hilbilbyculturedfood

[kemecalendar]

Full Color Custom Design Weekly Diary Calendar

[rosemoncherie]

close to you: t.wolff

pairing: toto wolff x black f!reader

summary: you can never get enough of him.

warning: MINORS DNI 18+, NSFW, cockwarming, usage of ‘Daddy’, dirty talk.

note: repost from my main page.

w.c: 1.54K

tags: @queenshikongo3

How can a man say that he is on a break but most of his waking moments are spent locked away in their office? You wanted to yell that at your boyfriend’s head. Sure the break was induced due to how the formula one calendar is constructed but you marvelled in these moments where you were just able to spend time with him.

Toto was a very,very busy man and you had no doubt that the current season was stressful and demanding but .. so were you. You deserved his attention as well. Majority of the time, you travelled with toto across the globe and you understood the demands of his position but then there were times when you just needed his focus on you and you alone.

The house was mostly silent except for his voice bouncing off the walls and echoing into your shared bedroom. Despite his mellow tone, you could still hear him clearly - provided by the ajar door - and it sent shivers down your spine. His accent was one of the first things that pulled you towards him. It doesn’t matter what he was talking about, you just love hearing him speak.

You looked at the wall clock and saw that it was late in the morning and decided not to bother dressing up completely after your shower. You moisturised your skin with cocoa butter before wearing a comfy pair of underwear. You walked over to Toto’s side of the closet and pulled out one of his dress shirts and threw it over your body. Due to his tall and burly stature, all of his clothes seemed to swallow you but they were comfortable.

Once you applied some lip balm to your lips and straightened your braids, you followed the sound of Toto’s voice until you found him pacing in front of the floor to ceiling windows that gave a perfect view of the landscape beyond. He was dressed in light blue T-shirt and beige sweatpants, his hair unkept from frequently running his fingers through it. Your man was fine and you loved adoring him.

As if he could feel your eyes watching him, he turned to face you and you watched as his eyes travelled up and down your body. From your breasts barely covered by his shirt to your underwear digging into the flesh of your hips. He continued speaking on the phone but you smirked as his eyes followed you all the way to the couch and watched you lay on your side with your head on your hand, looking at him the way he was looking at you.

Your body was a temptation that he could never resist. He approached you and crouched down until the two of you were at eye level. You kept quiet as he used his finger to move the fabric away from your chest and expose your breast to him. You deeply inhaled as the tip of his finger circled your nipple before pinching it softly. Still sensitive from the night before, the action sent a shock to your pussy.

Falling back onto the couch, Toto pushed the shirt away from your chest and played with your nipples, pulling and tugging on them to his pleasure.

“No, I don’t want James at the factory, I want him at the track with us during the Suzuka weekend ..” You could hear bits and pieces of his conversation but you were more focused on the way his fingers were making you feel. You rubbed your thighs together to try and soothe the ache that was quickly building. Toto smirked before he leaned down and gave you a small lick as he listened to the other person on the phone.

Once the small moan left you, he shifted away from you and walked back to his desk and sat down. You pouted your lips and sat up, frowning in his direction. He finally finished his phone call and placed his phone down and focused on his laptop without sparing a glance towards you.

“Don’t be a brat.” He told you as you let out the deepest sighs.

“You’re not paying attention to me.” You huffed, crossing your arms which pushed your breasts upwards and you didn’t miss the way his eyes fell to your chest.

“You didn’t get enough when I was fucking you senseless last night?” His words caused your cheeks to warm as the memories of the previous night flooded your memory.

“And then you left me high and dry this morning.” You rolled your eyes.

“Are you wet right now?” He quirked his eyebrow as he leaned back into his chair. You bit your lip as you nodded your head. The wetness was getting distracting to be honest but when he was looking at you like that, it was hard to stop your body from reacting. “Come here.”

You stood up and walked up to him until you were standing in between his legs. Your eyes darted down to his lap where his hardening length was visible beneath the fabric of his pants.

“You want this dick baby?” He asked you as he cupped himself. Your mouth was watering for just a taste. You ought to be embarrassed with yourself but with the way Toto loved, cared and fucked you, all of your dignity was left at the door.

“Yes Daddy.” You whispered. You felt his hand hold the behind of your knee and pull you closer until you were bending down and straddling his lap. You held onto the back of his chair as he pushed he pulled his cock out of his sweats and rubbed himself against your covered clit.

You moaned softly as you pushed your panties to the side, your slick being exposed to him and your cunt throbbing with anticipation. He watched as your eyes rolled to the back of your head as he brought you down onto his length.

“Scheiße” He cussed as your warmth engulfed him and snuggly wrapped around him till you settled at the base of his cock. You tried to roll your hips but he wasn’t having it, he slapped your ass and gripped it still which shocked your core causing you to clench around him. “As much as I want to fuck you until you can’t breath right now, I still have work to do and I need you to be still.”

“How can I do that when you’re stretching me so good Daddy.” You whispered in his ear causing him to grunt as he wrapped his arm around your torso to keep you close to his body.

“You want to be my good girl don’t you? You don’t want to piss me off do you?”

“No.”

“Good.” He cooed in your ear. “You’re going to sit here until I’ve finished going through these emails and then I’ll be yours for the rest of the day. Can you do that for me?”

It was going to be tough but you were positive that you could do it. You wrapped your arms around his neck and held onto him as you willed your body not to move. You felt so full with him nestled inside of you. Toto was not a small man so he reached deep inside of you and because of the way your bodies were positioned, he was pressing against one of your spots leaving an agonisingly sweet ache in its wake.

You were so wet and you were drenching him. He was trying so hard not to focus on the puddle of cream forming at the base of his dick but along with the small whimpers you were letting out hitting his ears, he was going to lose his focus very soon. But he needed to teach you a lesson in patience. His job kept him away from you more times than he could count and he cherished the moments that he was able to have with you, But like a moth to a flame, you could never have enough and it was probably because he spoiled you to compensate for his lack of availability.

But truth be told, he loved it when you were needy for him. It fed a deep desire of his to be your only lover and provider - a promise he was going to keep. Your cunt was warm, wet and pulsating around him and that alone could bring any man to their knees. Toto didn’t know how his restraint hadn’t weavered and just fucked into you.

“Baby.” You gasped as your pussy began to flutter with small tremors of an orgasm that neither of you were expecting. Toto’s fingers stopped moving across the keyboard and dropped his head to your shoulder as his large hands gripped you as you came around him. Finally snapping, he stood up and up and sat you down on his desk and attacked your lips.

You squealed as you finally felt his hips move as he picked you up and brought you back down onto his length.

“Yes! Just like that.” You moaned as you ran your hands through his hair and stared into his eyes.

“Finally getting what you wanted huh. Now be a good girl and take this dick.” He bit into your shoulder as you completely took over his senses.

[blueberrypancakesworld]

Lawrence/Mark x fem!reader - Jealousy

Warning : jealousy, blood, saw horror, kiss, use of Y/n, fluff, comfort

Mark Hoffman x fem!reader, Lawrence Gordon x fem!reader

Summary : Two men, two successors to Jigsaw and yet, besides the latest game, there is something in both of them that they want...you.

masterlist

Costas mandylor - masterlist

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

Since John had chosen his successors, the last thing he hoped for from them was an intimate relationship. Lawrence was his biggest project and at the same time his biggest secret. Amanda for a short time like a daughter but for her he was the father.

Mark had gotten by the serial killer again a sense and Y/n the newest member of the almost cult was Johns second hand which concerned the creation of traps. Behind the young reporter's friendly demeanor, however, was a goddess who, like John, ruled over the living and the dead.

A woman who since she had emerged, especially the doctor and the policeman had not been able to get out of his head. Lawrence for the first time again felt his heart beating for someone after his wife and Adam.

How the blond came more and more often to the factory instead of being at work to take care of the medical things and to keep an eye on how it would cause physical pain.

His friendliness and just slightly insane mixed and he enjoyed the time together with her. To his surprise, she had worked as a nurse for a few years and both had an interest in the medical field.

Mark, on the other hand, scored with his sense of justice and his direct manner. He made it clear to everyone that he wanted something from her. The way he rolled up his sleeves to work on the machines when they tightened something together.

The way he made remarks and flirted, much to the chagrin of John and Amanda, neither of whom wanted to hear about it as long as the three of them didn't forget their goal in the work. The umstruckturieren, punish and judge the people.

The sun was already low in the sky when Y/n returned from her lunch break to her office for the last few hours. Closing the door to her office and enjoying the coffee she had bought just a few minutes before. Settling into her chair, she finally saw the bouquet of red roses lying on her desk.

Is it a birthday? she asked herself and looked at the calendar on her wall where the birthdays of her colleagues were listed. But there was no little cake to be seen that month.

Taking the bouquet in her hand she smelled the sweet roses, the redness of the blossoms matched her lipstick. She saw the small card in the bouquet and took it in her hands while she fetched a glass of water and put the bouquet in it.

,,For the most loving co-worker as a token of my love," she murmured the words that someone had written in cursive with a fountain pen. A message from a mysterious admirer had bought her the roses and seemed to be looking forward to them.

She looked at the roses with a smile and went back to her work. But during the remaining hours, her eyes kept going to the roses. The sweet blossoms, the scent that surrounded her, was intoxicating. Intoxicating until she walked out of her office and picked up a single one.

You could make any murder factory more beautiful, which is why she was even happier. ,,Hello, I'm here!" she called into the factory and got a cheerful hello back from Amanda who was working on the bear trap and John already seemed to be making new plans.

She put the rose in a coffee cup and filled it with water and put it on the small table by Amanda's bed. ,,Thank you" the black haired girl said and winked at the older one before Y/n disappeared into the corridors of the factory with a nod.

She looked into a few of the rooms and saw the various torture devices, some still in the middle of finishing work or in the testing phase. But that was not her goal. ,,I hope the stomach doesn't burst open again" she mumbled and could still remember the last time they wanted to place a bomb in one of the victims.

This, however, shortly after a false start led to complications and both died. A mistake that went on the cap of Lawrence and Y/n who had not switched everything on correctly.

Knocking on the door frame of the doctor's room she went in and saw the blond working on a person. He turned to her and seemed to be expecting someone else, but when his bright eyes went to her he smiled.

,,Hello Y/n, good to see you," he said cheerfully, pointing to the instruments he had laid out. She saw how he had already sewn up several wounds and was about to use hoes to probably hang the victim later. ,,A new device?" she asked and put on gloves before she started to hand him the things one by one.

He always gave her a thank you back and they both soon fell into a new conversation topic. She would be lying if she didn't like his calm and friendly manner. The little smile that was on his lips every time he pulled the needle with the thread through the man's skin.

He is always perfectly calm she thought and couldn't help but smile herself. The older one had noticed this and smirked as well, ,,What's so funny?" he wanted to know although they both seemed to know how absurd this all was. Two adults picking at one person.

Until they both burst into giggles and put away their medical tools to calm down. ,,Let's just hope that no-" she was about to continue when Lawrence put down the cutlery and stepped up with his prosthesis.

A mistake, as it turned out, when he drew in the air sharply and the bloody cutlery and tray fell off as he held onto the wall and almost toppled over. ,,Lawrence!" she cried, frightened, and hurried over to him, pushing the victim aside and supporting the blond doctor before taking him to a chair.

With a pained sigh, he tried to find a reasonably comfortable position before she pulled up his pants and looked at the prosthesis. ,,A screw came loose and cut your leg a little...I'll fix it...wait a minute" she said and he couldn't help but smile at her professionalism and caring.

More than once he had let his thoughts wander to her. He knew that his heart was beating for her but he didn't want to press her. Not like Mark.

He approached her and took off his prosthesis - he hadn't used his cane lately. ,,I shouldn't have been so independent of my cane," he said aloud and saw her give him a look of understanding before she came to him with the things.

,,It may have been a while now...but Gordon even I had to get used to my prosthesis," she said cheerfully and he looked at the three fingers of her right hand. Instead of flesh and blood, there was metal and leather and several joints connecting the three fingers.

Mostly, however, she wore a glove to hide the injury, not to mention the relatively large piece of her left ear that was missing after a bullet from a pistol nearly blew it off.

She didn't see the slight redness on his cheeks as she tended to his wounds and the blood. He had winced as she dabbed the disinfectant on the wound. His fingers briefly tightened on her shoulder and she gave him a moment to give himself time.

The position they were in she was kneeling in front of him practically between his legs and the pain stopped paired with her warm soft hands was something that made him draw in his breath sharply.

,,That should do it," she said in conclusion, tightening the bandage before sliding the prosthesis back onto his leg. Suddenly Lawrence's hand touched her cheek and she smelled that sweet smell again.

,,You gave me the roses," she said, and she felt as if someone had removed the board from her head. His smile widened and she felt the gesture of Lawrence pulling her closer. His fingers slid lightly over her body and he touched her gently.

She felt him pull her up, almost onto his lap, and she closed her eyes, hoping for the kiss, when suddenly a loud clearing of the throat was heard. ,,Doctor shouldn't you take care of your patients and let the living ones go?" Mark asked bitingly and gave the blonde a warning look before winking at the younger one and walking back into the hallway.

,,I need your help honey!" he called and she heard Lawrence shake his head in annoyance. ,,Thank you Lawrence" she said hastily and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek and handed him his walking stick before walking behind Mark.

He seemed to have just returned from work, she smelled the smell of his gun, his aftershave and that smug feeling that surrounded him. ,,You can be nicer to him, you know," she reminded him, not liking that they didn't like each other. She knew that if they were going to keep doing this, they had to get along.

As soon as the next game was on, they all had to work together. ,,Don't be so sugar he'll get over it as soon as he can walk again" the brown haired man waved her off and she rolled her eyes as she walked with him to one of the machines.

She knew he had a more than deft hand for the traps. ,,Honey, can you get me the hooks from the main hall?" he asked and was already working on the metal. In answer to his question, she watched him for a moment before she disappeared.

A sigh inevitably escaped her and Amands patted her encouragingly on the shoulder. ,,Don't let it go to your head," she said, and John seemed to rebound from the whole affair.

His own relationship and love had been shattered by it all and the last thing he wanted to do was deal with it. ,,See that you get our new one and the trap ready...I don't want any delays Y/n" he said and she nodded showing him a look in which he let her know that she had finished it. Before the white haired one went back to his work himself. With the target in her hand she returned to the room and paused.

That's extra she thought and saw how the policeman had opened his shirt slightly, rolled up his sleeves and smiled broadly at her. ,,I knew it, good girl" he praised her and she threw him the heels which he found surprisingly good and started to work.

She leaned against the wall giving him new metal from time to time, but most of all she knew how much he enjoyed her looking at him.

How her eyes ran over his body and he was just wallowing in her gaze. After a few more moments of her looking at the trap and Hoffman in particular, he set the welder aside and tapped on the trap. ,,Sit down," he said, tapping the seat of the trap, which she knew could kill someone as soon as it was finished.

Sitting down on the cold metal, she was about to grab the blades when she felt his hand move up her thigh. Leaning against the metal and preventing her from escaping while she did not take her eyes off him.

At least he didn't allow that as he grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. ,,You know, I could give you more than the doctor" he whispered to her and she saw how he came closer to her and the kiss seemed inevitable.

Suddenly a cane crashed against the metal of the tubes and he rose from her. ,,You're disturbing, you know that?" came the sarcastic question and Lawrence smirked smugly as Mark moved away from Y/n and grabbed the welder before the three went back into the main room.

But before that she had hastily risen and given Mark a kiss on the cheek as she did with Lawrence, standing in the middle while the two men stared at each other dismissively. ,,John, we're done," she said to the oldest, who nodded contentedly and withdrew.

She seemed to sense what was about to happen, which is why she was grateful that Amanda took her by the hand and the two women retreated together.

Between all that, they both seemed to have found each other the most. The kiss she got at the end of the day from Amanda herself. But the arguing noise could still be heard in the hallways of the factory.

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

@lola-max-sugar , @megustadilf , @slut4hoffman , @agunislover

[chibrary]

“Brrrrrr!” says Charles Leclerc, on a chilly late afternoon in a São Paulo that’s enveloped in grey and pendulous cloud.

Cruelly denied a coat by our photographer, Charles hastens from the back of the Sauber garage to the welcoming environs of the team unit as soon as his duties are concluded. Glenn, our snapper, replaces a lens cap and shakes his head ruefully. “You can’t treat ‘em like kids,” he says. “Otherwise it starts with you letting them wear a coat and ends with you having to take all the blue M&MS out of the bowl…”

Perhaps in some cases, but Charles Leclerc is emphatically not cut from junior diva cloth. Though F1 starwrangler Nicolas Todt has steered his career, Leclerc’s talent and singular determination has provided the momentum. There is not a hint of the silver spoon about his rise to prominence, and that comes across in the respectful politesse with which he unfailingly conducts himself.

Now seated and beginning to thaw, Charles holds the question deck between finger and thumb and regards it with genuine surprise. “All these are from fans?” he asks, agog at how an F1 rookie could possibly generate so much interest.

Well, there’s a reason for that… [...]

source: gp racing (uk) series: 2018, f1

What does the underside of Alonso's car look like? David Foulston, UK CL: The underside? What's the underside? [The penny drops] Ah! Yes, when he went flying over me [at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix]. I tell you, it happened so fast that I could barely see anything. I certainly wasn't going to analyse it [technically]. It was definitely black, but that's the only thing I can say.

F1 Racing: Surely, given their relative position in the championship, Sauber don't have much to learn from Mclaren at the moment any- way… CL: Ah… [He glances in the direction of team PR Mia, who responds in startled fashion to F1R'S cheeky query. Charles giggles, though whether this is at the question or its effect on his colleague is un- clear]

In your company car, have you beaten the best commute times from Monaco to Modena set by Gilles Villeneuve and Jody Scheckter? Phil Darby, UK CL: [Laughs again] Errrrr… no! I'm not so quick on the road. F1R: In your position, you need to be responsible. CL: Definitely.

F1R: Were you aware there was a record each of them tried to break? CL: To get to the grand prix? F1R: To get to the Ferrari factory when Enzo rang up. They'd say, "Okay, be there in five minutes…" CL: [Laughs] For sure, I could never get to the factory that quickly. I'm not really racing on the road.

Is there any circuit you would love to see added to the F1 calendar? Matt Lloyd, UK CL: Laguna Seca. Even though it's very… yeah, I don't think F1 could go there in reality.

F1R: The run-off at the Corkscrew isn't very wide, and there's a cliff on the other side.

CL: Yeah? That would make it more, er, challenging… F1R: According to folklore, the corner is how it is because they were driving the bulldozer along, got to the edge of the drop, and then just turned left. CL: Nice story. But is it true?

What is your biggest fear? Severine Covens, UK

CL: Oh, snakes. F1R: Is it the creepy dryness of the scales, or their rasping forked tongues that creep you out? CL: I don't really know - I'm just not liking these animals. F1R: Have you ever actually encountered a snake? CL: I did, in Australia. Haven't you seen the pictures? I have it all round my neck. [He shudders at the memory] You'll have to ask the Sauber people why they did it…

What was the first car you drove? Kamil Zaotkowski, Poland CL: I really shouldn't say, because I was quite young!

What is your favourite childhood memory with Jules Bianchi? Chloe Hewitt, UK CL: Probably every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at his track. [Jules Bianchi's father managed the kart circuit at Brignoles] That and his birthdays in Saint-tropez. All the races we did together in karting. Fun times. F1R: Did you get to go to his party after he finished in the points in the Monaco Grand Prix? CL: No, I was too young, and in Monaco they're quite strict with things like that.

[hyperlexichypatia]

I’ve been thinking a lot about guilt lately. Maybe it’s because it’s currently Lent in the Western Christian calendar, when many Christians practice self-reflection about their wrongdoings and commit to doing better. Guilt gets a bad rap, as emotions go. It's not pleasant, but just as other negative emotions like anger, sadness, and pain have their uses, so does guilt. In particular, guilt alerts people to what they're doing that they shouldn't be (or what they're not doing that they should be). It's an indicator that something is wrong and needs to change. The problem, so often, is what people feel guilty about, and what they do about that feeling.

I've seen a post going around social media of an exchange between a therapist and a client. The therapist says that children are resilient, and the client replies that if that's true, why do all adults need therapy? This leaves the therapist at a loss for words.

Obviously, this exchange rests on several assumptions-- first of all, who decided that "all adults" need therapy? Yet equally obviously, the therapist has a professional interest in not disputing this premise. In fact, the therapist is in a real bind, because of the conflicting messages that mental health culture has about parental guilt. One message, directed at parents (especially mothers) is that parental guilt is unnecessary, irrational, and pointless. All parenting choices are equally valid. Children are resilient and will not be harmed by anything their parents do to them. The other message, directed at adults who feel harmed or traumatized by their childhood experiences, is that their grievances are valid, and they should not have been expected to simply resiliently endure their parents' mistreatment of them. The inherent conflict in these messages leads to some truly contorted reasonings in mental health culture – all parents are doing the best they can and should not be judged nor feel guilty, but all children are abused and traumatized by their parents. Usually the hinge used to square this conflict is that parental-induced trauma is caused by parents’ own “trauma” or “mental illness” – all parents do their best, but they are Intrinsically Defective, so they contaminate others with their Intrinsic Mental Defect.

From a radical Mad/ neurodiversity/ cognitive liberty and youth rights perspective, the problem is not “mental illness” or trauma, but power – parents and guardians, and adults generally, have near absolute power over children. Their exercise of this power, even if well-meaning, is frequently harmful and traumatic. People who wield this near-absolute power may feel guilt over some of the choices they make, but they rarely question their own position of power. Guilt is a natural response to holding positions of power, because we naturally have some inkling that holding power over others is in some way wrong. But without an acknowledgment or analysis of that power, and steps taken to wield power responsibly (or surrender it), guilt becomes useless.

Ask any group of people what they feel guilty about, or what their worst vices are. A surprising number will mention something to do with food. Eating ice cream isn’t a vice! The only food you should feel guilty about eating is human meat. Otherwise, you’re fine. Food is morally neutral. Why do so many people feel guilty about eating snacks, but not about participation in oppressive capitalist kyriarchy? Why do so many parents feel guilty about using one or another kind of diapers, but not for beating their children, subjecting them to behaviorism, or micromanaging their lives, which they invariably defend as good and correct parenting? Why do people feel guilty about the sugar content in the cookies they eat, but not the labor conditions in the factories that made them?

If what you feel guilty about isn’t what actually harms people – and if your guilt isn’t motivating you to take steps to change or mitigate that harm – then it’s useless, and you might as well give it up. But if you’re willing to be honest with yourself, look at how your behavior actually affects others, and change it accordingly.

[turtleations]

Interview with Sakaguchi Ken (Designer)

Published in the hide BIBLE (by Akemi Oshima) 2008

Note: This interview is the reason I have not posted anything for so long. Originally, I mean to skip it, because my brain took one look at this this in it's original form and said "Nope!" But here it is anyway. I do not believe that my translation does it justice but I did my best to at least uphold the structure, which is doing things to the Japanese language that should never be done.

Althought this is a "short", I am placing most of it under a cut for length.

Q1: When did you meet hide for the first time?

A: Us,   encountering  “hide”   on this star   for the first time   was BUCK TICK’s 1990.8.2 A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM concert   Seibu stadium   Gekko-san   MOOL LIGHT    a wonderful night. SAKAGUCHIKEN FACTORY as well   the time of activation   and tomorrow   and overmorrow   until morning   the drinking   party   party   to the next place   to the next place   it doesn’t end!   Even today   and tomorrow   and overmorrow   it doesn’t end!  Doesn’t end!  Doesn’t end!  Obviously  it is   unending… Us, too   Kazumi Town Red Shoes   Ah   our own   outer space   swimming smoothly   flying   leaping, into   a new   session   drinking   too much   until then  to live  merrily   is to live   forever! Forever! Forever! Aah   even now   though it   doesn’t change   the rock music then   was foreeeever! To say   let it evolve   no way!   To see a new sun   the beings are   once again   ready   to release   a new   future  !  maybe   surely   so!  Directly   that was   a session! Already   from the   beginning!  Until the end… I say.   That’s right!   That we encountered “hide”   for the first time  was in Kazumi Red Shoes   that night. During the bubble period? Who knows   anyhow   it was an era   of illegal partying   pissed off by   the stupid cars   jumping on those stupid cars   while bussing   in this world   shaaan! Wanting to change it!   Overflowing with a sense of justice   a guy like that! Us, too   together   again   maybe   surely   so   to release   that new future!  Because he did!

Q2: Please tell us what kind of impression you had at the time.

A: Our first proper meeting was   after all   thoroughly drinking   from dusk till dawn   you know!

Coming from Extasy   this time    having made their major debut    from a newborn record company    the after party   of the rock band   “LUNA SEA”    we who handled the art direction and   “hide”    “INORAN”    “J”    the four of us    drinking    going past all limits    a cosmic time of seriously    talking to each other.    There was the “DANCENOISE004” compilation album. Released in 1993, I was handing the artwork. The participating artists were bringing in cutting edge dance beats, this album was, well, a digital beat album made as a unit. “SUGIZO”, “M-AGE”, “FUJITA-CB.GB.-TAKASHI”, and others. The unit “MxAxSxS” made of “X JAPAN’s” “HIDE”, “LUNA SEA’s” “INORAN” and “J” was participating. Actually, the art direction of that shot and the artwork for that album were the first time I had a session with “hide”.    In a wrecking yard    in Yokosuka.   Rocket.   PARK SIDE X…    I properly met    Matsumoto Hideto   and his roots.   A  n  d   t  h  e  n        a    n  d     t  h  e   n         A n  y  w  a  y    “hide”’s    existence   blood   was earnest.  Serious.

Also   because he was    someone   who said “I tell you   let it evolve”   I worked with him again   and   again.

Q3: Please tell us of an episode with hide that left an impression on you.

A: I did the art direction of the “hide” 1996 calendar we did together in L.A..

That! Yeah! “hide”   in his head   You! Art director! Supervisor! he said   as expected   someone   who   understood the universe.

There are many episodes.

Many    times    when   we joined   extremely    so amazing =☆   A    representative    of    Earth.

By the way    “hide”    has    in his time    as representative    gone beyond his time on Earth    with a BOOM.

At the record company    who was doing overtime    was    certainly   “hide”   and such.  The ideas for the jacket   are endless!    Endless!    Endless!   That    again   until the end    planning.    Moving on    from Earth time   fully   let’s expaaaaand it; he said    and did so    indefinitely…

Nevertheless    a beloved     important person   whatever happens    I won’t betray him –

In that L.A.   this again    right in front of    the beautiful stars    hide suddenly asked me, “Ken, when you broke your skull, what did you dream of?”

Me: “Only,,, only,,, a long pathway under the earth,,, fluorescent lamps going on endlessly,,, I was riding a stretcher,,, why am I being carried,,, that image” I said.

Hide said, “You ○○○”, such an ill omened thing to say,,,”Don’t be stupid, hide!” I answered. I guess–    hide was like no one else.

Over and over   after this    that’s right!    ∞,,,   No, again, again, not enough. Forever! ∞

Q4: What kind of person was hide to you?

A: He went around, went around, went around, went around, went around, went around, went around, went around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around   To the end   “hide”’s existence is right in front of me    Earnest.    At any time    whatever happens    without    betrayal    goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around, goes around,   at any time   at the start    next to me    laughing and saying    “Stupid Ken is gonna be stupid.”

Q5: If you ever saw him live, please tell us of your impression.

A: The event at Chiba Marine Stadium that was “hide” announcing LEMONed.

“LEMONed presents hide Indian Summer Special” !!!

Only chatting through an international phone call,,,   That I got to meet “hide” in person again, a long time since L.A….   The backstage guest since before the opening     already    beer was served    (we who loved alcohol took anti-nausea-medicine from hide’s younger brother and manager, “Hiroshi”-kun),,,  from that point I was exited for long, loooooong, for “hide” to start.

Anyway    that day too    Earth time or something    left it behind with a “BOOM”.    Really    exceeded it.

“KIYOSHI”   “PATA”   “CHIROLYN”    “JOE”    “DIE”    “INA”    Those seven people ,    extremely ,    already popped!   Blown away by the excitement    for the festival    around there!    Well, or weren’t they! “hide” was already throwing off the image of “hide the guitarist” like a set of clothes,,   !!   Leaped out of Chiba Marine Stadium with momentum, flew around on the stage. There were laser rays! Parachutes! A dog! Crossdressing CHIROLYN! DIE-chan’s fall! Bone fracture! There was!  Then, the final magnificent fireworks display! That kind of feeling,,, well.   Even on Earth    even in Japan,,,   There can be such a fun event! To say, really, they slayed it! We all got “hide’s” strong message that said, Let’s move on to the next world!

The afterparty of such an event, as maybe expected, began in a club in Ebisu, that “hide drinking version of autumn festival”, got terribly lively, turned into an even in the back! Goes without saying. The girls from the fashion show were also there, it was gorgeous…

No matter what, the mysterious people gathered there, they were,   a bottomless pit    of heavy   drinkers!!!!!!! That fun atmosphere went all the way to a food stall in front of Ebisu Station. From the main station, already at work rush, the salarymen and office ladies were hurrying to their companies in a flurry of activity. The party of mysterious people, and some OLs [office ladies] who happened to be nearby, went to buy bentos in a convenience store and eat them, until past noon,,, That laughing voice continued to eternity. (I was later shown group photos taken at that food stall in front of Ebisu Station by “Hiroshi”-kun, but,,, somehow, it was really a party of mystery people!)

“hide” and, “BUCK TICK’s” IMAI and, our time to go home was,,, Already! What! That’s all! Drink until the end!   ,,,,,,   No, no, that anti-sickness-medicine! I say, it worked well. Mr. Sun!

Q6: Out of hide’s songs, which is your favorite and why?

A: “SCANNER”

Really! We are skull-fracture brothers! We discussed the cosmos    a lot   plotted   of course   all the fun to come    after this    therefore

Even with this    this questionnaire    I can’t express it    like I want toooooooo–

Well! From that    let’s start    again and again    from this    that’s right! ∞ ,,,No, again, again, it’s not enough.         Forever! ∞   That’s right!   I guess so    we, too    the incomparable “Sakaguchiken”      We’ll laugh – okay!    G - g -   good waves  ,,  69! ∞

[totowlff]

chapter ten — jackpot

➝ what are the chances of a dream coming true on any given friday?

➝ word count: 3,8k

➝ warnings: mentions of medical procedures

➝ author’s notes: i strongly advise you to translate the parts in german.

Cassie sat in her car for a few minutes, trying to calm herself down before she went into the fertility clinic.

She had come to find out if she could undergo her second attempt at in-vitro fertilization after the first round had failed.

She and Toto had made the decision together to proceed with a second round at her flat a few weeks prior. The following Monday, Cassie called the clinic to find out what the procedure would be like since they had some frozen embryos.

Her doctor explained that, although she would not need to go through the egg retrieval process like the first time, she would need to repeat the cycle of hormones she’d gone through before the first embryo transfer to prepare her uterus for implantation once more. Cassie had a feeling that would be the case, but she was still a bit frustrated when she found out that she would need to wait a month following the period she’d had after the first failed round. Her doctor had explained that it was important to give  her uterus a chance to recover from the first cycle. It was understandable, but Cassie was still anxious. 

Since she and Toto decided to try again, she’d started counting down the days on her wall calendar until she would be able to start a new cycle. It was agonizing — she’d have to wait five weeks to the day after one of the most depressing days of her life.

Finally, the appointed Friday arrived. Cassie woke up early to go to the clinic for a quick fasting blood draw before work to check her hormone levels so her doctor could plan the next cycle. She didn’t mind — it was a race week, so it was better for her to be at the factory early, anyway.

After her blood was drawn, Cassie was told to stop by at the end of the day to receive the results and figure out what her next steps would be. She thanked the nurse and left the clinic, unable to shake her looming anxiety.

The day felt like it was dragging on, even though Cassie was incredibly busy with her race weekend workload. She had also been dealing with her period earlier on in the week, and was still feeling a little fatigued. However, even the urge to go home and lie down on the couch didn’t stop her from going back to the clinic after work for her results, and to find out what was next.

Cassie took a few deep breaths bet getting out of the car and going into the building. She felt her phone vibrate inside her bag as she stepped into the clinic’s waiting room, but ignored it for a moment while she said hello to the receptionist. 

— Good afternoon, Miss Aldersey — she said.

— Good afternoon, Ashley, I came to get the results of my blood test from this morning — Cassie replied. 

While Ashley typed something into her computer, Cassie opened her purse and checked her phone. Toto had sent her a message.  “I'll answer him later”, she thought, shoving the phone back into her purse.

— Of course, Miss Aldersey. Could you follow me? — the receptionist said, while getting up to lead her to a private room. It was just like when she’d started this process and received her blood test results and instructions.

Cassie didn’t find the experience of having to go through all of this again very pleasant. She had hoped to go through this only once and only return to check on issues related to the health of the baby growing inside her. But fate, God, coincidences, chance, or some other entity ensured that she wasn’t pregnant after her first embryo transfer.

Upon entering the room, Ashley asked her to sit down and wait for the nurse to arrive so they could review her results. While she waited, she fished her cell phone out of her purse to check the message Toto had sent her. It was direct and simple.

“Is everything going okay? How are your blood tests?”, his message read.

Cassie wrote that she was waiting on the nurse and put her phone back in her bag as soon as she tapped “send”. As soon as she zipped up her purse, Martina, the head nurse at the clinic, knocked on the door and let herself in.

— Good afternoon, Miss Aldersey, how are you?

— I’m okay, Martina. How about you?

— I'm fine, honey. So, let’s talk about your results.

— Okay.

— Your hormone levels are very good, which leads us to believe that you’re making good progress so far.

— I'm glad — Cassie said.

— It is normal for these levels to double every two days, so these high numbers are what we expect to see — Martina said, pointing out some numbers on the clipboard she was showing Cassie —  They are within the expected range for the beginning of a healthy pregnancy.

Cassie blinked, stunned.

— I'm sorry, but did you say pregnancy?

— Yes, Miss Aldersey.

More silence.

— I think there's been a mistake, Martina.

The woman widened her eyes.

— Why makes you think that, Miss Aldersey?

— My first cycle didn't work out. I… I thought this blood test was to do a check for my hormones before another embryo transfer. Why are you talking about pregnancy?

The woman looked down at the test results in her hands, then back up at Cassie.

— Well, your results indicate that there are levels of hCG in your blood that are consistent with that of a pregnant woman.

She felt her heart skipping a beat.

— Martina, that doesn't make any sense — Cassie said — I did the tests before, nothing was detected, I had my period right after, and another period just finished. There must have been some sort of mix-up in the lab or something...

— Miss Aldersey, you were the only patient who had a blood draw today. There weren’t any other samples in the lab to mix yours up with.

Cassie blinked. She felt like the floor was disappearing under her feet.

— But... But... Is there a chance that there was some… Mistake… A false positive?

— It’s not impossible, but it’s not likely — Martina replied, looking again at the papers in her hand, reading the numbers printed on them. When she saw the look on Cassie's face, she looked thoughtful for a moment — Well, if I may ask... Have you had sexual intercourse in the last five weeks?

The image of Toto above her, his face contorted in an expression of pure pleasure as he came inside her filled Cassie's mind. It had been… 

Four weeks.

— Uh, well… Y-yes — Cassie stammered, a little dazed.

Martina smiled.

— Well, then I believe that there is a high likelihood that you conceived naturally since your last period.

Cassie was having a hard time wrapping her head around it. No, it wasn’t possible.

— But, my period just ended…

— Was the flow lighter than normal?

Cassie thought for a second, before tentatively nodding.

— It was probably implantation bleeding, which is quite common in the first few weeks of pregnancy. 

Cassie fell silent, and her heart was beating so fast she thought it would explode inside her chest. Her breathing was heavy, her hands had started to shake. It seemed too surreal to be true. “Am I dreaming?”, she wondered.

— Miss Aldersey — Martina said, crouching down in front of her and placing her hands on Cassie’s knees, a wide smile on her face — You did it. You're pregnant.

— I'm pregnant — she repeated, as if in a trance.

— You’re going to be a mum.

— I’m going to be a mum — Cassie repeated.

— Yes, there's a little baby growing inside you right now. And it is doing very well, Miss Aldersey, if your hormone levels are any indication.

Cassie’s head was floating, her body numb. It couldn’t be.

— Fuck — she muttered.

Martina laughed.

— I know this isn’t usually how women find out they’re pregnant, but it's a special moment nonetheless, don’t you think?

— What now?

The head nurse smiled.

— Well, in case of success at conception, we refer the patient to an obstetrician for pregnancy care. 

— But… What should I do?

— I'm sorry, I don't understand, Miss Aldersey.

— I mean, there’s so much to do now, like… do I buy maternity clothes? Should I start putting that… cocoa bu4tter lotion on my belly? Do I put in for leave at work? Do I already choose the hospital where I will give birth? Should I start getting the nursery ready? What about the name? — she asked, gesturing wildly. She knew she was rambling, but she couldn’t stop herself. It felt like all the pregnancy articles she'd read up until then started to jumble together in her head.

— I know it’s a lot to think about, but I think you could start by telling your partner that he's going to be a father.

The word 'father' made Cassie's heart skip a beat. Not only had she become a mother-to-be, but Toto had also become a father-to-be. He needed to know that he was going to have a child. He needed to know that they had done it, in more ways than one.

But Toto was in Spain. She couldn’t possibly tell him over the phone.

The rest of the conversation with Martina was a blur. Cassie received prescriptions, a referral to an obstetrician, and a pair of white crocheted baby booties from the clinic, and the well-wishes of the nurse and staff.

Back in the car, Cassie had no idea what to do. She felt dazed, lost, and a little scared. She had gone to start a second fertilization cycle and left the clinic with the news she had been waiting for months, something she’d wanted more than anything. Instead of feeling joy, she felt an almost-paralyzing fear.

Staring at the silver Mercedes logo on the steering wheel, resting her hands on her stomach, Cassie only snapped out of her thoughts when she heard the insistent vibrating of her phone inside of her purse. She dug it out again and saw Toto’s name on the caller ID. 

— Hello?

— Hi, Cassie. Is everything okay?

"You are going to be a father".

— Yes — she replied, in a thin voice.

— How did things go at the clinic?

"I'm pregnant".

— Things went… Fine  — Cassie said, hesitantly.

Toto was quiet on the other end of the line, like he knew something was up.

— Are you sure, Cassie? Any issues with the results?

"We are going to have a child".

— Yes. There was a… Change.

— Change? What kind of change? You weren't taking any medications.

"In our life, forever".

— I know, but… It's just… Toto, this is something I'd like to talk to you about in person.

More silence on the other end of the line.

— It is serious?

“Do you consider having a child serious, Toto?”

— No, not really. What time do you come back on Sunday?

— I believe I'll be in Oxford by early evening. I can stop by your flat before I go home. How about that?

— Perfect — she replied, forcing herself to smile. If she sounded more optimistic, over the phone, maybe Toto would worry less.

He said goodbye to her and hung up the phone. After staring at her own reflection on the screen for a few seconds, Cassie leaned her head against the back of the seat, letting out a long sigh, bringing her hand to her stomach.

She would lose it by then.

The weekend was agonizing. Cassie's effort to think about anything other than the fact that there was a human being growing inside her was futile. She seemed to sabotage herself at every turn, whether it was spending time doing research, browsing Instagram and looking at other people’s baby pictures, or watching free and qualifying practices, hoping to see a little bit of Toto.

“Does he have any idea what I'm going to tell him?” she wondered, staring at the image of him on the television, his jaw set in concentration as he sat at the engineering station. It made Cassie think of his expression when he was inside her, promising that he would give a child to her. He unknowingly fulfilled his promise that night.

Cassie was far more nervous on Sunday morning. She was so distracted that she couldn’t finish anything she’d started. She was having breakfast when she decided to take a shower. In the middle of the shower, she remembered something that she wanted to look something up. She left something out on the counter instead of putting it in the refrigerator. Her nerves were so bad that her stomach was twisting and churning, making her throw out the uneaten half of her breakfast. When she tried to put on her deodorant, she recoiled at the smell and became immediately nauseous. 

— Thanks for letting me know you're there, little brat — she muttered, getting up from in front of the toilet to brush her teeth and get the taste of bile out of her mouth.

After leaving the bathroom, Cassie went back for something she had bought at the end of the first fertilization cycle, when she still hoped she was pregnant. She dug through her bedroom closet, moving aside some clothes and a few boxes until she found what she was looking for. It was a small box. She took the package in her hand and sat on the edge of her bed to open the lid, revealing a small onesie nestled in some teal tissue paper, smiling at it. It had a race car and some text that said “Future Mercedes Driver” on it. Cassie thought it was too cute to resist ordering when she saw it online.

It was how she’d planned on surprising Toto with the good news the first time, but when the first IVF cycle failed, she shoved the box deep into her closet, because remembering she had it was too painful. But now it was real. The onesie had an owner growing inside of her, and the owner’s father needed to know.

At the end of the day, Cassie received a message from Toto, a heads-up that he was returning from Barcelona and that his flight would be landing after about two hours. She sent a thumbs-up emoji, for lack of anything better to say to him other than "you're going to be a father".

Those few hours felt so long. Not even the fourth episode of Girlboss managed to distract Cassie from looking at the little white box resting on her coffee table. Her eyes were glued to her phone’s clock, and she was practically praying for time to pass faster so her anticipation and nerves would be resolved sooner. She just wanted to be able to tell Toto so that they would be able to enjoy the moment together. Only when Toto, the man who had been dreaming of this with her, knew, would she be able to relax.

The sound of the doorbell made her jump off the couch and practically sprint to the button near her door that opened the building’s exterior door. A few seconds later, Cassie heard a knock on the door to her flat. She broke into a smile as she opened it, and could feel her heart pounding in her chest. 

— Good evening, Cassie — Toto said.

— Good evening — she replied, exerting a great deal of effort to appear nonchalant  — Come in.

He walked past her and toed off his shoes in the hallway as Cassie closed the door. She felt like her whole body was trembling. Taking a second to breathe, she followed after him, who had headed into the living room, where the episode of Girlboss was paused.

— Well, I was going to stop by today anyway, but you said you needed to talk to me, so I decided to stop by before I went home.

— Yes, I needed… I need to.

— Well, I'm here. 

Cassie stared at him in silence for a few seconds.. “How do you start this kind of conversation?”, she wondered. Her hesitation caused Toto to look concerned.

— Cassie, is there something wrong? Did something show up on your blood test?

— I think you'd better sit down — she said quietly.

He raised an eyebrow.

— Cassie, I'm not going to do anything until you tell me what’s wrong. Please, tell me.

The words got stuck in her throat. Her eyes filled with tears. Even before the first tear could run down her cheek, Toto got close to her, cradling her face gently in his hands.

— Cassandra, if you don't tell me, I won't know how to help you.

— Toto — she sniffed, placing one of her hands over his. 

— Come on, my angel, tell me.

She looked at him. Hearing him call her “my angel” sent a tingle down her spine, but it gave her the resolve to finally speak.

— There was… A change in the hormone levels on my blood test.

— What kind of change?

— The level of a hormone called ‘hCG’ is… Elevated — she whispered.

Toto blinked.

— Is that serious?

— Well, it depends.

— Depends on… What?

— How serious is a child for you?

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds. Toto’s face became puzzled.

— What?

— I'm pregnant — she finally managed to say. Tears were falling down her face in earnest now — We're having a baby.

After a few seconds, Toto cracked a smile. Not just any smile, a wide smile, the kind that went all the way to his eyes and caused the top of his nose to crinkle. His eyes were shining with tears too, but he could only laugh. Removing his hands from her face, he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her into a hug, spinning with Cassie in the middle of the room, their laughter echoing through the apartment.

— We're going to have a baby — Toto repeated as she held onto his neck, laughing and crying at the same time. She had never felt so happy in her life, not even with her professional achievements. And that realization was, at the same time, incredible and frightening.

Suddenly, he stopped, setting Cassie on the ground.

— Fuck, you shouldn't have done that, right? — he asked, in a slightly worried tone. — Did I hurt you? Did I hurt the baby?

Cassie laughed.

— No, I'm fine. And considering the baby is the size of a poppy seed, I don't think it cares too much at this point.

— But how? When? The first cycle failed — he stopped for a few seconds.

— Yes, the IVF failed, but, uh… The other method did not.

He blinked.

— We hit the jackpot — Cassie smirked, placing a hand on her stomach.

Looking down at her hand, Toto was silent. It was like he was trying to take everything in, trying to convince himself that it was real. 

He was trying to convince himself that he was going to be a father.

— Fuck — he muttered.

— Don't talk like that in front of our child.

— Sorry.

— It’s okay — she whispered, with a smile on her face.

After a few more seconds

— Can I talk to her? — he asked quietly.

— To the baby? — Cassie asked. She was a little confused.

— Yeah.

— Of course — she replied — It's your child too.

Taking her hand, Toto walked over to the couch and sat down, positioning Cassie between his knees. Then, he took his hands to the shirt she was wearing and lifted it a little, enough so that her navel showed, just above the line of the shorts she was wearing. There weren't any signs that could suggest a pregnancy yet, but Cassie started crying again anyway. Then he looked up at Cassie, as if he was considering a question he would ask.

— Toto?

— Can I speak German with her? I want to… Express myself properly.

— You can talk to her in whatever language you’d like. Even in Tengwar, for all I care.

He smiled again.

— That’s from Lord of the Rings, right? I don’t speak that, but I can learn. I'm good with languages.

— I know, mister polyglot — Cassie chuckled, rolling her eyes a little.

Turning his eyes to her belly, he took a deep breath.

— Hallo Tochter. Oder Sohn, aber ich bin sicher, du bist ein kleines Mädchen. Dein Vater spricht. Ich bin so froh, dass du endlich auf dem Weg bist. Du hast keine Ahnung, wie oft ich von dir geträumt habe. Mit dir und deiner Mutter. Du wachst neben mir auf, machst gemeinsam Frühstück, spielst auf unserem Rasen. Und jetzt, du bist hier, bei uns. Na ja, nicht gerade bei uns, denn du hast noch etwas Zeit im Bauch deiner Mutter, aber du bist in gewisser Weise hier.

Cassie was a little embarrassed that she only knew two modern languages, unlike Toto, who spoke five fluently, with only a slight accent. She had taken French lessons during her school years, but she hadn't actually retained much of it. In college, she learned modern and ancient Greek as well as Latin, which was of little use in the marketing world.

However, maybe it was better that Cassie couldn’t understand German. Toto was speaking to their child in his mother tongue, in the way he felt most comfortable. It was like seeing him for real, freed from the filters that other languages put on his words.

— Ich kann es kaum erwarten, dich kennenzulernen, Tochter. Ich kann es kaum erwarten, dich in meinen Armen zu halten und in deine Augen zu sehen, die wahrscheinlich der schönste Braunton der Welt sein werden. Ich kann es kaum erwarten, Küsse auf deinen Kopf zu pflanzen, der mit roten Strähnen bedeckt ist, wie der deiner Mutter. Du wirst so schön sein wie deine Mutter, da bin ich mir sicher. Und ich werde genauso verrückt nach dir sein, wie ich verrückt nach ihr bin.

Cassie thought she could puzzle out a few of the words he was saying, just because they sounded similar to words in English, like ‘tochter’, which sounded like ‘daughter’, and ‘sohn’, which had to mean ‘son’. She also recognized the word ‘mutter’, which she assumed was ‘mother’, which made her think maybe he was mentioning her, but that was the extent of what she could understand.

— Ich werde immer für dich da sein, meine Tochter. Für dich und deine Mutter. Ich liebe dich, Tochter, ich liebe dich, und ich liebe deine Mutter. Ihr beide seid mir das Wichtigste auf der Welt. Die einzigen Dinge, die zählen — Toto spoke softly, resting his head on her stomach. Cassie then brought her hands to his head, her fingers tangling in his dark hair.

— Thank you — she murmured.

He looked up, a little startled.

— For what?

— For keeping your promise.

Toto smiled as he stood up, embracing Cassie in a warm hug. He looked down at her with a fond look on his face.

— I will always keep my promises to you, Cassandra. Always.

[lesharl-eclair]

F1: a colorised history 1/10 - text and graphics mine with thanks to Wikipedia and Reddit

text in photo below the cut :) if you spot any mistakes please let me know!

The first-ever World Championship for Drivers was concluded in just seven Grand Prix races in 1950, one of the shortest official calendars to date. Points were awarded to the top five finishers in each race on an 8–6–4–3–2 basis, and 1 point was awarded for the fastest lap of each race.  The 1950-1957 era was marked by the dominance of factory Italian and German cars, seeing the rise and fall of Alfa Romeo, the invincibility of Ferrari, and the technical genius of Mercedes, then known as Daimler-Benz. Giuseppe Farina would claim his first and only victory in a blood-red Alfa Romeo 158 in 1950, but the Alfettas struggled and eventually withdrew, making Ferrari practically invincible from 1952. The FIA (being the FIA) could not do anything about this and was in an embarrassing position as it had already announced that current regulations would last until 1954. Major manufacturers were already working to develop cars for the future regulation so there was a lack of serious competition. FIA eventually adopted Formula Two regulations for the 1952-53 seasons in an attempt to curb Ferrari dominance but this did not work very well, as Alberto Ascari won 11 of 16 races and thus the championships over these two years, remaining the last Italian driver to do so.  Daimler-Benz came to the formula in 1954, bringing with it the first desmodromic valves and direct fuel injection - their technological superiority was proven as they swept the next two seasons. This was sadly marred by a catastrophic crash at Le Mans in June, which killed driver Pierre Levegh and 82 other spectators, and prompted the constructor's exit from motorsport until 1994. The 1955 season was curtailed by tragedy, seeing the deaths of four drivers including Ascari, who crashed at Monaco before crashing again, this time fatally, during testing at Monza four days later. Following Daimler-Benz’s departure, Juan-Manuel Fangio, affectionately known as El Maestro, won two more titles with Ferrari and Maserati in 1956 and 1957, totalling five titles in this period with four different teams, and holding the highest winning percentage in F1 at 47.06% to this day.

[formulatrash]

Hello Hazel!

Everyone on twitter is talking about the 4 races in 5 weeks/6 races in 8 weeks thing and I saw that thread by Joe Pompliano about how teams are jumping to and from all these continents (i.e. Baku then Miami, only to go to the US again later) and so was wondering about how F1 said they were trying to arrange a region based calendar for next year since the current calendar isn’t sustainable.

So I was thinking, are the travel/hotel costs of the teams part of the cost cap? Because if they are, wouldn’t F1/the teams just decide to have a triple headers all around so that they don’t have to pay the costs that come with flying their employees back or paying for hotels for the extra week when there isn’t a race if it’s overseas? Sorry, I feel like I can’t articulate what I mean that well but I hope my point is coming across.

I know they’re still doing double and triple headers even if the races aren’t in the same continent but the frequency of them would be waaay more and I feel like that still wouldn’t be a sustainable way of living for the people working in this industry, even if it is more sustainable for the planet that they aren’t having to go back the same continent 2-3 times and only having to go there once.

Thanks!

F1 sort of mumbled about a regionalised calendar but it doesn't seem to be happening. there's feeling that having a European or say, North American leg of the calendar would create a situation where less popular races lost out to more popular ones and the event bosses are keen not to have direct geographic competition next to their event.

that is, of course, rubbish. F1 traditionally had a European chunk of the calendar and despite the exorbitant price of events, people often do chain them together as a road trip, when they can. home crowds will go to 'their' race regardless - and in the Americas, Montreal and Sao Paulo are a pretty goddamned long way away from each other, while Vegas and Miami only exist as premium events that dont share a market with the others.

teams do pay for their logistics and freight out of the cost cap; last year when the price of freight quadrupled there was a cost cap increase to reflect the fact it was impossible to have allowed the right amount, under massive price hikes. this didn't just affect F1, it was all global logistics; some freight was up as much as 800% and logistics costs remain sky-high, as well as very unreliable, I wrote a load about it here if you're interested.

so: human and freight logistics are one of the hardest puzzles to solve in F1 generally and made harder by the complicated calendar. would untangling it somewhat help? yeah, probably; it's not totally straightforward because there are times when events need to be held because of weather (like, good luck moving Silverstone and expecting anything other than freezing sleet and Jeddah clearly can't be held in summer) but there are definitely efficiencies that can be made.

proportional to freight, people movement is relatively less of a problem. F1 uses charter jets most of the time so the costs are pretty different to just putting everyone on a British Airways flight and honestly, the finances of it aren't the issue.

the problem, both for trackside and factory staff, is that it's not possible to perform at an F1 level 30 weeks a year. a grand prix isn't the Sunday race, it's prep work that starts months in advance, it's hours of programming an computer development, tooling, parts coordination and design, it's running a garage and fluid lab and IT operation trackside and the operations and simulator back at the factory for five days straight for each event. it's just not possible to make that work to a high enough level for the sport for that much of the year.

F1 isn't a spec series, it is a development race and it is ludicrous but there's also a reason it's so popular whereas the series with objectively better racing that are more spec, running on lower budgets and with less setup time and resources across a weekend, just aren't. I'm the last person to buy into the mythology about F1's pinnacle of technology - it's the pinnacle of the sport of F1, not automotive tech - but the reason people like it is because it does what it does at an unbelievable, impossibly high level.

you can't do that if either no one wants to work in it because it's basically a hotel jail sentence or there's no time to do the development that lets F1 teams play the game as well as they do.

[lazyrants]

Sports Day (prod 102)

Original airdate: August 17, 2004

Story by Magnus Scheving, Mani Svavarrson

Written by Rocky Garibaldi, Scott Gray, Magnus Scheving

Directed by Rufus Scott Church

Executive producers - Magnus Scheving, Ragnheidur Melsted, Raymond P. Le Gue, Mark Read, Brown Johnson, Kay Wilson Stallings

Starring Magnus Scheving, Stefan Karl Steffanson, Julianna Rose Mauriello

Puppeteers - Ronald Binion, Gudmondor Thor Karason, Jodi Eichelberger, Heather Asch, David Matthew Feldman, Julie Westwood, Sarah Burgess

Sports Day was the first LazyTown episode the crew worked on after the Lazy Dance. Not directed by Magnus Scheving, but instead Rufus Scott Church, this episode is very different from others with CGI and green screen flaws. Does the plot in fact make up for that?

The episode begins with Sportacus brushing his teeth, then noticing the date on the calendar (of course, in classic Sportacus fashion, while he's upside down) and realizing that it's LazyTown Sports Day, then he rides his airship into town to see what's going on. This cold open uses a terrible green screen of Sportacus doing the t-pose flip in the opening credits instead of just recording a new one.

Milford is trying to fix the town up to get the kids excited for Sports Day while Bessie is chit chatting on the phone. Nothing new, but it is so extravagating how Bessie does no work at all.. and why in the world does she have TWO PHONES?

Anyways, the LazyTown kids are hanging together outside and Stephanie is reading a book about the history of the town. She reaches a page about Sports Day and everyone says they won't do it this year because they're bad. Seems like everyone has forgot the lessons from the past episodes.. AGAIN. God, I hate when this happens.

Luckily for Stephanie, Sportacus has just arrived in the town and has a surprise for everyone - Ziggy guesses it's chocolate twice, but Sportacus is actually trying to say it's Sports Day. I don't know why it's so funny, but everyone just says "awwww" except Stephanie.

Anyways, nobody comes except Sportacus and Stephanie until Sportacus says that Milford is (well, trying to) fix the town up. Suddenly everyone has a change in character when Pixel says the field is ready for a race. 20 seconds ago you guys were dreading this idea!

Robbie is in his lair, deciding what to wear, declining every single outfit for the one he wears IN EVERY SINGLE EPISODE OF THE SHOW. God, I love the scripts of this show. Cherry on top? He gets a miniature version that couldn't even fit a doll, BUT IT WORKS.

Anyways, Robbie decides to peep through the hole and look at what the LazyTowners are doing. He sees Bessie.. relaxing and gasps and gags. Very confusing knowing that Robbie is all for being lazy, but then the camera pans and we realize that he is gasping at the gang playing with a ball on the field. So.. weird. Not funny (well, his face kinda is..)

Robbie has his 400th Lazy Idea of the week, which is to buy the field, which in real life would not work unless you had a mayor as bumbling as MAYOR MILFORD MEANSWELL, who unknowingly accepts to the deal, until Sportacus steps in and says that he has to beat him and the gang at sports day. Robbie says that if he does win, that he will make the sports field a pillow stuffing factory, and Sportacus has to leave town. Sportacus handshakes him. See, that's why I liked him. He was the only one who had guts to speak up. Robbie accepts the deal, and they start training.

Ziggy is put in the job of Sports Candy Supervisor, and his task is to get sportscandy for the gang to power up. Ziggy is the last person I would ever put in this role, so either Sportacus has lots of faith in his friends - or sometimes he is just plain stupid.

Anyways, the kids start exercising, running around. Pixel is doing pushups, Trixie is doing handstands, Stephanie is trying to stretch (and failing, which is totally out of character), and Ziggy is using giant lollipops at barbells. At least he's doing something. Stingy is doing sit ups, and he can't do them for his LIFE, unless you shake money or his piggy bank around his face. Robbie is being lazy in his lair, and of course, making gadgets for the race. For the man that made the deal, he really is not taking it seriously. Stingy is being the jerk he is and refusing to give anyone the baton in practice, and they (the puppets) all chase him as fast as they can, which might have been the only workout they did.

So anyways, Pixel is spouting data about how bad they were (shut up, french fry hair boy) and Ziggy brings out sportscandy (gummy people that Ziggy makes run, jump and spin into the mouth), but Sportacus says they need REAL energy. So instead of climbing up to get an apple from a tree, instead he decides to cartwheel and flip to the tree, then whacks it to make it fall down. Effective, but.. well.. it's cool, too. I ain't complainin.

Sportacus gives Stephanie an apple, then he does a spinning flip in the air. Why? He has more apples in his backpack. (It could have taken much more shorter to just.. hand everyone the apples..) Then they perform "Energy" while Robbie is watching. He scolds Sportacus for thinking he can win by eating fruits, then he yells one of the 2: "THAT'S DISGUSTING!!" or "IT'S DISGUISE TIME!". If anyone can buy the script from Mark Valenti on eBay (no, seriously, he's selling about 30 scripts from Season 1) and tell me what it says, deeply appreciated.

Pixel asks Sportacus if he's ever eaten sugar before, and Sportacus tells him the whole story - he ate too much sugar, all his energy drained and he fell to the floor. That's why he doesn't eat it anymore. TLDR - Sugar gives Sportacus diabetes. I know this show is crazy on the health aspect, but that's actually ridiculous even for Sportacus.

However, Robbie is in his classic mailbox costume, spying on them when Ziggy is told to get more apples. Ziggy tries to climb the apple tree, but he can't reach it. His solution? A sugar apple that Robbie whipped up with Rotten Candy Faker Maker 4000. Robbie puts it on a fishrod and hits Ziggy on the head with it. Ziggy believes it is magic and he HAS to take the apple. Personally, I WOULDN'T take a floating apple.. but, Nickelodeon, man.

Anyways, Sports Day starts with a race between Robbie and Sportacus (Robbie starts two seconds earlier.. and loses in the end anyways). Mid-way, Ziggy gives Sportacus the apple, and he takes a bite and flops his way to a bench. Oh, no, he's dead.

Stephanie gives Ziggy the baton and Robbie is now on the biking section of the race. Trixie is doing the scooter section, and everyone is kinda mad at Ziggy until Pixel finds out the apple came from Robbie's gadget. If you ask me, I don't think they should've been mad to begin with. Ziggy's too nice to give Sportacus a sugar apple.

They give Sportacus a bite of the real apple, he wakes up ready for the baton and biking and rides over Robbie who has been taking a power nap. Stephanie gives him the skateboard, he jumps onto it and basically flies with it. Awesome! He wins the race. Robbie doesn't see it and puts HIS ride onto power mode and crashes into an apple tree. Sportacus gets to stay in LazyTown, and they all sing the Bing Bang song. The end.

There are so many things wrong with this episode it's aggravating. Horrible green screens, montage music that sounds like it wasn't composed by Mani out of character dialogue, a mediocre song and once again, an absent Robbie ending. WHY?!

Good plot, but a very weak episode.

5/10

[kemecalendar]

Creative Beech Magnet Hanging Poster Calendar

[szottesfolditanyak]

Olga Kharitidi,

'90-es évek, Novoszibirszk, pszichiátriai intézet.

" Later, as I was completing my paperwork and dreading the long bus trip back to my little apartment, the phone rang in my office. I picked it up and heard "Hello, Olga!” in a voice I recognized immediately as Anna’s. Anna was a medical doctor, and we had been close friends for many years. I had become adept at sensing the many different moods of her complex personality through the sounds and rhythms of her voice. Today she sounded tired and worried.

As usual, for a while we chattered about nothing and everything. Anyone listening to us might have found our conversation trivial, but every time we talked, even about simple things, I rediscovered the importance of our friendship. There was always a phrase, an emotion, or simply a surge of energy between us that left me feeling joyful and alive. I knew it was the same for her.

The main reason for her call today became clear when she asked if I could make time to see her neighbor, who feared he had a serious mental problem. I couldn’t refuse her request, so I asked her to send him to my office the next day at three o’clock. Anna had never visited me at the hospital, so I gave her directions and I marked the appointment in my calendar. We made a date to see each other soon and then said our good-byes.

The next day, at exactly three PM., the day nurse brought a young man to my office. He stood hesitantly in my doorway.

“How do you do, doctor. I am Nicolai. Your friend, Anna Anatolievna, referred me to you.”

Nicolai was a young Siberian with a handsome Mongolian face. With age, faces such as his were often dominated by a hard masculine strength. This man was still young enough to show hints of shyness and sensitivity, both of which were particularly apparent at the moment. He was clearly embarrassed and ill at ease to be standing in a psychiatrist’s office.

Apart from his nervousness, the young Siberian standing in front of me certainly didn’t look mentally ill. Still, I guessed he must have felt he was in serious trouble to have taken Anna into his confidence and then to have come here of his own free will. In my professional experience, I had discovered that very few people were willing to seek psychiatric help on their own. There was a tremendous stigma attached to any hint of mental abnormality. This not only dissuaded people from getting help but also led those who did so to try every means possible to keep it secret. If their situation became known by their friends or colleagues, it inevitably created social discrimination.

Nicolai moved forward and stood in the middle of my small office, still looking awkward and unsure of himself. I told him to make himself comfortable, gesturing him to the chair in front of my desk. I watched him as he went to it and sat down. He looked like a factory worker. He wore a neat dark gray suit, white shirt, and black tie. I could tell he perceived our meeting as a very official event. He sat nervously on the edge of the chair. I didn’t hurry him but simply waited for him to tell his story. After a short silence to collect his thoughts, he began.

“Thank you for seeing me. The reason I am here started about a month ago.”

He spoke Russian with a slight mountain accent I found pleasant. Anna had told me he came from Altai, an isolated, ethnically different region with its own language. I was not surprised to hear him give a typically Russian name, for all native peoples were given Russian names when they applied for internal passports from the Soviet state. It was a purposeful evil, intended to hasten the destruction of their cultures by deliberately erasing the heritage that lived in their names.

Nicolai didn’t look at me as he spoke. It was clear that he still felt very embarrassed but that he had made a commitment to himself to talk to me and was determined to fulfill it. Undoubtedly it was difficult for him to open up his mind to a stranger, and he feared my reaction to what he was about to say.

“This thing began for me when my mother asked me to come home to my village in Altai.” The expression on his face showed that he was reluctant to speak about his village. This was common. Many youths who came to work in the city preferred to hide their country origins for fear of being ridiculed. He continued slowly.

“My uncle, Mamoush, had become very sick, and my mother needed me to help nurse him. We were his only relatives, and he had lived alone, apart from the other people of the village. I had never been interested in spending any time with him, but I could not refuse my mother’s request. I had no choice but to take a vacation without pay and go home.

“I spent ten days there. My uncle died on the fifth day. He was eighty four years old, and like most of our people of his age he knew his time had come. He had no interest in trying to live any longer. In our village we believe that anyone of his age has already lived a complete life and would want to die. I had never had much love for my uncle, so I had no desire to change anything unless it was to help him move on quickly so I could return to my life in the city.”

As Nicolai went on, his voice trembled, and he paused longer and longer between sentences. All the while, he continued to emphasize that he had never been close to his uncle. I couldn’t help wondering why he was still so nervous. His sensitive personality wasn’t enough by itself to explain being so affected by the death of an aged relative he had hardly even known. I knew his story didn’t fit together yet, but I didn’t ask questions or interrupt. My job for now was just to listen and let him continue his story in his own way.

Nicolai continued to ramble, telling me how difficult it had been for his mother to take care of his dying uncle and what he, Nicolai, had done to support her. Then he shared some opinions with me about the nature of his uncle’s disease, switching from one possible malady to another. I could see that his fears were getting in the way of his desire to be healed and that he was trying to find the courage to tell me the real essence of his story.

I finally decided to interrupt him, in an attempt to bring him back to the reason he had come here. “Nicolai, you suggested that whatever it was that you wanted to talk to me about began about a month ago?”

He agreed without either speaking or looking at me, simply nodding his head up and down.

“What happened after your uncle’s death?”

“Well, it is a strange story. . . .”

“I have heard many strange stories. What is so strange about yours?”

“Do you believe in shamans?” he asked tentatively.

Now it suddenly struck me that perhaps I, not he, might be the one in trouble. I knew almost nothing at all about shamanism. The word shaman had a very negative meaning in our society, as an unhealthy symbol of primitive cultural and spiritual beliefs. I had to be very careful with my answer.

“Unfortunately, I know only that shamanism had to do with the old religion of the Siberian peoples, long before Christianity. That is all I know. But I believe in the existence of people called shamans.”

Gradually, still without looking at me, he seemed to understand that I was accepting his words without judging them. His body relaxed into a softer posture, and his voice sounded less nervous.

“My uncle was a shaman,” he continued. “Because of that, I did not like to spend time with him. He lived in solitude on the edge of the village. Many who lived there believed he had very strong shamanic powers, but nobody was sure he used these powers only for the proper things. And maybe they were right. People were afraid of him, and they avoided him except when they needed his help for their problems and diseases.

"I never was interested in such things myself. From the time I was very young, my only wish was to leave him, and even my village, as soon as I could. You know there is nothing to do in the country, especially in the winter. It is cold and boring. I never doubted that I would go to the city right after I graduated from high school. I wanted to serve in the army but didn’t pass the medical examination. My vision is terrible. So, you might understand how happy I was to find my present job. I have been working here for almost a year now, and I have already been promised an apartment for next year. It is rare to have this happen so soon. For now, of course, I still live in a dormitory.”

I knew that as soon as young men and women got jobs at a plant, their names would be put on a waiting list to get their own apartments. Sometimes it could take up to twenty years for a name to come to the top of the list. Occasionally a name might even get lost, and the happy reward of a private place to live might never happen at all. These unfortunate people would live out their working lives in dormitories where three or four people shared a single small room. Sometimes as many as fifteen or twenty rooms would share one small kitchen area, one shower, and one toilet. I understood how much it would mean to Nicolai to be promised an apartment so soon.

Nicolai continued, “I have a girlfriend, and we are planning to get married. So, you could say that my life’s dreams have started to come true. Now I am afraid everything may be lost. I really need your help, doctor. I am ready to do anything, to take any medicines to restore my health. To restore my sanity.”

He looked at me with a desperate hope I rarely saw in my patients. It was still difficult for me to piece his story together. His shamanic uncle had died, and now he feared he was mentally ill. His problem was not yet clear to me. I tried to postpone a conclusion of some kind of psychosis, even if what I had heard so far of his story tempted me toward such a conclusion.

Hesitatingly, he resumed talking. “I fell sick the day after my uncles death. While he was dying, he had asked me to spend time with him alone. I was not happy about this at all, but I agreed because it was his last request. He lived in a small dark house without electricity. He had a collection of very strange things there: half-dead plants, stones (some with pictures on them), his drum, tattered clothes. Everything in his small house was unusual. I was frightened, yet I felt I had no choice but to spend his last days alone with him.

“Then my uncle began to speak to me about power — shamanic power. The first time, he talked more than two hours about it. I was not attentive. It sounded to me as if he was having some sort of dying fantasy, so I simply tried to be polite to him. We had many other conversations. I don’t remember much except the very last one.

“It happened late one night. His illness had grown worse and worse, but he hadn’t let me invite anyone else to be with us. His breathing became rapid and heavy. His speech became interrupted, and he seemed confused. I knew his end was near. Finally, he asked me to come close to his bed. The room was dark. Only the corner where his high, narrow wooden bed was placed was dimly lit by the flame of a single candle, burning on a small table amidst strange amulets and dried herbs.

“My uncle lay covered by a warm blanket made from multicolored scraps of different fabrics. When I drew near, he grasped my hand roughly in his own hot dry hands. From somewhere, his voice suddenly found great strength and clarity. He stared at me intensely. His whole being had changed so dramatically that for a moment I actually thought he had rid himself of his disease.

“Slowly and with great concentration, as if he might have been trying to hypnotize me, he said, ‘Shamanic powers live with us in this world, and they must be left in this world. I am dying, and my power won’t follow where I am going. I give it to you, because this is what has been decided by the spirits.’

“As he spoke I experienced a severe cramp in the hand he was so desperately holding. It felt as though a fire flashed through my body. I was too stunned for a moment even to notice that in that same instant my uncle had died. My state of mind was completely strange to me. I could not, and still cannot, fully describe what happened. I understand that this might be necessary for you to diagnose what’s wrong with me, but I don’t know what else to say. I tried to throw light on my problem by reading some books about psychiatry, but I had to give them up. It was much too difficult for me to understand the words.”

He had almost been reliving his experience as he described it. His left hand had seemed to cramp when he talked about it. His face was now sweating, as if he had heard his dead uncle’s voice again while talking to me.

“Let’s take a little break from talking about your uncle. Maybe you can tell me a little more of your life in the city?”

He accepted my suggestion with obvious relief. “What would you like me to tell you?” He shrugged his shoulders indecisively.

“Tell me about your work, the workers at your plant. How do they relate to you?”

“Well. Very well.”

I looked at him silently. He was motionless, sitting very straight on the edge of his chair. His posture showed a great deal of tension.

“They are good people, but they are very different from the people in my home village.”

“What are the differences?”

“Well, it’s difficult to say. I’ve never really thought about it. I’ve just felt it. They drink a lot, even at work. My people also like vodka, but they would never be as rude after a few drinks, or even after many drinks.”

I imagined this sensitive young man among his coarser fellow plant workers. Well, at least part of his dream of moving to the city hadn’t been as lovely as he had expected.

“Are you trying to be like them?”

“No, I don’t think so. I realize that I have to get used to being here, though. It was my wish to live in a big city, but I expected a lot more from it. I guess I still believe it can be a lot more. I only need to get used to being here. And I need to be healthy.”

After a brief pause, which seemed to help him collect his strength, Nicolai continued.

“After my uncle's death I had a very high fever for five days. I did not eat, I did not speak. I did not even remember who I was. In my delirium I saw him all the time. Thanks to a local district doctor, who came to see me and gave me some injections, I recovered from the fever. I forgot everything that had come to me in my sickness, and although I still felt very weak, I returned to work.

“Then I got better and better physically, but at the same time something began happening to my mind. I started to hear my uncle’s voice demanding that I remember my dreams. Now his voice comes to me without warning, anytime, anywhere. It comes when I am speaking with people, and when I am on the bus among strangers. I become deeply frightened when this happens, and I know I must seem crazy. I feel panic and want to run away. It is becoming so bad, I am afraid I may be fired from my job.” After a long, deep sigh, he asked if he might smoke.

Normally I would not let a patient smoke in my office. In Nicolai’s case, I decided to break the rule. I felt it would help him be comfortable and open up. He took a pack of cigarettes without filters from his suit pocket and frantically looked for his matches, his hands moving quickly from pocket to pocket without finding them.

I stood up and went to the corner of the room opposite my desk. From the top of the refrigerator I took the matches and the tea saucer that occasionally substituted as an ashtray and handed them to him.

The small hinged opening at the top of my window was too high for me to reach, so before going back to my desk, I used a long pine stick to open it a little bit. The stick had a carved human head at one end. It had been made for me a few years earlier by an elderly patient who for twenty years had believed he was God and who had tried incessantly to create people from wood. The man had died the year before, old and alone like so many of our patients. There were no relatives to bury him, so the hospital sent his body to the medical school to be used for studying anatomy.

I remembered that when I began medical school, one of the hardest things for me emotionally was having to dissect the old, thin, often decrepit corpses. Eventually, I had no choice but to relate to them as tools for science, trying to forget that they had once been people who had lived the ends of their lives alone, with no one to care for them or give them comfort at the moment they died. Even at the medical school, where they became objects in the name of science, their lifeless bodies were denied respect.

Freezing cold air burst in through the windows narrow opening and swirled through my office. Nicolai moved his chair away from my desk and smoked with deep inhalations.

“What am I going to do with this man?” I wondered. I knew I had all the resources I needed to begin an effective psychiatric strategy to diagnose and treat him. If Nicolai had been an official, legally admitted patient, I would have been more or less required to order a series of laboratory tests that would tell me if he suffered from the aftereffects of some unknown fever, manifested through a residual organic psychosis, with possible episodes of seizure. But in this case I could be more flexible, so I decided to try something different first. I would do what I felt was correct for Nicolai. Depending on the outcome, I could always use a more traditional psychiatric therapy later.

I asked him if he was willing to try an experiment. He nodded his head in agreement, and I asked, “Do you think you could hear your uncle’s voice again, in my presence?”

He inhaled deeply again, and it was obvious that the cigarette had made him more comfortable. "I think I can, but I don’t know how to make it happen. It always comes by itself, without my willing it."

“Perhaps we can do it together.”

“I agree to try.”

I pushed the hidden button on the floor near my desk, signaling for the nurse to come into my office. The button had been put there originally for emergencies with violent patients, but we usually used it as a form of communication between different stations in the hospital.

When the nurse arrived, I asked her to walk Nicolai to the hypnotary, the room where we carried out hypnosis, and to wait for me there. He put out his cigarette, stood up, and took his short black sheepskin coat from the nurse.

I watched them from the window as they walked through the snow to the hypnotary. They were talking to each other, and I wondered what about. The nurse was a professional. She had retired a few months ago but then had decided to return to work to help support her three daughters. It was common for parents to help support their children even after they started working at their own jobs. This nurse, who was both conscientious and frugal, managed to buy new clothes for her daughters almost every two months. It sometimes cost more than half her salary to do this, yet she did it willingly. I was glad she was back.

I had just finished filling out and signing ward papers and was about to go to the hypnotary when the doctor on duty called me from the reception ward. “Olga,” he said, “I am admitting a very serious patient to your women’s ward. She has been coming here periodically for twenty years. The diagnosis is schizophrenia. She was last admitted to our clinic two years ago. Now she is in the last degrees of cachexia [physical exhaustion]. It appears she hasn’t really eaten in more than a month because of the voices that fill her mind. I’ll prepare all the prescription orders for the nurses tonight, but I'd really like you to see her and her husband before you leave today.”

“When will she be at the ward?” I asked.

“In an hour and a half,” he replied.

I agreed to see her and was relieved that I would still have time to work with Nicolai first.

Our doctors had put a lot of their own efforts into creating the hypnotary. It had already been built when I began working at the hospital, and it was a miracle that it existed at all. Over and over again, I had heard the stories of the dedicated doctors who had made legends of themselves by supplying the equipment, supplies, furniture, and carpeting to create this important facility. It could never have been done through government channels. The hypnotary was crucial to my work, and I always felt comfortable there.

I entered the darkened room quietly, the plush carpet allowing me to move with soundless steps. A small red lamp sat on the floor in each corner of the room. The room’s silence and the faint red glow of the lamps helped me make the necessary mental and emotional trip beyond the sounds and images of the world outside.

The nurse had already prepared Nicolai. He was reclining in a soft, deep armchair in the middle of the room, wearing only his white shirt and pants. His suit jacket, tie, and boots had been taken to another room by the nurse, who would have them waiting for him at the end of the session. He looked relaxed and did not even notice my arrival. I quietly walked over to him and slowly let the back of the armchair down.

“We can start now, Nicolai. I need you to answer my questions honestly and as accurately as possible. If you don’t have an answer, don’t try to think one up. Our success does not depend on the number of questions you answer. It depends on a different quality. And we don’t have to discuss what that is but only trust it, knowing that it is already present and true for us and that we may be guided by it.” My words were deliberately obscure, because I needed to confuse his mind in order to create an opening for my words to enter his unconscious.

Nicolai closed his eyes, and his facial muscles became more relaxed as I consciously spoke to him in a deeper and deeper voice, speaking more slowly and quietly with each word.

“Now I am going to ask your body a question that doesn’t require your answer, Nicolai. You don’t even have to listen. I need to get an agreement from your body that it will help protect you from stress during our work. Now I’m speaking directly to your body, asking it to cooperate with us in protecting you. And I'm waiting for an answer.” His left hand gave a small tremor, and I knew from my experience that it was a sign of agreement.

“Thank you,” I responded in acknowledgment.

I continued, “Nicolai, in the past there have been many times when I have tried to recall an important memory but found it impossible to do so. The more I focused, the more unavailable my memory became. I tried again and again, until I became absolutely exhausted. Then I gave up and relaxed. Shortly thereafter, the image I sought came to me from my unconscious. This phenomenon was what first led me to understand the power of the unconscious mind and to realize that it can help us immensely if we learn how to communicate with it.

“As I speak to you now, you may not understand some of the things I talk about. Don’t be concerned. It is not necessary for your conscious mind to know the meaning of my words, so don't interrupt the calm and relaxed state that is expanding inside your mind and body by trying to understand them. Your unconscious will know. I want to enlist the support of that power that has been speaking to you in order to teach you something important. This may not make sense to you yet, but my intention is to help you understand."

“Do you remember the last time you heard your uncle’s voice? Please answer yes by moving your left hand or no by moving the right one. Was it on Monday?”

Nicolai’s right hand moved slightly. “Tuesday?” No. “Wednesday?. . ."

When I reached Friday, the left hand moved.

“Place yourself where it happened. Is it dark where you are?”

No.

“You are in a well-lighted place. I think this is your workplace. You are speaking with a colleague.” Carefully observing the response from his hand, I continued as it made little movements of agreement. “The time now is just before your uncle speaks. You can remain calm and relaxed, because we are in charge of this experience and nothing had can happen.

“You are at the point in your memory where you can hear the voice of your uncle. No one from your work notices anything. The colleagues you were talking to go away, dissolve. Your attention shifts from them to your uncle’s voice.”

Nicolai’s face became tense. He breathed more deeply and quickly. I reached forward and placed my hand on the middle of his chest, saying, “Now my hand breathes together with your lungs, and we can bring this rhythm down, slowly and calmly — gradually, together.”

He calmed down, and said softly, almost in a whisper, “I hear him. . . .”

“Listen to everything his voice tells you. Be calm and sure. My hand is here with your breath, and you can get help from me or stop any time you want. But you won’t need to stop, for you are protected and safe.”

Nicolai spoke softly, “He is not frightening me now. He is different from before."

“Stop talking to me, Nicolai. You did not come here to speak. You came to listen. So do it now. I appreciate your sharing with me, but not right now. We will do that later. For now, just try to remember everything your uncle says, and he open to it."

I stood over him in the reclined armchair for half an hour, my hand on his chest. It was fairly dark in the room, but I could see his face. It was relaxed, and at first it looked as though he was sleeping. Gradually, as he began to relive his memory, his expression became more active. His eyes began to move quickly under their closed lids. He was obviously seeing intense images. All the emotions he was experiencing were reflected in his face. I saw him wondering, expressing curiosity at first, then deep sadness, and I thought he might start crying. I sensed he was very far away experiencing something important in his memory. I guided his breathing with my hand, slowing him down, prepared to wake him up if his emotional state appeared dangerous. Otherwise, I would let him return on his own when he was done.

Finally, he took a long, very deep breath and announced, “I have completed my journey. I am ready to come back now.”

His voice sounded stronger and more sure of itself. I spoke to him again.“Now I ask you to be attentive to my words, Nicolai. Gradually you will recall how we first met this afternoon, when you came to the hospital. You probably feel very different now, because you have a new memory inside you. When you return from your journey and come back to my office, you will notice these changes. Then you will remember what happened to you, and you will tell me about it. When I take my hand off your chest, you will open your eyes and be present here again.”

I noticed his left hand was tightly squeezing the armrest, and I touched it softly to help him relax. I walked to the wall, turned on the overhead light, and pressed the button to call in the nurse. The red lamps turned off automatically.

I could now see the paintings that had been donated to the hospital by the Siberian Gallery of Fine Art. It was always a small miracle to me that such fine paintings had found their way to this unlikely place. There were some beautiful landscapes on the walls, but the most special painting to me was an oil portrait of a young woman with hair parted in the middle who was wearing rich, lace-trimmed clothes from some past century. She had a kind, reassuring face, and when I worked there, I felt almost as if she supported me.

The nurse helped Nicolai stand up and put his jacket back on. I threw my fur coat over my shoulders and began the walk back to my office. I was quite satisfied with the session. It had gone very well, and it felt right to have tried to resolve Nicolai’s inner conflict without pharmacology. I hoped the experience would prove to be what he needed to settle this family relationship that had appeared to him in such a mythological-religious form.

Nicolai entered my office looking serious and somehow different. Part of his transformation was that now he seemed completely relaxed, not even caring how he looked. He held his tie in his hand and sat at ease in the same chair he had occupied so nervously before.

“I want to thank you for your assistance. I was given a very important message. It changed many feelings inside of me.”

I listened attentively, noticing at the same time how my own feeling of self-esteem was growing. I started to think I was a very lucky therapist to hear such words from my patients so often.

“I was glad to help you. I hope it will allow you to live your life more easily and be successful.”

“But everything has changed, doctor. I think that I must become a shaman.”I was stunned. I sat immobile in my chair, trying to keep the same blank expression on my face as I listened to him. But my feeling of self esteem plummeted lower and lower, turning into shame. How could I have let this happen? This man had come to me for help, and instead I had acted unprofessionally and only reinforced his delusions. I had failed him, and I suddenly felt sorry for both of us.

Nicolai began to explain. “I truly communicated with my uncle. There was no sense that he had died. He seemed fully alive, and he spoke to me like a real person. He argued with me, and I found I could not disagree with anything he said. In the end, he persuaded me.

“Somehow, he showed me a complete history of our people in a way that I had never seen before. It became clear to me how difficult it is for my people living in Siberia. I saw how they had lost their religion and power because of the tremendous pressures from the outsiders and evil spirits among us. I saw some of my friends who have taken jobs that required them to become Communists. I saw how their souls had left them, and how they had become tools of evil.

“I journeyed again and again with my people from winter to winter, without hope, without joy, frightened all the time. They were even afraid to pray quietly to their ancestors and protectors, because they could be sent to prison if anyone even guessed they were doing it. Doctor, this vision you enabled me to see has opened up something inside me that has always been closed off. Now it is accessible.

“My uncle left me no choice. He told me I really have to become a shaman. If I don’t do this, my sickness will increase terribly. He says I’m the only one who can do this, and that my people’s time of lost faith will end. It is toward this goal that I am to work for them. I still don’t know what to think about it. I know nothing about being a shaman! But at the same time I feel it is my true way of life. I will need time to understand exactly what I am going to do.”

It was strange that I didn’t fear his words, for they were very dangerous. In a time only recently past, we could both have been put in prison for them. Even now, with the declaration of perestroika and new thinking, the wrong person hearing his words could still cause much trouble for us.

But I was not afraid. I found that I related to many of the things he was talking about. I didn’t know much about the suppression of native peoples, but I knew what it meant to have to hide one’s religious beliefs. I had been secretly baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church by my grandmother in Kursk, and I had often been confronted with my inability to express my strong attraction for the teachings of Jesus Christ. My daily life did not offer the possibility of going to church or communicating with holy people. Owning religious or esoteric literature of any kind, including the Bible, was forbidden. If found, such books would threaten the security of one’s home in a moment.

As I felt Nicolai’s strong feelings, they changed my own. I no longer cared to evaluate my therapeutic abilities in the context of Nicolai’s treatment. I felt that something important had happened, and what I wanted most was to understand it.

Nicolai interrupted my thoughts, saying, “I was asked by my uncle to give you a message.”

The idea seemed so crazy to me that I did not respond.

“Mamoush said to me, "Tell this woman that very soon she will meet the Spirit of Death. Tell her not to be frightened.’”

I didn’t like these words at all. I had never appreciated predictions of the future, especially dire ones like this. I stared at Nicolai’s clothing. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and he lacked a tie. It helped me to remember that he was not an oracle but only a factory worker who was the friend of a friend.

My experience told me our session was essentially over, and I also remembered that the newly admitted woman still needed my attention. I decided to wrap up my meeting with Nicolai quickly. “I don't know anything about a message from your uncle, Nicolai, but I want to wish you success in whatever you choose to do. I believe you have the ability to make all the correct choices, but if you need additional help, please feel free to call upon me. Right now, though, I have to see an emergency patient who has just been admitted.”

Nicolai also seemed ready to finish. “That’s fine, doctor,” he replied. ”I appreciate your time and your help. Perhaps we will meet again. Good-bye for now.”

As soon as he left my office, I quickly crossed the small room to stop the frigid air still pouring in through the open window. For a few quiet moments, I stood and looked down at the grounds below. My session with Nicolai had been unusual and would require time to understand and integrate into my experience. I watched Nicolai as he walked through the hospital grounds toward the bus station. His quick and decisive steps were those of a man certain of his purpose. I closed the window using the same stick with the human head carved by 'God'.” "

Olga Kharitidi - Entering the Circle, 1996

[nickgerlich]

Looking Into The Crystal Ball

There are more than three months on the calendar remaining until Christmas, and analysts are already making predictions about the most important aspect of the holiday: How much money we spend. Because—you know—any religious significance takes a back seat.

And the forecast, while in the positive direction at least, is not anything to write home about. Auditing and consulting firm Deloitte predicts that sales will increase by only 3.5% to 4.6%. While that may sound impressive, recall that the current rate of inflation is roughly 3.7%, and rising oil prices are bound to make it inch higher.That’s another way of saying that holiday retail, once accounting for inflation, will likely be flat compared to last year. And last year’s increase was 7.6%, at a time when inflation was running at about 8%. In other words, last year was flat as well.

And if sales are flat, it signals that consumers are not all that confident about their economic situation. In fact, “flat” means they are actually buying less overall compared to two years ago, yet spending roughly the same in inflated dollars. Gift recipients either received less in material items or gift card gifts, or—worst-case scenario—old Uncle Joe didn’t get anything.

There is one eyebrow-raising prediction, and this one is not bad in terms of the economy. It might cause BAM retailers to be a little more nervous, though, because the e-commerce component of holiday sales is predicted to jump between 10.3% and 12.8%, to the tune of total online sales somewhere between $278 billion and $284 billion. This one component is growing faster than the rate of inflation, meaning it is worth watching.

I did the math. Deloitte predicts that e-commerce will account for about 18% of all retail sales this coming holiday season. Nearly one in five dollars. Well, I might be bringing up that prediction, because I suspect that least 80% of my holiday spend will be online, but that’s because I hate crowds and love convenience.

Of course, it may be just a little bit early to be making any kind of predictions. We all know from watching The Weather Channel that forecasts are educated guesses based on models that, no matter how good they are, still come packed with error terms. Look at the “cone of uncertainty” for any hurricane prediction, and you will see that it fans out steadily the farther out you go, which is usually only a week at most. Now remember that this holiday forecast is for more than 90 days out.

While I respect professionals like Deloitte, and am certainly not one to besmirch anyone with training and experience, the “cone” for holiday sales predictions may be a little too narrow. Too many things could cause sales to plummet, or grow. For example, if oil were to top $100 a barrel, that would mean an average national gasoline price over $4 a gallon. That would then cause prices of anything else that is delivered to retailers and to our homes to jump as well.

Furthermore, since labor and talent strikes are the new black, consider how little (if any) gifts those people will be buying if they are still striking in three months. For example, while the current UAW strike is technically only going on at three factories, if union bosses put all 146,000 members on the picket line, those people will only be earning $500 a week from the UAW strike fund. That’s not enough to pay even the most basic of monthly bills, like mortgage, car payment, and food.

Retail always hopes for good weather, because sunshine and mild temps mean we are likely to venture out more times, and the more we venture out, the more we might spend. Snowstorms keep us home and/or shopping online. Even restaurateurs and movie theaters like all that good weather, because we are likely to couple shopping with dining and entertainment.

But don’t ask me or anyone just yet what our spending mood might be like in 90 days. My mood today may not be the same mood I have come winter. Just like the three-month weather forecast I just saw on The Weather Channel is very promising, calling for significantly warmer than normal temps across much of the nation, there is no guarantee we’ll be running around in flip-flops here in Amarillo come Thanksgiving. Maybe, but probably not, to be honest. I’ve seen some pretty bad snows here in November, so I know it can happen. It’s just too early, and too many current predictors need to stay constant.

Ah, but it is fun anyway to extend the regression line into the future. I am guilty as much as the Deloitte people are. I studied more statistics than most people. I also know that once you get out too far, those models are about as good as the palm reader down the street.

Meanwhile, start pondering your holiday gift-giving list, and if you see any bargains come up in the coming weeks, grab them. That’s the real beauty of looking ahead, because if you wait until December to shop, you might just find yourself backed into a corner with no extra money to spend.That’s my prediction, and I’m sticking to it.

Dr “Making My List And Checking It Twice” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[chibrary]

title: you ask the questions: charles leclerc source: stuart codling, gp racing uk format: article (interview) season: 2018, f1

Now listen very carefully: Ferrari’s latest star signing might not be afraid of Sebastian Vettel, but he’s not keen on snakes – and neither is he very sure of what to make of that ‘Allo ‘Allo meme that’s doing the rounds… “Brrrrrr!” says Charles Leclerc, on a chilly late afternoon in a São Paulo that’s enveloped in grey and pendulous cloud. Cruelly denied a coat by our photographer, Charles hastens from the back of the Sauber garage to the welcoming environs of the team unit as soon as his duties are concluded. Glenn, our snapper, replaces a lens cap and shakes his head ruefully. “You can’t treat ’em like kids,” he says. “Otherwise it starts with you letting them wear a coat and ends with you having to take all the blue M&MS out of the bowl…” Perhaps in some cases, but Charles Leclerc is emphatically not cut from junior diva cloth. Though F1 star-wrangler Nicolas Todt has steered his career, Leclerc’s talent and singular determination has provided the momentum. There is not a hint of the silver spoon about his rise to prominence, and that comes across in the respectful politesse with which he unfailingly conducts himself. Now seated and beginning to thaw, Charles holds the question deck between finger and thumb and regards it with genuine surprise. “All these are from fans?” he asks, agog at how an F1 rookie could possibly generate so much interest. Well, there’s a reason for that…

What was it like to see yourself on the front cover of a magazine for the first time? Charles Leclerc: It was very cool. It’s a special moment to see yourself on something like that for the first time. What does the underside of Alonso’s car look like? CL: The underside? What’s the underside? [The penny drops] Ah! Yes, when he went flying over me [at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix]. I tell you, it happened so fast that I could barely see anything. I certainly wasn’t going to analyse it [technically]. It was def­initely black, but that’s the only thing I can say. F1 Racing: Surely, given their relative position in the championship, Sauber don’t have much to learn from Mclaren at the moment anyway… CL: Ah… [He glances in the direction of team PR Mia, who responds in startled fashion to F1R’S cheeky query. Charles giggles, though whether this is at the question or its ef­fect on his colleague is unclear]

In your company car, have you beaten the best commute times from Monaco to Modena set by Gilles Villeneuve and Jody Scheckter? CL: [Laughs again] Errrrr… no! I’m not so quick on the road. F1R: In your position, you need to be responsible. CL: Def­initely. F1R: Were you aware there was a record each of them tried to break? CL: To get to the grand prix? F1R: To get to the Ferrari factory when Enzo rang up. They’d say, “Okay, be there in five minutes…” CL: [Laughs] For sure, I could never get to the factory that quickly. I’m not really racing on the road.

Is there any circuit you would love to see added to the F1 calendar? CL: Laguna Seca. Even though it’s very… yeah, I don’t think F1 could go there in reality.

F1R: The run-off at the Corkscrew isn’t very wide, and there’s a cliff on the other side. CL: Yeah? That would make it more, er, challenging… F1R: According to folklore, the corner is how it is because they were driving the bulldozer along, got to the edge of the drop, and then just turned left. CL: Nice story. But is it true?

What is your biggest fear? CL: Oh, snakes. F1R: Is it the creepy dryness of the scales, or their rasping forked tongues that creep you out? CL: I don’t really know – I’m just not liking these animals.

F1R: Have you ever actually encountered a snake? CL: I did, in Australia. Haven’t you seen the pictures? I have it all round my neck. [He shudders at the memory] You’ll have to ask the Sauber people why they did it…

What was the first car you drove? CL: I really shouldn’t say, because I was quite young!

What is your favourite childhood memory with Jules Bianchi? CL: Probably every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at his track. [Jules Bianchi’s father managed the kart circuit at Brignoles] That and his birthdays in Saint-Tropez. All the races we did together in karting. Fun times. F1R: Did you get to go to his party after he finished in the points in the Monaco Grand Prix? CL: No, I was too young, and in Monaco they’re quite strict with things like that.

[jamieroxxartist]

✔ Mark Your Calendars: Thurs April 27 on 🎨#JamieRoxx’s Pop Roxx Radio 🎙️#TalkShow and 🎧#Podcast w/ Featured Guest: #Justinsuperstar, #Director ​("#MomandDadsNippleFactory"; #Film | #Documentary) ☎ Lines will be open (347) 850.8598 Call in with your Questions and Comments Live on the Air. ● Click here to Set a Reminder: http://tobtr.com/12220520 Pop Art Painter Jamie #Roxx (www.JamieRoxx.us) welcomes Justinsuperstar, Director ("Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory"; Film | Documentary) to the Show! ● WEB: justinsuperstar.com ● IG: @justinsuperstar ● YT: @justinsuperstar ● IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt20851876 Doclands DocPitch Award Recipient "Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory" from Emmy-Winning director Justinsuperstar is set to kick off its 2023 festival tour as the opening night film at the beloved Milwaukee Film Festival on April 20, followed by stops at Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and Doclands in Northern California. The film is a touching and inspiring documentary that shows the power of love, perseverance, and innovation and is a must-see for anyone whose life has been touched by #breastcancer. The documentary tells the story of Brian and Randi, a couple from the conservative town of Eau Claire, WI and their extraordinary journey to help Randi feel complete after her battle with breast cancer and subsequent mastectomy. Through Brian's innovative and unorthodox solutions, the couple launches a project that grows from a labor of love into an unintended calling with the power to change thousands of lives through the sale of custom and handmade prosthetic nipples for their clients. Director Justinsuperstar previously directed the award-winning feature documentary “Double Digits: The Story of a Neighborhood Movie Star” which played numerous festivals and was distributed by Gunpowder & Sky’s FilmBuff. The film was produced by two time Independent Spirit Award nominee Noah Lang (The Climb) and Academy Award® nominee Jason Cohen (Facing Fear). Renowned domestic sales agent Visit Films is representing the film for distribution with an announcement of the public release forthcoming. ● Media Inquiries: October Coast www.octobercoastpr.com

[bugbus]

Located at @florian_airmapp ・ ・ ・ ➖ SPREAD BY @bUGbUs ・ ・ . ・・・ VIN 20-29559, which makes it a late June 1952 chassis number, out of the factory in early july.It makes it very early, with (in extremis!) some cool specific details like the 100mm gas tank, the split beetle type armrest, the T air filter, the split beetle type battery attachment, the early VW dash logo (without split between V & W).... etc, etc. (and of course all other 52 details like the uber cool deep skylight windows or time in Canada, at The Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. It makes it the earliest Canadian VW ever... From what I know VW Canada may have kept it for a few months/years then sold it to a German guy living in Ontario, who then sold it to Bill around 1956. Bill was a carpenter and used the bus daily to go to work until 1961 when, from what he told me, "something broke on the steering" making him lose direction and crash into the rear of a truck parked on the road side. Bill has been seriously injured in the crash and needed 5 years and several surgeries to walk again. He kept the bus in his backyard nevertheless, being so attached to the car who dramatically changed his life. The bus sat far in his backyard! 👉🏻 ・ ➖ Use our tags 👉 @bugbus 👉 #bugbus AND . . . . Show up your best pictures at bUGbUs.nEt‘s Facebook group: 👉 facebook.com/groups/bUGbUs 👈 . ➖ ⚠️ www.bUGbUs.nEt ⚠️ Classifieds and show calendar for classic Volkswagen and Porsche: Europe-wide and free of charge . ➖ Follow my Insta buddies: @air.cool.ed @VW_Barndoor_Force @austrosplit @vwbusner @niels_airmighty @vw_bugs_n_babes @deikaferservice @vwphotographer1 @vw_barndoor_force . . ➖ #bugbus_net_japan #vwbus #vwlove #vw #vwcombi #vwkombi #aircooled #vwtransporter #vwaircooled #instacar #splitscreenbus #splitscreen #splitbus #vwsplit #vwsplitscreen #vwbarndoor #vwbarndoorbus #barndoorbus #barndoorvwbus #barndoormafia #barndoordivision #vw_barndoor_force https://www.instagram.com/p/ClY5VnSMNgw/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=