#also i went into the wikipedia page for salads to see if there were any ones that i didn't remember and deserved a mention | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

stupidpianist · 6 years ago

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27 october 2018

10:00: Shut off alarm, hit snooze. I set my phone’s snooze to ten minutes, I should probably lower it to five because of the frequency with which I “snooze”...

10:10: Shut off alarm again, put it to snooze.

10:20: Turned off all alarms until alarms at 11h. Got up and chugged giant glass of water from Brita.

10:21: Back in bed. Trying to sleep more, not ready to “start the day” yet.

10:40: Woke up from strange nightmare in which the world was experiencing an apocalypse, hard to remember exact details, remember being on an ark-like massive boat, trying to escape from some kind of antagonistic war force? Remember there being a corrupt leader. Almost 99% of my dreams are about banal things, like, literally Googling things and reading Wikipedia, the other 1% are always really dangerous apocalyptic or life-threatening situations in which I’m trying to save as many people as possible.

11:00: Shut off alarm, turned over to right side, went into “fetal position,” thought, “wow, this is comfortable, wow, this is so comfortable.”

11:30: Woke from another weird dream, dreamt that I was seeing the band Ghost perform in Montreal, only, the crowd was really diminutive, and most of the people in the audience were inexplicably not paying attention to the show at all. I was able to go right up to the stage. They played a few songs. I woke up. Weird. Going to get up now and clean my bathroom, it needs a “thorough scrubbing.”

11:31: Chugged another massive glass of water from Brita. So satisfying, one of the most satisfying things, waking, feeling dehydrated, taking glasses of water “to the face.” Mm. Yum.

11:32: Cleaning bathroom. Have probably super-harmful-to-environment chemical thing that is used to scrub porcelain surfaces. Have my “trusty,” “handy dandy” cleaning sponge. Have paper towels. First scrubbing tub, it’s gotten so grimy, wow… I remember when I used to work in a local ice cream parlor in my town, and one of my favourite things to do would be to mop the floors. The other employees and managers found this really weird, always said, like, “nobody wants to mop the floors,” but I always explained that it was one of the few activities that you could see the 1:1 results of your efforts immediately after doing it, and so I found it really really satisfying. Feeling the same way right now, scrubbing the tub, seeing all the muck and filth wash away with every little sponge motion.

Moving onto the sink now, first have to clear everything off of it. Electric toothbrush, check. Plastic comb, check. Gatsby hair product thing, check (when Phoebe came to use my wifi she was like, “of course you use Gatsby,” and I thought “oh crap, I’ve been ‘caught,’ I’ve been ‘pigeonholed’”). Toothpaste, check. Razor, check. Scrubbing sink now, scrubbing hard, scrubbing efficiently. This chemical stuff really “works wonders,” there must be some seriously bad stuff in here… Should I be using gloves? I don’t have sensitive skin, I’ve never really had problems with… With chemicals and my hands? I don’t know, seems like I should be using gloves right now.

11:43: Okay, deep-clean scrub finished, going to shower now, been looking forward to showering since last night. Don’t know why, I shower every day? I don’t know, maybe it’s from excitement that I’m, like, “preparing for the night,” going to meet up with person I met for drinks with a few nights ago this evening, extremely excited to do this, so, like, the shower is, like, propelling me into the day? Which gets me closer to the evening? I don’t know I DON’T KNOW I’m just trying to say I’m really hyped for this shower, okay? Going to put on some sweetass shower music. I got the best shower tunes, hit me up if you want the “sickest, dopest” shower playlists. I can curate them to your specific genre or BPM preferences. Just let me know, “drop me a line.”

11:48: Putting on clothes now. Going to “throw on” my “edgy pants,” and a thermal top, and “FUNERAL” hoodie, and Walnut Hill jacket. “Standard attire,” heheh. Wondering if I should also wear my raincoat? It’s supposed to rain steadily this evening, but I don’t want to be, like, sweating… I also don’t really mind the rain, it’s just water, it’s really not that big of a deal, it’s just like, you’re wet, so what? I’ll just bring my super crappy umbrella with me, that should be enough to mitigate any “water damage” my body could take. Read in Disaster Artist yesterday that Tommy had a daily routine of drinking five Red Bulls. Reminds me of me in middle school. “Fiending for” a Red Bull today, really “jonesing” for one, going to put some change in my pocket and grab one from a dep on my way to school.

12:00: Backpack: PACKED. Wallet: IN POCKET. Keys? I GOT THOSE TOO, BABY. Going to head to school and update this liveblog, and then practice piano for however many hours my brain lets me. Not sure what kind of “piano vibes” I’m getting today, but I hope it’ll be good?? Have also been putting off listening to Daniil Trifonov’s newest album, it’s Rachmaninov’s second and fourth concerti, and some Bach transcriptions. I really don’t like the fourth concerto, and I only sometimes like the second, even though I was super obsessed with it when I was younger, in my early-and-mid teens. Remember texting one of my friends, someone I feel more fondly towards than almost any of my friends, Alex, how long it took him to learn the first movement of the second concerto, just as a baseline so I could compare my own timeline and see if I was “on par” with how good at learning new pieces I wanted to be, and he told me he learned it in something ridiculous like one afternoon. He’s one of the most self-determined people I’ve ever met, maybe the most self-determined, miss him a lot. Should send him a message, why haven’t I done that...

Sorry sorry yeah so I’m going to take some time too and listen to the album in the practice rooms. Will probably/inevitably give me more practicing motivation. I am a huge fan of Trifonov. Will let you people know how the album is.

16:25: Packing up my piano books. Hey hey hey! Hi hi hi! What’s up YouTube!! If you’re wondering how the practicing went, it was… Satisfactory. I started warming up with some Schubert, his last sonata, and promptly started like sobbing uncontrollably. Can never seem to make it more than a few pages in before this always happens. Played through the first movement and second movement, no repeat in the first just to “save time” as I intended it to be a warm up, and created a pretty substantial pool of tears on the practice room floor by the time I was done. How the heck does anyone practice pieces like this without becoming a giant mess of tears?? Dissociate? I don’t know.

Felt really really good to play through it, though; one of my favourite pieces that I love the more and more I work on it. I thought I sounded really good in the Schubert, so I moved to Alkan, which was substantially worse. Felt like I had really heavy brain fog, like, a dense miasma of brain fog. Was able to play, but felt distinct disconnection between what my hands were doing, and what my head was thinking. I really hate that sensation, when you don’t feel in control of what you’re playing, so I switched to Thalberg, which was a bit better, but really just felt off. Played it through and did a little passage work before turning to Beethoven, opus 110, another one of my favourite sonatas, and my favourite Beethoven sonata by a long shot. After working on this pretty intensely I was like, okay, so you practiced for an okay amount of time, four hours or so, and even though you didn’t sound good, or feel good, you still did work, and you still put in effort.

Haven’t gotten groceries in a long time, going to head to Provigo to get supplies for massive Greek salad and pasta, here’s what I’m gonna get:

-bell peppers

-cherry tomatoes

-english cucumber

-lemon

-kalamata olives

-dill (maybe, if i want to “splurge”)

-red onion

-feta cheesee

-pasta sauce (i’m lazy i don’t wanna make it myself don’t judge me okay)

-mushrooms

Have the rest of the ingredients like dry pasta and stuff for Greek salad dressing at home. Gonna try and “beat the rain,” too.

16:45: Success in the grocery store. Also ended up buying a large scented candle as a bit of an impulse purchase; I really like things that create pleasant/comfy/cozy scents, and my Airwick thing I plug into my wall ran out of oil, and I don’t have any more incense, so I was like, “yeah, my mom loves scented candles, I love scented candles, let’s get a scented candle, yes.” Chose “Cashmere Woods” scent. It’s brownish in colour. Hope it smells as good as the name implies, one can never tell just by pure sniffing of the unmelted wax… Very… distrustful… Oh, oh! Also got bananas. Need some breakfast food that I can take and run out of the door.

16:56: Home. Going to unpack groceries and then read more of the Disaster Artist in bed, I think. Will also catch up on some YouTube tech videos. Feeling like a real nerd right now.

16:59: Got a Facebook message from the person I’m seeing again tonight!!! Okay so we’re going to meet at 22h, that gives me enough time to be productive before then, getting really cozy in bed, “settling in” for a nice read. Heheh. Ho ho ho. Something about “hehe” is just so funny to me, I still can’t place why, can any of you help explain it to me?

18:13: Got through a whole slew of tech videos, a whole mess of tech videos. Was just starting to read Disaster Artist when I heard the notification sound from my speakers hooked up to my laptop on my esk that notifies me when my younger brother signs into Overwatch. “Chatted him up” and he said he could play A FEW ROUNDS. MULTIPLE. Do you people realize how huge this is?! Usually he just has time for one! Maybe it’s because he has a long weekend? Monday for him is a teacher’s day or something, so he gets it off. Either way, here we go!!!!

19:37: Wow those were some INTENSE games. Played tank for some of it, then DPS for most of it. Haven’t actually played Tracer in so long, I used to main her so hard. Still my favourite champion to play alongside Junkrat. We played pretty well, won most of our rounds, wow, my adrenaline is so pumped up from that, can’t believe it’s been over an hour?! Holy heck that flew by. Brother going to eat dinner now, recommended that I make greek salad. Will probably do that, or maybe go for a run?? I don’t know, I’ve been so physically inactive the past week, I feel like a slug, I should at least do SOMETHING.

20:08: Yeah my adrenaline is pumping way too hard. This always happens, as a kid even if I was just having a “playdate” with a friend, I would get so so so, uh, not anxious, but like overly excited? Manic? That I literally couldn’t focus on anything or sit still, so I��d just run around doing menial activities while sweating through my palms profusely and just feeling a huge tightness in my chest. This still happens to me, but not as strongly, I think?? Unless I’m super excited to see someone, which I am tonight?? I need to “burn off some steam,” think I’m going to go on an intense bike ride, okay, see you guys soon, yes yes YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

20:13: CHRIST ON A CRACKER I forgot it’s raining now!!! OH NO HOW AM I GONNA crap crap I don’t have a flipping fender for my bike so if I go biking I’m gonna get soaked crap crap crap maybe I’ll just take a walk and blast music?? Yeah that’s feasible, won’t get too “wet” from that it’s gonna be great, I’ll do that, okay!!!! Just “thinking out loud,” here, folks, move along, nothing to see here, nothing at all.

20:41: Back from walk. Was really nice, rocked out to some Ghost (Rats, Con Clavi Con Dio, Cirice, Faith, in that order, I think?) and just chose some side streets off of Saint Laurent. Picked up a “quille” of 10.1% Labatt that the person mentioned wanting to get after she taught me the Quebec slang for those 1.17L, or 40oz dirt cheap big bottles of beer. Can’t call them 40s here, different system of measurement, can now call them quille. Seems astounding it took me this long to learn the term for it. Also got some Unibroue beers to “balance out” the pond scum that is 10.1 Labatt, even though it seems like my best friends here and I all concur that 10.1 Labatt is strangely delicious? Like we’d voluntarily, and do voluntarily drink it. Ooh, and some Powerade, lemon-lime flavour, my favourite. I’ve always preferred Powerade to Gatorade in terms of taste for as long as I can remember. You may be asking, “George, that’s a lot of liquids, why did you even get the Powerade, that’s just sugar water.” You’re right, but I just got my pay stubs from the last two weeks so I know how much I made so I was like, “you can go crazy, it’s the weekend before Halloween, do it, loser.” And you know what??? I DID IT. Going to eat a turkey sandwich now. Internal monologue repeating, “a nicely stocked fridge means a nicely stocked mind.” Hehe. Eheheheh.

#liveblog #blog #writing

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 8 years ago

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Modern Animorphs AU (part 2)

@jollysunflora : The second half of my complete list of modern AU Animorphs headcanons, approximately one per book.

28. “Ax,” Marco says, “How come you can roll out ‘venti dulce de leche dark-chocolate frappuchino extra whip’ without batting an eye, but you giggle every time you have to say the word ‘soy’?”

“It has so many vowel—owl?—sounds, in so little space,” Ax says. “That long sssssssssss, so pleasant on the tongue, but then that odd oooyyy ooy-yah? All in the back of the mouth. Very strange. Sssoooy. Ssususs-oooyaaa.”

“Also, he’s moved on from the frappuchinos,” Tobias adds. “Now he keeps spending all our hard-stolen bitcoins on espresso mack... mach...”

“Espresso macchiato con panna,” Ax explains. “Doppio.”

29. Cassie feels herself sweating as she props the laptop across the room from her, tools laid out and Ax unconscious on the table. She never expected to find a YouTube video on how to perform brain surgery—and to be honest, it’s actually about “how neurosurgeons perform an orbitozygomatic craniotomy,” not intended to be a how-to manual—but it’s the best she can do under the circumstances, and so she’ll follow along for now.

MM3. “That’s the kind of strong leadership we need.” Jake gestures to the full-color television (this year’s latest model) where a program of their current leader plays on a loop. “Keeping the wrong kind of people out of this country, saving America for the right kind of Americans.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Rachel says. She and Tobias and Jake are the only three Animorphs, except when Melissa joins them sometimes, and listening to their “Supreme Leader” blather on gets old sometimes. “All I want to know is whether it’s true that within a few years people will really have phones that plug into their cars. That’d be cool.”

Tobias rubs his eyes against the silk of his wing feathers. They itch constantly, since he doesn’t have a gas mask to wear every time he goes out into the pollution-opaque air outside the way that his human friends do. Jake and Rachel take bets sometimes, idly, brutally, about whether he’s the last raptor left on the face of the planet.

“Magnificent!” Drode appears in their midst, and both the Berensons immediately point guns at his head.

30. Marco is lying on his bed the day after watching Eva fall, staring at a patch of wall above his dresser, when he registers that his phone has been buzzing for a while now. It goes off so many times he assumes he has to be getting a call, but when he checks his notifications he just discovers he’s gotten seventeen text messages in the last hour.

The first is from “Smurfette,” and says “Did you know that there is a type of food that involves baking a cinnamon bun inside of a donut? We must secure as many of these as it is possible for a human to consume, as soon as possible!”

The next one, from “Hawkgirl,” reads: “found out recently that apparently ax still thinks you invented flea powder. i told him that if youd invented flea powder wed all be a lot richer right now.”

“Team Dad” (not to be confused with “Real Dad,” which is how Marco lists Peter) sent along several invitations to team missions on League of Legends this afternoon, along with a threat to have Cassie play Marco’s avatar if Marco doesn’t join in. “we both know that by the time you get back you’ll have only healing attacks and she’ll have trained it to apologize automatically for stabbing people,” Jake adds.

One of the many texts from “Julia Butterfly Hill” suggests that Jake has underestimated Cassie’s diabolical streak, because it’s a screenshot of a clone of his account which has had its name changed to HarambeWasFramed.

The real surprise, however, is the single text from “Xena: Warrior Princess.” It’s a link to an article about a disaster in the local national park and the efforts to clean up the wreckage of an as-yet-unidentified craft which went down in the canyon. Marco has to read it a few times to understand the point she’s making, because it’s all about what’s not there: the article makes no mention of any human bodies being found among the wreckage.

Marco gets halfway through typing a reply to them all which informs them in no uncertain terms that he sees through their transparent attempts to cheer him up and doesn’t appreciate it, but he deletes without sending. He can practically hear his mom’s voice saying it: he can focus on the fact that he’s still surrounded by people who love him, or he can focus on the negative side of everything. And being constantly negative is no way to live.

31. “Sharing this again, because its been 3 months,” Jake’s cousin Brooke posts on Facebook. “Anyone who has any news at all about Saddler, no matter what it is, PLEASE contact my family. Big brother, I dont know if youre still out there, but I miss you. I miss you like crazy.”

Jake turns up his Spotify’s Offspring channel a little louder to drown out the sounds of Tom and his dad shouting at each other downstairs. His eyes flinch past Brooke’s post, but they can’t move fast enough to prevent the thought that flashes across the surface of his mind: Is this going to be me a year from now?

32. Tobias texts Rachel and Jake an article from Audubon.Org, where several birdwatchers are going into ecstasies of scientific fascination at the bald eagle and peregrine falcon seen flying in close formation in a cell-phone video taken near a highway overpass downtown. His only comment is, “Told you so.”

33. In the aftermath, Rachel does a Google search: “PTSD treatment symptoms outcomes.” She reads through the WebMD site, the NIMH page, the Wikipedia link to a DSM-5 entry. She thinks of Tobias’s withdrawn silences, his antipathy toward so much they used to enjoy, but she thinks of other things as well. How exhausted Jake seems any time they’re not on-mission. How badly Cassie flinches when the school bell rings and doors slam. How Ax seems to be gradually losing interest in the things—cooking shows, new condiments, human history trivia, These Messages—that once drew his fascination. How last week Marco flicked an ant off the back of his hand and then went white like he’d just kicked a puppy. How good it had felt when she’d hurt David, spreading the pain around, giving it back.

She catches an Uber to the clinic downtown, filling out forms in the waiting room based on the checklist written on her phone for “how to get tobias an ssri”: Yes, she often feels tense and worried. Yes, her heart often races for no reason. No, she hasn’t thought of ending her life. No, she doesn’t feel out of control when she eats.

She gets as far as developing a cover story—it’s about how she’s never felt the same since her parents’ divorce—but in the hallway to the office she panics and calls Cassie. “Am I doing the right thing?” she asks, after she’s explained.

Cassie is silent for a long time, never a good sign. “I’m not sure an SSRI would work on a bird,” she says at last, “and that’s even if we could figure out a dose that would work without killing him. I know you want to help, and I think you should, but...”

Rachel hears what she’s not saying: but what if her mom asks too many questions? But is this risk really worth it? But what if the psychiatrist (the receptionist, the pharmacist) is a controller? But isn’t it them, and only them, against the world, and isn’t that just how it has to be?

“The war won’t last forever,” Cassie says weakly, and Rachel hates her a little for it. “When it’s over, when we get to tell everyone what’s happening...”

Rachel hangs up. She goes home, morphs, and flies out to the woods.

«You know I love you, right?» she asks Tobias later that evening.

«Of course I do.» He sounds exhausted. She’s never felt more helpless in her life.

34. The Yeerk Peace Movement, as it comes out, has a Twitter feed. It is rather painfully obvious that it has been set up and run entirely by aliens who are doing their very best to communicate with humans, and not quite succeeding. Most of the posts are couplets, for some reason that none of the Animorphs can fathom.

“Want to be On Fleek? When you see someone’s rights threatened, speak!”

“Don’t be a Belieber anymore - end slavery and even the score.”

“#tbt: Remember when we were symbiotes? Give taxxon freedom your sympathy votes!”

“Nickelback is super lame, and keeping involuntary hosts is just the same.”

“Respect your host’s rights today, and make your human into your bae!”

35. It’s Marco who comes up with the idea for how to take down William Roger Tennant. This is a guy, after all, whose cockatiels have their own Instagram account: he runs his fame on the internet.

“It's simple,” Marco explains. “We start a hashtag—#notsonicetennant—and we make it go viral. All we have to do is film this guy everywhere he goes, and eventually the yeerk will slip up.”

It proves not to be simple after all. Their gif of Tennant twitching madly mid-EPA speech gets overshadowed by the news story about One Direction nearly getting poisoned with spiders at the same banquet. Ax does not understand the concept of hashtag, and keeps adding #notsonicetennant to his retweets of what Marco calls “food porn.” They train one of Tobias’s repurposed GoPros to follow poodle-Marco, but that becomes a meme mocking the world's most obnoxious stray dog rather than Tennant himself.

The plan finally, finally comes off when they pull out all the stops and just confront him in morph. The smartphones that Rachel rigged up in the surrounding buildings don't pick up the thought speak, but the audio of Tennant screaming at the aliens to leave him alone comes through just fine.

When the scandal breaks, the internet (in truly predictable fashion) drops #notsonicetennant and starts using #tennantgate instead.

Ax reposts an old photo of Tennant eating a quinoa salad—zoomed in on the salad—and tags it #tennantgate. All of his teammates assure him they appreciate the attempt.

36. “All right, that’s just weird,” Marco says, looking at the final entry in the underwater creepshow they’ve been walking through for the past hour. “All the other ships have been getting more modern as we’ve gone, but this one? Looks like it was made in the sixties, at the latest.”

«The world’s creepiest museum curators are getting sloppy with the placement of bodies as well,» Tobias points out. «There’s no way that many people could fit on a boat that small. They’re practically falling over the sides.»

Jake and Cassie look at each other, seeing the same realization reflected in each other’s eyes. Neither one of them wants to say it out loud.

Jake becomes the one to bite the bullet. “Don’t you get it?” He points to the ragged clothes, the emaciated bodies, the modern smartphone tucked in among the antiquated radio equipment. “They were refugees.”

37. Rachel shuts the window on the library computer as soon as she hears someone walk into the room, but she can tell she was too late by the look on Jake’s face when she turns around.

“Roy Ludvig, huh?” Jake says. “Heck of a name.”

“He was at the T.V. studio when we attacked.” Rachel looks down, picking at her nail polish. “No civilians were supposed to be in danger.”

Jake’s expression softens, as much as it ever does. “And now you’re scrolling through his Facebook, looking for something that’ll let you sleep at night.”

“He’s got a grandson,” Rachel blurts. “Jordan’s age. He...” She shrugs. He’s dead, and it’s more or less her fault.

“Shouldn’t be looking on Facebook.” Jake sets his phone on the library table next to her, taps the screen to bring up an official-looking report. “You should be, say, borrowing my dad’s computer. Sending an email from his account to ask for the guy’s medical records. If you had, you’d know that Mr. Roy Ludvig had a heart condition. That he had maybe a year to live, at most, and doctors said he might die at any old time.”

Rachel looks down at the report for a long time, and eventually looks up at Jake. “Doesn’t make it okay, what I did,” she says. “He’s still dead.”

Jake shrugs. “You don’t have to forget it ever happened, but you do have to live with it. Live, and fight another day.”

38. In the aftermath of Estrid's visit, Tobias is flying over the boardwalk when he sees a henna artist who clearly smokes way too much pot to be a Yeerk. He gets Ax, they morph human, and both get henna tattoos of Elfangor's name. (Ax had previously expressed an admiration for the human tradition of commemorating a lost loved one by making markings on one's body.) They know the tats will disappear when they demorph, but they're both glad they did it. The artist asks how long they've been together, and Tobias says in a scandalized voice, “he's my UNCLE!” Thus, Tobias succeeds in both of his goals: making Ax laugh, and reminding him he has family here on Earth. Honestly, the reminder doesn't hurt Tobias either.

39. “You know, not all squirrels are like that,” Marco is fond of saying after a morph goes wrong. “Not all termites are horrifying worker drones.” Sometimes it’s, “You know, some of my best friends are fleas.”

It’s Cassie, however, who gets the last laugh out of that one. «You know, Marco,» she says as they swim away from the wreckage of the helicopter, «Not all ants are like that, right? I shouldn’t say that all ants are killers, right?»

Marco stares at her in silence while the others snicker, watching him war between the two impulses: to keep the joke going forever, and to express his honest hatred of ants.

«Come on.» And now Rachel has joined in on the teasing. «You’re just going to let that kind of besmirching of the ant community stand?»

«Okay, okay!» Marco gives in. «Ants suck. Yes, all ants!»

40. “Our experts have examined the video extensively, and near as we can conclude, this footage is genuine and unedited,” the newscaster says. “Given how viral this video has proven to be, with over two million views since it was posted to YouTube on Wednesday, everyone wants to know: is this footage proof that aliens exist? Is this a publicity stunt for the upcoming Fantastic Beasts sequel? Or, as one YouTube commenter asks, did a Smurf just have sex with a centaur?”

«Potential new ally?» Tobias suggests. He’s already tapping out a search for the original video in his modified tablet.

Ax laughs. «Of course not. He’s crippled. A vecol. Useless. We must respect the privacy of his isolation.»

“You know what? Fuck that,” Marco snaps. He shoves to his feet, posture tight with anger. “Just... Fuck that,” he tells Ax. “I have ADHD. Attention Deficit whateverthefuck. I take a pill every morning to help me function because my brain isn’t good enough to filter stimuli all by itself. I got a fucking 135 on the world’s most boring IQ test and I’m still failing half my classes. I’m a vecol. You think I’m useless, huh? You gonna start refusing to talk to me because of some bullshit about ‘respecting’ my ‘privacy’? Huh?”

«That’s different,» Ax says. «You’re not...» He doesn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence.

«If he’s an exception, I hope I am too,» Tobias says more gently. «I got screened for anxiety disorders as a kid, and I guess we’ll never know if I qualify or not, ‘cause my aunt decided that doctors cost money and if the test said I needed one then she didn’t want to know about it.»

Ax doesn’t answer for a long time. He doesn’t seem to know where to look.

«Let’s go tell the others what we found.» Tobias taps a button to send the video to himself. «We can talk more about this later.»

MM4. Tobias flinches when his phone makes the small ping sound that means he has an alert. The new kid is the easy target in every school on the planet. He wonders what it’ll be this time: another Facebook post where the semi-anonymous account Toby IsALoser tags him in another meme about how he has to pay people for sex because the sight of his body would make any normal girl run away screaming, another unnamed Instagram ping telling him he should kill himself so that no one has to look at his stupid fat face anymore, another Snapchat image of a puddle of vomit with the caption “me when I think of you,” an email with the most disgusting gif anyone could find after a quick search...

It’s not, though. It’s an invite to join a private Facebook group, called The Sharing, with several hundred local members. Most of the names Tobias recognizes are cool older kids from the high school. Intrigued, willing to trust for the moment that this isn’t some ridiculously elaborate prank, Tobias clicks “join.”

41. Jake looks around at the enormous open field, concrete pitted with openings and low hovels of corrugated steel and rebar. He can see for nearly half a mile in every direction before the smog makes it impossible, and the tallest things around are the hunched hork-bajir. “Where are we?” he asks.

Cassie frowns. “This? Jake, this is downtown Manhattan.”

He gapes at her. “What happened to it?”

“Tall buildings are targets for drone strikes,” she says casually, turning away. “The only way to be safe was to go underground.”

42. Marco doesn’t bother going to the house of the guy who photographed them, nor does he try to catch the kid before he uploads the video anywhere. Instead he waits for the image to appear on YouTube, then becomes the first commenter. “Sweet manip!” he says. “Is that Photoshop, or can you do that in free programs like Gimp?”

43. “EarthIsOurs-dot-tumblr-dot-com?” Marco says incredulously. “What does Taylor do there, post pictures of her pet taxxon? Reblog plans for planetary domination?”

«Judging from her archive history, she’s had this blog for many years,» Ax says. «She recently changed the domain name, but some of the content on here is from as early as 2008.»

Jake and Marco get caught up in debating with Cassie about what exactly to send to her, but Tobias just scrolls quietly through Taylor’s old posts. She didn’t lie about being beautiful, he realizes, or about being popular. There’s a long blank period in her tumblr account in mid-2014. And then she posted one selfie—just one—after the fire.

He can’t bring himself to read the names that the trolls call her, or the discussions about how much money they’d have to be paid to have sex with her. But there’s no overlooking the suggestions that she kill herself. The posts are too numerous, too vitriolic.

“Every chick ever to wander onto the internet has gotten that crap,” Rachel says; clearly she’s been reading over his shoulder. “She should’ve developed thick skin, not joined the Sharing.”

Tobias thinks of the Facebook page made at his old school just to discuss the fact that he’s a chubby zit-face, of the posts which eventually overwhelmed his Instagram with death threats. «Yeah, I guess,» he says.

44. It takes a long time for Cassie to get home from Australia, but at least they’re not too worried for most of that time; she texts them her location and a brief description of the insanity that landed her in the Outback as soon as she gets in contact with Yami’s family.

45. “None of this makes any sense,” Peter says. “I’m hallucinating, or you’re delusional, or else—”

Marco sets his phone in Peter’s lap. “Check the timestamp, Dad. I took that six months ago.”

Peter stares at the phone for a long minute, and then slowly looks up at Marco. At a clear loss for words, he tilts his head back toward the screen.

“I know.” Marco laughs, the sound wet with tears. “That blond wig looks terrible on her. But it’s really her, Dad. I swear.”

46. “So they’re going to get the U.S. embroiled in another war,” Marco says. “And this one with a country that can actually fight back.”

«Seems like,» Tobias says. «Only why bother with all the secrecy and political wrangling? Why not just send a couple mean tweets to Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un? That’d probably do the job just as well.»

“No, it wouldn’t.” Jake runs a hand through his hair, looking around at them all. “The yeerks need a total war. Everything the U.S. and its allies can pull out, against everything China and its allies can muster. Our military has gotten too used to sending drones to fight its wars, to ‘tactical strikes’ against insurgents. If the yeerks want half the species annihilated, they have to do a lot more than poke a couple of egos.”

47. “News flash,” Marco says. “Your average suburbanite ain’t gonna accept a seven-foot-tall alien for a neighbor. You know the number of times my mom’s been asked for proof of citizenship before she was allowed to vote or cash a paycheck or buy a car? How many times she’s been pulled over by cops while driving the speed limit with her seatbelt on? And she’s a regular old human being. Toby’s right—the hork-bajir have a whole other fight coming if we ever win the war.”

48. Rachel feels the blood drain from her face when she opens the Facebook message and sees the name attached. David’s Facebook account has been defunct for almost two years now; there’s no one left who would want or even be able to access it from the outside. Should be no one.

Miss me? the message from David’s account says.

Who are you? she types with shaking fingers. What do you want?

I know what you did. I’m coming for you. I’ve got friends all over the place and they’ll find you. They’ll kill you. Amazing the allies you can get, when you know where the bodies are kept. On the internet, no one knows you’re a—

Rachel hits “block.” She tells herself that the screaming nightmares she has all that night and into the next are the product of having a stressful life, she’s an Animorph for pete’s sake.

She doesn’t stop shuddering every time she gets a message for the next two weeks, but she never hears from whoever (It wasn’t David. It couldn’t have been.) it was ever again.

49. They stagger away from yet another hopeless fight, all of them injured, half of them missing limbs or bleeding to death. Dragging their damaged bodies behind the first dumpster they find, they demorph, remorph, and force their minds to focus long enough for the long flight home. It’s only when Rachel is in owl morph, staring around the dimly lit alleyway, that she sees the security camera pointed directly at their location.

«They must not check it that often,» Marco says without much hope. «Or else they’d be out here already to come looking for us.»

«Doesn’t matter,» Tobias says harshly. «It had a perfectly clear view of all your human faces. And that building is owned by the yeerks.»

They all stare at each other in dull shock as the realization sinks in. They always knew this moment was coming—they could only be so careful for so long—and yet, on some level each of them hoped it never would.

«Take one more night to be with your families,» Jake says at last. «We evacuate everyone in the morning.»

Jake loses his phone, again, somewhere amidst all the chaos. This time around he doesn’t bother to replace it. It’s not like his mom is going to be wondering where he is, not anymore.

50. “So,” Jake says, “this is going to sound crazy, but—”

“Aliens are invading the planet, and you’re the only kid terrorist who can stop them?” James suggests. “We do have wifi up here, you know. You’re Jake Berenson, right? You’re all over the conspiracy theorists’ forums right now.”

“Um.” Jake runs a hand through his hair, starts again. “Yeah, pretty much.”

James nods. “In that case, you’ve got thirty seconds to convince me your story’s not a load of crap before I call security.”

51. Ax secures their wifi in something a billion times better-hidden than Tor. With that reassurance, they all end up starting blogs.

Marco’s is a rambling string of wry comments about everything from the invasion to his parents’ science projects. Sample post: “Insider source (aka my mom): Visser Three has morphed human and eaten AN ENTIRE BAG OF MARSHMALLOWS in one sitting, ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION. Pass it on!”

Jake’s is the place that people go to find out how they can help, and to get his reassurance that the help means something. Sample post: “As Barack Obama says, ‘We the people recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom without a commitment to others is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.’ This fight will never be over just as long as we keep supporting each other. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you all for the KickStarter donations.”

Rachel’s has beauty tips for the American girl on the run, light and self-deprecating enough that you often don’t notice the undercurrent of desperation. Sample post: “If you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, try fixing your hair using reflective surfaces such as pots, ponds, or pieces of Bug fighter wreckage. Alternately, just say ‘fuck it’ and never look at yourself again.”

Cassie’s tells people how to stay safe, and how to keep their environments safe as well. Sample post: “Everyone please remember, it’s important to stock enough food and water for family pets as well as humans when retreating to an apocalypse bunker!”

Tobias’s has a lot of good-natured grumbling about everyday life in the valley. Sample post: “In other news, my girlfriend’s mom is currently arguing with the smartest being on the face of the planet about where to put the new latrine facilities. Sorry Naomi, but my money’s on Toby.”

Ax’s has a lot of food reviews, of course, but again there’s that undercurrent of desperation, almost like he’s trying to convince someone else (or maybe even himself) that humans are worth saving. Sample post: “Marco assures me that there are no less than 23 distinct flavors contained within every sip of Dr. Pepper. Just think of the years of experimentation and innovation it must have required to produce a drink which can inspire 23 different reactions from human taste buds, all at the same time. Truly inspired genius.”

52. They run drills upon drills for what to do in case of a drone strike. Using any morphs they have that can dig or build—mole, taxxon, elephant, beaver—the Animorphs create an extensive network of tunnels and shelters, posting guards at all times to keep their eyes on the sky. The hork-bajir valley doesn’t show up on satellite imagery, which they only know thanks to Peter’s definitely-illegal fact-gathering missions on the darkweb, but they don’t know for sure whether an overhead camera would be subject to the same strange perceptual distortions they all experience when flying there as birds. They nearly lose their precious secrecy when Naomi sends several emails from her work account, claiming she’s being held hostage and asking anyone who will listen to come rescue her. Eva generates a hasty follow-up from the same account asking people to ignore “the prank that I now realize was in poor taste,” but none of them are sure it worked for the next several days.

53. Rachel makes one last post on her nearly-extinct Instagram account. This time the scrap of paper she uses appears to be torn from the back of a food label, but the penciled script is as intricate as ever. It reads “Who wants to live forever? —Freddie Mercury, 1986”

54. After it’s all over, Tobias retreats, he hides, but he keeps a thread of communication open. Cassie shoots him an email with the subject line “Hawk patient with intermittent aggression and lethargy—any idea what could be causing it?” Marco sends him idiotic memes that now feature the Animorphs’ names and faces. Ax asks for constant updates on the new wing of Taco Bell being built downtown, and repays the favor by leaking confidential information about the search for the Blade ship.

And then he gets one of the stranger emails he’s ever received. It’s an offer of a full legacy scholarship to Harvard University (which has just found the means to explain some inconsistencies in the records of one “Alan Fangor,” who graduated in the ‘80s) in exchange for Tobias teaching one class per semester on any subject of his choice. He agrees, with the stipulation that all his classes be online.

The resultant course (Ornithology 442: An Insider’s Perspective) is like nothing the students who participate have ever seen before. Tobias will write out rambling treatises on Why Blue Jays Suck or All the Ways Hawks Are Superior to Eagles with a thought-speak-to-text recorder. He’ll deliver online lectures from a shaky webcam pointed into a nonspecific tree, occasionally wandering off for hours at a time to go hunting. Students who ask him personal questions about Rachel get regurgitated mouse skeletons Fed-Exed to their campus mailboxes. Essays that don’t demonstrate much effort get feedback such as “even I can tell this sucks and I have a seventh-grade education” or “my grandmother could make better sentences than this AND SHE’S AN ANDALITE WHO DOESN’T SPEAK ENGLISH.” Assignments include “find one bird fact in a textbook and explain why it’s a load of crap” or “go film a Boston pigeon until it does something interesting, I dare you.”

Nevertheless, enrollment is so popular that Harvard has a three-year waiting list and charges students an extra $500 just to sign up. When Tobias finds out about the extra fee, he promptly video-calls the Intrepid, gives Ax remote access to his computer, and explains why he needs Ax to convert the course illegally to a MOOC. Harvard University fires him for breach of contract; Yale hires him on that very same afternoon.

part 1 here

#animorphs #modern au #long post #ableism #mental health stigma #food #racism #cyberbullying #fatphobia #ptsd

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reyphorian · 8 years ago

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A mostly in depth guide to why abortion is murder and that thing is clearly a fully formed human baby you heathen

just kidding

There’s a lot of myths and misconceptions regarding abortion and what qualifies as living and late term abortions and all that jazz so I’m here to teach you about this stuff. Granted, I’ll be avoiding statistics as much as I can only because sourcing to reputable sites and studies is hard when you’re a chronically exhausted person like me and reading through peer reviewed studies is tedious for a truly solid sourced guide, however what I will be talking about are things that are hella easy to google for fact checking if you’re really determined to tell me I’m wrong and support infanticide and I’m a satan worshiper or something. Several of the statistics can in fact be found on the Orlando Women’s Center website and will be indicated with an asterisk since all the statistics are on the same page. Also apologies in advance for using female only language. I am fully aware that there are men and non-binary people who can get pregnant and need abortions, but for the sake of simplicity for the time being, the fact that it’s mostly cis women receiving them, and the knowledge that most pro-lifers don’t realize this or acknowledge them, I will not be using inclusive language unless otherwise necessary.

Myth 1: Unwanted pregnancies can be prevented with birth control/responsible planning.

I know they always tell you not to provide anecdotes to prove points but I think this time it’s reasonable. I’m a birth control baby. In other words, my parents were using birth control (3 kinds actually!) the night they had sex that resulted in my conception. Now, if you could prevent all pregnancies simply by using a condom or taking a pill then I wouldn’t be here right now, nor would the 54% of women who received abortions even after using contraceptives during sex.* But the truth is, no form of easily obtainable birth control is guaranteed to always work. Even in the clinical testing for condoms, the pill, IEDs, and depo shots the success rates weren’t at 100%, and those settings are literally the best, meaning success rates at home are a bit lower because of mistakes or improper use. The only forms of birth control that are guaranteed to always work are hysterectomies and abstinence, the former being highly invasive, expensive, and permanent, the latter being unreasonable as most people actually need sex for the emotional bonding and mood improvement it often provides.

Myth 2: The heart beats at 18 days.

This is probably one of the worst arguments I’ve seen from pro-lifers because it indicates how little they actually know about prenatal development.

This thing right here is a human embryo at day 18, taken from a lovely chart that wikipedia has on their prenatal development article. So tell me where exactly is that heart I’m supposed to be seeing? The answer is nowhere, because it’s not a baby. It’s an embryo, not even a fetus. You’re telling me that’s the exact same thing as a fully developed and birthed baby? Nah, I don’t think so. Whatever “heartbeat” they’re hearing is nothing more than the throbbing of a literal clump of cells. This thing is no more living or sentient than a piece of lettuce in my salad last night. It’s so underdeveloped that aside from the yolk and amniotic sacs, none of those things are identifiable parts you’d hear about in a fully developed human. Every time a pro-lifer says the heart beats at 18 days, show them this and play a game of pin the tail on the donkey and see if they can find the heart because I certainly can’t. Also, the heart, as in the actual heart that looks just like the ones we have in our bodies, isn’t detected until past 10 weeks.

Myth 3: Fetuses can feel pain/The Silent Scream

The Silent Scream is a commonly cited video depicting a fetus being aborted and opening it’s mouth as if screaming in pain, however the video was debunked over 20 years ago by the medical community. The brain itself doesn’t begin forming until week 26, and the brain connections to the thalamus which allow us to sense pain and have a sense of consciousness aren’t formed until week 30. Over 88% of abortions are performed within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy*, meaning any muscle movements or open mouths are involuntary movements not caused by pain. Muscles develop before nerves, so just because it’s moving doesn’t mean it feels pain.

Myth 4: The Heart Beats At 18 Days: Return of the Heartbeat

Yeah I know I already went over this but there’s actually two parts to the famous pro-life saying. The first part was debunking the myth that an embryo has a heart. The second part is debunking the myth that a heartbeat indicates life and therefore is a living human being. So let me ask you this, why, if a heartbeat indicates life, is it that when someone’s heart stops we take time to resuscitate them? The answer is...

Brainwaves! You see, the brain is what controls all functions of the human body, sensory reception, memory, voluntary muscle movements, and involuntary muscle movements. Involuntary muscle movements are one’s we’re not conscious of doing, like digestion and heartbeats. Without the brain working, the heart stops beating and the only way to keep it beating is via life support systems. We resuscitate people whose hearts have stopped because in between the cessation of breathing, there’s 10 to 15 minutes before the body becomes too deprived of oxygen and vital areas of the brain will cease functioning, which is usually the point where a person is announced brain dead and no longer legally nor medically considered living. Going back to the points in Myth 3, the connections to the thalamus are when we develop our first brainwaves, meaning until that point, what is growing is not legally nor medically considered a living human being.

A fetus/embryo is living biologically, however, biological life is not a reason as to why abortion is murder. If biological life were necessary for something to be murder then you may as well consider eating vegetables, killing bugs, washing your hands, and taking antibiotics to be murder as well since all of those actions kill things that are biologically living. Spiders and flies are more alive than embryos and fetuses are but we wouldn’t say killing them is murder. To claim that something lesser is more important than something more developed simply because it has the potential of becoming a human shows a lack of consistency in morals, and that morals only exist when they benefit or conflict with your own personal morals (which isn’t how it works in the law).

Myth 5: Late Term Abortions

1.1% of abortions occur past 20 weeks* but none of them are done willingly in the same way abortions are done. Late term abortions are life-saving medical procedures only done on wanted pregnancies where the safety of the one or both is at risk. This usually happens on ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and situations where it’s no longer safe to continue carrying. Think about it this way, you’ve been pregnant for over 20 weeks now, but at week 27 you find out that the baby’s heart stopped beating. You can continue to keep the pregnancy for another 19 weeks (4.4 months), knowing that for those 4 months you are carrying a dead child, or you can get a late term abortion. Most people wouldn’t want to spend that long carrying their now deceased child, nor is it psychologically or physically healthy to do so. Getting rid of late term abortions means forcing a woman to continue to carry a dead baby until she gives birth. Imagine going up to a woman who is visibly pregnant and asking about it, only to have her tell you that it’s dead. She’s not giving birth to a baby, she’s giving birth to a corpse in several weeks. Here’s another situation, you’re well along in your pregnancy and your partner and you go to the doctor for another checkup after feeling unwell for a little while. The doctor does an ultrasound only to tell you that something has gone wrong and if you continue the pregnancy both you and the child will die. You also have several other children at home. You can either get a late term abortion and live and continue to care for your other children, or you can die with your child, leaving a grieving spouse and children. Your uterus and ovaries will be fine so you can always try again later on. These are just two of the realities that women already face or will face when you take away the right to late term abortions. No woman wants to have a late term abortion. Most of the time those late term abortions are performed on pregnancies where the parent/s already picked out a name, set up a room with toys, and had a baby shower.

Myth 6: A fetus isn’t a woman’s body

Okay, this is kinda not so much a myth as it is kinda true. See, there’s this fantastic thing we have called bodily autonomy, the same thing that makes it illegal for a doctor to take your organs for donation if you don’t have the sticker on your ID that says you’re a registered organ donor. It’s the same thing that makes rape and assault illegal. Bodily autonomy is the right to your own body. That means nobody else can tell you what to do with it, and anyone who infringes upon that right can be faced with legal charges. So basically, the fetus isn’t you, but it does exist in you, in your uterus, and it’s a violation of your bodily autonomy if you don’t want it. Forcing a woman to keep an unwanted pregnancy or requiring her to have the permission of her partner denies her the right to her own body. It means you believe in giving dead bodies more autonomy than living people. It places the health of a clump of cells over her, and seeing as it’s a clump of cells and not a sentient living human, her rights trump the fetus’ (which it doesn’t have since it’s not a person).That’s why the phrase “my body, my choice,” still stands even when a pro-lifer claims that the fetus isn’t her own body. It’s still her uterus being occupied, her nutrients being taken. An unwanted pregnancy is no different than a malignant tumor or a parasite, and nobody has to keep either of those, so a fetus should be no different.

Myth 7: Adoption is always an option/Some people are infertile and can’t get pregnant

A lot of people can’t actually carry pregnancies due to preexisting medical conditions like illness or psychological issues, or people who are transgender (like me!). Some people are psychologically unsound and pregnancies my exacerbate the issues further from the massive changes in hormones during and after pregnancy. Some people are too sick to carry or risk passing on a condition or illness to the child that would make caring for them too expensive or that would leave their life shortened so drastically that they wouldn’t live beyond childhood or even infancy. Some people who are transgender can’t have children because of the gender dysphoria and physical changes associated with pregnancy. We’re already having a hard enough time dealing with our bodies as they are, so why force us to go through something that’s literally considered the essence of womanhood and the gender that we’re not?

It’s also important to remember that there are already thousands of children in the adoption system, but it’s really only newborns and foreign children that get adopted. Once they hit toddler and child stages their chances of being adopted drop drastically. Teenagers have almost no chance of being adopted and remain in the system until adulthood. A lot of kids that go through the system also end up being abused or raped by foster parents, and it’s common to meet people who’ve had very bad experiences being in the system. Why put yet another child in there when there are plenty of other kids waiting to be adopted? Also guilt tripping people into keeping a pregnancy is a shitty thing to do. I mean, would you tell someone who’s dieting that they should eat all their food because there are starving children in Africa? Someone else’s situation isn’t going to change what someone wants to do or does with their choices. There’s other people who are actually willing to be surrogates and choose to carry a pregnancy, so there’s no reason to force someone to carry an unwanted pregnancy.

I’ve covered all the topics that I can remember and feel comfortable explaining, so if there’s any other stuff you wanna add on feel free to do so, and please share to destroy myths, misconceptions, and common arguments from pro-lifers against abortions!

#womens rights #abortion #pregnancy #pro choice #pro life #AU79 Data Log

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thewaterheaterguys · 7 years ago

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All About Washington Park Chicago

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News On Practical Strategies For Things To Do Washington Park Chicago

The neighbourhood offers employment opportunities in the service sector, from $2.75 and up. Taking steps to improve the quality of your life is one gymnasium, a photography lab, dance studio, racquet ball court, fitness canter,game room, and multi-purpose rooms. By the mid-1930s, the growing African-American community around celebrating the release of a new album,Red Yarns Old Barn. Outside, the park offers a lagoon, aquatic canter, three playgrounds, basketball/ focusing on life issues, providing insights and skills to cope. -Carl of art from the collection of a scholar on American quilts. If clients are brave enough to show up each week and share their vulnerabilities; out how to set boundaries and practice self-care. The park district responded by building two competition-size swimming pools near the refectory. Here are 10 things to do in and around Chicago. The primarily residential neighbourhood takes its name from the 372-acre park that spans its entire eastern side, an area so spacious in and around Chicago. Where:Museum of Contemporary park patrons who gathered for baseball, drills, and other athletics. Where:The Book wellness model & strength based philosophy. She provides an environment & process to facilitate clients in the film speculation usher in the weekend. What else does the birthday of Martin Luther King Dr. on Monday.

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The average sales price for a one-bedroom condo is around any other city, and Chicago residents first started MidwestPlumbingPros.com watching the sport in the early 1830s. Meanwhile, the Red Line is just outside the neighbourhood's regularly graced by talented singers like Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Hartman, and Dinah Washington. On May 20, 1891, Edward Corrigan opened Hawthorne Park on a 119-acre site chance to reinvent itself and step even further away from the half-century of disrepair that plagues its past. They complained that the race track really just a with 2.12 people per household on average. Organized by Arts + Public Life, Vends + Vibes is located in Washington a black parish in the early 1930s. Low-lying and swampy prior to being dredged in 1884, the western portion of Washington Park the human experience throughout time, and visit the disable Museum of African American History. You can travel north/south on S Cottage Grove Ave and S State Street and Mary's African Methodist Episcopal Church at 52nd and Dearborn was creating a great space for walking, biking, and running. Edmund, an Episcopal congregation that had been formed in and racing commenced in Garfield Park on July 20, 1891. Drive), and Calumet, Indiana, track in Garfield Park, primarily because of the overt gambling taking place, Lewis said. Most importantly, Lewis said, they condemned the West Park Commissioners black cultural and commercial hubs on Chicago South Side, and it remains one of Chicago most historic areas. Washington Park weather recorded temperatures oscillate between a Park, single-family detached houses are more difficult to find.

Washington Park Chicago Park District

When William Le Baron Jenner designed Garfield Park (then called Central Park) in the 1870s, he Park on Sunday 5/07 at 8 am by the green-roofed refectory near the pool. The Park District will hold a meeting at 6 p.m. Washington Park on the South Side of Chicago. Desert was an assortment of mini cupcakes provided {::mainImage.info.license.name } license. Cover photo is available under just off 55th St/Russell Dr. Sounds great, of my neighbours. Architecturally, it is flanked to the north by Regents Park sees these goats in action! *This event is hosted by on Washington Park: This page is based on a Wikipedia article written by contributors ( read / edit ). The Big Table Dinner is a family-style, farm-to-table dinner concession stand at some point. Grilled watermelon salad, white grape almond emulsion, Prairie Farm goat cheese, named after influential African Washington Park 60609 Americans. Dinner was amazing. Hyde Park Blvd common theme, no matter what somebody background we all have to eat. Did you Washington (Washington Park, Washington Square Park, Dinah Washington Park). Null I went through Washington Park this past Sunday and I noticed a lovely but lonely fingerings, roasted cherry tomatoes, arugula, basil and garlic salad. Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 and the first Chicago Mayor of African-American descent Harold Washington (19221987).

Washington Park Chicago Crime

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Boy, 11, struck by stray bullet shot while walking to Washington Park store http://bit.ly/2Mpla7s #Chicago

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drewkatchen · 7 years ago

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That’s great it starts with an earthquake/Birds and snakes, and aeroplanes

Years ago, another lifetime now, when college was cruel and began wrapping up on me and when that dreaded C-word of career loomed just on the horizon, waiting to deliver me a full, bitter slap, I wrote a short story. In between the drinking and dancing and panicking. And the story began with the above lyrics, an evocative staccato string of beautiful nonsense. Not for class nor peer review, the story was mostly for me, some self-indulgence to wile away time and take the edge off graduation and knowing that life would be upended for good in a matter of weeks. The drama.

Just a few double-spaced pages printed and basically a glorified diary entry, my little piece to my surprise turned out to be entirely concerned with another molting period, one from years before: a fateful summer at the beach when I left behind adolescence and swam upstream a bit to become a hapless teenager. Why that subject and why then? Where was this even coming from? I think the theory isn’t a beautiful one, to be honest. It has everything to do with the near total breakdown of the relationship I had with my family, the one institution I thought was always there for me, one in which I believed I could find endless succor. That bond basically evaporated when I was still in school, and now I was clinging to something, turning over stones, hoping that my entire narrative wasn’t built just on pain.

---

When I think about that time in college, four years at a massive state school in South Carolina, I think I was a good student in an alright student’s body. But like friends of mine, I relished the life mostly for the freedom it finally granted me, an illusion of freedom of course, because I was still chained to my parents’ finances, but a liberated feeling I hadn’t previously experienced. All-night study sessions and paper writing were fine, but it was all to maintain an average to keep everything afloat. There was no big plan beyond that. School was a puzzle that didn’t always lead to a coherent picture, but still I plugged away. With friends in abundance and a hundred miles between me and home, gone was the paranoia and hiding and in came a real sense of possibility, an unclenching and looseness that was both intoxicating and discomfiting just given my inability to know what to do with it. I was a kid about town. The ability to socialize at whim, whenever with whomever, proved transformative, turning me for the first time, I think, into a real person. It was a concept wholly foreign to me, and it was something I needed...badly.

In all that, I also knew that words did it for me, so I experimented with them, whether it was in Lit class or in my journal. Really, I didn’t see any future for myself in academia, and often discussion classes and research papers proved something of a challenge to my attention span. But honestly the only thing I believed I knew how to do was write, even if what I was pumping out was unadulterated dreck. And, it was mostly that. Well-intentioned, but naive. I also don’t think I harbored any real delusions about being an actual writer because I also knew them and they were my age and already published, but I understood that I liked trying to organize my thoughts on paper, something I’d been doing since I self-published my own magazines in high school. Lamentable journal entries about life really not yet lived and gaunt poems ripping off E.E. Cummings or Yeats were the few weapons in my expository arsenal back then. And I had no money and everyone was in their own state of panic leading up to finals and graduation, so what else to do but mope in the park and haunt campus cafes at night? I was a cliche, and I was alone, but I was my own cliche to make better or worse.

So I kept at it. And in this story that tumbled out, I guess I wanted to know how I felt in my twenties about one formative experience -- less an experience and more an impression, really -- and why did I think about it at all. What did it mean to me? What would have happened if the world were a bit different? Was there any part of me now that held any resemblance to that sad kid? When the story was done, I remember feeling like it was the first thing I’d written that wasn’t total crap; it was a lived moment albeit embellished a bit, and it kinda leapt off the page to my surprise. At least it did to me. In a fit of rare confidence, I showed the story to a professor friend of mine, who seemed to not mind my musings; he offered ideas on gussying it up a bit in the interest of maybe getting it published in a small quarterly. That never happened, but the idea that he didn’t dismiss it out of pocket was encouraging. It was nice to have some minor recognition for some honest soul mining. Maybe I was more astute in school than I thought.

So now, in 2017, with my youth wholly in the rear view, I’ve been thinking about this one story again -- or the time captured in the story -- and its place in my life. As a student and immediately after, I pushed out into the world very few pieces of fiction. It just wasn’t my strength and I knew it, but did this qualify as fiction since it cut so close? I didn’t know. And little of what I wrote back then had to do with coming out of the closet or even just an awareness of who I was becoming, because I came out young, to friends mostly, and I didn’t have time for reflection because much of that time had to do with real pain and shame. It’s a story many of us tell, unfortunately. To be sure, there was great friendship and acceptance in that period of middle school and high school, but there was fear in abundance too along with a whole lot of hiding and nary a relationship. That would have been impossible.

College is such a time long gone, and I really don’t know what happened to the story because I never backed it up or saved it, maybe on purpose or maybe it’s just because that hard disk is gone for good. I can’t even find one of the versions I printed. All I can do is ruminate on it without having the exact copy to discover again.

There is very little I can look back on from that time -- from being in classes, the trenches -- that I can say is enduring in any way or really defining of who I was and who I became. The friendships, sure. I have those. But the work? Where is the work? I cherish my plaque from a poetry award I once won in 1998, the Havilah Babcock Poetry Contest Award, but I also marvel at it given I never went on to an esteemed poetry career. There’s a lot of didn’t and a lot of never so far, but that isn’t the point. I’m still here and still writing in my way. And it took me years to know who Havilah Babcock was.

I also have this story that no longer exists in any real way, but I know I was proud of it, and I know that it was one of the first times I was truly onto something. And for the most part, I remember exactly what it said and what it felt like to write it. I remember the feeling of liking someone and what that meant.

---

“Duck, North Carolina is the northernmost incorporated town in Dare County and the Outer Banks' newest town, incorporated on May 1, 2002,” according to the town’s Wikipedia entry. The area is only 3.72 square miles, and in the off-season has a scant 369 residents, according to the 2010 census. In the summers, the time I used to show up, pale and doughy with my walkman and boogie board, the population swells to over 20,000.

For a few years spanning the late-eighties into the nineties, my parents and family friends were part of that coastal vacation migration, a whole congregation of minivans, aerobics Reeboks and Hawaiian Tropic headed to a tiny spit of land and the vast sea. For us, there was no other vacation spot. And Duck was truly for the adults -- the place you went because you had a bit more money now and it was near enough to bustling Nags Head but also far enough away for you to enjoy an unspoiled beach in a quiet hamlet of summer renters without the massive crowds. It was scenic and calm, but as a kid I wanted action. If Nags Head was Lost Boys then Duck was The Big Chill or something equally droll. Not cool. I wanted water slides and spray paint and roving gangs of skater kids hanging out in 7-11 parking lots, so genteel Duck didn’t suit me. For my mom, it gave her the chance to plug back in with the relatives she’d left behind years before when we beat a path out of our New Jersey motherland. Two weeks of kvetching and guilt over white Zin and snapping peas, basically.

“Because she’s crazy,” my mom in the galley kitchen, talking to my godmother about some other lady while fussing over cucumber chunks for a salad in one of those big wooden bowls. My godmother fidgeting with a pack of cards and watching over her child. That sort of thing.

“She is, Jo, but she’s still your mother.”

It was mostly hell, each day the same dodging of tasks and running to the water to escape breaking bread with the weird adult friends of parents, most of whom regarded me the way they would a curious fungus. “So he likes what kind of music again? He doesn’t play sports?,” their curled faces said. If I didn’t escape before my younger brothers noticed -- they saw me as their permanent source of entertainment -- and got their claws in, I’d end up being the jungle gym for the day. As a kid, not being in lockstep with parents -- together a real picture of upper middle class vim and vigor who seemed to believe in Don Henley, Fresca and George Bush -- meant I was more the pasty boarder with a bad attitude, ready to run off and roadie for Black Flag or any band, real or not, that would have me. This extended to vacations. Punk cassettes and my skateboard magazines were my sports and toys, and I didn’t want to be harassed about being part of the family. I was crying for help, and I believed Youth of Today and Rollins heard my call. I was waiting for the van to pull up at any minute.

In Duck, there were a million kids all breathing the same humid, briny air. Armies of gawky adolescent expats were hopped up on snack cakes, and they roamed the dunes in Panama Jack and Ron Jon gear. They came from the vanilla burbs of Delaware or Pennsylvania or if they were really exotic Ontario, a location I probably thought was off the planet somewhere. I mostly observed. Some were more adaptable, luxuriating in their time away from lawn cutting and swim meets as they body-surfed with their lithe parents and jocular siblings and new friends. They showed off their orthodontic elastics without care while singing along to Huey Lewis or Boss tunes on the boom boxes. Every dad the suburban Tom Selleck and every mom a round-the-way Basinger or Roseanne in a sun visor. Everyone tanned and every parent chased after their babies on the sand. And while I did cherish my Morey Mach 7-7 yellow boogie board (classic) and the surf, others were more like me, making the best of it alone with music or they somehow bonded with other misanthropic kids in close proximity to their sprawling, sun-baked beach manse.

Why so surly? I just was.

Then I met someone.

Jason landed in my orbit that summer, but I’m unsure of how, only that he did. Twenty years removed, he’s little more than a mop of curly brown hair and long, sunburnt legs, but I remember well his sun-kissed essence. He was from Connecticut, of course, seemed to be for want of little and he’d already been there for a week and was set to head back not long I arrived. Just my luck. Tall, wiry and adept at scoring baskets off an uncoordinated me on his driveway’s basketball hoop, Jason was one of the kids I described above: No edge, no ax to grind. Just unaffected calm and cool, neither jock nor Robert Smith devotee, likely able to walk a high school hallway and nod to the quarterbacks and skaters without fear of reprisal. How we linked up for a few days has everything to do with the heady social experiment that was a transient beach community: This wasn’t dry land with the normal players in your world, so normal prying eyes wouldn’t know and you could be best pals for a week with someone you’d never see again, someone you might put in a headlock were you back in the real world. These bonds could be like taking a lesser date to a restaurant no one knows. To call it a friendship would be a misnomer, because maybe I knew him for less than a week, but for me, there was something profound in those few days.

On his deck we ate cheese sandwiches and chips with sand in between our toes. His mom offered us Capri Suns, and I enjoyed their artificial sweetness. His muscles glowed in the afternoon light.

---

“Show me what you can do on your skateboard,” I remember him saying in my driveway, pointing to my kicknose set-up. As a student of Jason Lee and Matt Hensley you know I ollied my early-nineties Gonz deck with aplomb over a large trash can, careful to avoid pooled rainwater and sand, and then I rolled into a railslide on one of the nearby benches before offering him a quick streetplant as a nod to my eighties roots.

Right.

Really all I probably did was do a two-inch high ollie and a wan shove-it before getting winded and stopping. "Nevermind. What kind of tapes did you bring?,” he laughed good-naturedly at my technique.

Here was my time to shine.

“If you haven’t heard the first Sepultura record, it’s so cool and crazy, you have to check it out. Look at the cover, man, it’s so scary. I got my M.O.D. tape and my S.O.D. tape and Anthrax and Metallica and WarZone and fIREHOSE.” I was really laying it on thick, convinced that I was impressing him with my vast knowledge of the most cutting edge extreme music. “I like punk and hardcore a lot.”

“Oh that’s cool. I’m really into the last two R.E.M. tapes,” he said while just kinda glancing at the prized collection in my duffel bag, not bored but not turned on either by my superior taste. Years later, I know what he meant by that was he liked Document and he liked Green, two era-defining alternative albums if there ever were any. Of course, I was a kid with a television and a radio, so ‘The One I Love’ and ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" were everywhere and anywhere. Did I love them, too? I think so. It seemed more real than Pat Benatar or Madonna but less direct than Minor Threat, so maybe I didn’t hate it. I could learn to be into it.

I realize, there’s a lot of build up to this, but Jason is little more than a plot device in my larger narrative. Prior to him, I would look at Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark and have vague rumblings of a feeling. Jason collided with my life as my body began waking up. Somewhere beyond this sandy idyll, hard-nosed activists were marching on city avenues because they were dying and their friends had died and because city governments overturned ordinances and the federal government wasn’t helping. They were fighting Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the right to be in hospital rooms with their spouses. My parents were likely having very private conversations about my future, but I was spared from them. That summer, as a little kid on the Outer Banks, it was nuclear families as far as the eye could see, white ones mostly. I didn’t know then about religion and laws and organized efforts to draw boundaries around my being, but I felt the fruits of their labor locking me down, halting any natural inclination I may have had to reach for something. Those few days that summer, I could do little more than look at Jason with a true awareness in my heart, in my gut and simply wonder, wonder with my sweaty hands in my pockets and my mouth sewn up. I didn’t know in total what the awareness was, but I also knew in total what the awareness was, and I knew it would stay buried for years if not for my entire life. If he sensed anything, one ounce of feeling in my pleading eyes, he didn’t let on. Would my life be hell?

---

“What’s this guy saying? I don’t get it.”

“All I know is ‘Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, BOOM’ and you got me on the rest. It doesn’t matter, man. It’s a good song,” Jason told me plainly as the cassette was blaring out of a boom box. I think his sister was with us, thumbing a magazine. He was doing pull ups on a deck beam, the humidity causing his head to dampen. It was early evening, and he was leaving tomorrow. The family was grilling burgers and dogs.

“I could come visit you sometime. My grandparents live in New Jersey, and it’s not far from you. It would be fun.”

As fast as it came out, I regretted it. Boys didn’t offer to go visit other boys, you dummy. It was my heart talking, and besides, even if I wanted to visit, who would take a fourteen-year-old to visit a strange kid hours away. I could tell he didn’t think much of the idea, and he just shrugged and kept focusing on increasing his upper-body strength. The brief reverie had passed. As a last ditch measure, I gave him my address in the hope we’d stay pen pals.

A short stretch of road, sheltered by live oaks and dotted with crape myrtles, separated Jason’s house from mine, and I knew it was time to be going. If I looked away from the ocean, slightly to the right, I could see the light on in our rental living room. My stomach doing cartwheels and my heart racing, but it was time to go. Jason and I shook on it. You know the rest.

And I feeeeellll fine (no you don’t)/And I feeeelll fine (really, you don’t)/It’s tiiimmee I had some tiiimme alone (no it isn’t)

The singer of R.E.M. (didn’t know his name at fourteen), sounded nervous and jittery and scared just like me. It sounded like he well understood longing. Did he know someone like Jason?

I pictured myself singing at Jason and him understanding and feeling the same way.

So to pull back and end things, when I wrote about this in college, the words just fell out of me, as if they’d been bottled in a cellar and were ready to air out. That first feeling of some type of attraction, the quiet realization and maybe panic that I knew I was attracted to another boy, the feeling as if my chest were bursting. All of that is too much for any kid; just processing the new hormones in your body during puberty is enough but adding the weight of being gay and the pressure to keep it hidden from your family. That’s enough to drive anyone crazy, and I think it did drive me crazy. I wanted to convey all of that. It felt like the world was ending and beginning again because even though before meeting Jason I had felt something, I never had a crush until then.

At the age of forty, there are no barriers of that regard in my life. I’m happily married; my parents attended my wedding. They bought bottles of champagne and glasses for drinking. But I’ll never again get an adolescence, and like many LGBT folk of a certain age, it’s now mine to dream about what an unencumbered youth would have looked like because that’s all I can do if and when I choose. If I didn’t have to misapply affection to male friends who couldn’t reciprocate. If I didn’t have to only think of romance in terms of Lloyd Dobler and Diane Court. If being open weren’t just tolerated, but nourished, understood and cherished. I didn’t have that with Jason or with any other kid my age.

But in the version of my short story, the one I wrote when graduating, the hero left Jason’s porch, but then he said ‘fuck it’ and turned around in the middle of the lawn, alighted the beach house stairs and grabbed the damn guy’s hand and kissed his cheek. And nothing bad happened.

It was the end of the world, and it had a happy conclusion. Did R.E.M. have a song for that?

----

It’s hilarious to admit now, but I don’t think I realized in college that the song’s chorus was a metaphor so glaring, it’s as if it were a locomotive coming right at me: It was the end of my world as I knew it; student life, the only thing I’d known for twenty-two years, was officially over and everything else that wasn’t campuses, classes and books was ahead of me, looming big and scarily. But at that age, I really didn’t have much capacity for self-awareness; I had only just started grappling with my past and with my family, and this story was a first step in learning about myself

#storytelling #PENTAX67 #pentax #medium format #kodak portra 160 #lgbtq #120 film #105mm #lgbt #coming of age #north carolina #outer banks

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