelganger Peace Prize Lives!" or "Doppelganger Peace Prizes"

In this composition, the disguised speech synthesis is much-better hidden, making it harder to provide clear-cut examples. However, at 35:53 "Better get dead!" is pretty clear. This is probably a duppel/doppel entendre, since The Grateful Dead are one of the very few bands which also openly advocate the importance of psychic powers in music. https://stanleykrippner.weebly.com/a-pilot-study-in-dream-t…

37:32 "Figaro's a lunatic!" (reference to Mozart's Nozze di Figaro and/or Rossini's "Barber of Seville"?)

42:50 "Better get dead" is reiterated...

43:29 "Figaro!"

46:33 After what sound like repeated iterations of "Democrat Winner" throughout this piece, the music quixotically ends with what sounds to me like "Reagan" -- a President who wasn't elected yet. Of course, this album was published during the Administration of Gerald R. Ford, before the election of Jimmy Carter, and hence, well before "Reagan".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bHnGorNTT0

 "Things I 'Figured Out' for Myself"

July 24, 2010 at 12:34 AM

from 2005? (approx.) "Things I Figured Out for Myself" I made this list because I sometimes do figure out these nifty ideas 'without help', and then read about them later in the news (as someone else's 'great new discovery'). So, I am working on this list, and will add to it as I recall more such events and instances. 1. Sharks with wings might be an evolutionary path on another planet. (It has been discovered that there were actually winged sharks in the seas of ancient Earth, but they went extinct many millions of years ago). I had a dream once, about being on a catamaran on the placid lagoon of a planet orbiting Tau Ceti ("Ceti" is actually Greek for "sea-monster", and not "whale", as many might presume), and awaking from the dream-experience (which felt like a memory) of being eaten alive by an enormous Great White Shark, with wing-like appendages similar to those of flying fish. Subsequent to my dream, I also learned that Great Whites are well-known for jumping out of the water to catch prey. 2. Epsilon Eridani has an inhabited planet (It has been discovered that there is at least one planet in orbit around Epsilon Eridani, which is probably uninhabited since much too large. However, there still might be smaller planets in orbit there, which are unseen). The SETI project observed a spike or signal from Epsilon Eridani on the first day of operation (if I recall correctly), but it was never repeated. Frank Drake supposedly concluded that this was only terrestrial interference which appeared to be from the direction of Epsilon Eridani, but I am suspicious of the whole SETI project, in principle. 3. Time-travel to the past must exist (Hasn't been confirmed yet, but light has been accelerated to 300x "c" in experiments). If information about the present day (approximately) somehow shows up in music composed in 1725 (e.g. Bach's Brandenburg Concerti), then someone must have put it there. 4. Global warming is real (pretty much confirmed recently). I based that judgment on the fact that California summers keep getting hotter... of course, many other people concurred on that one, so I clearly didn't invent it, but I was way ahead of the curve, and managed to get fired from a job as a chemist back in 1989, partly as a result of my opinions on the subject. 5. It makes lots of sense to assume that space is comprised of an infinite number of dimensions, of infinite size (infinite-dimension theory is getting popular these days, although 11-dimensional M theory leads the pack of theories). Common sense leads one to ask "What is so special about the number 11, anyway?" I can still remember pretty vividly being told that there were definitively 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, or 27 dimensions as well, at different times. Why would we be so gullible as to latch onto the idea that '11 dimensions' is the final and correct solution? 6. If "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce is a cyclical novel based on human history (it is), then it might be used to predict human history and events before they happen (example... the fall of the Soviet Union and Iran-contra [see pp. 518-519 of "Finnegans Wake"]). 7. Time-travel can be accompanied by information-loss phenomenon (thoughts influenced by Hawking's work, but pushing his 'envelope' somewhat). 8. Information isn't necessarily lost inside Black Holes, since particle pairs are created on the boundary... therefore the 'lost' information could remain accessible and encrypted somewhere (Hawking's information-loss paradox seems to deny this, and then he changed his mind somewhat, and there is also the work of t'Hooft on this subject). My idea that information is actually encrypted and not destroyed is just based on the fact that music contains encrypted information (sent at faster-than-light speeds) which is decodable. Encrypting information in music (or other art) might also be a means of compensating for 'information-loss', since the information could later be retrieved and reconstructed. 9. Since music contains decodable faster-than-lightspeed information, it ought to be useful in predicting future events (I've done a few 'experiments' of this nature, which seemed to work pretty well). Music can be a type of 'artificial intelligence' or intelligence amplification... this would also account for the 20-point IQ gain exhibited in experiments on the 'Mozart effect'. Einstein claimed to have had the inspiration for the Theory of Relativity while listening to Mozart -- this especially makes sense if Mozart's music contains information from the future which might have subliminally influenced Einstein. 10. Based on decoding messages in Mozart, Bach, Pink Floyd, Stockhausen, Frampton, etc., I determined the existence of an 'alternate Universe' or history which diverges from ours in approximately the year 1977. (Recent work by Hawking and Hertog implied that there clearly have been 'other universes' in history, which might be confirmed by examining cosmic background radiation levels -- some of this work is associated with NASA scientist John Mather, who won the Nobel for his efforts). Hawking and Hertog contend that their theory hasn't yet been confirmed, but I am inclined to say that I have already proved it, by using a fairly devious means. 11. There is a great black hole at the center of our galaxy, and it is much larger than previously thought (I was right on both counts, although I might have seriously overestimated the size of the black hole by a magnitude of 3 [digits]). 12. The Vulcans ("Star Trek") could really be based on witness-reports of aliens from Tau Ceti (some claim to have seen beings with pointed ears). "Star Trek" itself could be largely based on Top Secret UFO files, and CIA agents like James Jesus Angleton, Leonard McCoy, and Scotty Miler (among others). The CIA was actually founded two months after the Roswell event (or non-event) in 1947. 13. An extraterrestrial (or UFO/saucer/time-machine) crash at Roswell probably really happened. Among other things, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the Army to bury test-crash dummies in child-size coffins. 14. Prior to Seth Shostak making the proclamation that the SETI project was looking for messages from alien (i.e. ET) life-forms in "all the wrong places," I copyrighted my notes and thoughts on the subject (as "The Encryptment Thesis" in 1994), where I discuss the idea that truly advanced alien civilizations wouldn't send out signals to more primitive planets (like Earth), but would probably encrypt evidence of faster-than-lightspeed travel in 'places' which would have some degree of permanence. Encrypting coded messages (about the future) into great artworks like Bach's Brandeburg Concerti, Mozart Symphonies, etc., would allow a slow "coming to consciousness" for Humanity, that it already has had, and always will have had alien contact, but simply didn't understand it yet. 15. Based on my reading of philosopher/logician Saul Kripke's "Naming and Necessity", as well as my observations of encrypted or subliminal speech fragments in music, I speculated that sound itself may have properties which actually influence or predict events... This is a metaphysical concept which seems tangential to Kripke's thoughts on issues like 'rigid designation', and more along the lines of Russellian thinking. In any case, I think I was the first to try to apply it methodically, yielding successful predictions of severe disasters on multiple occassions. The goal of predicting disasters does make sense, since if they can be predicted, they may also potentially be averted. 16. The movie "Zoolander" is obviously based on Eric Lander of MIT's Whitehead Institute and his work on the human genome project, although the resemblances between Ben Stiller's character and Eric Lander are relatively small. 17. A convenient unit for measuring the rate of time-travel/interstellar travel for a fairly advanced culture would be "lyps" (i.e. "light-years per second"). Civilizations with 'time-suit' or 'lyps' technology would literally be able to travel to other stellar systems in seconds. Given that many of the existing clues about faster-than-lightspeed travel exist as synthetic speech encrypted in music (somewhat like song, but still 'unsung'), I think that the use of the term 'lyps' is sufficiently appropriate. This is my list so far... I will continue to work on it, and see where it leads me. Obviously, it's not that long, yet, but it's a start.

Questioning Biases About Doppelgangers

NICHOLAS MEYLER·MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2017·4 MINUTES

If we take a look at the history of people who have had noteworthy Doppelgangers -- who have at least written about them and sometimes had witnesses who corroborated their stories, the “Double-goers” or “Shadow-walkers” are frequently harbingers of bad omens.

I, however, have been aware of my auditory doppelganger for at least 40 years without any drastic ill-effects, and have actually found its existence to be intriguing and stimulative of a great deal of thought.

Relatively few "musical" or "auditory" doppelgangers have been reported. My analysis of this phenomenon is unique, as far as I know, and involves extremely sane, highly rational people who are among the brightest and most successful people in the World. One of the best-known examples of the idea of a Doppelganger in Art (in Fiction) is Oscar Wildes’ “Dorian Gray”. Wilde’s choice of the name “Dorian” is interesting because it is a musical modality, established in Ancient Greek times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_mode, as well as a word evocative of Gold (i.e. “D’Or”). In Wilde’s fantastic fiction, Dorian’s portrait ages and becomes ugly, while he remains the same. In Music, contradistinctively, nothing changes, and all is preserved for the inspection of posterity.

Hearing "Beethoven" subtly mentioned in a Mozart Symphony is an example. Hearing the name "Casiraghi" in Beethoven's "Geister Trio" would be another. Beethoven actually modeled himself in some compositions, where it sounds like he is composing syntheses of his own name... "Wittgenstein" appears to be mentioned in a Haydn symphony, although I can't recall precisely which one. Saul "Kripke" is clearly mentioned in Stockhausen's "Ylem"; Norman Borlaug is very clearly mentioned in "Ceylon" and "Kurzwellen" (before he won recognition for the Nobel Prize), and the "Nobel Prize" itself is mentioned in Mozart's 14th Symphony, a century before it existed.

There can be a degree of indeterminacy about identities modelled in Music (or Art, in general), but I often find portions of Stockhausen’s “Kurzwellen” to evoke some thoughts of Stephen Hawking. This was a composition from 1968, before Hawking was really famed, and it also has a peculiar phrase (i.e. “His wheelchair’s God”) which is odd since it happened to be composed before Hawking was even a Professor at Cambridge, and long before he announced himself as an Atheist.

I once told a friend from Princeton who also attended Saul Kripke's ‘Advanced Logic’ course, that I thought I heard his name mentioned in Beethoven's 8th Symphony, and wondered if he concurred. Within a decade, the "Beastie Boys" composed a tune called "Intergalactic Planetary", which is filled with obvious and clear speech-synthesis, including his name ("Brilliant Burtie" is how they put it), along with the mention of "Another Dimension, another dimension". Burt Totaro's research on higher dimensions in Algebraic Topology is something that appears to be very relevant to this kind of acoustical modeling: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0209173. Burt eventually went to work at Cambridge University, in Stephen Hawking’s Math Department, and now works at UCLA (a school founded by my great-great grandfather George Gephard).

Other acoustic/auditory doppelgangers exist for several of my Princeton classmates: Jody Savin (Director/Producer class of '82) is modeled with me in Mozart's 41st Symphony. Christopher Gocke (Cancer Pathologist class of '81) is mentioned in Beethoven's 3rd Symphony. "Hoookie" was a nickname for CIA Director/Secretary of Defence James Schlesinger's niece, "Kathryn" and appears in the Brandenburgs as well as the Salzburg Symphonies.

I have been aware of the existence of all these contemporary "acoustic models"/ Doppelgangers for many years, now, and all of them (except Borlaug, who died at the age of 93 or 94) are still alive. This clearly "breaks the mold" on the concept of Doppelgangerism being purely a harbinger of bad things.

My intent is to address the oddity of these observations and find logical ways to account for them. I think their causation might have something to do with my grandparents having been friendly with JFK's CIA Director, who was also the Secretary of the Army in 1948 (the year after the Roswell Crash). John McCone was a Secretary or President of the AEC, the Air Force, etc., and was involved in Project “Bluebook”, which I remember asking about when I was between the ages of 6 and 8.

I look for explanations based on acquisition and use of Alien Technologies, rather than Spiritual/Metaphysical issues, but the truth is that these might actually overlap.

  SETI: Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

NICHOLAS MEYLER·FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2019·1 MINUTE

I find it puzzling that no one seems to care about the superluminally embedded speech-synthesis in Mozart's early Salzburg symphonies that clearly enunciate details of events that actually happened in the late 1970's, some hundreds of years after his birth.

Moreover, Karlheinz Stockhausen, who claimed to come from the star Sirius, includes plenty of cryptographic details about both me and my distant cousin, Norman Borlaug, who is credited with saving 1 billion lives. Plenty of prochronistic anachronistic cryptography is embedded in Ceylon/Bird of Passage (Chrysalis Records), for example (published in 1975, several years before I even knew who Stockhausen was, although 5 years after Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Nobel Prize).... The inference that I was the CIA UFO pilot that brought him here from Sirius is fairly obvious, in retrospect. Probably working in tandem with Iran-contra figure Felix Rodriguez.... ("Ear on Contra")

In any case, if the search for neutrinos was conducted in Salt mines, deep below the Earth, I think the search for ET should probably be conducted in Salzburg symphonies several hundred years old. The scholarship of Stockhausen merely amplifies the obvious facts. One thing I didn't like was Neil deGrasse Tyson trying to pass off Edward Snowden as the originator of my theory about Alien cryptography and signal transmission as his own.

   Close Note

Notes on “Watergate”

NICHOLAS MEYLER·FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2017·6 MINUTES

Nixon was extremely interested in UFOs, and so was Haldeman. The conversation dealt partly with a UFO experience/sighting that I had had, personally. My family was also friendly with JFK's CIA Director John McCone, who I definitely met, and who had indicated to me that the Democratic Party (including LBJ) were behind the JFK assassination. Thus, it would have been completely natural for me to be in sympathy with the just-reported break-in at the DNC, and expressing my support (misguided or not). My family has been friendly (over decades) with several different Presidents' closest friends and advisors.

Because of my concern, at the time, that McGovern was fomenting a potential assassination, I actually advised several people that I thought that it would be reasonable to bug the DNC, and listen in on conversations for any possible clues about assassination plots. One of these was Otis Chandler, I believe, who encouraged my effort at protecting the Presidency, despite his being an ardent "JFK Democrat". Chandler was the former owner of the LA Times, and quite well-known. Obviously, if my family was acquainted with the Chandlers, it wouldn't have been very far-fetched to contend that I could have been placed in verbal contact with Bob Woodward.

No one else, that I know of, has been able to explain exactly why Watergate even happened, let alone how they know why it happened, so I suspect that my claim might well "trump" Mark Felt's claim to be a key informant. One key doubt about Mark Felt is that he couldn't possibly have had any knowledge of the 18.5 minutes of tape, nor what it was about, since he wasn't a "Whitehouse insider".

Also, it has been pointed out that Woodward couldn't have been correct to assert (as he claims) that he communicated with "Deep Throat" by placing a flowerpot on his balcony. Adrian Havill's research proved that no flowerpot could have been seen from the street... also, Havill pointed out that "Deep Throat" couldn't have communicated with Woodward by drawing clocks on the newspaper (as claimed in "All the President's Men"), since the papers were delivered in a stack in the lobby, and not personally, so Woodward couldn't have known which paper to pick.

The tape could well have been erased to protect the identity of a minor (I was 12, at the time), and also because UFOs are considered a matter of highest secrecy and national security.

I should also point out that my name "Nick Meyler" makes a fairly obvious pun ("Neck Miler") on Deep Throat... It also makes a pun on "Iran contra" (Miler/Nicaragua), and I do feel I should point out that I actually invented the Iran-contra plot (as I claim in my 2004 and 2005 Marquis' Who's Who Entry).

In fact, I invented Iran-contra, based on p. 518 of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", partly out of a sense of moral outrage at people like Woodward, who had exploited me as a minor, and contributed to my delinquency, by giving me an eponym (i.e. "Deep Throat") which is highly sexual, and obscene. Also, I saw an opportunity to help protect the United States from Communism, and to help hostages held in Iran. Note that Ollie North, much better known for his role in Iran-contra than I, has never claimed to have invented the concept. If anything, he said he received the idea from Ghorbanifar (which I of course dispute, since I had sent in a 4-page letter to President Reagan in 1983 or 1984, outlining my reasoning for this covert action -- since my grandparents were friendly with some of Reagan's key supporters, I was listened to, when others might not have been).

Not only this, but the term "Deep Throat" as I understand it, refers to a phenomenon of speech-synthesis (synthetic voice [or "throat"] by musical instruments (also discussed in my Who's Who entry, and in my entry in the 1993 Cambridge International Biographical Society's "Men of Achievement"). I am the subject of a considerable amount of musical art "modeling", and, for example am modeled in the subliminal lyrics of the album "Dark Side of the Moon" (very popular at the time), and numerous other pieces of music.

The fact that I was only 12 to 14 at the time is irrelevant, since I have an IQ which has been reported/estimated at 215 (and I did actually score a 195 on one test, though it might not have been my best performance), certainly high enough to be significantly intellectual at an early age.

"Deep Throat" was probably more than one person, but certainly not mostly Mark Felt. I feel that my claim to be that more or less fictional identity (and certainly not a name of my own choosing, at least as I recall) is sounder, more reasonable, and more accurate than what Woodward and Bernstein are claiming.

Because I was intuitively aware that Bob Woodward was probably a liar, even as a 14 year old, I called upon some of my acquaintances to help me recollect events carefully. As a chessplayer, I was in tournaments ("All the President's Men is also an allusion to "All the King's Men", obviously), and had met people like James Tarjan, who was a US Champion. Tarjan's brother is a world-leading authority on Artificial Intelligence and Computers, and it is well-known that the most famous computer chess programs are named after "Deep Throat" (i.e. "Deep Thought" and "Deep Blue"). I definitely believe that I can remember James Tarjan telling me not to trust Woodward to eventually tell the truth, and that the scheme of overcoming his deception could be accomplished by long-range planning (which chessplayers naturally have a greater faculty for). So, this justifies the naming of the computer programs, and serves the ulterior purpose of outwitting Woodward. Parenthetically, dull chessplayers are sometimes referred to as "woodpushers". I suspect I am a mere "woodpusher" (currently only rated 2040) to James Tarjan, but I am convinced that I have accomplished a goal of long-range planning, to defeat disinformation by the American media.

For those (and other) reasons, I think that the "divulgence" of Mark Felt as "Deep Throat" is a fraud by Woodward and Bernstein. It certainly would make sense, however, that a journalist would like to keep hidden the fact that he dubbed a 14-year old "Deep Throat". I have claimed to be "Deep Throat" before, as early as 2003, in an article I published on "Useless Knowledge.com" To my thinking, Woodward and Bernstein's conduct violates my intellectual property rights, and my right to publicity on this controversial matter.

There are other instance of Woodward blatantly lying, too. For instance, he claimed to have interviewed CIA Director William Casey after brain surgery (Casey couldn't even speak at the time). Casey's widow was quite offended with his lies, I recall. And, after all, when Felt "came out" as "Deep Throat", Woodward and Bernstein both initially denied it -- and then changed their stories within 24 hours.

So, clearly, doubting their account of events is extremely reasonable. My feeling is that I have "force majeur" in demonstrating who more closely resembles that obscene moniker.

I believe (if my memory is accurate) that I was introduced to Nixon telephonically by Robert Haldeman, whose family had been friendly with mine since at least 1963. That would have been the 18.5 minutes of tape that was later erased (i.e. referred to as "Tape 342"). In fact, my phone number at the time was 342-2445, in Tarzana, CA.

 On the Utility of Music as Cryptocurrency

NICHOLAS MEYLER·SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2017·3 MINUTES

On the Micronesian Island of Yap, in olden times, money consisted of large stones carved into several-foot diameter circular shapes with central holes of several inches in diameter.

There was no actual use (or “utility”) for these stones, but they could only be made by taking long and dangerous sea-voyages to islands hundreds of miles away, where the the limestone could be quarried, and then transported back (via outrigger canoe) at an even higher and more perilous risk... The value of this currency was therefore based only on its rarity and the inherent difficulty of its acquisition.

One might also infer, from the roundness of these carved and polished stones, that they could be rolled for spatial intervals, to be transported. This, my Readers, was the invention of “Rock and Roll”.

I suggest that there is much greater usefulness to mere sound-waves (i.e. as “Music”) which seems to justify an even higher value than the old Yap stones (at the very least). I postulate the following:

Time=Money

Information=Money

Intelligence=Money

Therefore, Superluminally-embedded Information which allows alteration of Future History should also be "Money".

Sound has been demonstrated to be able to travel faster than lightspeed (i.e. "superluminally"), because Phonons (quanta of sound/vibration) are massless and therefore not restricted to the Einstein limit of velocity (c= speed of light).

Music itself is the original cryptocurrency. It brings joy to the listener, or a plenitude of other emotions, and subliminally imparts information about 5-Dimensional Hilbert Spaces. In my opinion, that is why People can score 20-points higher on IQ tests while listening to Mozart (i.e. "The Mozart Effect"), because so much of his music is based on time-travel and alternate Universes (Alternate Histories). Einstein himself admitted that most of his inspiration for Relativity came from listening to Mozart, and as an accomplished violinist with a very keen ear, his statement cannot be discounted as mere metaphor.

The primary effect of listening to Mozart is enhanced "Spatial Reasoning" skills, which is quite reasonable if we consider that Mozart's music (especially) contains some of the clearest examples of speech-synthesis and superluminal information content, as well as clear-cut discussions of Alternate World-histories, etc. Ingmar Bergman also agreed with me about this (“Bach and Beethoven show us other worlds”). https://www.facebook.com/notes/nicholas-meyler/ingmar-bergman-on-possible-worlds-beethoven-and-bach/125256810845569/

In any case, one of the reasons Apollo was the Greek God of Music, Prophecy and Reason (in my opinion) is that Music permits Superluminal Information Transmission and thereby enables great Reasoning skills, based on better Information.

The old adage about music being worthless (i.e. "It's worth a song", meaning valueless) is questionable. Rather, Music is perhaps a cryptocurrency of greater value than mere "money" itself.

The idea behind Bitcoin was that digital information has inherent value. This has proven, at least empirically, at least so far, to be true, where Bitcoin has commanded prices up to $15,000 per unit.

There is also a utility to Music, based on psychoacoustical phenomena, which is unique. For instance, acoustical perception of the note A (440 Hz) actually stimulates nerves in the brain to vibrate at exactly 440 Hz ["This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel J. Levitin: http://daniellevitin.com/…/boo…/this-is-your-brain-on-music/]

No other type of perception of Art forms does this. So, Music, which is clearly an Art, has a unique value unto itself. We also know that Art has value, from recent events like a fairly unknown painting by Da Vinci selling for $450 million.

So, I suggest that we need to re-think our attitudes about Music, and reconsider it to be a medium of communication and commerce which deserves greater attention.

[worshipgifs]

So wait a minute.. "God" decided to become man.. so he could die (which if you're dead you're dead right?) For our sins? Makes no sense absolutely whatsoever. Who authored the Bible btw? Man. And we ALL know.. man was made with error. Evidently.. HE SINS! You Christians are so gullible and contradictory. May you be guided to the truth my brother/sister. I will keep you in my prayers.

So wait a minute.. “God” decided to become man.. so he could die (which if you’re dead you’re dead right?) For our sins? Makes no sense absolutely whatsoever 

 Once a year, the priest was to make an offering of the blood of animals on the altar of the temple for the sins of the people. “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). But this was a blood offering that was limited in its effectiveness, which is why it had to be offered again and again. This was a foreshadowing of the “once for all” sacrifice which Jesus offered on the cross (Hebrews 7:27). Once that sacrifice was made, there was no longer a need for the blood of bulls and goats. Hebrews 9:11-18 confirms the symbolism of blood as life and applies Leviticus 17:11 to the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 12 states clearly that the Old Testament blood sacrifices were temporary and only atoned for sin partially and for a short time, hence the need to repeat the sacrifices yearly. But when Christ entered the Most Holy Place, He did so to offer His own blood once for all time, making future sacrifices unnecessary. This is what Jesus meant by His dying words on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Never again would the blood of bulls and goats cleanse men from their sin. Only by accepting Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross for the remission of sins, can we stand before God covered in the righteousness of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Who authored the Bible btw? Man. And we ALL know.. man was made with error. Evidently.. HE SINS!

There can be no doubt that the Bible does claim to be the very Word of God. This is clearly seen in Paul’s commendation to Timothy: “… from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:15-17). There are both internal and external evidences that the Bible is truly God’s Word. The internal evidences are those things within the Bible that testify of its divine origin. One of the first internal evidences that the Bible is truly God’s Word is seen in its unity. Even though it is really sixty-six individual books, written on three continents, in three different languages, over a period of approximately 1500 years, by more than 40 authors who came from many walks of life, the Bible remains one unified book from beginning to end without contradiction. This unity is unique from all other books and is evidence of the divine origin of the words which God moved men to record.Another of the internal evidences that indicates the Bible is truly God’s Word is the prophecies contained within its pages. The Bible contains hundreds of detailed prophecies relating to the future of individual nations including Israel, certain cities, and mankind. Other prophecies concern the coming of One who would be the Messiah, the Savior of all who would believe in Him. Unlike the prophecies found in other religious books or those by men such as Nostradamus, biblical prophecies are extremely detailed. There are over three hundred prophecies concerning Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. Not only was it foretold where He would be born and His lineage, but also how He would die and that He would rise again. There simply is no logical way to explain the fulfilled prophecies in the Bible other than by divine origin. There is no other religious book with the extent or type of predictive prophecy that the Bible contains.A third internal evidence of the divine origin of the Bible is its unique authority and power. While this evidence is more subjective than the first two, it is no less a powerful testimony of the divine origin of the Bible. The Bible’s authority is unlike any other book ever written. This authority and power are best seen in the way countless lives have been transformed by the supernatural power of God’s Word. There are also external evidences that indicate the Bible is truly the Word of God. One is the historicity of the Bible. Because the Bible details historical events, its truthfulness and accuracy are subject to verification like any other historical document. Through both archaeological evidences and other writings, the historical accounts of the Bible have been proven time and time again to be accurate and true. In fact, all the archaeological and manuscript evidence supporting the Bible makes it the best-documented book from the ancient world. Another external evidence that the Bible is truly God’s Word is the integrity of its human authors. The fact that they were willing to die often excruciating deaths for what they believed testifies that these ordinary yet honest men truly believed God had spoken to them. The men who wrote the New Testament and many hundreds of other believers (1 Corinthians 15:6) knew the truth of their message because they had seen and spent time with Jesus Christ after He had risen from the dead. Seeing the risen Christ had a tremendous impact on them. They went from hiding in fear to being willing to die for the message God had revealed to them. Their lives and deaths testify to the fact that the Bible truly is God’s Word.A final external evidence that the Bible is truly God’s Word is the indestructibility of the Bible. Because of its importance and its claim to be the very Word of God, the Bible has suffered more vicious attacks and attempts to destroy it than any other book in history. From early Roman Emperors like Diocletian, through communist dictators and on to modern-day atheists and agnostics, the Bible has withstood and outlasted all of its attackers and is still today the most widely published book in the world.

It should not surprise us that, no matter how the Bible is attacked, it always comes out unchanged and unscathed. After all, Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Mark 13:31) x x

[rmtranslations-blog]

How To Thank You For Saving Me Ch.1

Title

How To Thank You For Saving Me 救命之恩无以为报

Author

Retrospect

Publisher

CP/长佩文学

Translator

ECirce

Editor

Chen Ai

Chapter 1

Warning: !!!This chapter contains adult & NSFW content. Please make sure you are above the age of 18 before proceeding!!!

Yan Zhuo was completely hammered.

When he woke up, he was laying on the couch of the club, pants dangling on his knees, barely on. And some guy had been touching his private parts over and over. The busy hand was quite thin and fair with some bulging veins, might be because he’s been at it for a while.  

There was no response.

The guy was starting to think that Mr. Yan just can’t “do it”, but he still didn’t give up. Carefully, he lowered his head and stuck his tongue out, anxiously wanting to lick the tip, he was pushed away.

He quickly glanced at Yan Zhuo, a bit taken aback by Yan’s vague smile, didn’t know what he was supposed to do next.

Zhuo licked his molars, trying to taste last night’s craziness, not at all in a hurray to pull his pants up. Then, he grabbed the guy’s collar and pulled him down, closer to him. As he was slightly tilting his head onto the left hand, which was setting on the couch’s armrest, his right hand hooked behind the guy’s chin, tilting the guy’s face to the left, then right, as if examining some goods.

Huh, looks like two or three years younger than him.

There was always rumours about his taste in younger people, that he didn’t like older guys, so when people are trying to get into his pants, they tend to look younger. But they keep coming, after a while, it’s exhausting.

Just like this time.

He got back to the country only yesterday, and today, somebody’s licking his junk. Though he might want to praise this person’s social skill, what a speed in getting this info. Yan Zhuo chuckled a bit, then pressed a button on the wall, pulled up his pants, made himself look decent.

Not long after, the waiter from this bar came up, dragged the sobbing guy away, as if he’d done this a million times.

Now that Yan Zhuo had got out of that mess, he still felt swimming. He picked up the coat and went upstairs only to find out, upon entering the room, that he had not even turned off the television. He entangled his fingers into his hair, as if venting to his hair all the annoyance caused by that silly man. Ruffling it into a complete mess, Yan Zhuo sneered in frustration. After going into the bathroom to get rid of the alcoholic stench, he stepped out barefoot, casually rubbing his hair with a dry towel, with occasional glances at the screen.

They were broadcasting an award’s night. Yan Zhuo suddenly spotted a familiar face as the camera turned. Shen Ji’s shirt was properly done up to the top button, as tightly postured as his complexion, lips hard pressed into a thin line without the slightest hint of a smile. He looked so sharp and smart, yet so thoroughly, enticingly stoic. Yan Zhuo’s glance closely followed Shen Ji, not daring to look away even for a blink, yet the camera swept past him and settled on a celebrity who had recently been the public’s favourite.

Yan Zhuo waited for more than half an hour, but the camera did not go back there until the end of the live. He stirred, realizing that all this waiting was kind of pointless, yet just as he reached out to turn it off, the frame shifted. The host was on interview with a few invited guests, the first of them being Shen Ji, Chief Executive Officer of Zhao Xi Entertainment Ltd.

Yan Zhuo pressed his sapped lips. Shen Ji’s voice in there was neither hesitating nor rushed, but enticingly husky. Shen Ji was scanty of words, but every sentence he directed at you was cold enough to make the distance clear. Suddenly Yan Zhuo felt like all the sparks of that burning lust he suppressed deep down was pouring out from all over his body, setting it on fire even though it had just emerged out of water.

He spreaded his legs apart, exposing fair thighs from under that dressing gown, which now only covered the parts below the belly. He couldn’t care less about his current posture, being under the cover of that white dressing gown; he only kept his eyes on Shen Ji on that screen, fully dressed in black tie. So damn stern, yet so damn seductive. Yan Zhuo put his right hand under the gown. Only the watery substance off his finger tips and interrupted sighs occasionally leak out a sound or two. Yan Zhuo had only one word in his mind, and it was Shen Ji.

As his motion intensified, the interview on screen came to an end. Now on that screen was a complexion strange to Yan Zhuo. Delicate, fair, of the same gender, and younger, yet the blood boiled up by Shen Ji now went straight down to the sole. He cursed under his breath, but he was not feeling much down there.

So you are being picky. Mumbled Yan Zhuo. Yet he was already sweeping the lockscreen aside and dialed his emergency contact. After two buzzes followed ‘the user was busy, please dial later.’ Yan Zhuo bit his lip. He should have expected Shen Ji to hang up on him. He fished out a voice recording in his phone and started looping.

The deep and melodious voice belonging to Shen Ji was within touch. He put his legs on the footstool, his bottom on the edge of the bed, completely exposing everything, and his underwear dropped to the floor. Still fumbling, he reached for his phone and pressed Shen Ji’s WeChat. He hovered over the video call option as he mindlessly rubbed his finger on the sensitive skin. His breathes were disrupted, wondering if he was being a bit too slutty, so he resorted only to “press to speak”.

The WeChat icon of Shen Ji was a white blank picture, but even from there Yan Zhuo could spy all that he fancies, and his breathes intensified just for that. Shen Ji would be able to hear him. The idea rushed the blood in his brains all the way down to the bottom. He bit his lips as sighs developed into continuous moaning under his breath.

‘Nnh…’ His toes curled up in satisfaction, as the pleasure hovered for another fleeing moment. And then he spoke, voice still hoarse but smug, “Even if you hang up on me.”

Putting aside that boiling impulse, Yan Zhuo enjoyed an undisturbed sleep as he comfortably spread on the bed. After the bombardment of messages was completely ignored by Yan Zhuo, said person resorts to a bombardment of calls. Yan Zhuo did not even bother to stir his eyelids but pulled his phone under the blanket, presses listen, and spoke in a muffled voice, “Fxxk off if you’ve got nothing better to do this early in the morning. You’re driving me insane.”

Ning Yao smirked on the other side, “I am doing exactly that. I have told you long ago, don’t mess with Shen Ji, or who else do you think will have to clean up your mess?”

Yan Zhuo still found it funny at first before his mind was set in motion and recollected everything left out earlier in that sleep. Shen Ji?! He sit up in a snap. He sent him a voice message last night.

Ning Yao was still chattering non-stop. Yan Zhuo palmed his forehead, hanged up, and opened the chat with Shen Ji. The 14-second voice message he sent last night at 11.34 was successfully sent. He swallowed, pressed that message in an attempt to recall it. After seeing the notification, he threw his phone onto the bedsheet and wrapped himself under it. He really did mess up this time.

A tiny line of notification written in grey was right under that voice message.

‘Shen Ji’s account is private. You are not his (her) friend yet. Please send a friend request. You can only start conversation after your request is accepted.

Translator's Note Words:

All NSFW chapters are posted on Tumblr.

It's my first attempt of translation, so there might still be a massive amount of errors. I as translator will keep trying my best to work with editors (and the editor for this chapter is amazing), but if there's any language problem about this translation that you absolutely cannot stand then please point it out in the comment.

Conventional surname-followed-by-first-name translation of names. Mostly transliteration based on PinYin.

Although the first chapter is NSFW, the novel as a whole (just about short of 30 chapters) may not be as smutty as you'd thought (surprise!). There's going to be more focus on character interactions and revealing of background stories in chapters to follow.

I hope you enjoy the read!

Next>

[f1chronicle]

Lewis Hamilton – The Man Who Reached The Summit Of Formula 1’s Mountain

Akin to that mountain, which soars high into the skies, Lewis Hamilton stands tall amid jaw-dropping reactions in the firmament of FORMULA 1.

Lewis Hamilton Proud Of Record Achievement

It’s a sport to which Hamilton has given a decade and a half of his life. It’s a sport which has become second nature to Lewis Hamilton – a man born to race, someone we today cannot imagine the highest level of Grand Prix racing without.

The Brit was proud of what he and his team have achieved, saying ‘I think ultimately I’m just very proud of the job that I felt I was able to do today and the things I was able to overcome, but also the job we have done collectively as a team and it’s just reminiscent of the beginning when I joined the team, the decision I took to join the team and what we have done since.

‘I knew that we would win championships. Did I think we would win as many as we have? No. Did I think we would win this many races? Of course not. But it is a phenomenal time for us and the great thing is that it’s not just me that is living with the history, it’s the whole team and I think everyone acknowledges and realises how much they are part of it, so I feel incredibly grateful to my teammates.

‘To Valtteri, for being the contender he is, the team-mate he is, for pushing the team forwards – we’re generally rowing in the same direction whilst we are competing, and it’s been a privilege to work with him. So what a time to be alive.’

Lewis Hamilton Has Excelled Since Day 1

To a sport that demands excellence- Lewis Hamilton had nothing else but excellence on offer, arriving at the 2007 World Championship curtain-raiser: the 2007 Australian Grand Prix (18 March) where he earned a P3.

In so doing, Lewis immediately proved his mettle for his McLaren team. But was that easy to do- with Kimi and Alonso being at their devastating best back then? It’s anybody’s guess.

Thirteen years hence, as Lewis Hamilton finds his name against arguably the most amazing record in Formula 1- nothing’s really changed.

Back then- he was hanging out on or around the podium, scoring nine back-to-back (podiums) in his maiden year in Formula 1 alone.

A few hours back, he stepped onto the podium for the 161st time in Formula 1, he’d made history; a mighty one at that.

Just how many wins can the new record holder tally? Well he won’t say the sky is the limit, but he is prepared to keep working to raise the bar higher and higher for those set to follow him.

‘I don’t believe in the saying the sky’s the limit. It’s just a saying. It depends how much we want it, how much we want to continue to raise the bar and going by our history together, just the way we work, we don’t sit back on our results, we keep working, we keep elevating.

‘Every race feels like the first one. I don’t know how that’s possible after all these races but for me it does, just as challenging as the first, and I think there is a lot more for us to do. Especially as we’re in this crazy time of the pandemic.

‘We’re in a crazy time with having to also utilise our position as a business, as a leader in the business for inclusivity, for diversity, there’s a lot of work to do. So, that keeps me inspired.

‘My team-mates, who are continuously growing, my fans who are continuously learning through this process with us all, and our sport that is slowly changing, it’s a real special time.

‘I definitely sometimes wonder, you know, jeez I’m 35 years old. I still feel physically strong but you still wonder when is it going to tip over and lose performance but showing by today it’s not yet,’ added Hamilton.

Consistency Has Been The Key

The all-time win record is a piece of history every driver whether contesting in the sport or desperate to break through to the top flight in F1- would absolutely love to script.

As Lewis Carl Hamilton crossed the line and received the checkered flag at the very tricky and truly testing Portimao-bound Portuguese Grand Prix- he scored the 92nd win of his career, the most by any F1 driver – dead or alive.

In this clip, you can see Hamilton talking about this record-setting moment with none other than Martin Brundle.

But every sport needs a hero- someone who can prove himself to be Mr. Consistency, and blaze a trail for the others to follow.

Lewis Hamilton – 161 podiums, 92 race wins, 97 pole positions, 52 fastest laps, 6 world titles – is a humble and mild-mannered one.

2020 Portuguese Grand Prix, Sunday – Lewis Hamilton (image courtesy Mercedes-AMG Petronas)

He ain’t some flickering myth that’ll burn out or fade away (He’s here to stay).

Not when at 35, making the body endure the grind for fourteen long years, and about to claim a seventh world title. And maybe go even more!

And certainly not when you’re finding much younger guys- a little over half your age- in your mirrors only for you to ply phenomenal race craft to emerge unscathed in the end – (race after race, weekend after weekend).

But Hamilton, who’s proven himself to be statistically superior than even the great Michael Schumacher, must not dwell on the lot that passes easy judgement holding little to appreciate one’s journey.

Fact is- Lewis Hamilton won from pole again and not only that, ended up delivering the grand slam of the race, including the mark for fastest lap.

Dominant Display In Portugal

At the Portuguese Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton briefly lost the lead a few laps since the start. It didn’t matter, however.

He was soon dictating terms from the very front of the grid with usual Hamilton-esque guts.

‘When I come to these races I never think of the numbers. I just never let it enter into my thought process. Today was really about… we’re at this track, it’s very, very smooth, you see the struggle we’re all having with the tyre temperatures, so towards the end of the race I was thinking about what I will and won’t say in terms of what is appropriate to say and not to say but ultimately it’s no secret, I think today was about tyre temperature.

‘I felt through the race that I was learning, lap on lap, more about the circuit. I was trying lots of different lines and discovering new lines that worked well. The wind direction was very, very tricky, I think, today, lots of crosswinds, headwinds and tailwinds and there were some positions that you could utilise to your favour and others that kind-of get in the way.

‘I think the key is the times when you have a tailwind, it’s minimising the loss through those stages. Set-up was something that I really focussed on. It was less about qualifying set-up, and more for the race set-up and I think today that enabled me to go one better, I guess, than before.

‘I just felt like I was generally getting faster and faster throughout the race – but I had to keep up the pace for these tyres. That was really the key,’ added the race winner.

But implicit in the journey of the most successful driver in F1’s history (race wins wise👏) is respect. That which he gives to his competitors on the grid. That which he himself earns as a result of feverish consistency.

It’s easy to lose ones head at the highest annals of Grand Prix racing. But very difficult to keep winning despite having at one’s disposal – the fastest or most complete car on the grid.

Hamilton Almost Faultless Throughout F1 Career

Why Hamilton must be respected is because despite having the best of both worlds- the most powerful machine and ample manpower- he hasn’t put a foot wrong in Formula 1.

This isn’t to say he didn’t err – there was the controversial pit lane entry despite the window not being open, and the ignorance of yellow flags in another event (earlier this season)- but Hamilton’s driver errors have been few and far between.

He did, as a matter of fact, collide twice with Albon (Red Bull) in the space of one year- starting with Brazil 2019 and then, the 2020 Austrian GP- but Hamilton won’t spin, won’t slide off the track and won’t self capitulate.

We’ve seen a magnificent champion in Sebastian Vettel make more errors than probably any other man on the grid in the past half a decade period; an onerous length of time during which Hamilton’s performances grew to the size of a shape-shifting beast: hard to ignore, even harder to beat.

Still, what would you put it all down to- these eight race wins in 12 starts in 2020? Isn’t it a precise combination of smooth race craft and next-to-faultless car control?

Hamilton The Ultimate Competitor

On top of it, Lewis Hamilton seems an athlete that just won’t budge; the more difficult the circumstances- the more he challenges himself.

Earlier this year, at the landmark British Grand Prix, Hamilton won with three tires, having suffered a front-left failure thanks to horrible delamination in the final lap of the race.

The bad news was, Max was closing in- just six seconds behind. The good news was- Lewis wasn’t going to give up.

In 2019, a year where perhaps Mercedes’ domination of the grid was arguably the most ruthless – the team winning eight back-to-back races- Lewis enjoyed the upper hand over Bottas until Verstappen’s race win at Austria halted the driver’s marauding charge.

It wasn’t Valtteri but Lewis who won four back-to-back races before Max’s mad run at Spielberg changed the narrative somewhat, the Briton picking up big wins at Spain, Monaco, Canada and France.

Yet, ever wondered why we credit Lewis Hamilton. Is it just the magnanimous success and that instinct for domination?

Perhaps suffice to say, there’s a Lewis Hamilton the benevolent observer who resides in the heart of the man who wants to and does drive like a champion all year around.

The Hamilton v Vettel Rivalry

At the 2019 Singapore GP- an event we’d have loved to see this year too- the warmest congratulatory message to the race winner arrived from the man who finished fourth.

As Sebastian Vettel, occupied in arguably his most important post-race interview was about to conclude, a warm tap on the shoulder arrived from behind.

As Vettel turned immediately to see who that was, he was greeted by the most affectionate smile from none other than his closest rival on the grid, one to whom the German had played too often the vanquished (than he’d have liked) in the previous seasons- Lewis Hamilton!

What a beautiful tiny moment that was featuring two guys who were daggers drawn at each other at Azerbaijan 2017, you thought.

But that’s precisely where we owe much credit to the fighting duo.

The sport, with every passing decade, has birthed new heroes and presented personalities.

But it’s very hard to deny that had Hamilton and Vettel not pushed one another to the absolute limit- evident closely in races like Hungary 2017, British GP 2018, 2018 German GP, 2018 Belgian GP, among a few more- we wouldn’t have seen two stars burning brightly in the F1 galaxy.

Stars who remember to respect one another despite occasional on-field scuffles.

That the two twinkle lends substance to a sport that can’t function minus its shining lights, one of whom has become a mighty planet.

He was once a kid, not even a boy who took to Karting pushed by his doting dad.

Today that same kid from Stevenage (who sat in a kart at the best of his father) has grown into a global icon despite all odds.

Little wonder then it’s Lewis Hamilton who says – Still We Rise!!

Take a bow champion. Take a bow.

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/nation-and-world-news-briefs-national-4/

Nation and world news briefs | National

Private jet loaded with weapons and cash stopped from leaving for Venezuela

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Learjet loaded with weapons and cash was stopped from leaving the U.S. for Venezuela over the weekend.

Seized at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport were 18 assault/bolt actions rifles with optics, six shotguns, 58 semi-automatic pistols and $20,312 in cash and $2,618.53 in endorsed checks, a news release said. Air and Marine Operations in Fort Lauderdale seized the plane and a vehicle.

Two Venezuelan nationals were arrested but not identified by Homeland Security Investigations.

According to Broward Sheriff’s Office booking records, the pilots are Gregoni Jenson Mendez, 40, and Luis Alberto Patino, 36. Both were charged with illegally possessing firearms, and they are in the custody of U.S. Marshals.

Several agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, were already investigating the plane, the release said.

Notre Dame moves classes online for 2 weeks after COVID-19 cases more than double in a day

The University of Notre Dame is shifting its classes online for a two-week period in response to a spike of COVID-19 cases on campus since classes started a week ago.

The Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, announced the change in a livestreamed video for students Tuesday afternoon. It came after cases on campus jumped from 58 to 147 in just one day.

“We have decided to take steps short of sending students home, at least for the time being, while protecting the health and safety of the campus community,” Jenkins said. “For at least the next two weeks, we will move undergraduate classes to remote instruction, close public spaces on campus and restrict residences halls to residents only.”

Jenkins said the school, located in South Bend, Indiana, was prepared to send students home altogether but decided to try enacting a stricter trial period after consulting with the county’s public health department, which endorsed the move.

Notre Dame spokesman Paul Browne said students are expected to remain in their residences and take classes virtually for the time being.

“Traveling to various points across the country and back again is not helpful,” he said.

While classes are remote, students living off campus should stay there, limit interactions to roommates only and refrain from visiting campus, according to Jenkins. Gatherings larger than 10 people will also be prohibited.

“The objective of these temporary restrictions is to tame the spread of the virus so we can get back to in-person instruction,” Jenkins said. “If these steps are not successful, we will have to send students home, as we did last spring.”

Tuesday’s one-day increase marked the largest surge in cases since students returned to campus Aug. 3. At that point, only 33 of about 12,000 students had tested positive when they were assessed prior to arriving.

But after the first weeks on campus, the challenges became clearer. On Sunday, Notre Dame announced it was enhancing its testing procedures and planned to carry out surveillance testing of the general student population, in addition to athletes. The school also said it would improve the process for students with symptoms or known exposures to get tested on campus.

In that message, Notre Dame officials said the majority of cases — at that time, it was about 50 cases — appeared to stem from two off-campus events held Aug. 6 and Aug. 9.

Hornets suspend radio announcer who tweeted ‘mistyped’ racial slur

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Charlotte Hornets have indefinitely suspended radio play-by-play announcer John Focke after a tweet he sent Monday included the N-word.

“The Charlotte Hornets are aware of the recent social media post by radio broadcaster John Focke. As an organization, we do not condone this type of language,” the Hornets’ statement said via Twitter.

“John has been suspended indefinitely as we investigate the matter more closely.”

Focke, who just completed his first season with the Hornets, was tweeting about the Utah Jazz-Denver Nuggets playoff game Monday afternoon. The tweet included the N-word instead of “Nuggets.”

“Shot making in this Jazz-(N-word) game is awesome! Murray and Mitchell going back and forth what a game!” the tweet read.

Focke apologized on his Twitter account around 10 p.m. Monday night.

“Earlier today I made a horrific error while attempting to tweet about the Denver-Utah game,” Focke’s tweet read. “I don’t know how I mistyped, I had (and have) no intention of ever using that word.

“I take full responsibility for my actions. I have been sick to my stomach about it ever since. I’m truly sorry that this happened and I apologize to those I offended.”

Focke responded to a text from The Charlotte Observer on Monday night, saying he would not have additional comments for now.

—The Charlotte Observer

‘God help us all’ if Democrats win Senate, SC’s Graham says as his race gets tighter

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina’s Republican U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott urged voters during a South Carolina Chamber of Commerce forum Tuesday to get involved to make sure Democrats don’t gain control of the U.S. Senate and White House after November.

Graham, who faces his own contentious battle for his Senate seat against challenger Jaime Harrison, said on the videoconference call that he was “scared” of the causes championed by House Democrats, calling the politicians on the other side of the aisle “radical.”

“It’s very important that President (Donald) Trump get reelected,” Graham said. “But it’s more important that we keep the Senate.”

In order to gain control of the Senate, Democrats would need to hold their current seats and win four more. Democrats also could aim to win three seats and the White House, leaving a Democratic vice president to break the tied votes.

“If we lose that majority, God help us all,” said Graham.

On the call Tuesday, Graham also criticized the Green New Deal, an environmental and economic plan championed by several Democrats and rebuked by Republicans. Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden also supports parts of the program, which aim at tackling climate change and promoting jobs in the clean energy sector.

Graham said the plan would “destroy the economy in the name of helping the environment.”

Scott, meanwhile, warned that if Democrats gain control of the Senate they could try to get rid of the filibuster, a method of blocking or delaying a bill. Several Democrats have advocated getting rid of the filibuster, including former President Barack Obama.

Without the filibuster, Scott said it would be easier for the controlling party to pass legislation and the type of legislation passed would change dramatically as the Senate changes hands.

“The ability for a bipartisan coalition to transform this country will be gone,” Scott said. “What we really want is certainty and predictability. Good policy is helpful, certainty is necessary.”

Graham reiterated Tuesday that Republicans need to be reelected to the Senate to keep that control. But recent polling suggests Graham’s own standing might be changing.

—The State (Columbia, S.C.)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Copyright 2020 Tribune Content Agency.

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The 9 symbolic revelation of Jesus

The Book of Revelation is not just an inspired book of the bible but an 'unveiling', 'uncovering' or 'revealing' of divine truth which God gave to John - hence the name, Revelation. In this post, The 9 symbolic revelation of Jesus Christ and their meaning, I will share with you from few selected verses, 1-3, 10-16, John's declaration The description of the risen and glorified Christ which he saw The symbolic meaning of what he described.  

John's Declaration

"The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his servants things that must shortly come to pass." This prologue to the book of Revelation establishes the authority for the entire writing by stating that this uncovering — ''revelation'' — is from Jesus Christ, given by God to John, which John bare record and promises blessing to those that read and keep the prophecy contained in it (therein). - vs. 2-3 "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw..."  

The Description of the Risen and Glorified Christ

Before John turned to see the voice that spake with him, he has already received a command to write the things that he saw in a book to testify to the churches. This revelation John saw, was also given to Daniel in Daniel chapter 10, and a preview also to Peter, James and John when Christ took them apart to a high mountain and was there transfigured before them to validate the testimony of his coming glory. Which they heard a voice that spake with them out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son, hear him." Being turned, here is the description of what John the Beloved saw. "seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength." - (Revelation 1:12-16) Beyond the physical description John described, there is a lot more symbolic messages to be known in the appearance of Christ as he revealed himself to John. These symbolic meaning is explained below

The symbolic meaning of Christ's appearance

Recap: "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw..." 1. Seven golden candlesticks; And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man Meaning - According to Revelation 1, the seven candlesticks represents the seven churches in Asia which God was commanding John to write messages to. These churches include, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and the Laodicean church. The Son of man in the midst of the seven candlesticks symbolizes Christ's presence in his Church and his Lordship over them. The Bible says in Matthew 18:20 "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." These seven golden candlesticks is another symbol of Christ's church that is expected to give her light to shine in a dark and corrupt world as we see in Matthew 5:15-16 and to remain pure. 2. Clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle Meaning - This picture of Christ here portrays an emblem of his everlasting priesthood which he wore for beauty and glory. In the Old Testament, Christ gave Moses a charge to clothe Aaron and his sons with holy garments to minister in the priests office. He separated them (the Levites) for this purpose to bear the burden of the people in approaching God on their behalf and in making atonement for their sins. This was a pointer of his everlasting priesthood and his enduring atonement for the sins of mankind. "And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty. And for Aaron's sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make for them girdles, and bonnets shalt thou make for them, for glory and for beauty." (Exodus 28:2,40) Today, Christ has made the final sacrifice for our sin and has become our high priest after the order of Melchizedek who makes atonement for sins not with the blood of goats or of bulls like the priests of the Old Testament, but with his own blood. and he ever lives making intercession for the saints. 3. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow Meaning - This symbolizes the purity of his words and truth and his perfect righteousness. In Daniel 7:9, the prophet Daniel wrote that he saw the Ancient of Days, describing Him as having hair that resembled wool. Seen as having such a resemblance to God the Father. Christ is a representative of God and will not speak of himself but whatsoever the Father says, that he speak. There is no error in God and his words are 100% true. The Psalmist says in Psalm 19:7-9, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 4. His eyes were as a flame of fire Meaning - This symbolizes the searching eyes of the Almighty which not only sees but penetrates the heart, prunes and purifies. His eyes like fire searches every activity going on in his church, beholding the good and the evil. No one can feign innocence in His presence and succeed with the hypocrisy “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” (Proverbs 15:3) 5. His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace Meaning - This symbolizes God's judgment for sin. Christ is going to judge sin at the end of the world and there will be no hiding place for any man when we all appear before the Bema seat and will be judged, every man according to his works. (Rev. 20:11-15) 6. His voice as the sound of many waters Meaning - This symbolizes Christ's majesty, power and dominion over everything or circumstances. Nobody can teach Him knowledge. He has victory over all things. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." - Psalm 19:1-6 7. In his right hand seven stars Meaning - The seven stars represent God's ministers in those seven churches. And they being in his right hand shows his sovereign power in preserving them despite oppositions in ministry. The Son of God seated on the right hand of the Father holds every true and faithful minister (child of God) with this same right hand of power. "Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." 1 Peter 1:5 Those whom God has appointed to be his ministers here on earth has no need of fear, for their lives is preserved. 8. Out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword Meaning - This symbolizes the word of God that can pierce the heart, melt it and covert the soul. This two edged sword is one of the armors of God according to Ephesians 6. 9. His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength Meaning- This symbolizes his shekinah glory. His awesome presence as dazzling as the sun when it gives her light in its strength that makes it impossible to fully look upon. This was the Light that appeared to Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, whose brightness blindfolded him. He confessed to King Agrippa, "At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee" — Acts 26:13-16, 19   These are the symbolic meaning of the revealed Christ which John saw and described. When John saw these things, he fell down at his feet as one dead. But God gave him the words of peace, "Fear not..." This is also telling us that no man can stand God, but they can court his mercy. Greater fear awaits those who are yet to see the other side of God. We must obtain the same mercy John the beloved, Daniel and all the saints of God obtained through repentance, forgiveness and walking with Christ to receive this same words of peace when he shall come in his glory. This post has given you a revelation of Jesus Christ according to Revelation 1:12-16 as he sends John to the seven churches. Today, God's ministers are still sending messages of hope, warning and repentance not just to the church but to the world, we are expected to receive His messages with penitent hearts and submit to him in obedience so we can be partakers of divine mercy when he shall come. Read the full article