#PUT YOUR NASTY SELVES ON FICTION

[kpchrs]

Picking morally grey and/or villain blorbos over humans every time because at least they and their crimes are not real.

Sorry. Back in the phase of "losing my faith in humanity" again.

[preface2adreamplay]

Under Your Spell (Part 10) - Ashes On My Shoes

Summary: A Jared Padalecki/OFC fiction.

Stef is a musician, recently gone solo. Happy with her life as a forever single person until Jared makes it his mission to get close to her. (For the purpose of this fiction, I have liberated some lyrics from various artists and their videos. This is fiction, with real people mentioned.)

Chapter warnings: Flirting, swearing. 

Chapter WC: 2,458

The night of the Texas show was here. Stef was always nervous for every gig, why wouldn’t she be? There were a hundred and one ways that things could go sideways. Most of them had already happened during her career. But Jared would be at this show. He had text her to say he was incoming, ’With the boys.’ She assumed Jensen would be joining him. 

The bus was parked up next to the venue, the first of bands that were playing with them had started their set. Stef was already dressed for the stage, usually she kept it simple enough but tonight she made a special effort to be a little more flamboyant. Claire had helped her put together this flowing ensemble. A dress with a plunging neckline that just about reached to her navel, long sleeves and a train of black and silver material that followed her around as she walked. It was a flirty, Morticia Addams inspired dress with a slit up the front that came up to her knees. When she moved it dragged behind her, showing off her long legs. 

The legs that Jared had kissed and ran his fingers up and down teasingly the last time they were together. He said he loved her legs. She loved them when they were wrapped around his waist.

‘Focus, Stef.’ she scolded herself in the hand held mirror she used to put on her make up. 

Just then her tour manager pulled open the door, shouting ‘you decent?’

‘Yeah, come on in,’ Stef had one more coat of mascara to do and she was done.

‘Wow, you look great. You going on a date afterwards?’ Jeff was cool, he was a friend from years back, from the beginning. Always a good guy to have with you on tour. You needed a snack at 3am, he got it. You needed a replacement guitar string before you ran on stage, he had it ready. 

‘Maybe.’

Jeff carried on with his checklist, talking to himself more than to her.

‘Your stuff is on stage, the band are hanging in the waiting room. You staying on the bus?’ 

‘Nah, I’m going to go in now.’

‘Just so you know there are some fans at the gate, waiting for you.’

There were always a few people hanging around the venue before her shows. The first time she got off a bus with people shouting her name was definitely one of the highlights of the business for her. They were the reason why she still did shows. Her fans were always hungry for more music.

Recognising a few of the faces in the crowd, Stef hung with them for a few minutes.

They were complimentary about her ‘new style,’ asking if it was for the new album.

She agreed, butterflies nesting in her stomach again at the thought that she had made this effort just for Jared. What had become of her?

Smiling and doing her best poses with the fans, she waved them goodbye. Promising to give them a shoutout from the stage.

The venue was packed. Though she put that down to the most excellent support acts that were with her. Slipping into the backstage area through the rear entrance, she noticed her band mates were rowdy. 

‘What is it about the Texas crowds that get you guys so wound up?’ She laughed, watching the empty mini bottles of Jager tumble down from their ludicrous game of dominoes. 

‘What is it about Texas that’s got you looking like that?’ Evan queried, the boys wolf whistled. 

‘Settle down.’ She scolded. Forever the mother. These guys had been around nearly as long as Jeff. She found them all adorable and annoying, referring to them as her ‘hairy ass babies.’

Curing her nerves with two glasses of whiskey, she saw the second support act coming backstage, sweaty and loud. 

They’d be up next. 

Jeff appeared again, ‘Hey Stef, c’mere.’ 

‘Your friends just arrived,’ he said in a hushed tone, nodding his head towards Jared and Jensen. Misha stepped out from behind the two taller men and waved energetically. ‘Hey!’ he called across the corridor at her.

Stef ushered them into the room. Giving Jensen and Jared a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. Jared was smiling from ear to ear, but said nothing.

‘Hey hot momma,’ Jensen tried to keep a straight face, glancing at Jared. ‘Can’t wait for the show. We brought this idiot, he loves your music too.’

‘I’m a new fan.’ Misha pulled her into a tight hug. ‘Not as big a fan as Jared, but I still love your stuff.’ 

Misha seemed to be a guy you could instantly like. Stef patted him on the back, letting him know that the hug was done. 

’Sorry, I’m excited to meet you. Jared talks about you non stop.’

‘Do I?’ Jared was looking at Stef, taking her in, his eyes pausing on all the right places of the dress. 

‘You do, actually.’ Jensen clapped his friend on the back. ‘Come on, let’s get ready for this show then.’ He gave Misha a playful push out the door and threw Jared a look that said ‘hurry up.’

When they had disappeared, Jeff pointing the way up to the box Stef had booked for them, Jared was still standing over her. ‘You look beautiful.’

She could feel herself getting a little bashful. ‘Thank you,’ she replied, deciding it was best to just say it rather than pass it off as ‘this old thing?’

‘Good luck, I can’t wait to see you play.’ He leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the lips. That surprised her, she didn’t think he wanted to advertise that they were somewhat ‘together.’ 

‘I can’t wait to play for you.’ Stef smiled, giving his chin a little tug. 

‘You got about five minutes,’ Jeff came back and took Jared by the arm, leading him out of the door. 

With the lights glaring into her face, she could never see the crowd. That often helped with her nerves. Being up there made her feel so vulnerable, that was why she loved doing it so much. It was like therapy, pouring her heart out into the songs and letting them take over. The crowd were waiting impatiently when the lights went down. It was her cue to walk on stage. The guys were at their instruments, playing the intro to the new single. Stef reached the mic as the beat kicked in, her words flowing easily. Everything sounded right. In the moment, she forgot everyone around her. Forgot about Jared sitting forward in his seat taking in the show, watching her move with the music, doubled over when the high notes required it. 

There was little time to chat between songs, Stef preferred it that way. It was easier to just get on with it. 

She hated the ‘hey there..*insert city* you’re the best.’

Halfway through the set, she thanked the crowd for coming out, introduced the band and pulled out her acoustic guitar. 

‘This isn’t usual for me, I like to kick it full steam ahead for you guys. But, someone recently sang this song to me and it revived some old feelings. Despair and lost love. Sounds good, right?’ The crowd whooped and cheered.

‘Ok, cool.’ Stef started right into the song, keeping the pace that Jared had set when he sang it to her on the floor of Jensen’s cabin the night they first made love. 

Burning soft skin of two

Trying hard to let go of you

Hoping it will do

Pulled right out from underneath you

She heard the crowd singing it along with her, her breath caught in her throat when she finished the song, pushing her guitar aside and holding up her hands in thanks to the fans. 

‘You know what, I don’t usually say this, but y’all ARE the fuckin’ best.’ 

Backstage, everyone was in high spirits. The whiskey was flowing and Stef was so buzzed. Misha was taking pictures of the band, wanting her to strike some ridiculous poses with Jensen and Jared.

Several of the shots made it on to instagram. Jared and ‘the boys,’ each posted a picture with Stef, exclaiming about how great the show had been and how excited they were to be invited backstage.

Stef even posted one with Misha, Jensen and Jared holding her up as she lay across them. There were so many comments on it, she just didn’t have the energy to read them.

Back on the bus, the guys were continuing their little party in the ‘living area’ behind the driver. Jared had come back with Stef to have a chat before they had to go.

Checking that no one was watching, Stef pulled him halfway into her tiny bunk, there was no way the both of them would fit in there but they managed to squeeze in, legs dangling out from behind the curtain. Giggling like teenagers, they made out for a while. Jared punctuating each kiss with how much he enjoyed the show. Eventually, after several phone calls from an increasingly pissed Jensen, Jared took his leave. Kissing her wrist to her shoulder and then giving her several kisses that made her head spin, he left. 

‘Stefanie’s got a boyfriend!’ One of the guys stuck his head out through the sliding door of the living area, he was so drunk he could barely stand. 

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Stef threw a pair of his balled up socks at him. ‘And clean up after your-damn-selves.’ 

The next day they were playing a much smaller venue, but the crowds were still coming out, thankfully.

Stef had taken a moment to look at her tagged posts on social media. There were a few great shots taken the night before, she was incredibly grateful her tits didn’t pop out of her dress. 

‘Wow, you know J2?’ ‘OMG Jensen’ ‘OMG Jared’. Was how most of the comments were going. Several were suggesting she was fucking one of them, or all three.

‘She sucks, her music sucks and she’s ugly.’ Charming. Stef often deleted the nasty ones, coz who wants to see them, right? 

There were more followers on all platforms, that was nice. More people to hear the music, she supposed.

Her heart skipped a beat on seeing a post on insta from Jared. It was a picture of them striking a ridiculous pose, his arm around her waist. They were doing their best blue steel. The second was a shot of him, Jensen and Misha heads together at the show and the third was Stef on stage, she couldn’t recall what part of the night it was. 

‘If anyone gets a chance to see this girl live, go see her. You rocked us last night, Stef. So proud of you.’ Several love hearts.

Misha commented, ‘get your hands off my girl, Jared.’

Jared: ‘And how long do you know her that you think you can lay claim?’

Jensen posted several laughing emojis, ‘as MJ said boys, ‘the girl is mine.’

Stef liked each of the comments. Adding her own ‘I’d take all three of you, no problem.’ To which Jared added a sad face and a broken heart. 

Her phone began vibrating, the long stream of comments disappearing. Oscar’s name was flashing on screen.

‘Hello, Oscar.’ Her voice was a little husky from the night before.

‘There she is. I see your show was well received last night.’

‘Oh?’ She feigned ignorance. 

‘There is a write up about it already, some fans of Supernatural are getting quite excited about it. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone from the show would you?’

‘Maybe.’

She heard Oscar sighing down the phone where there would usually be laughter.

‘You better not be messing around with a married man, Effie.’

‘Why would that be any of your fucking business, Oscar?’

‘I thought as much, you won’t deny it either. I noticed something about you when you came down for Dar’s party.’

‘You noticed what?’

‘Well, don’t get me wrong you are always lovely but you were simply glowing when you arrived at the airport.’

‘Oh shut up, you’re so full of crap.’

‘Am I?’

She supposed he wasn’t. But again, she didn’t want to tell him he was right. 

‘Yeah, your silence speaks volumes.’

‘I’m a big girl, Oscar. I look out for myself. Always have.’

The last two words stung him and she knew it. He shifted in his chair, she heard him clear his throat the way he always did, before he wanted to launch into a speech about how she was getting herself into trouble.

’Before you start, because I know what you’re going to say!’ She warned, hearing him start to tell her to watch herself.

‘I appreciate your concern, but I’m not getting myself into anything I haven’t thought about for many sleepless nights. We have...an agreement.’

Oscar scoffed, ‘so you’re fucking a married man. That’s fine is it?’

‘It is for us, Oscar. Please don’t judge me.’

‘I can’t not judge you. What’s with you lately? You’re not really acting like yourself.’

‘Hey, you told me I needed to loosen up a bit.’

‘Loosening up a little means go out with your friends more and have some fun. Not start a relationship with a married guy. A famous married one at that. Jesus, Stef, you have to be more careful.’

‘Oscar, I appreciate the concern.’

‘That’s it? No fighting back?’

‘I don’t want to fight, not with you. I can’t fight with you anymore.’

Oscar was sighing again. ‘Promise me, you’ll be sensible. I can’t stand seeing you broken hearted.’

‘Oh don’t start that shit again, please.’ Stef buried her face in the crook of her arm, laying across her bunk. 

‘I mean it, Stefanie. Don’t do that to yourself, you’re worth more than that. You’re more than a mistress.’

‘I know that. And as I said, it works for both of us right now.’

‘Yeah, yeah sure. You frustrate me so much, you know that?’

‘I do. It’s why you love me though.’ 

Perhaps she had chosen the wrong words, his voice which had been pleading was now just sad.

‘Fuck sakes. I’m shaking my head right now, but you can’t see me.’

Stef bit her nails, ‘yeah but I can imagine it, vividly. You still got that nice head of hair?’

‘Yep, I’m shaving it off as soon as this movie is done.’

‘I hate your bald head.’ Stef complained.

‘I am doing it just to annoy you, and I will be sending pictures.’

‘Ugh, delete me from your life please.’

‘Never,’ he smiled a little, ‘I gotta go.’

‘Later Oscar.’

‘Goodbye, love.’

CHAPTER 11

[ah-ga-seven]

Christian Yu x Reader: Let Me Explain - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: These Seoul Streets.  | Chapter 2: Uninvited Guests |

Chapter 3: Confrontation | Chapter 4: Who Would’ve Thought?

Word count: 3159

Series type: Angst, Smut (in later chapters) & Fluff.

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol and sex and bad language. 

Additional Characters: DPR LIVE (Dabin) and mentions of other artists/fictional characters.

Rough summary: Christian is your boss but also your best friend. You both have feelings for each other but his way of living complicates your relationship.

A/N: For the people who were waiting for this, thank you for your patience. I struggled a little writing the series. Also keep in mind that English is not my first language, therefore there might be some spelling/grammar mistakes. 

You were part of the inner circle now. At least that’s what one of your best friends Christian said when you signed the 6-month contract. He called it a try out contract. You would still be known as yourself, the only thing you had to do was paste DPR before your own name to get more recognition for DPR itself. You weren’t mad at the contract, so why not? Anything to help out a friend who you also happen to have a crush on. At least that’s what you thought until it actually happened.

As a well known choreographer in Seoul, South Korea you worked with a lot of artists and ‘underground’ dancers.

You’ve choreographed for the big 3 so your name was out there. Everyone in the business pretty much knew who you were. You managed yourself and stayed out of the drama filled party scene which made you well respected by many in the industry.

It’s not that you hated clubs, you just hated when people’s nasty true selves would come out after a few shots. You mostly observe how handsome and successful idols would take advantage of their fame to get their pick of the night, without the public or their beloved fans ever finding out.  

It disgusted you, and the fact that men you’ve worked with would try to butter you up to take you home with them disgusted you even more.

You were used to it by now, the “No thank you’s” would come out of your mouth at least 20 times a night. Sometimes you even had to swat some hands away, and still you are here, just like every other weekend for the past month since you’ve signed your contract. It was your job to be with the crew whenever you could since you were a part of it now, but tonight you were not having it. You were tired and frustrated with your boss. Christian had been acting indifferent with you lately, it was almost as if your friendship before this whole business deal was non existent.

You were seated in the VIP area of one of Seoul’s most prestige clubs because your now new temporary boss had a special deal to book tonight with another artist and it also happened to be that artist’s birthday.

“So you’re the DPR dance department now, you’ll choreograph for the girls in our mv’s and other clients that might want to work with you, you still get to do your own thing just keep in mind that since we manage your scheduling now we take 40%”

“40? Christian I don’t know; I manage myself just fine you know.” You bite your lip looking at the contract in front of you.

“We’ll make it 30 then. The thing is to make us a package deal, if they want you they have to want us to shoot the mv too, and also I can’t just not pay our manager, feel me love?”

Love. He always calls you that.

You roll your eyes at his slick way of negotiating. “Fine. Just don’t forget that I’m the one doing you a favor with this.”

He gave you his mischievous smile. “How could I ever forget that?”

Yeah… How could he ever forget that?

If there’s anything you regretted more in life than signing that contract was the fact that you were here. At the birthday party of Kim Yura, a rookie artist who was about to debut under YG Entertainment. Christian would hit it big time if he scored a deal to direct her first mv, since her debut was highly anticipated. You had been working on her dancing with her, which she was terrible at. You never really hit it off with her. Mostly great friendships formed between you and your clients, but Yura was different. She was selfish, cunning and arrogant. Making it difficult to work with her as she never admits her wrongs. Besides all of that, she had a thing for Christian as well.

Signing the contract didn’t only take 30% of your original payments, but it also shone a light on Christian in a way you’ve never seen before. You were happy seeing him once or twice a week when your relationship wasn’t work related, but now that you see him almost every day, you also got to see the girls, partying and the alcohol making you wonder how he still had a functioning liver.

You couldn’t wait for the next 5 months to pass so you could get back to your own routine and try to start to forget your feelings for Christian. Even though you wanted to hate the way he treated you at times, you couldn’t. Because he was the sweetest man on earth before you knew him like this. You still hold on to those old times, low key hoping you could get back to them when your contract ended, but you knew that you just had to get over him as a whole when your business ties were broken.

You’ve taken care of him on his drunken nights countless of times, he also tried to fuck you on those nights countless of times but despite your feelings for him you were at least smart enough to kindly decline and put him to bed. He only did that when he was shitfaced with alcohol, and the day after he wouldn’t even remember.

He would always text you with a fucked up “Thank you for getting me home, love”

Lost in thought you take a sip of your non alcoholic cocktail when Dabin approached you putting an arm over your shoulder.

“Wuz poppin” he says giving you a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Just…sipping on this, minding my own business” you answer playing around with your straw.

Dabin knew you like the back of his own hand, if anything good came from your contract it was your friendship with him.

He chuckled. Looking at Christian who having a laugh with Jay and Loco.

“Is he still being a dickhead?” he asks leaning his head on his hand looking at you.

“Who?”

“What do you mean who” he chuckled.

“I’m not talking to you about him, you’re like brothers” you say taking another sip avoiding eye contact.

“So, does that mean I can’t keep secrets. Come on you always tell me when things pop off” he says looking at you with a pout.

“You’re just thirsty for drama” you say pushing his face away.

He chuckles and so do you. “No y/n, I actually care about you, you know that.”

You give him a reassuring smile looking into his sparkling eyes.

“Y/n” his voice made you look up immediately, and so did Dabin, his expression was a lot more relaxed than yours. You met his gaze and stayed silent.

Christian looked at the two of you ready to say something but he closed his mouth again before he did.

You could tell something was bothering him, you just didn’t know what yet.

“There’s a lot of people here who want to meet you, instead of sitting here all night, why don’t you make an effort to talk to someone” he said a little ruder then he intended to.

You raise your eyebrow at him. Ready to rip that fucking piercing out of his nose. “If these people want to talk to me so badly then staying in once place makes me more approachable doesn’t it?” you give him a cold look slamming your drink back on the table a little harder than you intended for.

You got up avoiding his gaze turning your back to him. “Dabin if you don’t mind I have to pee.”

Dabin chuckled and waved his hand signing for you to go.

“What’s up with her” Christian frowned watching you walk away.

“Ah, you know her, this just isn’t her thing. I guess the work stress makes her a little more agitated today than usual.” He calmly says shrugging trying to mend the situation.

Dabin was always in the middle of you two. He knew you had feelings for Christian and he also knew that Christian always complicates things when it comes to you because Christian can’t deny that he has feelings for you too. Christian tries to acts like he doesn’t, but he does and to Dabin it has always been obvious, but not to you.

“Then she should have thought twice about signing that damn contract” Christian said sitting down next to Dabin. “What is she even drinking” he said sniffing into your glass.

“Probably apple juice or some shit man I don’t know” Dabin chuckled leaning back into his seat.

“She just…frustrates me.” Christian says sighing.

“In what way? Sexually?” Christian shoots Dabin a glare which he simply laughs off.

“I just want our relationship to go back to the way it was you know.” Christian says removing his cap and ruffling his hair around with his hand.

Dabin sighed crossing his arms. “I think that makes two of you, just go talk to her.”

“Not tonight” Christian says throwing his head back, playing with his hair a little more. “I have to make sure I get this deal with Yura and her agency”

Dabin relaxed state vanished. He knew you hated Yura with every fiber of your being. She was a trainee but acted like she debuted 10 years ago, only because she’s from YG. You always nagged about her to Dabin, saying she was more stuck up than G-Dragon could ever be in a 100 lifetimes. Then again you also didn’t like her because Christian was extra flirtatious around her. Reeling her in with a debut mv would mean hitting it big time for DPR making them more well known to the bigger boys in the industry. You understood to some extend but Yura was enjoying the attention too much to your liking, especially for a rookie with a dating ban.

“What are you going to do” Dabin asked wide eyed.

“I don’t know man I might hoe out a little bit.”

Dabin scoffed. “What else is new.”

“Like you haven’t” Christian raised his eyebrow at Dabin’s sudden annoyed expression.

“You keep talking about how you want to mend things with y/n but then you keep fucking these girls it just doesn’t make sense.”

“Who ever said mending things with y/n meant being in a relationship with her.”

“Man that’s bullshit and you know it, if you do this tonight with Yura and y/n finds out, it’s end game for you.”

Christian opened his mouth to say something but Dabin shut him right up again.

“y/n is loyal, funny, hella cute and super hard working. She always puts up with your shit, she takes care of you when your legs won’t carry you anymore, yet you’re out here fucking around, knowing she has feelings for you, which you do too, even though you always try to deny it.”

Christian closed his eyes at his best friends’ hard words. Dabin was right. He was. But he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Not now.

“The timing just isn’t right” Christian replied.

“So you’re just going to lead her on until you get your head out of your ass?” Dabin says raising his eyebrows.

Christian opened his eyes in a millisecond looking Dabin straight into his eyes with an angered look.

“Fucking around is fun and all. Until you lose her man. You have to sort shit out with her. Rather sooner than later.” Dabin eyes shoot up when he sees you walking towards the table again. “Don’t sleep with Yura cause if you do, I will tell her. I’m on her side with this one Ian.” Dabin says seriously.

Christian just nods burying his face in his hands. Not knowing how to process everything that was just said to him. He only ‘fucked around’ because he couldn’t be with you. Other women distracted him of the fact that he couldn’t be with you. Not only would you turn out to be the girl who fucked her boss, if word got out. But it would also cost Christian his credibility as a boss with female employee’s.

You approach the table and feel the tension, wondering what happened in the time you were in the bathroom. You cautiously sit down next to Dabin on the other end of the rounded sofa. “Uh- I just ran into Dean. He said he wanted to talk to you” you tell Dabin. He nods getting up. “I’ll go find him”

Fuck. That’s not what you meant. You make eye contact with him. You tried your best to make your eyes scream. “Don’t leave me alone with him right now” but Dabin ignored you and Christian completely, making you wonder even more what the actual fuck happened while you were gone.

Christian lifts his head looking at you. His facial expression was soft and so was his voice when he spoke.

“Are you tired?” he asked scooting closer so you could hear him better over the loud trap music.

He put his hand on your thigh to comfort you, showing you he was trying to be sincere for once.

“I’ve been more awake.” You reply not making eye contact.

“I’ll take you home if you want, I didn’t take into consideration that you worked all day today before I made you come here.” He says removing his hand from your leg while sweetly putting a strand of hair behind your ear so he could see your face better.

You look at him, confused as hell, but you tried not to let your facial expression speak for you. This Christian reminded you of the old Christian, the Christian you fell for.

“I-“ you purse your lips together again reconsidering his offer.

“I’ll go home by myself, it’s just a 10-minute walk from here to my apartment, I’ll live.” You say getting up, but Christian grabs your wrist before you could walk away.

“No, it’s 2 in the morning, I don’t want you out on these streets alone in this outfit, at this hour, I’ll walk you home and then I’ll come back here it’s no big deal.” He says getting up.

You say your goodbye’s to everyone explaining you had a meeting planed tomorrow morning at YG. Dabin kissed your cheek like he always does, telling you to text him once you get home, even though Christian was walking you home.

The walk home was silent; it wasn’t an awkward silence though. Both of you just didn’t feel the need to speak. Just being like this together again was a huge step in the right direction for the both of you. After a few minutes your heels made it harder for you to walk on those damn tiles, so like you always used to do, you linked arms with Christian, stabilizing yourself on these Seoul streets.

Christian looked at you surprised when you did. You didn’t even realize him looking at you because you were too focused on trying not to trip.

“Don’t tell me I have to carry you” Christian said jokingly to lighten the mood.

“I’m good like this, just make sure not to let go of m- FUCK” you almost landed face first onto the sidewalk, but luckily Christian grabbed you by your waist, making sure you didn’t fall down. In the process of almost falling your heel broke, as it was stuck in a hole in between the tiles.

“Fuck y/n be careful” Christian says startled, still holding your waist.

“Nooooo my fucking shoe” you say in an annoyed baby voice, throwing an aegyeo filled tantrum as you take off your expensive as fuck nude Valentino pump looking at it with an almost tearful pout.

Christian bursts out laughing grabbing your face and pulling you into a hug. You bury your face into his chest. Your heart was racing like crazy.  “You’re so cute.” He simply stated caressing your hair. “I’ll buy you new ones, don’t be sad for too long okay.” He chuckled into your hair, kissing the top of your head.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t overly touchy, but he cherished moments like these with you, as they have become more rare over the past few weeks.

You stood there lopsided, trapped into his hug as your other shoe was still on.

Christian slowly let go of you. “You have to take the other one off too.” He says squatting down. You lift your foot up for him, holding onto his shoulders for support as he takes off your other shoe.

He gives you the other pump as you stand barefoot, not knowing what to do.

It’s just a few meters to your apartment from here, but the industrial iron stairs that actually led you to your front door were what worried you.

“Come here” he says lifting you off the ground bridal style.

“Christian!” you squeal surprised in a hushed tone. The streets were empty but you still felt kind of embarrassed as he carried you to your apartment and up the stairs. You buried your face into his neck while wrapping your arms around his neck as well.

“Here” he says putting you down. You wobble a little when your feet hit the cold concrete, making Christian cautiously hold onto your waist again. You hand your pumps to him, searching for your key in your handbag.

He waited patiently until you unlocked the door and stood in the doorway, taking your shoes from him again and placing them behind you on the floor.

“Thank you” you say yawning covering your mouth with your hand.

He gave you a warm smile. “Go sleep.” He says caressing your cheek with his thumb. You lazily lean into his hand nodding.

“I’ll call you tomorrow when I wake up okay, I think we both know there are things we have to talk about.”

You were surprised but you finally realized why the mood was so dark when you came back from the restroom back in the club. Dabin probably told Christian he was being a dick, and it worked.

You nod. “Okay” unexpectedly Christian pulls you in for a hug again, wrapping his arms around you, holding your head close to his chest. You wrap your arms around him too and you just stand there.

How long was it? Seconds? Minutes? You didn’t know, but to you it couldn’t’ have been long enough.

He let go of you first looking into your eyes. “I’m sorry.” He said giving you one last look before walking away from you.

After you texted Dabin you got ready for bed. All night you twisted and turned under your sheets thinking of what he was sorry for. Of course you had countless occasions listed in your mind of what he could be sorry for but still it didn’t make sense.

At around 4 you finally seem to fall asleep, but only three hours after your phone started to buzz you awake.

Chapter 2 

[eloise6158518-blog]

Guyspencer Paddling Fiction Online Forum

Just recently I wrote a considerable write-up on the essential maxims from Sun-Pluto connects with. Claude WALLER was birthed Mar 14, 1899 in Illinois, U.S.A as the 4th youngster of Thomas B. WALLER and Mary Elizabeth HEARD. Tom obtained this acceptable intellect fairly meekly; simply pondering, in his very own soul, the number of from these doomed men had spouses as well as children, and whether they would certainly experience as he did regarding leaving them. When provided the option I select Chester over Festus every time. The little ones think it is for participate in Uncle Dele, but they sign up with someone known by Mrs. If I weren't out here everyday battling the white male, I could possibly invest the remainder of my life reading, only pleasing my interest-- given that you could barely state everything I am actually certainly not curious regarding. For Successor's declaration to work with me, its own significance must be one thing that, on its own, induces Eidolon to intend to quit. After that, Eidolon's second realization-that Successor possessed Contessa's power-is a secondary factor, an understanding about why Successor can make him suicidal in four phrases. And also in our life opportunity our company could be in love along with a variety of folks just before our experts choose the one who is one of the most companionable as well as portions the same enthusiasms and also likes as well as disapproval as our company perform, and wants to work together on points, certainly not pull apart. The a single thing http://sporty-you.info/exatamente-como-executa-A-funcao-de-forskolina I can promise is actually that over all you are going to really feel much better, be able to breathe much better, however will the fellow concerned you is another factor, since the Lover method it considerably other in comparison to what the majority of people generally strongly believe, because our company could have a number of lover" yet it relies on exactly how they are actually to relate to you in each lifestyle opportunity. Dress the candle with reversing oil" and also eliminating oil" and point out to it all heinous or even ill will desired after (your mother's name), I return it to the sender" regular that 3 times, light the candle and also repeat the exact same factor 3 times and afterwards recite the 23 psalm the god is my shepherd ..." enable the candle light to get rid of carefully until it wears down, you may have to put this in a sizable adequate candlestick holder, but have this burn properly away from cloth, plastic, drapes, interested little bit of fingers and also household pets.

After the family (during the time merely him, Ralph, his mother, as well as father) migrated to New York, much more kids occurred, featuring future bad children, Frank and also Al Considering that you have actually achieved a factor were love is going to not nourish as well as dressed and also sanctuary the youngsters.

Memories from being actually therefore younger he certainly never thought he 'd ever before must grow up. Memories from times as well as people and also spots he liked genuinely as well as a lot. He (Manson) believes that he, and all people, are actually The lord as well as the adversary together. Regarding this passage possessing one thing to perform with the legalizing from enslavement, I believe the nasty analysis from these verses merely served to earn slave proprietors and trainers feel better regarding them selves, and also be able to put on their alright clothes and go to church on Sundays, without feeling as well sleazy. Audie WALLER was actually birthed Feb 21, 1897 in Illinois, USA. Thomas WALLER was birthed Feb TWENTY, 1696 in Wallers Adventure, Somerset, Maryland, UNITED STATE (Waller's Adventure). Life passes, with us all, a time at a time; so that passed along with our buddy Tom, till 2 years were gone.

[valorousowl]

if u believe in kin u believe theres no such thing as fiction, or skill in creating fiction like art & literature, u believe it just happened. u believe art & lit dont belong to creators, but 2 kin of it & its aus. u believe u have more a right to police the fandom than the creators. u believe ur the only authority on whats allowed 2 be drawn/written/talked about in fandom. its all a power trip. its not to make ppl feel better. its bc theyre manipulative brats. they hide it well. playing victims

and you’re on anon, I should believe anything you say why? Although I think I know who it is already. I’m going to reiterate a few things here because on anon you are a waste of my time. If you were off, you and I could speak of this privately, I’ve said recently I’m against majority of callouts because they’re driven by personal agendas and grievances (and gatekeeping) rather than any kind of betterment to the group. But you’re on anon so that tells me A) you’re not going to stand by your words publically so already they’re meaningless and B) you’re joining this kinhate hype train out of spite. 

I make Original concept works as well as AUs, UAs, and fanworks. I know the feeling of having your art stolen. I know it sucks and it feels invalidating. 

But if a few people making this shitty world better for themselves in a small way that does not change ANYTHING about where your art came from or who made it, you’re honestly just being petty. Because how many text posts and anecdotes from REAL PEOPLE’S LIVES go  viral and get tagged with #me #this is so me #this just happened to me when it didn’t? 

And honestly, if you don’t want people to use it? don’t post it? Do not? you can make plenty of shit and not post it? Are we really going to condone the path of Anne Rice? Like yeah it sucks and there are things people should never do. But considering ESPECIALLY the nature of AUS we’re already perverting the source material. We don’t really get to complain when people do it to us when we ignore the creators. It’s why I don’t post a lot of AE content anymore, because I put my heart and soul into world building and filling gaps, and lazy writing from temps and forced heteronormativity have really ruined a lot of things in universe but there’s not really anything to do about it because a lot of stuff is just ignored or looked down upon by the devs and the fandom. And that’s a damn shame honestly. So the majority I didn’t post and instead turned my energies to making my own stuff. Fandom is supposed to fill the gaps in source work. But when that fails you make your own original stuff instead. Because again, with fandom it’s a line of command with the creator at the very top, not that people remember that when the creator doesn’t agree with every little thing they say.

And to end? Like that’s a really, really presumptuous and pretentious attitude you got there. between that and spelling I can’t imagine you have much that anyone would interact with, much less kin with. Like oh, if I think kin people exist I have to agree with every last little thing they say? I think Christian people exist and I don’t agree with a damn word from any of them. Do you see how that logic doesn’t follow? Creative writing and art is an escape from reality, we make it for ourselves and others to enjoy and you have to let it go and understand people are going to  experience it and appreciate it in their own ways and we have absolutely no control of that, nor should we. Art is meant to connect people, to evoke feeling and to unite people on some level. It is the epitome of the human experience in physical form. And it can take any form be is scientifical, traditional, digital, with words or pictures and so many other things. To see it as something to be controlled or only consumed in one way is just, not possible. 

Also, if you think people define their own lives, selves and realities is any way policing or power tripping, you may have a misunderstanding on what individuality is, pal. I’ve wasted enough words on you though. You’re probably not even an artist or a writer or anything, just a nasty little troll that has fun screaming through your keyboard. It’s been fun though. Well, see you.

[furrynewsfnn]

Welcome to FenNN the Fennec News Network - Crusaders Against the Anti-Social

Deviancy is not new to the furry fandom. Maybe the version back way when in the 1980s when it was a few dudes on some BBS that no one heard of, but for most of the 90s and up it’s been nothing but fictional animals doing every sexual act imaginable and conventions that cater to more kinks than kink conventions themselves. Every taboo imaginable, including the ones that you don’t want to, are featured some way and somewhere in the fandom. If they’re not carried out literally, it’s figuratively and it’s one of the infinite fountains of stigma within the fandom.

Right now furry is more volatile than ever, for a myriad of reasons, which I can list below:

Leather Pups are pretending to be furries and completely ruining the idea of furry art and fursonas with inexpensive leather pup masks that vaguely resemble a dog and the bad “pup” behavior that comes with it (master/sub play that involves fighting and public exhibitionism).

A raging war between trolls who butter their bread butter side up and those who butter their bread butter side down, with the alt-right making Hitler jokes in-between bouts of Tourette’s like screaming “they’re autistic��� while the alt-left make some sick burns, high five one another, then go into Tourette like bouts of calling them autistic.

Furry convention parties being so well known at this point that any party that publically leaks its room number is likely to be shut down due to overcrowding and a near 100% chance of having to wrap it up and move elsewhere as a stream of people come and knock on the door looking for a good time.

Aggressive drug addicts who relied on the fandom to be complicit with their behavior when they were younger are now aging, become more capable and are testing more boundaries than ever between: see the pup play in 2018 at Furry Weekend Atlanta or recent events of furries falling from balconies. It’s getting worse.

Aggressive drug addict alt-right begging to overcrowd their room leather pups/morphsuit wearers who string drug trips in-between lewd public behavior on the con floor and public humiliation of themselves.

The fandom is rapidly consuming itself and the incidents of bad public behavior are becoming more and more frequent. The degeneracy right now is overvlowing, trust is non-existent, the sense of community is fading as chats are nothing but flashes in the pan as arguments spawn in near record time and no one is really asking how do we fix this but more than willing to calling someone autistic and talk about how much better they are than everyone else.

Most, I would argue are now off on their own tiny xenophobic island clique where new additions are thoroughly vetted for complicity and failing that, are told they’re autistic and to walk the plank. Meaning that for a sense of community, it’s a requirement to be part of the many, many furry cliques.

I argue that we’re getting to this point because years of over acceptance in the fandom has created an environment ripe for the growth of degeneracy: no moderation or filtration and universal complicity has every individual refusing to challenge someone else’s degeneracy in fear of someone challenging their own. That’s while building their own paradigm that the fandom is full of degenerates, while what they do is acceptable – no one, well that is no one who isn’t autistic in their mind, has said anything negative about their actions.

“They’re autistic trash lmao furries suck haha, we’re awesome.”

“Yeah, by the way, muurrrr when we’re at the con mind if I snort ancient tea leaves off of your eyebrows.”

“Ohhh murrrrr I hope you get some in my eyes.”

To me it feels like there is a sea of blue pots calling blue kettles black and vice-versa. The aforementioned islands often fly their flag of degeneracy, cultivating an echo chamber of like-minded degenerates to reaffirm each other’s ideas. The most vocal of the group are often the worse by society’s standards, whereas the rest are Humans who aren’t really too far from normal forming cliques to sit around and figuratively (and often literally) engage in mutual masturbation, being mostly complicit in the entire ordeal.

It’s time that someone speaks out and puts some kind of bug in everyone’s ears that things need to change. The way furries interact with each other needs to change. The way that the fandom operates, on the highest level needs to change. Even conventions, in my opinion, need to change.

There needs to be zero-tolerance from the convention itself on risky and anti-social behavior. There needs to be zero-tolerance, UNIVERSALLY, for bad behavior by community leaders and sites. This isn’t about complex morality, where you’d argue who is to decide what is bad behavior? My answer is simply this: society at large doesn’t tolerate anti-social people. If someone’s actions lack the care and wellbeing of others, then it’s anti-social. It’s easy to spot. It might be uncomfortable. It might hit a little bit too close to home, but there is a line and people are crossing it.

If there was a risk of getting banned from conventions for inappriorate sexual public behavior, if there was a risk that the entire fandom would say that the over-the-top bad behavior was not for them, the negative elements would have to leave and form their own fandom with blackjack and hookers, with the benefit of it being nothing but the anti-social elements, which means that these people aren’t going to cooperate, which means they can either reform and rejoin the community and be respectful or they can do whatever they want elsewhere – it’s not furry’s fault.

I won’t jump on the sword and say this is the literal only solution, but I will say just standing around and being okay with these people who are snorting more chemicals than what killed Anna Nicole Smith, throwing on a leather pup mask or a cheap Amazon morphsuit and then roll out on the convention floor to cause people to have a bad time is just, asinine.

If you agree then stop being complicit. Be a better person and start being something that people can at least say yeah, well it’s a bunch of animals doing the naughty but at least people aren’t messing their diapers in public while someone does the nasty in a public space.

There is a lot more to come on the subject, but let this be the first battle cry of FenNN, your Fennec News Network. A place where I don’t give a flying ferret if you think Hitler or Lenin or Obama or George Washington did nothing wrong. I just care that people start working on making everyone’s and their selves lives better and stop putting so much energy in trying to make everyone else’s lives worse.

~ Praise the Fennec Fox

[brownducks]

‘A Scanner Darkly’ - Philip K Dick

First published at The Quietus, who let me write whatever I like about long-dead novelists, bless ‘em

“Everything in A SCANNER DARKLY I actually saw. I mean, I saw even worse things than I put in A SCANNER DARKLY. I saw people who were reduced to a point where they couldn't complete a sentence…and this was permanent, this was for the rest of their lives. Young people. These were people maybe 18 and 19, and you know, it was like a vision of hell. And I vowed to write a novel about it sometime.” – Philip K. Dick

A Scanner Darkly was Philip K Dick’s fortieth novel, and it’s one of his best-known works. It’s paranoid, disturbing and dystopian, but it wasn’t a vision of the future – it was a memoir.

Its main character, undercover narcotics agent, Bob Arctor, lives in a California that feels straight out of the early ‘70s, although we’re told the novel is set in 1994. When Arctor tries to infiltrate the supply chain of a drug called Substance D, he becomes addicted to it – his own supplier, Donna, is the woman he loves. His friends and housemates are all addicts, too. The plot ramps up when his police colleagues, from whom his identity is protected, ask him to run surveillance on himself, which is no-one’s idea of a good time: whenever he’s not on Substance D, he’s watching videos of himself on it.

Substance D is basically speed. For a long time, this was Dick’s drug of choice (I’ve written before about how you can conjure up an image of him at his desk, furiously typing, blinds drawn to block out the South California sun. He said he could turn out 68 pages of prose a day when he was on speed). Substance D is especially nasty, though. It destroys the connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, so that they first function independently and then compete, destroying any coherent idea of the self. In the case of Bob Arctor, it means that the addict self and the narc self eventually become unrecognisable to one another.

Dick denied that he based Arctor on himself, but their situations are strikingly similar: after his fourth wife Nancy left him, in 1970 – taking their daughter Isa with her – he said, “I got mixed up with a lot of street people, just to have somebody to fill the house. She left me with a four bedroom, two-bathroom house and nobody living in it but me. So I just filled it with street people and I got mixed up with a lot of people who were into drugs.” Arctor, too, had a family, but found himself alone and involved in drugs. “And then I just took amphetamines,” Dick says. “I have never ever taken hard drugs. But I was in a position to see what hard drugs did to people, what drugs did to my friends…” In A Scanner Darkly there's a strong sense of “how did I get here?” – that this isn’t where Arctor is meant to be. It’s likely Dick thought this about himself after the end of his marriage, too. When he was writing it, his then-wife Tessa would find him at his desk in tears.

By the time he wrote A Scanner Darkly, Dick was clean. He also had a horrific rehab experience in Canada which gave him the idea for ‘New Path’, the rehab organisation in the novel. Before, he would knock out up to four novels a year, but he worked on draft after draft of Darkly for four years. It was different; it required him to wrestle with a devastating period in his life and create something that would help him come to terms with it. Perhaps because it was less of a flight of imagination than other novels he’d written, this fidelity to reality forced him to slow down, get it right. Its depth and density reflect this. Also, its timeless truths about drug addiction and perfect evocation of the grotty southern California of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s make it a canonical drugs novel.

Post-war, two ways of writing about drugs emerged: in the early ‘50s, on the one hand there was William Burroughs, unnerving and brazen about heroin addiction in Junkie. On the other, there was Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception, recommending a nice afternoon listening to Mozart, staring at some flowers and dropping a soupçon of mescalin. In the early ‘60s the Huxleyian narrative of blissful transcendence dominated – his 1962 novel Island is the ultimate pro-psychedelics story. Alan Watts’ Joyous Cosmology came out the same year; Leary, Alpert and Metzner published The Psychedelic Experience soon after. But by the end of the decade, these beatific ideals had collapsed. There was acid burnout – a move towards heroin, speed and cocaine. In the background, there was Nixon’s war on drugs and the Vietnam War. When Dick wrote A Scanner Darkly, he wasn’t alone in charting the cultural wreckage of the late ‘60s – in Joan Didion’s era-defining The White Album, she writes that when she was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Santa Monica, her symptoms did not seem to her “an inappropriate response to the summer of 1968”.

Even so, the characters in A Scanner Darkly are recognisable today. Dick’s addicts are paranoid, wired and desperate. When they’re high they sit around shooting the shit, which is often very funny. Dick believed it to be both his saddest and most humorous work; a great deal of the novel is just them talking drug-addled rubbish at one another (Dick was also proud of the novel’s “very funny suicide scene”). Some of them have a grimly recognisable entrepreneurial spirit, too. Arctor’s smart-ass housemate Barris says at one point, “I’ve got a temporary lab set up at the house…watch me extract a gram of cocaine from common legal materials purchased openly at the 7-11 food store for under a dollar total cost.” Homespun drug production? Distinct shades of Breaking Bad there.

But it’s not just a novel about drug addiction. Dick was always spilling over with beliefs, questions and epiphanies. A Scanner Darkly races back and forth between depicting the nervy, brutal shape of drug abuse and Bob Arctor slowly losing his grip on his identity, trying to understand why it insists on being elusive and unstable. This instability is, of course, directly linked to the way in which Substance D causes – as Dick says, wonderfully – “organic brain damage producing split-brain dysfunction and a tragic parody of bilateral hemispheric parity”. But it also connects to a far greater set of ideas Dick was exploring, primarily metaphysical, and especially so as he wrote this.

Dick was an enormously wide-ranging reader and thinker – apparently he pored over his giant set of encyclopaedias (he would have loved the internet). But his reading suggests a certain wayward solipsism, which might be necessary, I guess, if – as he was – you’re busy creating your own cosmology. He read especially widely in mysticism, theology and spirituality, and as he tumbled further into this realm, there’s a sense that whilst the outside world deeply informed his work, what really lit him up was the construction of his own metaphysics. As much as he was anchored in the now (and in A Scanner Darkly this is especially true), he was also working out his own fantastically idiosyncratic responses to the kinds of abstractions that have been asked forever, most especially who am I? And is this reality the only reality?

Dick’s novels always pulsate between possible selves and possible realities. He was open-minded and in earnest. But in the case of A Scanner Darkly, in which the other self and the other reality are created by Substance D, all further possibilities are foreclosed. The only self is the disintegrated drug addict, the only reality their collapsed horizon. Everything implodes inside this paranoid subjectivity. It’s fascinating – in this novel alone, Dick shuts down a question he would normally push to the weirdest possible limits; it says an awful lot about the extent to which it stands out from the rest of his work.

In the early months of 1974, whilst writing the novel, Dick had a set of visions which formed the basis for his VALIS trilogy, and are also intricately detailed in his collected journals, ‘The Exegesis of Philip K Dick’. (Robert Crumb also turned them into a comic.) Based on the date, he called them the ‘2-3-74’ visions. These events convinced him – amongst much else – that there was another being within him: a first-century Christian called Thomas. Dick also came to believe, in all seriousness, that Anaheim, where he lived, was very clearly also first-century Rome or Palestine; that they were one and the same, and the two thousand years between them did not exist.

He was pretty confident about being Thomas and about his new interpretation of spacetime. As the PKD scholar Erik Davis remarks, “Dick dived into the deep end of the pool of weird”. He had ruptured reality and there was no looking back. As it stood, aspects of 2-3-74 had also been foreshadowed in his earlier writing, which made it all the more convincing. Through these visions, which refuted the idea of a single reality and a single identity, he barrelled towards a feeling of transcendence; towards something mystical and sacred that could eclipse everything that came before. You can see this play out in his novels – characters enter a process – a difficult struggle (just like Dick’s himself, which went on until he died of a stroke in ‘82) – to break free from the spell, or the entrapment, of their reality and reach something like salvation. It’s almost a Dick dialectic: reality plus rupture equals redemption.

A Scanner Darkly doesn’t do this, though. There’s no redemption, no light in the dark. This means that even as Dick was elaborating an entire metaphysics in his diaries, in Darkly, he was, very simply, writing his grief. “It is a very sad novel and very sad things happen to very good people,” he says. This makes it all the more a historical record, or even more accurately, a novel about drug addiction.

Since A Scanner Darkly then has no investment in predicting 1994, there’s no point asking what it got right about the future. Its few elements of science fiction, such as the ‘scramble suit’ that allows Bob to hide his identity in order to spy on himself (brilliantly depicted in Richard Linklater’s 2006 film adaptation, by the way); and the holographic projections of his house that he also uses to monitor himself, are background notes. Dick’s editor, Judy Del Ray, had to push him to make the novel more convincingly science fictional. “Judy, you know damn well the book is about the ‘60s,” he told her. Even so, he almost can’t help but write prescient novels. Even his novels were uncanny precogs – how meta.

In A Scanner Darkly, legal and governmental forces pretend to rehabilitate addicts, but inevitably, in this pessimistic universe, they enable them. The circulation of Substance D represents the epitome of a corrupt system, and making this point in the ‘70s might have made Dick seem a bit fringe, a bit of a conspiracy nut, but today he’s an anti-authority touchstone – a harbinger for exposing how corruption is at the very centre of things. There’s also, of course, the fact that surveillance is omnipresent in the novel, and that Bob Arctor watches and reports on himself. Dick’s surveillance dreams are the reality of social control today. You could also, if you want, say that Arctor’s split into two is an analogue of the real-life self and the self on the internet; the former watches the latter, and the latter is, of course, enmeshed in a web of monitoring. You could even go further and say that Substance D, causing self-surveillance and self-estrangement, is a symbol of identity dissociation in the same way the internet is.

But this is all conjecture. Really, Dick just wanted to talk about the friends he lost to drug abuse, and the pain it caused. In the Author’s Note at the end of the novel, Dick says, “This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did.” There’s a list of his friends who have either died or been damaged by drug addiction and he says, “I loved them all”. (He puts himself in that list too – to Phil: permanent pancreatic damage.)

Usually, when we think of Philip K Dick we think of his astonishing foresight. He played with simulacra, fractured realities and multiple selves in ways no-one else did and that uncannily anticipated the postmodern condition. The transformation of a novel like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep into the stunning noir of Blade Runner has also made him synonymous with the hypnotic aesthetic of future-dreaming late capitalism, which is, in fact, far removed from his grubby, shambolic novelistic worlds. His prescience and the aesthetic vision we’ve superimposed on him are the reasons why he’s so popular; he dreamed up the myths of the future and we have filled them out, made them real.

Yet I stick to what I’ve always believed about him – that pretty much the driving force of his writing was to make us empathise with others and with their suffering. A Scanner Darkly was, as he says, “from the deepest part of my life and heart” – it is bound up with his own experience of loss, grief and addiction. Yes, Dick was a brilliant thinker, but it’s about time we gave more space to the other aspect of his brilliance – that he was also fully in touch with his own humanity, and able to turn it into such dark, funny and visionary novels.

Thanks to Kiran for her help and to Mark Fisher (RIP) for his essay on A Scanner Darkly

[amerikanramblerpod-blog]

Trump, Cords, and Movie Franchises: Your Guide to 21st Century Living

Has 21st century living got you down? No worry, here is your handy guide to navigating through a few of the stickier parts of our daily existence. Cheer up! If you are reading this, it means you don't have to worry about all the bullshit people will deal with in the 22nd century. You'll be long gone by then!

Cords: Got wifi? Okay, maybe you do. But that doesn't mean that your life isn't a spaghetti ball of annoying cords. Cord for your phone, your computer, the cable box, DVD player, TV, And let's not forget the car, which now has cords for your satellite radio hookup, your GPS, and your phone. Back in the olde days, cars and phonographs actually started by cranking them. No wires there!

Scamming scumbags. Back in the olde days, you had to have human contact in order to get scammed. That guy that sold you a diseased horse? The Three Card Monte guy on the corner? The clip joint? The used car dealer? Snake oil salesman? The local palm reader or slumlord? These were all scam artists, but they had one thing in common: they had a human touch. They approached you or even you approached them. Physically. In a street or in an office. Such encounters could be horrible. But there was at least a human connection.

Not anymore. Scammers are not only prolific, they are faceless. They contact you through emails from Nigeria, wanting money. They send you spyware, malware, and other nasty viruses for no good reason other than you clicked on their stupid link. They destroy your 401K via Wall Street shenanigans or they are at a sleazy bank that sells you a subprime mortgage. They rob you blind, and yet don't even have the decency to do it with a gun when you're waiting in line at the bank. Scamming is high tech.

Except when it isn't. Let's not forget the payday lenders, check cashing places, car title mountebanks, and other assorted legal loan sharks that charge people $300 interest on a $500 loan. They make credit card companies look like charities in comparison. Not many people pick cotton in this country anymore, but there are still virtual sharecroppers. And they have the massive debts to prove it.

It was fitting that the 2016 Republican convention was held in Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. Because the Republicans at the top like to keep their voters in Check Cashing Place economic chains. The Republicans at the bottom, of course, are those who patronize Quicken Loans. Somehow, though, no one at Fox News found the convention site an ironic choice. Enjoy putting your doctor's bills on the credit card, Debt Slave!

Paying for stuff that you used to get for free. Remember when you could watch TV for free? All you needed was a TV. In the 1980s, when I grew up, TV was free, and it was pretty good. Sitcoms, dramas, lots of movies. Lots and lots of movies. Movies were on every night. You could watch a couple movies a day if you wanted to.

And then VCRS came out. And people started paying to watch movies they used to watch for free. But it was still good. VCRs freed you from commercials. And you could watch films uncut.

Then cable started getting bigger. For a while, cable just had movies and music videos. Then they started making shows. And more people started paying for cable to watch TV. The reception was better, and you could watch delightful, well adjusted people on HBO like Carrie Bradshaw and Tony Soprano.

Then the internet got popular. TV had to step up its game in order to compete with chat rooms and unlimited free porn. If you avoided getting cable, you still had to pay for a digital converter box.

Eventually, internet and cable became part of one demonic package brought to you by the likes of the devil's intern: Comcast. Or whatever cable company to which you have access. But, no, really, Comcast is the worst.

You might find yourself paying $120 a month to keep your internet and watch House Hunters a few times a week. You might eventually ask yourself, "is this insane?" To which the correct answer is: yes.

Luckily, we have ways to get around the cable companies. Netflix never got around to putting flicks on the net. But they do have some pretty cool shows. Amazon, too. And while, we're at it, let's check out Hulu. All for a monthly fee, of course.

Talentless, useless celebrities who never go away. We live in an era where even hardcore music fans could not name a single song by a major artists such as Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, or Justin Timberlake. And these are the pop stars! Like them or not, those musicians have talent. In contrast, there is the unwashed masses of reality TV, from the bearded, backwoods shitasses of Duck Dynasty; the morbidly obese, egg-sucking gutter trash of Honey Booboo; to the sad, terminally lonely mental patients of Hoarders.

But, really, aren't we talking about the Kardashians here?

Yes, Kim and the narcissists and circus geeks that move in her inner circle represent the nadir of the American character. They are like pop culture whales that consume everything and produce nothing. They are ambiguously ethnic Frankenstein's monsters: self-absorbed androids speeding across the consumer dystopia. They are Mitt Romney's loftiest dream (rich) and his worst nightmare (morally bankrupt). The Kardashians are both one-percenters and the worst kind of takers. They are celebrities known for being celebrities.

It is no wonder that the Kardashians turned men like Lamar Odom and Bruce Jenner into shells of their former selves. That is what happens when you get too close to a black hole: you collapse.

But bashing the Kardashians is too easy. Kim and Kanye deserve each other. But as bad as they are, they are pretty harmless. Such is not the case with Donald J. Trump. Trump, like the Kardashians, represents a particularly toxic strain of the national DNA. Kim Kardashian has far too much money. But at least she's not making national policy decisions and insulting foreign leaders and major trading partners who have nuclear weapons.

Trump is the logical extension of a world that bludgeons us with reality TV stars. A man who hath not so much brain as ear wax. He is a bloviating bully--the worst fever dream of H. L. Mencken. Trump is also a man who probably has no idea who H. L. Mencken is and is too lazy to look it up.

Bad hair, bad makeup, bad faces, bad hands, bad debating, bad gestures, bad spelling, bad Tweets. Racism, sexism, xenophobia, taco bowls and KFC buckets. Trump is the embodiment of America's garbage culture. If I were, say, H. L. Mencken, I could call Trump the "Orange Menace, "The Lyin' King," or the "Fastfood Fascist."

But in his defense, I'm not sure Trump knows what is real and what is unreal anymore. He acts as if all the world is his TV show, where only he makes the rules and determines what is fact or fiction. He is a monster, but only because no one told him "No!" 40-60 years ago. We have to blame ourselves, a bit, for the crass, idiotic leadership we get.

Yet, Trump brings up the perennial question that plagues pop culture in America: is this real or performance art? Only Glenn Beck knows for sure.

Yes, the Trumps and the Kardashians will go away eventually. That's comforting if only because of its inevitability. The sad flipside is: they will be replaced by someone worse. That's inevitable, too.

Recycling pop culture, ad nauseam. Hey, did you hear they're making a new Star Wars movie?" Yeah. The only reason I know is because people have been talking about it for, like, five years.

I said that last year. And there making another one. Again.

We've been living with Star Wars for almost 40 years. The first movie came out in 1977. The last really good one was made in 1983. For the last 34 years, Americans (re: white males) have been slave to a nostalgia that knows no bounds. In the mid-1990s, Lucas re-released the original Star Wars movies. Ten years after that, he FINALLY released them on DVD (while not remastering the original movies that everyone loved so much. The DVD of Jedi, for one, looked like shit).

In the interregnum, George Lucas pooped out three very bad Star Wars prequels that made his fans wonder if they weren't living in some kind of bad dream. Lucas wisely sold the film rights to Disney, which, with the help of J. J. Abrams, is putting out some new, highly professional, very adequate, test-marketed product.

The Star Wars franchise, though, is only the worst offender in a culture that recycles pop culture ad nauseam. Did you know there's a new Strawberry Shortcake show? Did you catch the reboots of Spiderman? The Hulk? Superman? Batman. Batman vs. Superman? The Robocop remake? The Total Recall or Magnificent Seven remake? Hollywood has reached a creative nadir, and we only have the people who saw Jurrasic World (which made $1.7B) to blame. But Ben Hur was a bomb, so I guess there's that.

These are just a few things you need to know on your tour through modern life. I'm sure there are other I'm forgetting. Stay tuned!