#Real Barbie of Berlin

[transpornman]

[kammomilla]

I wrote 5 pages worth of text so this is one long post. A whole wiki for my oc because why not

Reddie Martin – Reagent 0928 

Real name: Brunhilde Renata Martin 

Fake ID: Mandy Brown 

Mafia alias: Reddie Martin  Nicknames:  

Hilde (by mother and aunt Karolina) 

Rena (by childhood friends) 

Renata (by father and grandparents) 

Reddie (by the mob)  

Italian Family tree: 

Angelo & Marcella Martin (grandparents)  

Santo “Saint” Martin (great-uncle, deceased) 

Leonardo “Leo” Martin (cousin) 

Lando Martin (uncle, deceased) 

Lucio Martin (father) 

Frieda Martin (Leo’s mother, Lando’s wife) 

German Family tree: 

Ingrid & Hermann Jung (grandparents) 

Wilhelmina Martin (Mother) 

Karolina Treumann (aunt) 

Fritz Hoffmann (step-father) 

Background 

Reddie was born in Germany in 1935. When the Soviet Union took over, Reddie had been ten years old. The Martin family ended up living in DDR, East Berlin. Lucio Martin had been disfigured by the war and unable to provide for his family. Reddie smuggled illegal goods from West Germany when they turned 15. The same year Wilhelmina divorced Lucio and remarried to Fritz Hoffmann, Reddie’s former primary school teacher and former nazi supporter. Lucio was transported to a facility for chronically ill. Reddie never forgave this and blames their mother for tearing the family apart.  

Eventually they were caught by KGB and Reddie crossed the border to west in late 1956. Reddie sailed across the Atlantic and ended in Cuba where they met the Martino crime family members in 1957. Reddie became a wise guy and disguised themself as a man for months. Only capo Toni Pontini and soldier Bruno Caruso knew. They were nicknamed Reddie due to their reddish hair and ‘ready cash’ pun. Reddie did racketeering, sabotage and spying and partook in drug trade and battery. One Cuban officer was shot by them.  

After a while, Reddie chose to move to New York and unite with Santo Martin’s gang. They received new papers as Mandy Brown by Toni’s associate. Santo’s gang didn’t believe Reddie’s tale and kicked them out. Reddie did more racketeering and trade while taking low-paid jobs and trying to get hired by the local mafia for two years. The Police arrested them for stealing and having no permit for firearm. Reddie managed to contact Toni who then hired a corrupted lawyer and Reddie got out without bail.   

A week later, the Police double-checked Reddie’s papers and the pistol they were gifted by Toni. FBI got involved and Reddie escaped to the streets. Now homeless, broke and wanted, Reddie saw Murkoff’s ad and joined the Project Lathe Two in 1959 September. The plan was to get “rehabilitated” long enough for FBI to give up on the chase and go work for the gang again at the headquarters, Louisiana.  

Personality

Reddie acts like they were born in the mob. They are blunt, business oriented and indifferent to violence. Reddie says what’s on their mind whether it’s a tasteless pun or a weird memory no one else understands. They like to joke a lot and tell wild stories some which are exaggerated. Reddie often takes newbies under their wing and guides them through the trials, only to later blackmail them for favours.  

In a way, Reddie comes across self-centred: they think adding Franco Barbi as a prime asset was targeted at them. They don’t have proof of this, but it feels like it is. The same goes for other reagents: if one behaves suspiciously, Reddie is quick to think it has something to do with them. Paranoia plays a role in this. Years of illegal activity has taught Reddie to be observant and on their guard with everyone. The other reason is that Reddie views themself as a potential threat to Murkoff. Again, a wild assumption without proof but for Reddie it makes most sense.  

Reddie tries to be a team leader, but they are emotional and juvenile type in nature. If someone tells them they can’t do something, they’ll prove them wrong. If someone commands them to be still, they’ll complain and make an excuse to stand. If someone tells them to act like a lady, they’ll curse and raise their fist. Simply, Reddie does when asked, not ordered. They don’t like to be bossed and they negotiate on everything. 

Reddie’s weak point is navigation and patience on trials. The maze is their worst enemy. Once they learn how each task works, they tend to rush into the action, alerting ex-pops nearby and setting off sound traps. Reddie bashes through doors instead of unlocking them too. The teammates following behind are the ones paying the price for this.    

Relationships

Relatives 

Leo Martin – Reddie's younger cousin. Reddie taught him smuggling in the past and told him to come join them in New York once he’s old enough. Leo could be living in New York by now.  

Lucio Martin – Reddie loves him dearly and would like to bring him to America if possible.  

Santo Martin – Reddie never met the great-uncle but they heard stories and saw photos of him. Grandpa Angelo and grandma Marcella received letters from him that Reddie would read.  

Wilhelmina Martin – Reddie has a complicated relationship with her. She is their mother, but Wilhelmina has never fully accepted Reddie the way they are. Deep down, Reddie wants this acceptance despite everything that has happened between them.  

Fritz Hoffmann - Reddie despises the stepfather. He mistreated Reddie in school and continued doing so after marrying Wilhelmina. Reddie is ashamed of him since Fritz had been a vocal supporter of Hitler’s government.

The mob 

Toni Pontini – Toni took Reddie in and taught them the ways of the mafia. He saw potential in Reddie and was willing to act against rules to make them a member.  

Bruno Caruso – Bruno came up with the nickname Reddie the day they met. He taught them how to place car bombs.  

Salvatore Barbi – Reddie spoke with Don once on the phone. He mentioned the Martino family could make them a permanent member if Reddie’s up to it.

Sinyala Facility 

Mother Gooseberry – Reddie finds her somewhat scary. She reminds them of Wilhelmina whenever she’s aggravated. They try not to interact with her during trials. They know Dr Futterman is a puppet but they often forget this and think Futterman is a separate entity that says funny things and makes Reddie laugh. Dr Easterman recommends more trials with Gooseberry since her presence gets interesting results. 

Leland Coyle – Reddie thinks it’s ironic there is a cop calling them guilty because it’s true. Reddie is more bark than bite with him though. It’s fun to shout back at him and make him act like a fool as long as there are bricks and a stun rig available. Once the chase is on, Reddie is quick to vanish from sight. They are planning to build a bomb and bring it to the police station – a little payback for the justice system. Plus, to see that cop crying his eyes out.  

Franco Barbi – Reddie and Franco never met before but Reddie was told who he was. Toni and the rest gossiped about him in graphic detail. When Franco’s prime asset debut came, Reddie had been shocked to see Don’s son face-to-face. They think Murkoff’s planning something by adding him. Overall, Reddie views Franco as a fellow mobster and isn’t jolted by his level of violence. They want to form a possible allyship with him, if only Franco would stop aiming Lupara at them and hear Reddie’s offer.  

Trivia 

Reddie’s haircut is inspired by photos of younger Santo Martin before he moved to US. 

Reddie hates their first name Brunhilde, always has. It was their great-grandma's name. 

Their favourite colour has always been yellow, and their favourite flower is sunflower.  

Reddie is fluent in German and their Italian is decent, yet they intentionally speak like a mafioso. 

Reddie had one affair in Cuba. With an older, wealthy and married, woman named Melina.  

Reddie has a fedora in their room. They never wear it but it’s there as an inside joke. 

Reddie is often misgendered and people can’t decide on their pronouns so they can be she to one person and he to someone else. Reddie doesn’t care. 

Reddie has a habit on dropping hints of their criminal past and random names. They never explain if someone asks.  

[xuseokgyu]

Every month of 2023 with Belle!

post your favorite and/or most popular posts from each month this year (it’s okay to skip months and/or choose more than one set) I was tagged by @ambivartence and @jinniebit

I have been pretty inactive, but at least I didn't completely vanish hahahah Here is my year in review

January - The most popular set is WooSan and I'm not surprised at all hahah This random old moment I saw and had to have it in my blog. Some favorites and honorable mentions are My top songs of 22 cause it turned out better than I expected; one of my favorite Mingi looks ever (which I RANDOMLY got a photocard of on a store ~destiny~); Velvet Hwa cause LOOK AT HIM and Ponytail Mingi cause I still can't believe that was real

February - Again, not surprised at all cause yall are THIRSTY, but my most popular post in February was Berlin Mingi; Favorites and honorable mentions are this Pink Mingi; Fever Epilogue Teez cause that's still my favorite era/album (and I love my coloring); and Date with DK cause we love to be delulu

March - Most popular is Woo being his silly little self in Wanteez hahahah; And omg what a great month I have SO MANY SETS I LOVE; The favorite is definitely not my best set but it was Cyberpunk Mingi in Madrid FILMED BY YOURS TRULY, just the fact that i made a gif of something I filmed... I was THERE, I SAW THEM!!! And then I love all my sets from Atzrevival but I guess the “Tingle Interview” one made me specially proud with the coloring etc

April - Finally some more SVT heheh The most popular set was the Silliest SCoups ever hahaha I love him; My most favorite is Joong and Bumjoong in Madrid cause I LOVE to see these brothers interact; then we have Barbie Mingi, this ADORABLE Puppy Gyu and some of my firsts Xikers gifs

May - Of course the most popular post was YuWoo's kiss on Wanteez hahah Now for favorites we have Bouncy Teaser Mingi (which I was super proud of the coloring); this tiny adorable Minghao; and Tadashi Yunho

June - Another great month (*cough* Bouncy promotions *cough*) The most popular post was YuSanSang being Adorably Silly; AND WE HAD MY MOST FAVORITE VARIETY EPISODE EVER Wooyoung with Arin 😭😭😭; Some other honorable mentions are Furry Minghao (don't judge me, he is adorable); Ateez cuddle pile, Rainbow Sorbet Joong and Changbin with Harang

July - I've started to slow down on creating around this month and you can see my sets from here on out consist basically of Mingi, YunGi and a little bit of Yunho, but I can see you get me since the most popular is this adorable YunGi moment during fansign; Honorable mentions are this adorable Puppy Looking Yunho and My SVT bias line keeping the delulu alive

August - FATHER AND SON FINALLY TOGETHER and I love that you all agree with me, making Mingi and Sumin the most popular post of the month hehe My favorite set after this one is Ateez's Family Dynamics (because I looooove their family like relationship) and a special shout out to Mingi's Birthday Post cause I was super proud of how it turned out

September - This post turned out way more pink than I wanted but this YunGi moment is so PERFECT I'm not surprised is the most popular post; Then we have Sunglasses Mingi making me weak in the knees as a favorite

October - I only created one post during October :') but Mingi being Babied by the Members is SO cute and the post went so well I'm sure it would be one of the most popular ones even if I had more, It would definitely be within the favorites

November - Again, just one post during the whole month... And honestly, I wasn't going to create at all, but I saw this DK at UNESCO and something *clicked* I HAD to gif it

December - Crazy Form promotions made me create a little more this month (lots of Mingi to no one's surprise)... The most popular post, and definitely my favorite as well, is Mingi being Obsessed and Making Yunho blush cause like... yeah. I'm also proud of my MV Highlights post and I'm obsessed with the Season's Greetings aesthetics

And that's it! Thank you for sticking by me everyone I don't think I'll get back to being super active, but I definitely don't want to have months with a single set again, so you can still expect great things from me Here is for a great 2024 for us all!!

[blogjeepster]

Time to Face Facts...

Get Ready....

     Most American car horns honk in the key of F.

     The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."

     Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

     Every time you lick a stamp, you consume 1/10 of a calorie.

     The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

     Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself.

     Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every 2 weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

     The citrus soda 7-UP was created in 1929; '7' was selected after the original 7-ounce containers and 'UP' for the direction of the bubbles.

     101 Dalmatians, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and Mulan are the only Disney cartoons where both parents are present and don't die throughout the movie.  .

     A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

     'Stewardesses' is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.

     To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs - it will let you go instantly.

     Reindeer like to eat bananas.

     No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver and purple.

     The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

     Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

     The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

     The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II Killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

     More people are killed annually by donkeys than airplane crashes.

     A 'jiffy' is a unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

     A whale's penis is called a dork.

     Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown farther if it is thrown west.

     The average person spends 6 months of their life sitting at red lights.

     In 1912 a law passed in Nebraska where drivers in the country at night were required to stop every 150 yards, send up a skyrocket, wait eight minutes for the road to clear before proceeding cautiously, all the while blowing their horn and shooting off flares.

     More Monopoly money is printed in a year, than real money throughout the world.

     Caesar salad has nothing to do with any of the Caesars. It was first concocted in a bar in Tijuana, Mexico, in the 1920's.

     One quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet.

     Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although they are rapid, they are not agile.  So, if being chased by one, run in a zigzag line to lose him or her.

     Seattle’s Fremont Bridge rises up and down more than any drawbridge in the world.

     Right-handed people live, on average; nine years longer than left handed people.

     Ten percent of the Russian government's income comes from the sale of vodka.

     In the United States, a pound of potato chips costs two hundred times more than a pound of potatoes.

     A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel.

     A person cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva. For example, if a strong-tasting substance like salt is placed on a dry tongue, the taste buds will not be able to taste it. As soon as a drop of saliva is added and the salt is dissolved, however, a definite taste sensation results. This is true for all foods.

      Nearly 80% of all animals on earth have six legs.

     In the marriage ceremony of the ancient Inca Indians of Peru, the couple was considered officially wed when they took off their sandals and handed them to each other.

     Ninety percent of all species that have become extinct have been birds.

     There is approximately one chicken for every human being in the world.

      Most collect calls are made on father's day.

     The first automobile race ever seen in the United States was held in Chicago in 1895. The track ran from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois.

The winner was J. Frank Duryea, whose average speed was 71/2 miles per hour.

     Each of us generates about 3.5 pounds of rubbish a day, most of it paper.

     Women manage the money and pay the bills in  75% of all Americans households.

     A rainbow can be seen only in the morning or late afternoon. It can occur only when the sun is 40 degrees or less above the horizon.

     It has NEVER rained in Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert of Chile.

     It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World.

     The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

     An eighteenth-century German named Matthew Birchinger, known as "the little man of Nuremberg," played four musical instruments including the bagpipes, was an expert calligrapher, and was the most famous stage magician of his day. He performed tricks with the cup and balls that have never been explained. Yet Birchinger had no hands, legs, or thighs, and was less than 29 inches tall.

     Daylight Saving Time is not observed in most of the state of Arizona and parts of Indiana.

     Ants closely resemble human manners:  When they wake, they stretch & appear to yawn in a human manner before taking up the tasks of the day.

     Bees have 5 eyes. There are 3 small eyes on the top of a bee's head and 2 larger ones in front.

     Count the number of cricket chirps in a 15-second period, add 37 to the total, and your result will be very close to the actual outdoor Fahrenheit temperature.

     One-fourth of the world's population lives on less than $200 a year.  Ninety million people survive on less than $75 a year.

     Butterflies taste with their hind feet.

     Only female mosquito’s' bite and most are attracted to the color blue twice as much as to any other color.

     If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

     It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.

     In eighteenth-century English gambling dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the dice if there was a police raid.

     There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

     The human tongue tastes bitter things with the taste buds toward the back. Salty and pungent flavors are tasted in the middle of the tongue, sweet flavors at the tip!

      The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s gum. [link]

     When you sneeze, air and particles travel through the nostrils at speeds over100 mph.  During this time, all bodily functions stop, including your heart, contributing to the impossibility of keeping one's eyes open during a sneeze.

     Annual growth of WWW traffic is 314,000%

     %60 of all people using the Internet, use it for pornography.

     In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.

     Sex burns 360 calories per hour. [link]

     A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.

     Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it.

     The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.  More than 2 billion pencils are manufactured each year in the United States. If these were laid end to end they would circle the world nine times.

      The pop you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually a bubble of gas burning.

     A literal translation of a standard traffic sign in China: "Give large space to the festive dog that makes sport in the roadway."

      You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.

     Larry Lewis ran the 100-yard dash in 17.8 seconds in 1969, thereby setting a new world's record for runners in the 100-years-or-older class. He was 101.

     In a lifetime the average human produces enough quarts of spit to fill 2 swimming pools.

     It's against the law to doze off under a hair dryer in Florida/against the law to slap an old friend on the back in Georgia/against the law to Play hopscotch on a Sunday in Missouri.

     Barbie's measurements, if she were life-size, would be 39-29-33.

      The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30ft.

     One third of all cancers are sun related.

     THE MOST UNUSUAL CANNONBALL: On two occasions, Miss 'Rita Thunderbird' remained inside the cannon despite a lot of gunpowder encouragement to do otherwise. She performed in a gold lamé bikini and on one of the two occasions (1977) Miss Thunderbird remained lodged in the cannon, while her bra was shot across the Thames River.

     It has been estimated that humans use only 10% of their brain.

     Valentine Tapley from Pike County, Missouri  grew chin whiskers attaining a length of twelve feet six inches from 1860 until his death 1910, protesting Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency.

     Most Egyptians died by the time they were 30 about 300 years ago,

     For some time Frederic Chopin, the composer and pianist, wore a beard on only one side of his face, explaining: "It does not matter, my audience sees only my right side."

      1 in every 4 Americans has appeared someway or another on television.

     1 in 8 Americans has worked at a McDonalds restaurant.

     70% of all boats sold are used for fishing.

      Studies have shown that children laugh an average of 300 times/day and adults 17 times/day, making the average child more optimistic, curious, and creative than the adult.

     A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

      The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes. [link]

     You were born with 300 bones, but by the time you are an adult you will only have 206.

     If you go blind in one eye you only lose about one fifth of your vision but all your sense of depth.

      Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

     The strongest muscle (Relative to size) in the body is the tongue.

      A Boeing 747's wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.

     American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class. [link]

     Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

     A palindrome is a sentence or group of sentences that reads the same backwards as it does forward: Ex:  'Red rum, sir, is murder.' 'Ma is as selfless as I am.' 'Nurse, I spy gypsies. Run!'  'A man, a plan, a canal - Panama.' 'He lived as a devil, eh?'

      The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA'

     In 1986 Congress & President Ronald Reagan signed Public Law 99-359, which changed Daylight Saving Time from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in April.  It was estimated to save the nation about

300,000 barrels of oil each year by adding most of the month April to D.S.T.

     The thumbnail grows the slowest, the middle nail the fastest, nearly 4 times faster than toenails.

     The Human eyes never grow, but nose and ears never stop growing.

     The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottles represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had. [link]

     Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.

     If Texas were a country, its GNP would be the fifth largest of any country in the world.

     There are 1 million ants for every human in the world.

     Odds of being killed by lightening? 1 in 2million/killed in a car crash? 1 in 5,000/killed by falling out of bed? 1 in 2million/killed in a plane crash? 1 in 25 million.

     Since 1978, 37 people have died by Vending Machine's falling on them.  13 people are killed annually.  All this while trying to shake merchandise out of them. 113 people have been injured.

     Half the foods eaten throughout the world today were developed by farmers in the Andes Mountains (including potatoes, maize, sweet potatoes, squash, all varieties of beans, peanuts, manioc, papayas, strawberries, mulberries and many others).

     The 'Golden Arches' of fast food chain McDonalds is more recognized worldwide than the religious cross of Christianity.

     Former basketball superstar Michael Jordan is the most recognized face in the world, more than the pope himself.

     The average talker sprays about 300 microscopic saliva droplets per minute, about 2.5 droplets per word.

     The Earth experiences 50,000 Earth quakes per year and is hit by Lightning 100 times a second.

     Every year 11,000 Americans injure themselves while trying out bizarre sexual positions.

     If we had the same mortality rate now as in 1900, more than half the people in the world today would not be alive.

     On average, Americans eat 18 acres of pizza everyday.

     Researchers at the Texas Department of Highways in Fort Worth determined the cow population of the U.S. burps some 50 million tons of valuable hydrocarbons into the atmosphere each year.  The accumulated burps of ten average cows could keep a small house adequately heated and its stove operating for a year.

     During a severe windstorm or rainstorm the Empire State Building sways several feet to either side.

     In the last 3,500 years, there have been approximately 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.

      The Black Death reduced the population of Europe by one third in the period from 1347 to 1351.

     The average person spends about two years on the phone in a lifetime.

     Length of beard an average man would grow if he never shaved 27.5 feet

      Over 60% of all those who marry get divorced.

     400-quarter pounders can be made from 1 cow.

     A full-loaded supertanker traveling at normal speed takes at least

20 minutes to stop.

     Coca-Cola was originally green.

     Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.

     Hong Kong holds the most Rolls Royce’s per capita.

     Average number of days a West German goes without washing his

underwear: 7

     WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific armed their airplanes while stationed with .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measuring 27 feet before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, he went through "the whole 9 yards", hence the term.

     Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.

     Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

     Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.

     In the early 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (like two-way radios in taxis) but did not re-number the other channel assignments.

     The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

     Firehouses have circular stairways originating from the old days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

     The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

     111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

     Statues in parks: If the horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

     The expression 'to get fired' comes from long ago Clans that wanted to get rid of unwanted people, so they would burn their houses instead of killing them, creating the term 'Got fired'.

     "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

     Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

     The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law, which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

     The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

     The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight in case of war or emergency, they could be used as airstrips.

     The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army. G.P. for 'General Purpose' vehicle.

     The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary, because when it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

     The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

     If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19, the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

     In Aspen Colorado, you can have a maximum income of $104,000 and still receive government subsidized housing.

     Honking of car horns for a couple that just got married is an old superstition to insure great sex.

     Dr. Kellogg introduced Kellogg's Corn Flakes in hopes that it would reduce masturbation.[link]

     The sperm of a mouse is actually longer than the sperm of an elephant.

     In medieval France, unfaithful wives were made to chase a chicken through town naked.

     The Black Widow spider eats her mate during or after sex.

     Napoleon's penis was sold to an American Urologist for $40,000. [link]

     Eating the heart of a male Partridge was the cure for impotence in ancient Babylon.

     A bull can inseminate 300 cows from one single ejaculation.

     When a Hawaiian woman wears a flower over her left ear, it means that she is not available.

     The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk with the shutter on backwards.

     The only nation whose name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanistan.

     The following sentence: 'A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.' Contains the nine different pronunciations of "ough" in the English Language.

     The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.

     The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.[link]

     The shape of plant collenchyma’s cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.

     Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.

     Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

     Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.

[link]

     PEZ candy even comes in a Coffee flavor.

     The first song played on Armed Forces Radio during operation Desert Shield was "Rock the Casba" by the Clash. [link]

     Non-dairy creamer is flammable. [link]

     The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)

     Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

     Golf courses cover 4% of North America.

      The average person will accidentally eat just under a pound of insects every year.

     Until 1994, world maps and globes sold in Albania only had Albania on them.

     The value of Pi will be officially "rounded down" to 3.14 from

3.14159265359 on December 31, 1999.

     The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from space.

     A piece of paper can be folded no more then 9 times.

     The amount of computer Memory required to run WordPerfect for Win95 is 8 times the amount needed aboard the space shuttle.

     The average North American will eat 35,000 cookies during their life span.

     Between 25% and 33% of the population sneeze when exposed to light.

     The most common name in world is Mohammed.

     Mount Olympus Mons on Mars is three times the size of Mount Everest.

     Most toilets flush in E flat.

     2,000 pounds of space dust and other space debris fall on the Earth every day.

     Each month, there is at least one report of UFOs from each province of Canada.

     40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.

     You can be fined up to $1,000 for whistling on Sunday in Salt Lake City, Utah.

     It takes about 142.18 licks to reach the center of a Tootsie pop.

     The serial number of the first MAC ever produced was 2001.

     It is illegal to eat oranges while bathing in California.

     If done perfectly, a rubix cube combination can be solved in 17 turns.

     The average American butt is 14.9 inches long.

     More bullets were fired in 'Starship Troopers' than any other movie ever made.

     60% of electrocutions occur while talking on the telephone during a thunderstorm.

     The name of the girl on the statue of liberty is Mother of Exiles.

[link]

     3.6 cans of Spam are consumed each second.

     There's a systematic lull in conversation every 7 minutes.

     The buzz from an electric razor in America plays in the key of B flat; Key of G in England.

     There are 1,575 steps from the ground floor to the top of the Empire State building. [link]

     The world's record for keeping a Lifesaver in the mouth with the hole intact is 7 hrs 10 min.

     There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

     The world record for spitting a watermelon seed is 65 feet 4 inches.

     In the Philippine jungle, the yo-yo was first used as a weapon.

     Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

      Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.

     The three most recognized Western names in China are Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, & Elvis Presley.

     There is a town in Newfoundland, Canada called Dildo. [link]

     The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston,

Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

      All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.

     In space, astronauts are unable to cry, because there is no gravity and the tears won't flow.

     Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

     There are more plastic flamingos in the U.S that there are real ones.

     The crack of a whip is actually a tiny sonic boom, since the tip breaks the sound barrier.

     Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets in our solar system combined.

     Hot water is heavier than cold.

     The common idea that only 10% of the brain is used it not true as it is impossible to determine the actual percentage because of the complexity of the brain.

     Lawn darts are illegal in Canada.

     There are more psychoanalysts per capita in Buenos Aires than any other place in the world.

     Between 2 and 3 jockeys are killed each year in horse racing.

     5,840 people with pillow related injuries checked into U.S.

emergency rooms in 1992.

     The average woman consumes 6 lbs of lipstick in her lifetime.

     Some individuals express concern sharing their soap, rightly so, considering 75% of all people wash from top to bottom.

     Conception occurs most in the month of December.

     CBS' "60 Minutes" is the only TV show without a theme song/music.

     Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.

     'Obsession' is the most popular boat name.

     On average, Americans' favorite smell is banana.

     If one spells out numbers, they would have to count to One Thousand before coming across the letter "A".

     Honey is the only food which does not spoil.

     3.9% of all women do not wear underwear.

     This common everyday occurrence composed of 59% nitrogen, 21% hydrogen, and 9% dioxide is called a 'fart'.

     "Evaluation and Parameterization of Stability and Safety Performance Characteristics of Two and Three Wheeled Vehicular Toys for Riding." Title of a $230,000 research project proposed by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, to study the various ways children fall off bicycles.

      Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

     Meteorologists claim they're right 85% of the time (think about that one!)

     In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.

     Los Angeles' full name 'El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula' is reduced to 3.63% of its size in the abbreviation 'L.A.'.

     If you went out into space, you would explode before you suffocated because there's no air pressure.

      The only real person to ever to appear on a pez dispenser was Betsy Ross.

     Mike Nesmith's (the guitarist of The Monkeys) mom invented White Out. [link]

     Only 6 people in the whole world have died from moshing.

     241.     In a test performed by Canadian scientists, using various different styles of music, it was determined that chickens lay the most eggs when pop music was played.

     The storage capacity of human brain exceeds 4 Terabytes.

      In Vermont, the ratio of cows to people is 10:1

     Any free-moving liquid in outer space will form itself into a sphere, because of its surface tension.

      The average American looks at eight houses before buying one.

     In the average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator.

      Koala is Aboriginal for "no drink".

     Shakespeare spelled his OWN name several different ways.

     The first contraceptive was crocodile dung used by the ancient Egyptians.

      A signature is called a John Hancock because he signed the Declaration of Independence. Only 2 people signed the declaration of independence on July 4. The Last person signed 2 years later.

     Arnold Schonberg suffered from triskaidecaphobia, the fear of the number 13.  He died at 13 minutes from midnight on Friday the 13th.

     Mozart wrote the nursery rhyme 'twinkle, twinkle, little star' at the age of 5.

     Weatherman Willard Scott was the first original Ronald McDonald. [link]

      Virginia Woolf wrote all her books standing.

     Einstein couldn't speak fluently until after his ninth birthday.

His parents thought he was mentally retarded.

     Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

      Deborah Winger did the voice of E.T.

     Kelsey Grammar sings and plays the piano for the theme song of Fraiser.

     Thomas Edison, acclaimed inventor of the light bulb, was afraid of the dark.

     In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

     You can sail all the way around the world at latitude 60 degrees south.

     The earth weighs around 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.

     Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

     Porcupines can float in water.

     The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

     A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

     The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

     All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20, a national pot-smokers hour.

     "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt."

     Almonds are a member of the peach family.

     Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

     Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

     There are only four words in the English language which end in

"dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and  hazardous.

     Tigers not only have striped fur, they have striped skin!

     In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

     On the ground, a group of geese is a gaggle, in the sky it is a skein.

     To Ensure Promptness, one is expected to pay beyond the value of service – hence the later abbreviation: T.I.P.

     When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.

     The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life."

     A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.

     A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

     On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1"encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.

     The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z; hence the name "OZ."

     The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

     Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.

     John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.

     There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

     The scene where Indiana Jones shoots the swordsman in Raider’s of the Lost Ark was Harrison Ford's idea so that he could take a bathroom break.

     A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

     A snail can sleep for three years.

     All polar bears are left-handed.

     China has more English speakers than the United States.

     Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

     February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

     If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

     If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you will have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

     In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

     Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

     The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

     Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

     On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

     One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 1930s lobbied against hemp farmers they saw it as competition.

     Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

     Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

     Starfish haven't got brains.

     The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

     The name of all continents in the world end with the same letter that they start with.

     There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

     The longest word comprised of one row on the keyboard is: TYPEWRITER

     You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

     The average person spends 12 weeks a year 'looking for things'.

     The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe..

     The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

     Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

     "Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und"

     The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis..

     The longest place-name still in use is:

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiakitnatahu,

a New Zealand hill.

     An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

     Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

     Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.

     Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

     The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

     Steely Dan got their name from a sexual device depicted in the book 'The Naked Lunch'.

     The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.

     There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

     A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

     Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

     The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from

1.8 miles away.

     The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.

     The word "dexter" whose meaning refers to the right hand is typed with only the left hand.

     To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

     Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."

     The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead."

     The first episode of "Joanie Loves Chachi" was the highest rated American program in the history of Korean television, a country where "Chachi" translates to "penis".

     Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

     The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.

     Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

     The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

     Giraffes have no vocal cords.

     The pupils of a goat's eyes are square.

     Van Gogh only sold one painting when he was alive.

     A standard slinky measures 87 feet when stretched out.

     The highest per capita Jell-O comsumption in the US is Des Moines.

     If a rooster can't fully extend its neck, it can't crow.

     There were always 56 curls in Shirley Temple's hair.

     The eyes of a donkey are positioned so that it can see all four feet at all times.

     Worcestershire sauce in essentially an Anchovy Ketchup.

     Rhode Island is the only state which the hammer throw is a legal high school sport.

     The average lifespan of an eyelash is five months.

     A spider has transparent blood.

     Every acre of American crops harvested contains 100 pounds of insects.

     Prince Charles is an avid collecter of toilet seats.

     The most common street name in the U.S. is Second Street.

     Tehran is the most expensive city on earth.

     The sweat drops drawn in cartoon comic strips are called pleuts.

     Babies are most likely to be born on Tuesdays.

     The HyperMart outside of Garland Texas has 58 check-outs.

     The Minneapolis phone book has 21 pages of Andersons.

     In the 1980's American migraines increased by 60%.

     Poland is the "stolen car capital of the world".

     Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter, the monetary system, and the folding attic ladder.

     The S in Harry S. Truman did not stand for anything.

     In Miconesia, coins are 12 feet across.

     A horse can look forward with one eye and back with the other.

     Shakespeare is quoted 33,150 times in the Oxford English dictionary.

     The word Pennsylvania is misspelled on the Liberty Bell.

     NBA superstar Michael Jordan was originally cut from his high school basketball team.

     You spend 7 years of your life in the bathroom.

     A family of 26 could go to the movies in Mexico city for the price of one in Tokyo.

     10,000 Dutch cows pass through the Amsterdam airport each year.

     Approximately every seven minutes of every day, someone in an aerobics class pulls their hamstring.

     Simplistic passwords contribute to over 80% of all computer password break-ins.

     The top 3 health-related searches on the Internet are (in this

order): Depression, Allergies, & Cancer.

     Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.

     Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.

     Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

     Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.

     The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.

     All US Presidents have worn glasses; some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.

     Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

     Walt Disney was afraid of mice.

     The site with the highest number of women visitors between the age of 35 and 44 years old: Alka-Seltzer.com

     The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.

     Pearls melt in vinegar.

     It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.

     Thirty-five percent of people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

     The 3 most valuable brand names on earth are Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser (in that order).

     Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.

     Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a 'Friday the 13th'.

     The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they can be easily confused at a crime scene.

     The mask worn by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.

     The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games--MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL--are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.

     Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

     When the French Academy was preparing its first dictionary, it defined "crab" as, "A small red fish, which walks backwards." This definition was sent with a number of others to the naturalist Cuvier for his approval.  The scientist wrote back, "Your definition, gentlemen, would be perfect, only for three exceptions. The crab is not a fish, it is not red and it does not walk backwards."

     Dr. Jack Kevorkian first patient has Alzheimer's disease.

     Fictional/horror writer Stephen King sleeps with a nearby light on to calm his fear of the dark.

     It's possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.

     It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down.

     The very first song played on MTV was 'Video Killed The Radio Star'

by the Buggles.

     William Marston engineered one of the earliest forms of the polygraph in the early 1900's. Later he went on to create the comic strip Wonder Woman, a story about a displaced Amazon princess who forces anyone caught in her magic lasso to tell the truth

     Americans travel 1,144,721,000 miles by air every day

     The the U.S. you dial '911'. In Stockholm, Sweden you dial 90000

     38% of American men say they love their cars more than women

     The U.S. military operates 234 golf courses

     100% of lottery winners do gain weight

     Bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers were all invented by women

     A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

     A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

     Cats urine glows under a black light.

     In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

     Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."

     Pamela Anderson Lee is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.

     Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."

     When possums are playing 'possum', they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.

     Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme? Paul Reiser himself.

     Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

     Most lipstick contains fish scales!

     Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants!

     There are more than 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building!

     Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand!

     The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!

     The average American/Canadian will eat about 11.9 pounds of cereal per year!

     Over 1000 birds a year die from smashing into windows!

     The state of Florida is bigger than England!

     Dolphins sleep with one eye open!

     In the White House, there are 13,092 knives, forks and spoons!

     Recycling one glass jar, saves enough energy to watch T.V for 3 hours!

     Owls are one of the only birds who can see the color blue!

     Honeybees have a type of hair on their eyes!

     A jellyfish is 95 percent water!

     In Bangladesh, kids as young as 15 can be jailed for cheating on their finals!

     The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs!

     Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States!

     166,875,000,000 pieces of mail are delivered each year in the US

     Bats always turn left when exiting a cave

     The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head

     Daffy Duck's middle name is "Dumas"

     In Disney's Fantasia, the Sorcerer's name is "Yensid" (Disney

backwards.)

     In The Empire Strikes Back there is a potato hidden in the asteroid field

     Walt Disney holds the world record for the most Academy Awards won by one person, he has won twenty statuettes, and twelve other plaques and certificates

     James Bond's car had three different license plates in Goldfinger

     Canada makes up 6.67 percent of the Earth's land area

     South Dakota is the only U.S state which shares no letters with the name of it's capital

     The KGB is headquartered at No. 2 Felix Dzerzhinsky Square, Moscow

     The Vatican city registered 0 births in 1983

     Spain leads the world in cork production

     There are 1,792 steps in the Eiffel Tower

     There are 269 steps to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa

     Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand while drawing with the other

Holy crap you stayed around long enough to read all of them.

Sure there was only 449, but most readers left at around 193.

You have real staying power!

Facts the factcheckers need to know

[randomoranges]

Summer 2023 Retrospective

Once more, summer break has come to an end and once more, I am reflecting on everything that I did and that happened over the past 7 weeks.

This year felt – different. It was almost as if summer never really got into the real swing of things. The weather was a clusterfuck, what with forest fires, smog, rain and cooler temperatures. Every time it seemed like it was over, there would be another storm, another air quality warning and somehow, it impacted the overall feel of summer.

However, this summer was also filled with lots of visits from friends and family and adventures. Between people visiting me and me visiting them, it occupied a lot of time (in a good way.) There were highlights to the summer; notably, going to see the Back to the Future Musical, getting to see my uncle twice, visiting friends, making new friends, celebrating the Lizard’s 10th year, seeing the Perseids, and adopting a sunflower. I also got to go to many new places in the city I had wanted to visit.

On the other hand, there were also some downers to the summer; my dad getting hospitalised again, the never-ending debacle with my plants and the weather.

Yet, there were also so many smaller moments that were pleasant as well.  Out of the 37 days I had, I only had 6 days where I had nothing planned. (That’s insane.) I managed to go to the pool so many times, I did a lot of art and I read a lot of books. Even though I did not write at all, I still found other creative outlets, so I guess that counts. There are many things I never got around to doing, but I suppose that’s okay. Some can still be done post end of holiday and others can just be added to next year – hopefully.

I’m still not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. I never like the version of me I become under the duress of teaching and it seems that no matter how hard I try, I lose myself in the process. But – it’s a new school year and at least, I’m doing the same thing as last year so I know what to expect. There is less unknown. Hopefully, that will help.

As always, below is my little list of things I did over the summer – an old habit I’ve kept for over a decade now. More for me than anyone else, but it’s there.

Here’s to more adventures!

Pool: 23

 Ice cream Hocheglacé Iconoglace Pineault Dolce Santanella Kem Coba Ca Lem

 Adventures Maisonneuve Market Biodôme Observation Deck Quai des Commencements PAC Old Port Au pied du courant Ave Mt-Royal JT Food Trucks Eye balls E’s wedding Dad Fiasco First Official White Hair TM Sugar Sammy Plant fiasco Bonjour Montréal sign Navette fluviale Berlin Wall World Commerce Building PVM Ring RAMQ Lézard Bizarre 10th birthday NYC-PVD-BST Dinner with J Gogol Bordello Power failure/playing Pictionary in the dark Sunflowers! Strawberries! Chinatown Food trucks Bota Bota Spa Nails Edmonton + camping Did art Dusted room Cleaned out drawer Perseids Esplanade Louvain Sunflowers One Started Fic and a half Adopted a sunflower Dinner at Schtroumpf’s Showed Dad how to work the laptop Tea at the Ritz

 People S visit Zia visit Les petites La gang du camp Uncle x2 S J + Fam Zia Edmonton gang T, M and errone else Schtroumpf and Aqua C

Food Chez Gérard Beaver Tails Usine à spaghetti Au p’tit doré Guillaume Les enfants terribles Oh Dumplings La beignerie Terrasse Nelligan Tea at the Ritz Bota Bota Spa

 Movies/TV shows/ Books End of Miraculous s5 Spider Man Nimona x2 Nimona comic Q Force Melting Queen Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu ? Barbie x2 BTTF Musical Miraculous Lady Bug Movie Gomens 2 x3 Qu’est-ce qu’on a encore fait au bon Dieu ? Best Men Christmas in Wonderland Cowboy Bebop s 1 2 Staged s1 A Dash of Salt and Pepper The Gay Best Friend Heartstopper s2 Rose à l’île Red White and Royal Blue movie Red White and Royal Blue book Around the world in 80 Days

[bopinion]

2023 / 31

Aperçu of the Week:

"It's really beautiful. It feels like God visits everywhere else but lives in Africa."

(Willard Carroll Smith II, better known as rapper and actor Will Smith)

Bad News of the Week:

Free speech and Russia - unfortunately a contradiction. Politically effective opposition and Russia - likewise. Independent judiciary and Russia - ...and again. If someone is then known as a "Kremlin critic", he has lost three times over. Also in court. As happened again in recent days. First, Vladimir Kara-Mursa has lost his appeal. Who, after working for "Open Russia", was already twice the victim of a poison attack and in the spring of 2022 held an anti-war speech in Arizona. Enough to sentence him to 25 years in prison for treason.

And also Evergreen Alexei Navalny - who, unfortunately, after the poison attack on him at the end of his recovery in Berlin returned to Russia. A real conviction offender! - was once again on trial the day before yesterday. This time on the charge of "founding an extremist organization." So one can call political opposition naturally also. He got (additional) 19 years of imprisonment. Sidenote: the new trial was not taking place in a regular court, but directly in Nawalny's penal colony in Melekhovo, without public or media access. No, I refrain (albeit laboriously) from mentioning Guantanamo Bay in this context....

Good News of the Week:

I am not a megalomaniac. Nor am I a psychic. Still, I was surprised on Monday to read about an action that may have been inspired by my little thematic foray into "hidden costs" (and that they should be visible to consumers) last week. It's about a promotion by German grocer Penny, the discount subsidiary of retail giant Rewe.

Penny is labeling products with the prices it would have to charge if environmental impact costs were actually included, as part of a promotion - unfortunately limited to one week and only for nine products. This leads to smaller and larger price increases. And these are hardly surprising. For example, that the vegan schnitzel only increases by 5%. But the Maasdam cheese by 88%. And the Viennese sausages double themselves with 94% nearly in the price.

Naturally that is a PR Stunt. Critics, such as the far too conservative Farmers' Association, were quick to use the nasty term "greenwashing". I don't care. I am happy about the basic thematization. Which, in the store of a discount grocer, should also reach people who don't consume media that take up the topic. Any form of attention is fine with me. After all, how could I rant about the consumerism of someone who can credibly assure "Really? Oh... I didn't know that."

Personal happy moment of the week:

We live in the countryside. The mooing of cows, the bleating of sheep and the clucking of chickens are part of our everyday soundtrack. Sometimes nature comes very close to us. For example, a hedgehog is currently building a nest under a bush by our terrace. And it took us two days to find a little field mouse and release it back into the wild unharmed. And we all had more fun with it than stress.

I couldn't care less...

...about Rishi Sunak. He started out as the supposed savior of the post-Brexit UK. And proves to be a gravedigger for the planet. The latest example of ignorance is over 100 new drilling licenses for oil and gas production in the North Sea. On one damned day. God save the earth. The Brits won't.

As I write this...

...we are at home (still) discussing a movie we saw Friday night. In the biggest movie theater in Bavaria. In the original English. And it wasn't "Barbie". We can't get rid of the Pandora's box that Robert J. Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb", opened almost eighty years ago. A look behind the scenes of the Manhattan Project, dramaturgically designed by Christopher Nolan's team to be highly worth seeing, should be a must for all of us.

Post Scriptum

Europe's history on the African continent is anything but a good one. At least until this century. Yet we struggle to come to terms with the colonial past in a mature way. And with an unbiased view of the 1.4 billion people who live (or survive) there. See the current dithering in dealing with the coup in Niger. Just when our peacekeepers are withdrawing from the neighboring country Mali.

That the basic problem is called "understanding" is proven by a look at history: In November 1884, Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had a five-meter-high map of Africa hung up in Berlin. For three months, representatives of the European powers and the United States looked at this map. And negotiated how Africa should be divided up. As can still be seen today - on the map and on the basis of past and present conflicts - simply with a ruler. And without regard for peoples, landscapes or ethnic groups. Who is still paying the bill for this today? Hint: it is not the Western powers.

"Africa is not a country" is the title of a new book by Dipo Faloyin. The African-American was born in Chicago, grew up in Lagos and now lives in London. Primarily an editor for Vice, his subject has always been Africa in all its complexity. And enlightenment about precisely that. Now he is making his internationally acclaimed book debut. The German subtitle is "The manifesto against stupidity, laziness and simplicity in dealing with the multiformity of the African continent." Sounds like a must-read.

[transdetector-blog]

SUSPECTED CIS- PARIS HERMS (Real Barbie of Berlin)

Paris is a popular online model.

SUSPECTED CIS

Some people may see Paris’ over-the-top appearance and immediately assume she is transgender or some type of drag queen. But there simply isn’t any evidence to support any of those theories. There also isn’t any evidence I have found that confirms her status as a cis woman either; so for now she must stay as suspected cis.

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

Flake's podcast - Harmony in Music

published on yt 2020-04-29, but probably podcast earlier

A lecture on Harmony in music, Flake plays the songs in order, starting with songs with one keynote, then two etc.

Some of the first songs he discovered in relation to cars, for instance at 0h16 a song he found on a CD that came with the car that he bought from a befriended singer from another band (that starts with Knor and ends with Kator), or at 0h20 a song they used to play in the car when Flake travelled along with other bands to their gigs, just to tag along hoping they'd let him play his casio with them (when Feeling B wasn't playing much).

Feeling B is mentioned a couple of times, like at 0h39, when Flake plays King Crimson, a band he discovered when the old drummer of Feeling B played it (who was a huge fan), Flake tells how he went to the guys house to listen and how they got in the mood to jam in the middle of the night, without soundcontrol in the room, so the entire appartementbuilding woke up from the drumming (a neighbour came round to complain, but the drummer just stared him down and the neighbour left).

At 1h38 Flake talks about the trip Feeling B undertook to the USA, travelling, playing for a handful of people, and being all together confused about the country, completely misunderstanding distances, so having to walk for hours, getting soaked in the rain, just to get breakfast, and indulging in all you can eat buffets (where Flake ate so much pudding he had enough for a lifetime).

Flake also mentions a couple of films he watched in the GDR when young and that mesmerized him, like (1h06) The Last Waltz about The Band, and particularly Muddy Waters' song Mannish Boy in it, which was pretty much the anthem of the East German bluesscene, or (1h25) Blues Brothers with Ray Charles.

At 1h11 he plays German band Trio, who played at a tv show, and at the end where voted the best of the show and asked to play again. The band played, but the singer just stood there eating an apple (while he voice could still be heard, clearly showing they were using playback). Flake thought that very cool, to show it that way, not bothering about lipsync.

Talking about cool, when he at 0h49 plays Daddy Cool (by Boney M), Flake tells us he always wanted his kids to think he was cool, so when travelling with Rammstein he always tried to find nice souvenirs for his kids, the house is full of Eifeltowers by now (the kids don't even look at them if he brings one of those), boomerang didn't work, kangaroo-in-can turned out to be a stuffed animal (and fortunately not kangaroomeat) so that was okay, but when he bought a real native american doll in the USA and came home with that, it turned out to be a barbie that you could also buy at Berlin-Kreuzberg (and Barbie wasn't considered that cool a toy by the kid's mom anyway, so no luck there).

One small Rammstein anecdote at 1h32: the band went to the MTV awards in Milan, and this time were asked to present an award to The Offspring, so Flake along with Paul and 'our drummer' (as he always refers to Schneider) agreed to do that. Flake thought it would be really funny if he, when announcing the award, gave a thank you speech instead. Well as it turns out Flake was the only one who thought it was funny, no one else did, least of all the actual awardwinners 😊

more of my takes on Flake's podcasts

[anbubisibuna]

Das Haus Anubis Character Life Stories my headcanon:

Nina: 🧸🎨

Nina was born on March 19th 1994 in Germany in a small village in Hessen. Nina used to live with her parents and her grandmother in a big house with a garden until the accident happened. (Her grandmother the mother of her father). Her grandmother had her own small flat in the basement. Nina's father was a successful lawyer therfor they were wealthy and they did alot of activities together. Nina's mother was an artist. Her mother would sometimea draw with her but Nina can't remember much of it. Nina only has vivid memories of her parents. Like how her dad used to go fishing and how her mom didn't like fish. Before her parents death Nina's mother gave Nina a diary in which she could write in once she was old enough.

On November 12 1999 it was a very rainy day Nina's parents both went shopping and took the car. They left by 10am and never came back. At 4pm there was a knock on the door. Two policemen stood there. Nina still being to young was sent in another room to play. The policemen then told her grandma the devastating news.

Nina's father was immediately dead after the accident. Her mother is in the hospital fighting for her life. Nina's grandma fought her best to keep it together for the sake of little Nina.

Nina and her grandmother went to her hospital to visit her mother. She had various injuries and internal bleeding. The prognosis were bad and the doctors gave a 1% that she would live. But still Nina and her grandmother didn't give up on her and were next on her bed everyday for almost 24 hours. Nina doesn't remember much from it, because she was only four. But she remembers her grandma holding her in her lap reading bedtime stories until she fell asleep. And sometimes she could hear her softly crying.

Four days after the accident her mother also died from her injuries. The first few months were hard because Nina couldn't fully grasp her parents not being there anymore. Her grandmother and her lived in the big house now together with her grandmother having full custody of her. Nina's grandmother gave her best in raising her. She was due her son's early death a bit protective of Nina. She didn't want her to go out later than 8pm. Nina never complained anyways. Her grandmother was everything for her.

Nina started to write in her diarys after her 8th birthday. After this she wrote something every single day. It was something that would remind her of her mother. And it felt like she would tell her about her day through her diary.

Nina started drawing again at the age of 9. She loved to draw landscapes, trees, birds etc. At school she had a close friend Abby with who she hung out with almost everyday. In the 8th grade Abby had to move which devasted Nina. Nina wasn't very popular in school. She wasn't bullied. She was just a shy kid and making friends was hard for her. For the next few years her grandma was her best friend.

In Spring of Nina's 9th grade, the health of Nina's grandmother worsened and she realised that she needs to be in a nursing home. It took them for a while until they found a nursing home and a place to stay for Nina. On September 29th 2009 Nina moved in the house Anubis and her grandmother to the nursing home.

Delia: 🛍👠

Delia was born on August 9th 1994 in Berlin. Delia's mother died right after her birth. ¹ After her mothers death her father was absolutely devastated and he made sure that Delia has everything she needs growing up. For the next couple of years Delia's father most of the time worked from home and the same time took care of Delia. Delia's father was a very successful real estate agent. His wealth allowed him to buy everything Delia wanted. Which he did because she was his little princess.

Delia discovered early her interest in fashion and make up. She loved to dress herself up in pretty clothes and do her make up. She would design new clothes for her Barbie dolls out of cloths. Delia also would invite friends over for a fashion show.

Delia startet doing balett when she was 6 and quit after 3 years.

When Delia was 9 years old Delia's father went out with a woman for the first time after her mothers death. The woman was roughly ten years younger than her father. She was a nice woman at first but Delia immediately had that gut feeling that something wasn't right with her. The two dated for 4 months until they broke it off. For the next couple of years Delia's father continued to date most of the time younger women. Delia soon started to realize why they were interested in her father: It was his money.

During that time Delia's father spend alot more time working outside his home, so Delia's stepmothers took care of her. Delia remembers them always being so nice to her face but as soon she would turn her back they would talk badly on their phone about her.

When Delia was 12 she met Kaya for the first time during the Hollidays in Hawaii. Delia immediately started crushing on him. And he had found interest in her aswell. Delia however acted like she wasn't interested in him first so he would have a hard time getting her. That what she has seen from her father and his girlfriends. Her father would always buy various gifts for them to impress them. That's what Delia wanted aswell. The two kissed on the last day at their hollidays after a surf show. It was Delias first kiss.

Delia forgot about Kaya and she briefly dated two other guys. Delia became very popular in school especially with the boys. She was labelled as the prettiest girl in school and that was what she felt like.

Delia didn't see Kaya again until a year later. When her father out of the blue annouced that Delia has to move in an internaat. Delia at first protested but agreed after he bought her the expensive Designer dress she always wanted. Her father also told her there was a very prestigious school in the near with good chances for a good career. And Delia always wanted to make career since she was little. So she agreed.

On September 8th 2007 Delia moved to the House Anubis. Two weeks after moving in. Delia has called in faith. Kaya moved in the House Anubis aswell. They two started to going out a few months after.

Daniel: 🧮🧠

Daniel was born on on January 12 1994 in a small village in Germany Bayern . His father was an accountant and his mother a secretariat. When Daniel was four years old his mother gave birth to his brother. Tobias. Tobias had downsyndrome. Early on Daniel stood up for his brother and defended him from bullies.

His relationship with his parents for the case normal and healthy.

Daniel discovered already by an young age an interest in Aerchology. He soon realizes he had alot in common with his uncle Peer. He would often go over to his place and discuss various things about history and aerchology. He didn't had much interest in his parents occupations. Daniel loved to read early on and he was always labeled as a very sharp individual.

However when Daniel was 11 years old his uncle Peer had to move. Three hours away from their home. The visitations had become rarer. In school Daniel also faced some sort of depression. He felt unchallenged and bored. Daniel however didn't want to skip a grade. ( The school he was visiting at this time had a low reputation and the education they received was more low hanging fruit). After some discussions with the teachers, his parents, the school counselour and the principal. They decided it was best for Daniel to transfer to a different school. 5 months later they found a suitable school for him with a free place. However the school was three hours away from his home.

After some more discussions they decided that Daniel would move in to an Internaat near the school.

On March 5th 2006 Daniel moved to the House Anubis.

Luzy: 💄🧨

Luzy was born on October 29 1994 in Bremen, Germany. Luzy came from a middle class family. She had an older sister named Diana. Her parents loved her but from a young age Luzy always felt like her parents were favouring Diana. Diana got effortlessly good grades, she was popular in school and she was good in sports. She was everything and Luzy envied her.

When Luzy was 8 years old her later best friend Linn moved next to her. The two immediately clicked off and hung out almost everday after school. And eventhough Linn came from a different economic class. With Linn Luzy finally found someone who understood her. Linn stood up for Luzy when she was being teased for her light red hair.

Through her childhood Luzy has grown into a pretty feisty and hotheaded person. She was getting into some physical fights with other people when the provoked her and also had to serve some detentions.

Luzy contiuned to get into trouble with other students for defending herself. When her parents had enough of her parents and decided to have her move to an internaat. Luzy was of course furious upon the discovery. She did not intend to live this far away from her best friend.

Linn then argued with her parents that she also wanted to move in an internaat aswell.

Luzy and Linn moved in the House Anubis on March 16 2006.

Felix: 🎃🎭

Felix Gaber was born on May 26th 1994 in Frankfurt Germany. His father was a construction manager from a very successful firm and his mother was a stay at home mother. Felix had two older twin brothers who are 10 years older than him.

Growing up his parents were very strict, especially his father. Felix does remember having some sort of a loving relationship with his mother. Felix had always been a prankster in school. Which caused getting him into alot of trouble.

His brothers sometimes would help him out of it .

He met Magnus when he was in 3th grade. The two quickly became friends. With Magnus Felix had a companion to play pranks with. What Felix also liked the most Magnus most of the time figured a way out to get them out of trouble. He would often go over to his place to hang out. Magnus lived in a big house. His parents were rarely there. He was with a Nanny who slept most of the time. So everything was allowed. Completely different in Felix' household.

Felix however did wonder what Magnus' parents had been doing and why Felix had never seen them.

In 5th grade Magnus and his parents moved to München. Felix hated now being without his best friend.

Felix met Mo when he was in 5th grade Mo was 5 years older than him. Mo and Felix sort of became friends soon after. Mo teached Felix everything he knew about doing Horror Make Up. Which Felix loved to do, so he could scare people. Mo also teached Felix other skills like breaking into a door etc. He also got interested in technology thanks to Mo and Felix soon after became very skilled in it.

One time he put a virus on his teachers computer so the exam they were about to do couldn't be done.

Felix was getting into various of troubles and after almost burning down the school on accident he was expelled. His parents were furious but mostly his father. His brothers were both well behaved young men and were studying at a noble University in Norwegian.

His parents then decided to let him move to the House Anubis. But that was his last chance. If he got there expelled aswell they would sent him to an Internaat in Switzerland.

On September 7th 2005 Felix came to the House Anubis.

Magnus: 💵🏆

Magnus was born on April 12. 1994 in Düsseldorf Germany. He is part Romanian from his mother. His father is german. Growing up he always had a close relationship with his father despite seeing him not so often. His father was like a hero for him who he would do anything to impress. He also loved playing golf with him.

During his childhood most of the time the Romanian Nanny Marya would look after Magnus.

Magnus joined alot of competitions and was determined to win them. However his parents rarely showed up to any of them. Whenever he did win something his parents gave him some cash and told him to buy something nice. ²

In 3th grade he moved to Frankfurt in a new house where he met Felix. Magnus at first thought that Felix was a weirdo. But he began to like him because he did find him funny lowkey and he was the first friend he ever had. He invited Felix often to come over to his house to play games with him.

After finding out that he had some talent in singing his parent made him join choir called Penguins. It was something he enjoyed to do and he did it for almost two years.

In 5th grade he had to move with his parents to München. His father got a new job there.

He lived there, before his father got arrested.

On November 8th 2004 Magnus wanted to visit his father in his office to surprise him. That was the moment where is life changed forever. Magnus remembers two men screaming at his father hitting him and then arresting him. The court process was held two weeks after. On December 9th is father was being charged guilty for massive fraud and was sent to prison for life. Magnus was devasted. Soon after Magnus saw his mother with a new man and his parents got a divorce. On March 14th 2005 his mother gave birth to his first half sister. Which confirmed him that his mother had been cheating on his dad.

Despite that Magnus loved his half sister and took care of her. He however didn't like the relationship his mother had with his stepfather. After trying to break them up numerous times and getting into trouble at school because people made fun of him his father being in jail. His mother had enough.

She wanted to restart with a new family and Magnus was being a bad influence. He was being too much like his father. On September 2005 Magnus was being sent to the House Anubis.

Mara: 🌻⭐️

Mara was born on August 25th 1994 in Egypt. Right after her birth there was a big massacre. The society who were after everyone who was in the bloodline of Amneris to get eternal life murdered her parents first and then every new born baby they got their hands on.

During this bloodbath her parents got the wrong baby. Mara. The fleed from Egypt to Oman. Her sister Malika was one years old at the time.

Mara's father was a profi athlete and her mother was a stay at home mother. Mara loved to do sport with him. She also discovered early on a talent in learning new languages. She started to learn german when she was 6, French when she was 7, and Spanish when she was 8.

She did learn german with her older sister Malika. Mara had a very close relationship with her sister. She was her best friend.

When Mara turned 12 her father began having less time for her. He was more and more busy with his own sports or other things. Mara began to be very sad about this when he cancelled plans with her he promised. She however was still determined to get back his attention. Even when it was hard to do sometimes. ³

Mara has grown an interest in singing and she took some singing lessons and she loved doing Karaoke.

When Mara was 14 Malika wanted to go to Switzerland in an Internaat which offerered an excellent teaching programm. Mara didn't want to there because all of them wore uniforms and it was too boring for her. Mara did want to go to an internaat in Germany. Her parents agreed after some time of convincing.

Mara moved to the House Anubis on September 2008.

Kaya: ⚽️💪

Kaya was born on October 16th 1992 in Turkey. After his birth he moved with his family to Germany. On July 2th 1994 his sister Aylin was born. Aylin was blind from birth.

Kaya decided when was four that he would become a doctor and figure out a way to cure her blindness.

Kaya however had problems in school it took him longer to understand things, like the rest of the students. He became frustrated and unmotivated when it came to school. Kaya had to repeat the first grade and the fourth grade.

He did had a talent in sport which he figured out when he was 10. He played soccer, basketball, did track and surfing. Kaya tried every sport possible and he was quick to pick it up. Every summer he spent his Hollidays on Hawaii sand and participated on surfing competitions.

During his childhood the other kids made fun of his sister Aylin due her blindness. Kaya always defended his little sister which caused him being picked on sometimes aswell.

It did stop when Kaya got older. And he got more popular.

Kaya began to become interested in girls when he was 12. He was very popular with the girls due his good looks and charm.

When Kaya was almost 14 he met Delia during his hollidays in Hawaii. He has sworn he has never met a girl who was prettier than her. He kissed her on the last day of his hollidays.

Four months later he fell madly in love with a girl named Gia. Gia was a confident skater girl who was a year older than him. Kaya dated her for four months when he went to a Surf Camp with her for ten days During this time they met Benny a guy who was 17 at the time. Benny repeatedly flirted with Gia eventhough he knew she was with Kaya.

On the last day at their surf camp Kaya saw Gia making out with Benny which devasted him. Not only that but Gia broke up with him right after and started dating Benny.

Kaya continued to get bad grades in school until his father had enough. He sent Kaya to the House Anubis Internaat on September 22th 2007.

¹ We don't know anything about her mother so it is easily to assume that she's dead and also is so spoiled from her father.

² He has various trophies in his room. I think during his childhood he was very competitive so he could get his parents attention in some way.

³ I just think Mara's obession with Kaya in Season 1 runs deeper and is maybe connected with the daddy issues of her father. Like Kaya and her father are both athletes. And don't have much time for her. I think of any other reason why Mara was so determined to be with Kaya it's like she tried to get the love from Kaya she didn't get from her father enough or something.

Order of moving in:

Magnus and Felix moved in September 2005, Age: 11 years.

Daniel and Luzy moved in on March 2006, Age: Daniel 12 years, Luzy 11 years.

Delia and Kaya moved in on September 2007, Age : Delia 13 years, Kaya 15 years

Mara moved in on September 2008, Age: 14 years

Nina moved in on September 2009, Age 15 years

[transpornman]

Real Barbie of Berlin

[goldgirl1239]

I feel cheated!!!!!! I feel cheated!!!!! I feel cheated!!! Did I know they were going to make the storyline Katarina became Red? Yes I have known that for at least 3 seasons. However after all the mystery all the intrigue the reveal felt anti climatic in a big way. After following this show for 8 years and being a faithful follower I felt like a kid on Christmas that ended up with the Dollar Store Barbie instead of Mattel’s Malibu Barbie! I wanted a meaningful answer to all my questions all the mysteries, all the webs that the writers had weaved! Did I get it? Did any of us get that? Nooooooo

We got a rushed explanation thrown together in black and white and tied up with a purple bow. They want us to believe that Dom cared so little about Katarina he gave her to men to women and put her in grave danger but then moved heaven and earth to keep her safe??? They want us to believe that the Tacoma house was so meaningful to Katarina because she played nanny sometimes when Carla wasn’t home that she blew it up to forget what happened there???? What happened there??? How did Katarina have a bloody Christmas Eve Story?? How did Katarina know Sam??? So bubble girl was Jennifer but she didn’t seem to mean anything to Katarina. Katarina didn’t really love the real Reddington? Did Mr Kaplan know about Red being Katarina?? Why was Katarina so concerned over Carla in the second season with Berlin? We were fed fast explanations and treated like casual viewers and I for one feel cheated!!!

Dear Blacklist Writers,

I want my eight years back! This wasn’t what you promised!

[talenlee]

Henry Orenstein

I'm going to tell you a story. It jumps around a little, to future and past, and it has a big twist in it that I'm going to need you to trust me on. Because of that, the fold - and content warning - is coming later than you'd expect.

This story, started, for me, on the Transformers wiki.

This is a Rubsign. It's a small piece of plastic that's heat-reactive. When Transformers started out as a brand, there was an immediate push to make cheap knockoff toys with similar ideas. In order to 'protect' the brand and ensure kids only wanted to buy the genuine Transformers, they developed something that they could pretend was part of the play pattern: a small symbol on the robot's body that had the silhouette of either the Decepticon or Autobot faction, and you wouldn't know for sure if you didn't heat it up, usually as a child, by rubbing it with your finger.

Transformers, and their gimmick of 'transforming', is essentially, open source. You can't copyright it or even copyright the techniques of a mould. This is one of the reasons there's so many knockoffs of those toys — the actual technique of a transforming toy is pretty much uncopyriteable method.

The rubsigns, however, were made with patented technology; not only weren't other people allowed to put them on their toys, but even worse, they simply couldn't make them because the method for their creation was proprietary. What I thought as a child was a clever way to represent a disguise, for a moment of tension in the narrative, was really just a corporate control collar, a thing that meant they could draw a hard line between their version of the idea and the other, shitty ones, so I could ensure my collection of second hand transforming robot toys was properly branded.

Rubsigns are a cop is what I'm saying.

But, they had to be invented.

This is Henry Orenstein. Learning about the origin of the rubsign meant learning that to my surprise, the patent for them is not held by The company per se, but is instead partially owned by Hasbro, and partially owned by this one dude, Henry Orenstein.

When I found his name in the Transformers wiki, the wiki stated, perhaps boldly: His life is more interesting than Transformers.

Bold claim.

This is professional Poker. It's a well known game that involves players playing for extremely large sums of money, often with similarly large sums of money involved in the buy-in. It's grown in popularity over the past twenty years, in part because of improvements in presenting the game to an audience. Back in 1995, a patent was filed for a device known as a hole camera, which let the broadcasters collect the information about the players' hands without doing anything that disrupted the natural flow of the game. The hole camera was used in 1999, and that's about when poker started to pick up in public discourse.

And the patent for the earliest hole camera (which isn't used much any more) is to a guy named Henry Orenstein. So important was this - and his winnings and his achievements lifetime - that he's been inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

This is a Johnny Seven OMA, which were made by Topper Toys. And that's a company Henry Orenstein founded to make his toys after being annoyed at how expensive dolls and toy guns were for poor kids. Topper Toys eventually folded into another brand, Deluxe Reading, which I understand if you are a hardcore toy collector, really into things like barbie accessories and cross compatibility, is very important to the hobby.

This background was how Henry got the attention of Hasbro, and wound up working with them on acquiring new toy properties. That meant he was in position to be in Japan, looking at Takara and Microchange toys, and come back with the idea of acquiring both toy sets, and rebranding them as Transformers in 1980.

Interesting dude, right? He should write a memoir.

Except he did already:

And now, when we jump back in the story, I have to say: Content Warning: Nazis.

Henry Orenstein was born Henryk Orenstein, one of five Jewish children to a Polish family, born in Hrubieszów, Poland, 1923. That is to say, when he was 16 years old, the Nazis invaded and occupied his country. This was obviously not ideal, and the Orensteins first hid themselves in their house through secret passages and hidden chambers between the walls. When the food and water ran out, the parents made the painful decision to surrender to arrest, in the hopes of keeping their children alive.

Henryk's parents were taken, shipped to a camp, and shot. The children were then sent to a camp, where Henryk dedicated a plan to keeping moving. If they were being moved around, transferred from thing to thing, if the person in charge of them was different from time to time, nobody would have the time to really make a protracted plan to execute them. That, hypothetically, was the idea. This meant that he and his siblings were in five different concentration camp - including the camp run by Amon Goeth, the villain of Schindler's List.

They end up in the camp in Budzyń. A few days after arrival, a report comes over the loudspeaker that 'Any Jews with math or science training must report to front office' and Henryk signs himself and his brothers up.

... they did not have math or science training

See, as things were Getting Worse towards the end of the war, the Germans were trying to maximise the resources they did have. This is part of the grouping of things you'd possibly hear as the wunderwaffe — the preposterous weapons of the later days of Hitler's aspirations. You may know these as a sequence of History Channel tv ads, like Hitler's Greatest Tanks or Superboats or The Cannon That Shoots Time Frozen Chunks Of Hitler's Future Brain or whatever. Nowadays, wunderwaffe is a German word primarily used sarcastically, in case you're curious. The Nazis were desperate, because they were a bunch of sucky losers who couldn't make anything good on their own —

And never did

— they instead tried to turn their prisoners to the task of solving their problems with the finest of Nazi Bullshit Magic. At this point, Henryk is maybe nineteen years old, and he and his brothers are signed up to the camp's equivalent of the Shed they dump the A-Team in. The scientists in charge of the lab are scared: if this fails, they're just wasting manpower, and while the Jewish subordinates may fail, if they fail, they're going to get shipped to the front and treated like meaty bullet catchers.

Henryk, recognising the situation, proceeded to run cons on the Nazis with his brothers.

They made bullshit devices that wouldn't work, but did look like they worked. They stole from the labs. They crafted things that could be faked to working but wouldn't work for real. They entertained the scientists with the finest of hokum. And then the researchers, full of relief that they wouldn't become a statistic on a Soviet soldier's bayonet, started to talk about how great their progress was of Doing Science At Shit to their command.

Command released an order to demand that these Jewish Science Wizards produce a tank paralysing gas.

Which was a problem.

Look, the Nazis were fond of demanding things that couldn't be done. Then they could shout at their subordinates who were fucking up, or they'd deliver and you looked great. Again, this is not an environment for refined science, this is a shrinking circular firing squad where everyone is trying to just not be the next person shot. But nonetheless, Tank Paralysing Gas was demanded.

Henryk and his brothers did what they could, they made something they assured the Nazis would work, and the scientists, sweating bullets, sent it off to another base to be tested.

Where it didn't work.

Obviously.

Okay, so now for a moment, consider the situation. Consider what this looks like. These scientists have sent a giant pile of reports about how great a job they were doing, and there's a big trapdoor labelled Actual Bullets on it underneath them. They just put together their wunderwaffe and sent it off to be tested, and it didn't work, so what do they do?

Blame the prisoners?

Uh, that's going to go poorly, because they were saying the prisoners were doing a great job just a few days ago.

Come clean?

Fuck off.

Okay, so what else do they have as an option? Well, they did the only thing a fascist can do. They posted through it, Nazi style.

They sent infuriated reports to the other camp. WHAT DID YOU DO TO OUR TANK-PARALYSING GAS THAT MADE IT NOT WORK!?

And... you can see how this goes.

Right now, nobody wants to be the person who admits something is wrong. Nobody wants to be the person who pulls the circle of who gets shot even closer. You don't want to tell your superiors you fucked up handling the Tank Paralysing Gas, or if you made the Tank Paralysing Gas, you don't want to tell them that the Tank Paralysing Gas didn't work.

And so back and forth they go. Testing things that won't work and demanding ever-increasing test protocols to try and make it the other person's problem. I don't have proof of it, but some accounts of the story include the two camps getting infrastructure projects like new roads to make sure the transport of the Tank Paralysing Gas works and is good and proper and anyway, the war ended before they got this resolved.

But there is paperwork, recovered during the fall of Berlin, with Heinrich Himmler's signature on it, ordering the mass production of the Tank Paralysing Gas made by Henryk and his younger brothers.

"The whole tale about the scam they pulled on the nazis is... instructive, too"

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Kate Durbin, author of Hoarders

Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer and artist. Her books of poetry include E! Entertainment, The Ravenous Audience, and ABRA, which won the 2017 international Turn On Literature Prize. Durbin was the Arts Queensland Poet-in-Residence in Brisbane, Australia in 2015. Her art and writing have been featured in the New York Times, Art in America, Artforum, The Believer, BOMB, poets.org, the American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She has shown her artwork nationally and internationally at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, The PULSE Art Fair in Miami, MOCA Los Angeles, the SPRING/BREAK Art Show in Los Angeles, peer to space in Berlin, and more.

Kate Durbin will be reading from her newest poetry book, Hoarders (published by Wave Books) with special guest Alex Dimitrov, also reading from new work, in our City Lights LIVE! virtual events series on Thursday, May 6th!

*****

Where are you writing to us from?

Los Angeles, California. I’m sitting at my writing desk with a bowl of Lucky Charms.

What’s kept you sane during the pandemic?

I recently bought a View-Master from eBay, and I’ve been looking at all these beautiful old reels, of places like Yellowstone in the 60s, and miniatures of old Disney movies like Pinocchio. There’s something comforting about a little 3-D world inside a View-Master. It gives this feeling of a world continuing on, outside the frame, beyond your vision.

What books are you reading right now? Which books do you return to?

Right now I’m reading Carribean Fragoza’s Eat the Mouth That Feeds You, Kate Zambreno’s To Write As If Already Dead, Sam Cohen’s Sarahland, Henry Hoke’s The Groundhog Forever, Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979, Divya Victor’s Curb, and Ted Dodson’s An Orange.

I return to more books than I can list here! I’m a big re-reader. The most recent is Nathalie Sarraute’s Tropisms, which are beautiful, short, strange meditations on everyday objects and spaces. I have been thinking a lot about objects, how mysterious they really are. And their complicated relationships to people. This object-person question is a thread through my books E! Entertainment, Hoarders, and a novel I’m working on now about my childhood.

Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?

Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons was a big influence for my most recent book, Hoarders. Stein’s book is filled with slippery little objects with a language all their own. In Hoarders, the objects also have a kind of animism, or life to them, and a sense of humor too. For example, there’s a poem filled with surreal Barbies, that are real Barbies that have actually been made and marketed! Walk and Potty Pup Barbie, who comes with a tiny dog with nuggets of fake poop, Claude Monet Water Color Barbie, Tippi Hedren in The Birds Barbie, and many more.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

My bookstore would be located inside the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas, somewhere near the shark slide. It would be called McDonald's Chicken Nuggets, and our bestseller would be Jean Baudrillard’s America.

[jocia92]

Tom, the robot in your film, speaks German but with an English accent.

It was like that in the original story. But for the role, I'd always dreamt of finding an actor who wasn't so well known in Germany. This is sort of my first real German film. Love Life (2007) was shot in Israel in English. Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (2016) was in multiple languages. Unorthodox is not really a "German" series. But here, because the script was in Germany, I thought it would be interesting to find someone who wasn't so well known for other roles. If I took [German star] Moritz Bleibtreu, the German audience would think: "that's Moritz Bleibtreu playing a robot."

I also think the slightly foreign accent helps Tom as a character because it gives him a slight linguistic alienation. In the script, he didn't have to be English. We actually looked all over Europe. Of course, I wanted someone good-looking. I had the image in my head of Barbie's Ken. But we also needed a really good actor and one who had a touch of self-irony and would have fun playing Tom, who sometimes just stands there, blankly, not knowing what he should do next.

Then I found Dan Stevens, who had just this kind of humor, and such precision in his acting. And he speaks excellent German! The script is complicated. Any German actor would get tongue-tied. It was such a lucky break. In part, we have the pandemic to thank, because, under normal circumstances, he would never have had the time. He works so much. I met him over Zoom, we talked a few times, he read the script and we went for it.

Did he already speak German?

Yes. He studied German, in Cambridge I think, and also in Germany. He even shot a film here — Hilde (2009) about [German singer] Hildegard Knef, alongside Heike Makatsch, as her husband, who was English. But of course, he had to practice. He was so incredibly disciplined with his German.

[thebenzene]

4th of July

Everything was better in 2008. For the first time in six years, I had a younger sister — my one and only sibling. I was in second grade and I was the most obnoxious in the class. I always receive disciplinary letters from my teachers and my mom used to attend parent-teacher conferences because I was too loquacious and hyper. It was also the year I turned seven. My parents took me to a mall and bought me a Barbie doll. I still remember her appearance. She had a waist-length pony-tailed dark brown hair, blue eyes and dark pink lips, a pink jacket coated in fur sewn with a silvery tube beneath (both designed hanging like a crop top), a pair of pants that I don't know how to call (it fits the doll well from the hips to her knee and it goes baggy hanging until her mid-leg), and a pair of violet stilettos that I wished I had one in real life. I regret giving her top to my childhood friend and lending her violet shoes that my friend in Caloocan dropped in the drainage. I bring that doll with me, almost wherever I go. In the box were teeny-tiny accessories that I barely remember, her mini mirror  and the mini comb, and her pink long-sleeved dress (like the pink one in The Princess and The Pauper movie). For a young child like me, my parents bought me that box with the Barbie doll inside when we went at the Toy Kingdom at SM Fairview, because my parents love me — and so I took care of that doll well. I remember how simply that day went, but I was happy. My parents took me to an inflatable play area and I met a child around my age. I don't remember what we talked about. I can only remember the joy jumping inside the play area, the slide, the colorful small balls that you'll land on, and the plastic tree that's being inflated as well. Most importantly, I remember my mom taking video of me with her two megapixel Nokia Supernova phone. God, I wish we were able to keep the file. I was in second grade and I barely remember everything. Yet I am sure, I was definitely happier despite of being bullied almost everyday. It was the year two thousand and eight when my dad subscribed to a pirated Dream TV Cable. The package pretty much came with a hacked card, a satellite, and a tv box where you insert the card and do the settings and stuff. I remember watching Tom & Jerry and the show that scared me truly called Courage the Cowardly Dog during the weekdays after coming home from school. My parents were strict (and still are, for the record). I only got an hour to watch everyday and so I had to remind myself. The tv was situated in my room. Using my red Artline and black Pilot markers, I write on the wall of my room the time I'm supposed to turn off the tv. For example, I started watching at 2:08 pm, I had to turn the tv off at 3:08. Well, I could confidently tell I was a straightass obedient kid at a point in my life. My dad would tune into History Channel after eating dinner. Watching tv after coming home from a long exhausting day of working at Valenzuela became his routine. I remember clearly when we were watching an episode about Berlin, Germany. I asked him, "Tatay, ano 'yung Berlin Wall at bakit may mga kwarto sa ilalim?". Then he explained about the World War 2, the East and West Germany, and the escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall. Back in that year, we had no internet connection (just the computer and printer that my parents use in their business) so knowing new pieces of info from the television (that are always elaborated by my dad because I was six) always leave me with amazement.

I miss watching episodes from the Living Asia Channel with my mom. It was a channel featuring wonderful places in Asia. I thought Laos was the Capital of Myanmar because I've read "Laos, Myanmar" in one of their trailers. When we studied geography later in elementary, that's where I realized that the trailer was about Laos and Myanmar and these two are different countries. I also remember watching tv shows back in the day from this channel called Flip TV. I had watched episodes from Buddy n Sol, John en Marsha, Ready na Direk (Herbert Bautista's peak years haha), Barangay Unang Sigaw (the sitcom where I was only familar of Ruby Rodriguez from Eat Bulaga, I still remember the theme song of the show), and some of the old movies that have provinces in the Philippines in their titles.

I miss 2008. I miss my mom buying me sleeveless undershirts printed with Dora and Boots and my name on the chest part of each one. I miss borrowing my mom's phone to take selfies and play games. I miss playing the song entitled Centre of Nowhere by Ladybug Mecca, the default song saved in all the Nokia Supernova phones. I miss 8.8.8. I remember my dad who went home proudly after buying a pair of brown sneakers from a thrift shop for only eight pesos. I can still recall how happy he was. I remember how my mom that I don't know for what reason, was sent an MMS (multimedia message) that has a 26-second clip of Ogie Alcasid's Kung Sakali song. I believe it was for a ring back tone, something you'll hear when someone tries to call you. I think it's just stupid and useless, they may have had a user-recorded voice but offered the song instead. I don't know if the voice status was already a thing before. One thing I'm sure is my mom laughed at that song every time I play it, calling it "kanta yan ng tatay mo sa girlfriend niya dati". hahaha.

I can't believe I spent more than an hour writing this. Thinking of all the memories makes me feel sad and old. It has been thirteen years and I could tell I had a great childhood (minus the bullying and the corporal punishment part). If I can only turn back time just for a second, I will go back to 2008. I miss the year 2008, the year when I wasn't thinking of the past nor the future. I could only care about my family, our tv, and my classmates. I still remember my reaction when I saw my little sister for the first time. My mom was in our Toyota Tamaraw AUV beside the driver's seat after my dad fetched me from a family friend where I stayed when they were in the hospital. For the first time, I saw an infant being caressed by my mom — and it was my sister.

2008 wasn't perfect but it certainly was the year when I was awarely the happiest.

[tootickie]

my new calling is watching all 36 barbie movies in chronological order and rating and reviewing them. i will add to this as i keep watching. 

nutcracker (2001): 8.5/10 - funny, and i liked that barbie was smart enough to guess that the nutcracker was the prince instead of being surprised. he also made sure she got credit for saving them, in a feminist gesture instead of just taking credit when offered. he also said he would only be the prince if people wanted him to, so the nutcracker is honestly so woke. only thing i didn’t like was the ending, because she definitely shouldve stayed in nutcracker land. also like, was the nutcracker reincarnated as the guy who gets introduced in the end? like i just didn’t get it.

rapunzel (2002): 10/10 - literally the painting scenes in this movie are so beautiful, the rabbit is hilarious, the penelope and her father storyline is genuinely heartwarming, and rapunzel causes world peace. i was also wondering if this is an east and west berlin allegory because people seem to have german names in both cities and a lot of the families being torn apart rhetoric seemed similar but also i’ve been studying the cold war a lot for class so that could just be me. but honestly this deserves 10/10 for the scene where she paints dresses on herself alone. ALSO the sorceress is called gothel and rapunzel loves to paint and is a lost princess, which is interesting bc none of this is in the original fairytale, and thus i have come to the conclusion that disney plagiarized barbie, proving that barbie is the superior movie studio.

swan lake (2003): 10/10 - let me start by saying the scene where they walk across the log by the waterfall is so cool i re-enacted it so much as a kid and also the spunky purple unicorn has my name so this is a very biased 10/10. i also thought it was interesting that even though odette is a good person, her motivation for breaking the spell was a selfish one at first and this added some complexity to her character and gave her an arc of personal growth of compassion winning over fear by the end, which is more relatable and inspiring imo. the dress in this film is so pretty also, and the dancing is so fun to watch! and to round it out, prince daniel said himbo rights when he kept trying to shoot arrows at the evil sorcerer who we established early on can melt arrows.

princess and the pauper (2004): 10/10 - annalise and julian are such a cute romantic pair they’re the first ones that have real chemistry i feel like. also he’s the first love interest with a brain and initiative . preminger is also such a spicy villain, the songs slap, the humor is good...we all remember why this movie is good i don’t need to go over it.

fairytopia (2005): 6/10 - i think the aesthetic of this movie is what really saved it; i thought the character design and settings were really nice, but i found the story to be pretty boring. elina didn’t really speak to me that much as a character, i just feel like there wasn’t as much development of her character as the previous protagonists. definitely some potential there, so i’m excited for the sequels. also i hate how cute i found bibble lol.

magic of pegasus (2005): 9.5/10 - this was mad good actually, my only con was that i did find annika’s voice was more annoying than other barbie characters, so i was just wondering what the deal was with that. annika’s positivity of hearing ‘the wand of light is made of these impossible items’ and going ‘it’s only three things!’ was inspiring, to say the least. the banter between the annika and aidan was so cute too. also literally the fact that he was a gambling addict who ran away from home with a whole redemption arc….iconic. anyway i really enjoyed this actually, i wish i’d actually seen it as a child. also all the ice skating scenes were fun. and uhh brietta and the cloud queen are def in love and you can’t convince me otherwise

mermaidia (2006): 8/10 - definitely better than the first fairytopia! to start with, the subversiveness of needing to rescue a prince is fun! said mermaid prince is cute and watching him interact with his captors is a joy, but why does he have a mullet :-/ i do appreciate elina’s commitment to female solidarity with regard to nori (who, as a side note, is hot), and their burgeoning friendship was a fun part of the plot and omfg the shot with the two of them jumping down the waterfall...nice. nori and nalu are a really cute pair also and i thought it was cool that elina wasn’t the one to get the guy. i also thought it was cool when bibble sang opera. and elina’s last sacrifice at the end redeemed her to me after being kind of bored of her. however, what i really don’t understand is why nalu even asked for elina’s help in the first place?? ( like, because they’re friends? he clearly has other friends, and while we’re on that subject, did their friendship develop offscreen or are we meant to believe they are close friends from the 30 second almost silent montage from the last movie?), so that kind of puts a damper on the whole movie for me.

the barbie diaries (2006): 7/10 - what on EARTH is this animation style. who okayed this??? im literally seasick watching it. this is like a regular teen movie, which is interesting for the barbie genre. the banter between the friend group is really cute and this movie is actually quite funny and profound and i really enjoyed it. but it’s really best if you just close your eyes and imagine what is going on bc whatever you imagine cannot be worse than what you will see on the screen. it feel really off brand for barbie movies plotwise, like it seemed much more like a disney channel movie. so the verdict is, i enjoyed it—the plot is fun, if a little predictable, but there was simply too much to be confused about.